Suryanarayanan Sainath
Department of Community & Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705, USA.
Insects. 2013 Mar 5;4(1):153-67. doi: 10.3390/insects4010153.
Amidst ongoing declines in honey bee health, the contributory role of the newer systemic insecticides continues to be intensely debated. Scores of toxicological field experiments, which bee scientists and regulators in the United States have looked to for definitive causal evidence, indicate a lack of support. This paper analyzes the methodological norms that shape the design and interpretation of field toxicological studies. I argue that contemporary field studies of honey bees and pesticides are underpinned by a "control-oriented" approach, which precludes a serious investigation of the indirect and multifactorial ways in which pesticides could drive declines in honey bee health. I trace the historical rise to prominence of this approach in honey bee toxicology to the development of entomology as a science of insecticide development in the United States. Drawing on "complexity-oriented" knowledge practices in ecology, epidemiology, beekeeping and sociology, I suggest an alternative socio-ecological systems approach, which would entail in situ studies that are less concerned with isolating individual factors and more attentive to the interactive and place-based mix of factors affecting honey bee health.
在蜜蜂健康状况持续下降的背景下，新型内吸性杀虫剂的促成作用仍在激烈争论中。美国的蜜蜂科学家和监管机构一直指望通过大量毒理学田间试验来获取确凿的因果证据，但试验结果却并不支持这一点。本文分析了影响田间毒理学研究设计与解读的方法规范。我认为，当代对蜜蜂和杀虫剂的田间研究以“控制导向”方法为基础，这使得无法认真研究杀虫剂可能导致蜜蜂健康下降的间接和多因素方式。我将这种方法在蜜蜂毒理学中历史上的兴起追溯到美国昆虫学作为杀虫剂开发科学的发展。借鉴生态学、流行病学、养蜂学和社会学中“复杂性导向”的知识实践，我提出了一种替代性的社会生态系统方法，这种方法需要进行实地研究，较少关注分离单个因素，而更关注影响蜜蜂健康的因素之间的相互作用以及基于地点的因素组合。
