6
Woolgar later reinforced this point by stating that there is a higher risk of ‘going native’
2
when observations of science are concerned:
The standard tension of any ethnographic study is present here. We want to see things from the natives’ point
of view but we don’t want uncritically to adopt their belief system. [..] Note, however, that in one important
sense it is more difficult to remain ‘strange’ in the exotic culture we call science than it is when conducting
an ethnography of, say, the Navaho Indians. When the latter informants tell us that they are dancing in order
to make it rain, we can readily draw upon scepticism which is ‘in-built’ in virtue of our membership of
‘advanced Western culture’. But when informants amongst the tribe of scientists explain that the right-hand
side of an equation ‘follows’ from the application of the rule of commutativity, we find it much more
difficult to resist the apparent authority of this explanation. Why? Simply because respect for scientific
rationality is deeply embedded in our own (ethnographers’) culture. (Woolgar 1988: 86)
3. Informed interviewing: Three tasks
3.1 Preparing the interview
Choosing an informed observation approach requires learning about the fields under
investigation and about the interviewees’ research prior to the interview. We usually apply two
strategies of information collection. Firstly, we try to obtain general information about the
research field(s) under investigation by studying reference books of the field. We used these
books especially to get information about the field’s most important methods and to understand
basic, often used terms. Of course, it is impossible to catch up with years of scientific training by
studying reference books. But it was possible in almost all cases of experimental research to
develop a general understanding of what the work in the field is about and how problems are
tackled. The following quotation exemplifies why it is useful to get this kind of knowledge:
Q: What is the common background of the projects you are conducting?
A: Organic Chemistry.
Q: This is very general. Organic chemistry is a very large field.
A: Synthesis and Preparation of natural substances and synthesis of derivatives. That could be said, generally.
Since the interviewer knew that organic chemistry is too large to form the common background
of a single scientist's projects she was able to extract a specification.
The strategy of studying reference books becomes rather difficult or even impossible if a whole
range of research fields has to be investigated. However, we would still propose to try.
The second strategy is essential for informed interviewing and should always be applied. It is
crucial to collect information about the interviewee’s research prior to the interview. Zuckerman
(1972: 163-166) reported how extensively she prepared her interviews with Nobel laureates. She
studied the laureates’ addresses given on the occasion of their Prizes, prepared publication lists,
2
‘Going native’ is one of the central methodological problems in anthropology. It describes the observer’s gradual
adoption of the observed culture’s belief systems and perspectives, which leads to a loss of analytical distance and to the
inability of questioning taken-for-granted positions and practices (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995: 109-112).
Convention