S. Scott Graham is an assistant professor in the Department of English and director of the Scientific and Medical Communications (SAMComm) Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There he studies rhetorics of science and medicine and critical/cultural technical communication. Scott has particular interests in the (medico-)science-policy interface, the nature of expertise, and multiple ontologies theory. His research explores communicative conflicts and argumentative practices in the intersections among scientific research and regulatory policy. Currently, he is exploring these issues through inquiry into two different cases: 1) FDA regulation and multidisciplinary pain science and 2) the participation of diverse stakeholders in FDA oncological drugs advisory committee.

Scott’s current book manuscript, tentatively entitled Pain Science & Public Policy: Agency, Ontologies and the Medical-Industrial Complex chronicles three years of ethnographic research into an interdisciplinary activist pain management organization. Scott explores the rhetoric of this organization as its members attempt to forge cross-disciplinary alliances in the face of profound incommensurability and endeavor to change the theoretical foundation of Western biomedicine and the regulatory policies of the FDA.