Open AccessClinical Trials and the Drive to Material Standardisation
Author(s) -
Catherine Montgomery
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
science and technology studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.675
H-Index - 14
ISSN - 2243-4690
DOI - 10.23987/sts.59226
Subject(s) - situated , acknowledgement , clinical trial , bureaucracy , ethnography , focus (optics) , public relations , psychology , engineering ethics , sociology , political science , medicine , computer science , engineering , law , computer security , physics , optics , pathology , artificial intelligence , politics , anthropology
There have long been calls to reduce the bureaucratization of clinical trials and make them more ‘sensible’, with the focus on approvals and guidelines. Here, I focus on the mundane environments of a multi-centre clinical trial to ask how ‘sensible’ it is to standardize trials at the level of material objects. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in the UK, South Africa and Vietnam, I present three vignettes of material standardisation. While acknowledging some positive effects, I argue that standardising in this way may be antithetical to sustainable and relevant clinical research. Three dimensions of this are discussed: 1) the external validity of evidence from pragmatic trials 2) the gap between experimentation and implementation and 3) long-term site capacity to conduct research. Drawing on the literature on ‘situated standardisation’, the paper concludes by suggesting a greater acknowledgement of the need for trials not only to be ‘sensible’ but also ‘situated’.