So Long, Succor

Abstract

Dr. Golem is the third in a series of books by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch that aim to make the insights of science and technology studies (STS) accessible to general readers.1 The Golem, the first of the series, consisted of a number of chapters based on prominent case studies in the social construction of scientific knowledge and highlighted the various contingencies and uncertainties inherent in the work of scientific knowledge production.2 The Golem at Large did the same for technology.3 Now Dr. Golem extends this formula to medicine. As Collins and Pinch acknowledge, however, the turn to medicine required them to confront a number of problems that they had not encountered in their previous volumes. We all come into contact with medicine many times in the course of our lives, and in ways that differ dramatically from we generally experience science and technology. As patients and as objects of pervasive medical surveillance and advice, we not only consume medicine but constantly find ourselves making or participating in medical decisions with profound implications for our health and our lives. Collins and Pinch intend Dr. Golem to help us make the best choices in our inevitable encounters with medicine. Hence its subtitle: where the first two Golem volumes told us what you should know about science and technology, this book tells us how to think about medicine. As in the previous Golem volumes, much of Dr. Golem is devoted to identifying and explicating the various kinds of uncertainty that beset tech-