Nicole C. Nelson, Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (Chicago: Un
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Nicole C. Nelson, Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 272 pp., 6 b&w illus., $30.00 Paperback, ISBN: 9780226546087 Rachel A. Ankeny1 Accepted: 21 November 2020 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2020
Mice remain the most ubiquitous model organisms in contemporary biology, but it remains critical to assess how and why they can serve as models for problems that are complex and distinctly human, such as psychiatric disorders including addictive behaviors. Nicole Nelson’s book relies on a contemporary case study of an animal behavior laboratory with a focus on the genetics of addiction and uses a mixture of historical and ethnographic approaches to explore how research is conducted with these organisms and made meaningful through continuous justificatory processes. As Nelson puts it, how is it that animal behavior geneticists “achieve” (p. 5) the ongoing validity of their models? This somewhat unusual language underscores that model validity must constantly be performed and never is ever “demonstrated” in any real sense. One of the highlights of the book is found in Nelson’s adept observations on her subjects’ own behaviors, and particularly how the researchers whom she observes engage in constant reflection, criticism, and tinkering of the models with which they work, which are key themes in the first part of the book. Perhaps because of the complexities with the field, particularly the well-recognized difficulties associated with modelling human psychiatric disorders, the case provides an excellent example of how knowledge created in such laboratory settings is inextricably situated and constantly being made (and re-made). Hence this study stresses that not all laboratories are what Thomas Gieryn termed truth spots, but instead are spaces full of epistemic problems to be managed, results to be stabilized again and again as studies proceed. The knowledge that her scientists produce is hence not only decidedly situated but also necessarily partial. I would have liked to hear a bit more about whether Nelson thinks her case might be more the norm in the contemporary life sciences, or what factors and characteristics mark these types of spaces as distinct from our more traditional view of laboratories. * Rachel A. Ankeny [email protected] 1
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
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R. A. Ankeny
Nelson’s use of the extended metaphor of “epistemic scaffolds” is provocative if not altogether successful: she uses this to show how scientists create and debate claims about the usefulness of animal models using a platform for their work that is flexible and temporary, drawing on a range of uses of similar concepts from STS and elsewhere (without always being explicit about these precedents). Grounding in this sort of constructionist language is clearly in tension with trends in animal studies and even s
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