Most recent papers:

• Where Do We Fit? Reflections on Research Interview Practice, Project Design, and Interpretation.
  Dmitriy Myelnikov.
  Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. April 03, 2026
  ["Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 82-96, March 2026. ", "\nWhat is special about historical research interviews in the history of science, technology, and medicine, and how do they compare to the tools of oral historians and social scientists? This essay reflects on three interview projects I have undertaken, each taking a distinct shape. I address methodological and pragmatic aspects of these projects, especially concerns related to anonymity and recovering memories of practice, as well as institutional challenges for placing historical research interviews among the more familiar and structured projects in the social sciences, notably around questions of anonymity. I suggest that we have most to learn from oral historians in thinking about research ethics and empowering the interviewee to decide what they want to happen to the recording and transcript, and whether and how they want to claim credit. At the same time, we can make different choices when it comes to designing, interpreting, and publishing our interviews. I suggest it may be beneficial to think of our work as triangulation across sources, within broader practices of what we might call “historical fieldwork”.\n"]

  April 03, 2026   doi: 10.1002/bewi.70010   open full text
• Learning with Patient Campaigners About a German Drug Scandal.
  Jesse Olszynko‐Gryn, Anja Suter, Edmund Bolger, Birgit Nemec.
  Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. April 03, 2026
  ["Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 50-65, March 2026. ", "\nThe West German drug Duogynon was internationally marketed as a “hormone pregnancy test” (HPT) between the 1950s and 1980s. In the late 1960s it came under suspicion for inducing miscarriage, spina bifida, and a spectrum of birth defects similar to those caused by the sedative thalidomide. In contrast to thalidomide, medical consensus did not form around the teratogenicity of Duogynon and many people who identify as Duogynon‐affected continue to campaign for recognition. The informal use of Duogynon as an abortion pill adds a further layer of shame, secrecy, and silence. In this article, we reflect on the value of oral history and the ethics of inclusion within a larger research project that investigates the rise and fall of HPTs, globally. We ask what collaborating with patient campaigners in a more participatory mode than is typical of archival research can contribute to the historical understanding of the Duogynon affair and other drug scandals.\n"]

  April 03, 2026   doi: 10.1002/bewi.70014   open full text
• Reflections on Fieldwork Around Europe.
  Cameron Brinitzer.
  Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. April 03, 2026
  ["Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 66-81, March 2026. ", "\nThis article is about the act and practice of doing interviews. In contrast to an ascendant enthusiasm for automation, computation, and digitization, it focuses on the process of interviewing as a relational mode of historical research and on uses of interviews that occur prior to their mobilization as evidence in historical accounts. The central argument is that, well before interviews can be used as historical sources, the practice of interviewing is useful for charting scientific networks, creating textual records, and generating archival questions. After setting the analytic stage, the article proceeds almost ethnographically through a series of conversations and interviews in order to illustrate some of the ways that interviewing—as a practice of knowing in and through relations—resists formalization and remains irresolvably human, social, and staged. In the conclusion, the article turns to epistemological questions raised when using interviews in historical writing. It argues that incorporating research interviews into the methodological repertoire of the history of science and medicine offers an occasion to practice reflexivity with respect to the narrative grounds of historical claims. It suggests that this might encourage a confrontation with the discipline's inherited epistemic valuation of naturalism.\n"]

  April 03, 2026   doi: 10.1002/bewi.70013   open full text
• Controlling the Field: Memory, Labor, and Ethics in Oral Histories of Brazilian Human Genetics.
  Rosanna Dent, Ana Carolina Vimieiro Gomes.
  Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. April 03, 2026
  ["Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 31-49, March 2026. ", "\nThis article examines how oral histories of twentieth‐century human genetics in Brazil reveal the politics of memory of fieldwork. Through a comparative analysis of interviews with prominent geneticist Francisco M. Salzano and technician Girley V. Simões, who worked with him for most of his career, this study explores the narrative strategies each employed to establish their historical accounts. Attending reflexively to the oral history encounters, the analysis examines how each narrator negotiates professional identity and moral legitimacy in light of changing ethical norms surrounding research with Indigenous communities. Simões's vivid recollections foreground invisible forms of technical and logistical labor, offering him the opportunity to recast his position as one of active knowledge‐making. Salzano's controlled and diplomatic accounts, by contrast, illustrate how the senior scientist curated memory to stabilize his professional legacy and defend disciplinary ethics in the wake of controversy. Contrasting Salzano and Simões's approaches to describing their shared experiences drives home the complex social and political realities of narrating fieldwork, as well as the political valences of remembering and documenting these histories in the present.\n"]

  April 03, 2026   doi: 10.1002/bewi.70012   open full text