The media have become an important arena where struggles over the symbolic legitimacy of expert authority take place and where scientific experts increasingly have to compete for public recognition. The rise of authoritarian and populist leaders in many countries and the growing importance of social media have fueled criticism against scientific institutions and individual researchers. This paper discusses the new hidden forms of suppression and self-censorship regarding scientists’ roles as public experts. It is based on two web surveys conducted among (...) Finnish researchers in 2015 and 2017. We focus on answers to the open-ended questions in these surveys, where respondents reflect upon issues of freedom of expression and the feedback they receive in public arenas. Building on previous research on suppression, “research silencing,” and the “chilling effect,” we discuss the connection between freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry. We make a distinction between four forms of suppression: political and economic control, organizational control, control between rival academics, and control from publics. Moreover, we make explicit and discuss the means, motives, and practices of suppression within each of these four forms. (shrink)

This paper explores what it takes for research laboratories to produce valuable knowledge in academic institutions marked by the coexistence of multiple evaluative frameworks. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two UK-based epigenetics research laboratories, I examine the set of practices through which research groups intertwine knowledge production with the making of scientific, health, and wealth value. This includes building and maintaining a portfolio of valuable resources, such as expertise, scientific credibility, or data, and turning these resources into assets (...) by carefully organizing and managing their value. Laboratories then put these assets to productive use within and outside their labs toward the creation or extraction of value. I identify two models for producing value within academic science: a commodity-based model whereby laboratories mobilize their assets to produce results, which can be converted into publications for the accumulation of credibility capital, and a rentier model of accumulation whereby laboratories own valuable assets, which they rent out to others outside their lab against revenue. Following recent developments in Science and Technology Studies on value production in the bioeconomy, I argue that the concepts of asset and rent are essential analytical tools for getting to grips with the origins of value within academic science. (shrink)

AI technology is capturing the African imaginations as a gateway to progress and prosperity. There is a growing interest in AI by different actors across the continent including scientists, researchers, humanitarian and aid organizations, academic institutions, tech start-ups, and media organizations. Several African states are looking to adopt AI technology to capture economic growth and development opportunities. On the other hand, African researchers highlight the gap in regulatory frameworks and policies that govern the development of AI in the continent. They (...) argue that this could lead to AI technology exacerbating problems of inequalities and injustice in the continent. However, most of the literature on AI ethics is biased toward Euro-American perspectives and lack the understanding of how AI development is apprehended in the Global South, and particularly Africa. Drawing on the case study of the first African Master’s in Machine Intelligence program, this paper argues for looking beyond the question of ethics in AI and examining AI governance issues through the analytical lens of the raciality of computing and the political economy of technoscience to understand AI development in Africa. By doing so, this paper seeks a different theorization for AI ethics from the South that is based on lived experiences of those in the margins and avoids the framings of technological futures that simplistically pathologize or celebrate Africa. (shrink)