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Showing papers by "Susan Leigh Star published in 1985"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Six mechanisms by which scientists transform local uncertainty are discussed: attributing certainty to the results of other fields; substituting processual for production evaluations in the face of technical failures; ideal type substitutions; shifting clinical and basic evaluation criteria; ad hoc generalizing of case studies; and the subsuming of epistemological questions in internal debates.
Abstract: This paper examines the transformation of local uncertainties encountered by working scientists into global certainty, or `scientific facts'. It discusses six mechanisms by which scientists transfo...

166 citations