Article ID: CBB270139233

How to choose your research organism (2020)

unapi

Despite August Krogh's famous admonition that a ‘convenient’ organism exists for every biological problem, we argue that appeals to ‘convenience’ are not sufficient to capture reasoning about organism choice. Instead, we offer a detailed analysis based on empirical data and philosophical arguments for a working set of twenty criteria that interact with each other in the highly contextualized judgements that biologists make about organism choice. We propose to think of these decisions as a form of ‘differential analysis’ where researchers weigh multiple criteria for organismal choice against each other, and often utilize multidimensional refinement processes to finalize their choices. The specific details of any one case make it difficult to draw generalizations or to abstract away from specific research situations. However, this analysis of criteria for organismal choice and how these are related in practice allows us to reflect more generally on what makes a particular organism useful or ‘good.’

...More
Citation URI
data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB270139233

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Similar Citations

Book Endersby, Jim; (2007)
A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: The Plants and Animals Who Taught Us the Facts of Life (/p/isis/citation/CBB000774282/) unapi

Article Robert Kohler; (2022)
Lords of the Fly Revisited (/p/isis/citation/CBB701830584/) unapi

Article Angela N. H. Creager; (2022)
Model Organisms Unbound (/p/isis/citation/CBB532396920/) unapi

Article Karen A. Rader; (2022)
Reflections on Making Mice (2004) (/p/isis/citation/CBB321873815/) unapi

Article Simon Lohse; (2021)
Scientific inertia in animal-based research in biomedicine (/p/isis/citation/CBB124857110/) unapi

Book Anita Guerrini; (2022)
Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR (/p/isis/citation/CBB030333227/) unapi

Article Bauer, Susanne; (2012)
Kommentar: Verteilte Handlungsmacht im Experiment -- Von der Epistemologie zu multiplen Ontologien (/p/isis/citation/CBB001211076/) unapi

Article Rebecca A. Hardesty; (2018)
Much ado about mice: Standard-setting in model organism research (/p/isis/citation/CBB487976291/) unapi

Book Fagan, Melinda Bonnie; (2013)
Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology: Knowledge in Flesh and Blood (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420098/) unapi

Article Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer; Juan Felipe Espinosa; Natalia Hirmas; Nicolás Trujillo; (2020)
Free-viewing as experimental system to test the Temporal Correlation Hypothesis: A case of theory-generative experimental practice (/p/isis/citation/CBB253993764/) unapi

Article Brad Bolman; (2022)
Introduction: What Right? Which Organisms? Why Jobs? (/p/isis/citation/CBB702630053/) unapi

Chapter Leonelli, Sabina; (2011)
Packaging Small Facts for Re-Use: Databases in Model Organism Biology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001000235/) unapi

Chapter Roy Sorensen; (2012)
Veridical Idealizations (/p/isis/citation/CBB197257981/) unapi

Chapter Marco Buzzoni; (2012)
Thought Experiments from a Kantian Point of View (/p/isis/citation/CBB794939617/) unapi

Chapter Vrishali Subramanian; Sanjay Chandrasekharan; Nancy J. Nersessian; (2012)
Computational Modeling: Is This the End of Thought Experiments in Science? (/p/isis/citation/CBB739614030/) unapi

Chapter John D. Norton; (2012)
Chasing the Light: Einstein’s Most Famous Thought Experiment (/p/isis/citation/CBB201950329/) unapi

Chapter Richard T. W. Arthur; (2012)
Can Thought Experiments Be Resolved by Experiment? The Case of Aristotle’s Wheel (/p/isis/citation/CBB597559409/) unapi

Chapter Julian Reiss; (2012)
Genealogical Thought Experiments in Economics (/p/isis/citation/CBB482966499/) unapi

Chapter James W. McAllister; (2012)
Thought Experiment and the Exercise of Imagination in Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB240679175/) unapi

Chapter Yiftach Fehige; Harald Wiltsche; (2012)
The Body, Thought Experiments, and Phenomenology (/p/isis/citation/CBB490701594/) unapi

Authors & Contributors
Arthur, Richard T. W.
Bauer, Susanne
Buzzoni, Marco
Creager, Angela N. H.
Endersby, Jim
Fagan, Melinda Bonnie
Journals
Journal of the History of Biology
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Publishers
Harvard University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Concepts
Experiments and experimentation
Epistemology
Philosophy of science
Experimental organisms
Research methods
Thought experiments
People
Aristotle
Einstein, Albert
Kant, Immanuel
Little, Clarence Cook
Rader, Karen A.
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Ancient
Medieval
Modern
Places
Chile
Europe
United States
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment