ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider the ways in which genetic discoveries tend to be represented in popular formats such as the institutional press release, and how this deletes the complex ways in which social and economic relations, as well as the physical material with which scientists work, produce ‘discoveries’. I am especially interested in the commercial context of genetic research, and the processes of governance as discussed in Chapter 2, and how these conditions shape scientists’ ways of finding out about the world and the very processes by which things get to be called ‘discoveries’. I also spend time discussing the relationship between the physical and the social aspects of disease, and where genes fit, or do not fit, onto definitions and explanations of disease.
