ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to reconnect with Rose's and Blume's musings on the relation between the state and its citizen in the case of user engagement with technology. It provides a tested for recurrent questions about epistemology and truth claims in relation to expert witnesses and forensic laboratory work. It then proposes to angle the discussion in the direction of user involvement in science and product innovation. The involvement of unauthorised practitioners in scientific research and technical development has received much attention from science and technology studies (STS) scholars over the years. A culture of DIY research, emerging from the margins of natural science, is transforming the way officially sanctioned research is financed and conducted. Psychonaut subculture contests the epistemological authority claimed by government agencies, the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies, paralleling much of what has been said before about patient group activism.