The Roles of User/Producer Hybrids in the Production of Translational Science

Abstract

This paper explores the interface between users and producers of translational science (TS) through three case studies. It argues that effective TS requires a breakdown between user and producer roles: users become producers and producers become users. In making this claim, we challenge conventional understandings of TS as well as linear models of innovation. Policy-makers and funders increasingly expect TS and its associated socioeconomic benefits to occur when funding scientific research. We argue that a better understanding of the hybridity between users and producers in TS is essential to encouraging effective TS activities. In arguing for broader understandings of the hybrid roles of user/producers in TS we rely on empirical observations made during our four-year (2006–2009) study of three translational pathways here labeled clinical, commercial, and civic. These pathways were identified in a large-scale network of scientists investigating the pathogenomics of innate immunity (i.e. “the PI.2 network”). Through our examination of “user-firms” in the commercial TS case study, of patients and clinician-scientists as users in the clinical TS case study, and of bioinformaticians as user/producers in the civic TS case study, we suggest that the iterative and dialectical nature of TS blurs the lines between users and producers, rendering such distinctions arbitrary and sometimes misleading. We suggest that such a blurred boundary may be a constitutive, if underappreciated, component of TS. Acknowledging the important role of user/producers may be a crucial step in overcoming translational challenges currently facing the biomedical domain, and in appreciating broader transformations in science.

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