PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Rapid developments and methodological divides hinder the study of how scientific knowledge accumulates, consolidates and transfers to the public sphere. Our work proposes using Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a historiographical source for contemporary science. We chose the high-profile field of gene editing as our test case, performing a historical analysis of the English-language Wikipedia articles on CRISPR. Using a mixed-method approach, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the CRISPR article\'s text, sections and references, alongside 50 affiliated articles. These, we found, documented the CRISPR field\'s maturation from a fundamental scientific discovery to a biotechnological revolution with vast social and cultural implications. We developed automated tools to support such research and demonstrated its applicability to two other scientific fields-coronavirus and circadian clocks. Our method utilizes Wikipedia as a digital and free archive, showing it can document the incremental growth of knowledge and the manner scientific research accumulates and translates into public discourse. Using Wikipedia in this manner compliments and overcomes some issues with contemporary histories and can also augment existing bibliometric research.
摘要：
快速的发展和方法上的分歧阻碍了对科学知识如何积累的研究，整合和转移到公共领域。我们的工作建议使用维基百科，在线百科全书，作为当代科学的史学来源。我们选择了备受瞩目的基因编辑领域作为我们的测试案例，对CRISPR上的英文维基百科文章进行历史分析。使用混合方法方法，我们对CRISPR文章的文本进行了定性和定量分析，部分和参考文献，还有50篇附属文章。这些,我们发现,记录了CRISPR领域从基础科学发现到具有广泛社会和文化意义的生物技术革命的成熟。我们开发了自动化工具来支持此类研究，并证明了其在其他两个科学领域的适用性-冠状病毒和生物钟。我们的方法利用维基百科作为数字和免费档案，表明它可以记录知识的逐步增长以及科学研究积累并转化为公共话语的方式。以这种方式使用维基百科补充并克服了当代历史的一些问题，并且还可以增强现有的文献计量学研究。
