Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement:Evolving notions of objectivity: changing conceptions of what counts as clinical evidence in 20th and 21st century Russia.

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Science & Society Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant seeks to examine clinical research practices in oncology in Russia over a thirty-year period beginning in 1972. The project will investigate changing ideas during this period about the validity of clinical evidence and the proper methodology for producing such evidence, as well as who is sanctioned to produce it. In researching the epistemic foundations of Russian biomedicine, this work will also follow the process of how these foundations of knowledge have undergone a profound transformation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This transformation is directly related to the socio-economic upheavals in Russia precipitated by the collapse of the USSR. This work will analyze a cooperative project between American and Soviet researchers in cancer chemotherapy, which was conducted under the auspices of the Soviet-American healthcare exchange beginning in 1972. A study of archival records from this exchange program provides an excellent opportunity to delineate differences between Soviet and American approaches to the production and evaluation of clinical evidence, and to develop a clear picture of Soviet epistemology. An examination of the exchange program also sheds light on the biopolitics of the period. Employing qualitative research methods such as ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews at leading Russian oncology centers, as well as careful review of published scientific literature, the project will trace the changes during the post-Soviet period in clinical trial methodology and data evaluation criteria that have been introduced in response to the disappearance of funding, the entrance of the global pharmaceutical industry into the Russian market, and the attempts at healthcare reform by the Russian government and international aid agencies. This research stands to inform a variety of social science and policy literatures, by presenting a picture of how cancer research on human subjects can be conceived and practiced quite differently in social contexts that change over time.