Networks of Collaboration in Microarray Research

I'm using social network methods to analyze the system of research involving genomic approaches to studying carcinogenesis. Approaches to data interpretation and assessment of the uncertainty associated with experimental outcomes vary widely between research groups, and development of a standard protocol for dealing with these issues is not a realistic prospect for the near future. This ambiguity is a potential obstacle to the effective use of information from genomic research in many contexts, including drug development, clinical practice, and environmental regulation. To overcome this obstacle, researchers must be able to communicate effectively with one another about their results despite different perspectives on the analysis of relatively new and complex objects. Studies in the sociology of science and in organization theory suggest that collaboration is an important means of developing a sufficiently shared understanding of the experimental situation to facilitate communication. Furthermore, the pattern of collaboration that characterizes the community of cancer researchers may influence their ability to develop a consensus around the validity of experimental methodologies and the certainty of specific results. The focus of my current project is to analyze these patterns and locate explanatory and statistical connections between network characteristics or configurations and the effectiveness of the research community in validating and supporting their discoveries in the context of environmental regulation.