Everyday characterizations of translational research: researchers\u2019 own use of terminology and models in medical research and practice

Dixi Louise Strand

doi:10.1057/s41599-020-0489-1

Abstract

Biomedical literature and policy are highly concerned with encouraging and improving the clinical application and clinical benefit of new scientific knowledge. Debates, theorizing, and policy initiatives aiming to close the “bench-to-bedside gap” have led to the development of “Translational Research” (TR), an emerging set of research-related discourses and practices within biomedicine. Studies in social science and the humanities have explored and challenged the assumptions underpinning specific TR models and policy initiatives, as well as the socio-material transformations involved. However, only few studies have explored TR as a productive ongoing process of meaning-making taking place as part of the everyday practices of the actual researchers located at the very nexus of science and clinic. This article therefore asks the question of how the discourse and promise of translation is embedded and performed within the practices and perspective of the specific actors involved. The findings are based on material from ethnographic fieldwork among translational researchers situated in a Danish hospital research setting. The analysis draws on the analytical notion of performativity in order to approach statements and models of TR in the light of their performative dimension. This analytical approach thus helps to highlight how the characterizations of TR also contain prescriptions for how the world must change for these characterizations to become true. The analysis provides insights into four different characterizations of TR and reflects on the associated practices where performative success is achieved in practice. With the presentation of these four characterizations, this paper illustrates different uses of the term TR among the actual actors engaged in research-clinic activities and contributes insight into the complex processes of conceptual and material reorganization that form part of the emergence of TR in biomedicine.

Highlights

Translational research has become subject to widespread debates in biomedical literature and politics, evoking high expectations, promises, and concerns
Existing studies have pointed to the multiple meanings of translational research in ongoing academic and policy debates—and to the way in which this concept is tied to a range of varying problems and possible solutions, in different medical fields and in different national contexts (Crabu, 2018; Greenhalgh and Wieringa, 2011; Krüger et al, 2018; van der Laan and Boenink, 2015)
The findings presented in this paper draw on a sub-set of the data regarding the way in which the translational researchers themselves understood and used the concept Translational Research” (TR)

Summary

Introduction

Translational research has become subject to widespread debates in biomedical literature and politics, evoking high expectations, promises, and concerns. Several of the informants in both research networks noted the buzzword character of the word, smiling or laughing at my question of their understanding in the interview thereby distancing themselves from the concept and instead locating the concept in a world of politics and funding bodies with interests different from their own They reiterated statements resembling the objectives discussed above regarding knowledge flow and transfer, but added that these ideas did not necessarily match the way TR projects played out according to their experience. Such ability to apply new methodologies across disciplines and to converse and move expertly across more than one discipline is a fourth way in which the discourse and promise of translation was embedded within the practices of both research networks

Discussion

Conclusion