If a museum existed that contained a collection of failed artefacts related to HIV
research what would that look like? How would failure be defined such that items could
be representative of it and what would these definitions tell us about HIV research?
These were some of the lines of enquiry which prompted the exploration of the Museum
of Failed HIV Research as a conceptual space for scholars to examine these failure.
This special issue is a collection of papers that have interrogated these questions
and they present on display some of the possible ways of considering failure in HIV
research.
The Museum of Failed HIV Research began its life as a panel at the Second International
HIV Social Sciences and Humanities Conference in Paris, France, in July 2013. HIV
has brought together various disciplines, e.g. Epidemiology, Global Health and clinical
trials; qualitative health research; and Sociology, Science and Technology Studies,
and Anthropology, and the conference reflected the range of languages, interests,
styles and conventions of the multiple efforts targeting HIV/AIDS. The editors of
this special issue invited scholars to submit papers that discussed failure. This
forum framed the discussion of failure, and this special issue grew out of that panel
in important ways. For instance, all these papers discuss contemporary examples of
HIV research, which reflected the focus of conference. Additionally, and unlike the
discussion of failure in biomedical fora, these papers employ a social scientific
methodology, mainly ethnographic techniques, which is reflective of the host journal
of this collection, Anthropology
&
Medicine.
The papers in this special issue examine a range of issues including community engagement,
the role of volunteer labour in data production, evidence-based medicine, methodological
concerns about the use of the case as the unit of analysis, developing caring relationships
with research participants during the conduct of research and the role of ethics as
a ‘fail-safe’ device in the conduct of HIV research and in regulating and promoting
good practice. Unlike the exploration of historic discredited practices, these papers
address ideas of contemporary importance. They all represent different areas of HIV
research and practice which are currently deemed to be credible (Bloor 1976; Pels
2003). This has made the accounts stimulating as they have engaged in some of the
ambiguities involved in ideas of failure and success. The contemporary nature of their
subject-matter also presents opportunities to inform policy and practices in real-time.
Furthermore, and unlike the study of controversies, none of the authors aimed to specifically
examine failure in their research. However, through their work in HIV the concept
of failure emerged in a variety of forms. As a consequence, all these papers employ
the notion of failure as an analytical tool to open the possibility of considering
HIV research and practice in alternative ways.
The papers in Museum of Failed HIV Research can be curated to address failure in multiple,
overlapping ways. So rather than taking a position on whether these papers describe
ideas, practices and processes that have objectively failed, we as editors see that
the value of these papers is in what they discuss as failure and the arguments used
to support these positions. Seeing these papers as a collection of artefacts in a
museum, has allowed us as editors to put ourselves in the position of curators and
to consider what types of narratives represent these accounts and for which audiences.
The papers could be curated according to how they define failure – in absolute or
positivist terms or as socially constructed. Defining failure in positivist terms,
considering something to have actually failed, allows assessments of success or failure
to be made and why those occurred (such as in papers by Le Marcis, and Montgomery
in this issue). This approach emphasises the ways in which failure can impact lives
and practices (Campbell 2003). The biomedical literature also takes a positivist relationship
with failure, which is often defined as negative findings. The growth in this literature
has mirrored increasing pressure to make not only success but also failure public
by reporting negative findings (Gupta and Stopfer 2011). This biomedical approach
defines failure in very limited terms. In contrast, the papers in this collection
have adopted a broader definition of failure to include systemic concerns, local social
dynamics, inequalities and structural violence in keeping with the social science
literature (e.g. Pigg 2013; Sariola 2009; Sobo 2009). For instance, in Sambakunsi
et al.’s paper, examining the termination of employment of volunteer community counsellors
in Malawi sees failure as being constructed.They present the working conditions of
the unpaid volunteers who are tasked with fulfilling institutional self-testing targets
in their community. They argue that volunteers' working conditions and the unrealistic
nature of the targets are such that the volunteers' failure can be regarded as being
to varying degrees constructed by their institutions.
A second way of curating the museum could be to emphasise the narrative that seemingly
successful practices of HIV research and interventions can detract from areas and
processes that can be deemed to be failures. For instance, Allman problematizes the
ideologies and process involved in community engagement by showing that when participation
becomes the gold-standard in social sciences, it marginalises theoretical analyses
and undermines the value of conceptual thinking. In Cornish's work, systematic reviews
of social interventions fail to take context into consideration, and she argues that
abstracting community mobilisation is difficult, if not impossible. Cornish shows
that there are very few examples of engagement available for comparison that are not
tokenistic and that in most cases notions of evidence and other variables remain incompatible.
Moreover, as papers by Allman, Cornish and Montgomery suggest, ideas of what success
means, how prevention is conceptualised, and on whose terms, are dominated by the
‘biomedical’. From these papers those researching HIV from a social science perspective
are shown to be under pressure to adopt practices and analytical strategies of biomedicine:
Montgomery shows that a ‘case’ is an individualised approach to thinking about transmission,
Cornish suggests that systematic reviews common to biomedicine when applied to social
interventions are not meaningful tools for comparison and Allman is critical of the
ways in which community engagement in social research marginalises social theoretical
analyses. In this way, these papers have brought social science under the analytical
lens of failure giving reflexive opportunities to a number of the disciplines involved
in HIV research. As Nguyen's commentary highlights, this reflection represents the
development and increasing maturity of the field of HIV research.
While it is possible to argue that bioethics has played a role in the development
of ethical HIV research, there are papers in this collection that draw attention to
the ways in which ethics plays an increasingly important role in defining success
and failure in medical research. Papers by Peterson et al., Le Marcis, and Kingori
show how current ethical practices can take attention away from local and global politics,
de-politicising Global Health research. In this way, ethics and research regulation
moves the question of failure to a ‘second’ register – ethics is put to task to ensure
that science and technology are socially robust.
A third way of curating the museum could highlight the idea of positionality and how
this shapes what is deemed to have failed (see also Timmermans 2011). The papers of
this special issue show that there are various types of cadre involved in HIV research,
ranging from volunteers to medical researchers, ethicists to social scientists and
participating communities. Taking a cue from the social construction of technology
and interpretive flexibility (Pinch and Bijker 1984), the perception of failure is
highly dependent on the audience of the museum. In fact, it would be more appropriate
to discuss failures in the plural because what failure means in a particular intervention
or study can vary depending on the vantage point of the observer. Le Marcis shows
how for study participants a trial can be a failure even if scientifically the treatment
proves to work and is a success. Inversely, both Kingori and Montgomery show how a
trial can be deemed to be a scientific failure but produce other outcomes that are
regarded as being successful by and to participants. A number of papers have sought
to identify some of the weaker actors in HIV research who are being held responsible
for failure. For instance, Petersen et al. show how ethics committees in Malawi declined
the PreP trial on three occasions. The authors argue that to present this as a failure
of the ability of Malawian scientists and regulators to appreciate the potential of
PreP research or as a failure of an African state more generally would be misleading.
Instead, it should be understood from their position and concerns about imperial research
ventures in an era of global off-shoring of research.
The articles in this special issue, with the exception of Nguyen's reflections on
the last 30 years of the AIDS industry, cover a fairly recent history of HIV/AIDS.
As artefacts in the museum, these papers are situated in an era marked by increasing
emphasis on evidence and randomised controlled trials in both medicine and policy
making (e.g. Wahlberg and McGoey 2007; Will and Moreira 2012). In search of larger
data-sets, industry-sponsored clinical trials have shifted to low income settings,
as have done Global Health projects, funded by academic and philanthropic sponsors,
that draw various international actors together in collaboration or competition (Biehl
and Petryna 2013; Crane 2013). While contemporary HIV research has been marked by
globalised connections Q2 and assemblages (Ong and Collier 2005), it has also been
mandated by expectations for social robustness (Corsín Jiménez 2005; Strathern 2005).
‘Mode 2’ knowledge production (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001) is characterised
by research that is socially relevant, ethically sound and engages communities. As
HIV research and prevention projects have required bilateral and interdisciplinary
efforts, HIV has been a driver of these trends as well as being defined by them.
All the papers in this special issue illuminate blind spots, of different kinds and
across all the disciplines, involved in HIV research and practice. In this way, they
remind us of the value of having a forum and space where multiple perspectives can
be interrogated and contentious issues explored in ways that allow those participating
in these spaces to consider and form their own impression of what is being presented.
These papers do not diminish the importance of failure but rather reflect the complexities
often found in identifying and gaining consensus in any absolute sense on what failure
is, who is responsible for it and, in turn, what amounts to success.