Social Science: Complex Cognition in Early AIDS Research

Social Science: Complex Cognition in Early AIDS Research Katherine D. Lippa (lippa.2@wright.edu) Department of Psychology, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy Dayton, OH 45435 USA Valerie L. Shalin (valerie.shalin@wright.edu) Department of Psychology, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy Dayton, OH 45435 USA in cognitive science. Perhaps a broader perspective on reasoning will identify processes not apparent in pre-focused laboratory research. Examining real world cases, like AIDS research provides an opportunity for a richer picture of scientific reasoning to emerge. The research reported here examines reasoning by several influential figures in early efforts to combat AIDS. It evaluates both their unique reasoning processes and how they interacted with one another to gain critical insights and make discoveries. Abstract AIDS presented a totally unknown disorder requiring immediate solutions. This study examines how leading scientists studied and thought about AIDS during the first years of the epidemic. We present a detailed analysis of three interviews with scientists who worked at or with the National Institutes of Health. Though representing different disciplines (epidemiology, clinical work, & immunology), the scientists went through similar stages in their thinking. An initial data gathering stage characterized by inductive logic was followed by an explanatory phase using abduction to understand the initial results and generate hypotheses. And finally a deductive stage where the data from the different scientists were combined to help discover the HIV virus as the underlying cause of AIDS. We highlight the discipline-specific manner in which each researcher engaged with the problem, the role of abduction and the influence of the scientists on each other’s reasoning. Methods In this study, we apply cognitive-historical analysis (Nersessian, 1992), which approaches scientific reasoning by examining historical documents with an analytic lens grounded in cognitive science. Data Keywords: scientific reasoning, medical reasoning, analogical reasoning, cognitive-historical analysis, logical processes, AIDS The primary data source was a series of post hoc interviews with early AIDS researchers who were working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (NIH, n.d) 1 . Victoria Harden conducted these interviews between 1988 and 1998. Ten interviews were selected for analysis that were primarily concerned with clinical or laboratory research (as opposed social or administrative issues), addressed the interviewee’s thinking regarding some issue relevant to early research, and addressed the interviewee’s own thoughts and experiences rather than their recollections of what others were doing. Preliminary analysis raised two methodological problems. First, many of the studies were shared efforts by several researchers (e.g. 3 researchers spent time in the same laboratory group), creating redundancy. Second, the data set was unmanageably large, making it difficult to see patterns. Therefore, we focused on three researchers, Dr. James Curran, Dr. Thomas Waldmann, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, for detailed analyses. These three were selected because they represented different disciplines and they headed efforts that involved most of the other researchers. Curran was working as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and headed their task force on AIDS. Waldmann was a researcher at the NIH in Bethesda, but his involvement with AIDS was primarily clinical, having the “Pneumocystis Pneumonia – Los Angeles” (Gottlieb, et al., 1981) these words headed a brief article disseminated to virtually every medical facility in the United States. The brief, apparently un-alarming report described five cases of a rare condition in a distrusted minority. It was also the first announcement of what would become the most deadly epidemic in modern times - AIDS. The early years of AIDS present a unique opportunity to study how scientists solve complex, novel problems. Most cognitive science research on scientific reasoning has either examined the historical records pertaining to specific individuals making exceptional discoveries or has used experimental and/or computational techniques to analyze some aspect of individual reasoning (Klahr & Simon, 1999). Both types of research have strengths and limitations. Until quite recently, studies based on historical records have tended to examine single individuals. The sudden appearance of AIDS presented the same information at the same time to many scientists from different disciplines. As such, AIDS provides an opportunity to compare reasoning among individuals and to see how the interactions among disciplines contributed to problem solving. A hypothetical-deductive model of science popular with philosophers in the mid 20 th century (Popper, 1959) appears to inform most laboratory experiments on scientific reasoning This study is limited by the post hoc nature of the data. A more extensive study is planned with a larger data set and incorporating contemporary documents (e.g. memos and scientific papers).