Eby Margaret R
Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennyslvania Perelman School of Medicine, 14th Floor, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Dr, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2025 Mar;369:117829. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117829. Epub 2025 Feb 7.
How are unsettled forms of expertise settled to the advantage of established, but insecure, professional authorities? This research draws on the emergence of eugenics as a "new science" during the first decades of the twentieth century, investigating how medicine came to provide disciplinary authority and organization to eugenic interventions. I do so by analyzing medical publications between 1907 and 1927 to trace physicians' engagement with eugenic hypotheses, their original research pertaining to eugenics, and the growth of eugenics as an explanatory medical factor. First, I analyze the professional challenge eugenics presented to the rapidly transforming field of medicine and the domain of medical authority. Next, I show first how physicians cast eugenics as both a historical norm and a new science, reinforcing it as part of their domain while protecting their skepticism. Finally, I argue that medicine was able to legitimize unsettled science through a process of "expertise laundering" in which medicine dominated an interdisciplinary exchange of eugenic claims which obscured the unsettled science behind eugenics while bolstering its legitimacy.
未定型的专业知识是如何被确立下来，从而有利于既已确立但仍不安全的专业权威的？本研究借鉴了20世纪头几十年优生学作为一门“新科学”的出现，探究医学是如何为优生学干预提供学科权威和组织架构的。我通过分析1907年至1927年间的医学出版物来进行研究，以追溯医生对优生学假设的参与、他们与优生学相关的原创研究，以及优生学作为一种解释性医学因素的发展。首先，我分析优生学给迅速变革的医学领域和医学权威领域带来的专业挑战。其次，我先展示医生如何将优生学既视为一种历史常态又视为一门新科学，在强化其作为自身领域一部分的同时保护自己的怀疑态度。最后，我认为医学能够通过一个“专业知识洗白”的过程使未定型的科学合法化，在这个过程中，医学主导了优生学主张的跨学科交流，这掩盖了优生学背后未定型的科学，同时增强了其合法性。
