In “The Role of Pathos,” (reprinted in Harris’ Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science Case Studies, 1997), Craig Waddell explores the 1976 debate surrounding whether or not recombinant DNA (rDNA) research should be allowed in Cambridge, MA. In particular, Waddell focuses on the city-formed Cambridge Experimentation Research Board (CERB) and a meeting it had with [...]
Category Archives: Reviews
Watson, R.T. (2005). Turning science into policy: Challenges and experiences from the science-policy interface. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 360, 471-477.
In “Turning Science into Policy,” world bank member and former Clinton-Gore adviser Robert T. Watson reflects on the relationship between science and policy within the debates on climate change, environmental sustainability, and population control. He argues that no fruitful directions in policy are likely without a through integration of research into scientific, economic, and social [...]
Morris, D. B. (1991). The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: UCal Press
David B. Morris’ The Culture of Pain (1991) offers the reader a wide reaching exploration of medical and cultural approaches to pain and its management. Foundational to his book is Morris’ argument that the then-contemporary biomedical approach to pain was grounded in a mechanistic ontology of the human body. Morris argues that this biomedical approach [...]
Dumit, J. (2004). Picturing personhood: Brain scans and biomedical identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans are currently used by the popular press and the entertainment industry to provoke great excitement. This mysterious and fantastic technology is (seemingly) able to probe deep into the invisible brain and take photographs which can tell scientists more about how the brain works and doctors more about keeping it working. [...]
Segal, J. Z. (1993). Strategies of influence in medical authorship. Social Science and Medicine, 37(4), 521-530.
In “Strategies of Influence in Medical Authorship,” Judy Z. Segal explores the rhetoric of medical authorship through the lens of three Aristotelian canons, invention, style, and delivery. After a justification of her use or rhetorical analysis for scientific discourse, Segal analyzes rhetorical strategies deployed in 35 medical journal articles selected from a corpus of 200 [...]
Starr, P. (1982). The social transformation of American medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of vast industry. USA: Basic Books.
In The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Paul Starr offers the reader a sweeping, thorough, and detailed history of the American medical profession. Book One interrogates American medicine’s establishment of sovereign cultural/ professional ethos and developing socio-economic dynamics from approximately 1790 to 1930. Book One traces the American medical establishment from fledgling pseudo-profession to cultural [...]
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Cali, D. D. & Estrada, C. (1999). The medical interview as rhetorical counterpart of the case presentation. Health Communication, 11(4), 355-373.
In “The Medical Interview as Rhetorical Counterpart of the Case Presentation,” Dennis Cali and Carlos Estrada conduct a “macrocommunication analysis” reviewing then-recent genre-studies of case presentations and medical interviews. The authors suggest the macroanalytic approach for its ability to respond to three then-recent trends in rhetorically-situated health communication studies: 1) the emphasis on “individual factors [...]
Maynard, D. W. (2004). On predicating a diagnosis as an attribute of a person. Discourse Studies, 6(1),53-76.
Douglas Maynard’s “On Predicating a Diagnosis as an Attribute of a Person” explores, through conversational analysis, interactions between healthcare workers and patients at the time of diagnosis. Specifically, Maynard explores how practitioners employ two discursive moves, “citing the evidence” and “asserting the condition” to attribute a diagnosis. The article also seeks to shed light on [...]
Segal, J. Z. (2005). Health and the rhetoric of medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.
In Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine, Judy Segal offers a broad introduction to the idea of rhetorical analysis and criticism as applied to biomedicine. Segal targets an interdisciplinary audience of rhetoricians, historians, philosophers, sociologists, healthcare providers, and industry representatives, suggesting that the tools of rhetorical criticism can help shed new light on a variety [...]