The politics of buzzwords at the interface of technoscience, market and society: the case of 'public engagement in science'

Imagining the model citizen: A comparison between public understanding of science, public engagement in science, and citizen science

This article examines the visions of citizens' ideal practices regarding technoscientific affairs in a democratic society, namely "imaginaries of model citizens," that underlie three science and public initiatives: public understanding of science, public engagement in science, and citizen science. While imaginaries of citizens are performative and necessary to these initiatives, they are often relegated to the background. I argue that such imaginaries are the result of a complex of perceptions on the nature of science, the role of democracy in scientific activities, and the form of "democratizing" science. The imaginary of model citizens in public understanding of science is of literate citizens who should know science sufficiently, use it in daily life, and support science; in public engagement in science, the model citizen is a responsible one who should engage in the governance of technoscientific issues; and in citizen science, a contributive one who should partake in and enjoy creating scientific knowledge.

From danger to destination: changes in the language of endemic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic

At the beginning of 2022, the word 'endemic' became a buzzword, especially in the UK and the USA, and a kernel for the formation of novel social representations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The word normally refers to a disease which is continuously present, whose incidence is relatively stable and is maintained at a baseline level in any given locality. Over time, 'endemic' migrated from scientific discourse into political discourse, where it was mainly used to argue that the pandemic was over and people now had to learn to 'live with' the virus. In this article, we examine the emerging meanings, images and social representations of the term 'endemic' in English language news between 1 March 2020 and 18 January 2022. We observe a change over time, from the representation of 'endemic' as something dangerous and to be avoided to something desirable and to be aspired to. This shift was facilitated by anchoring COVID-19, especially its variant Omicron, to 'just like the flu' and by objectifying it through metaphors depicting a path or journey to normality. However, the new language of hope and aspiration did not go entirely unchallenged. Our analysis suggests that two competing polemic social representations emerged: one of endemicity as hope and aspiration and the other focusing on misguided optimism. We discuss these findings in the context of emerging polarisations in beliefs about the pandemic, politics and disease management.

Losing the Public, for Better or for Worse: A Lesson from John Everett Gordon (1890-1983) and John Rodman Paul (1893-1971)

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare a tension around scientific expertise that has major implications for the effectiveness of health systems. Critical engagement with this tension, however, is largely missing from the lessons and programs consolidating in the wake of the emergency. Lacking good frameworks for discussing the tension, the vague term "public trust" has proliferated into a buzzword that stands in for more articulate discussion. The tension between experts and the public is not new, however. It is useful to look back to the 1930s, when health experts identifying as "new epidemiologists" imagined a new modern science of epidemiology that, some believed, would resolve evident failures in public cooperation. Historical analysis of different approaches to the production and use of epidemiological knowledge in these years reveals a debate about power at the heart of epidemiology, and a critical framework for discussing the tension around epidemiological expertise in public health.

What's next for responsible artificial intelligence: a way forward through responsible innovation

Industry is adopting artificial intelligence (AI) at a rapid pace and a growing number of countries have declared national AI strategies. However, several spectacular AI failures have led to ethical concerns about responsibility in AI development and use, which gave rise to the emerging field of responsible AI (RAI). The field of responsible innovation (RI) has a longer history and evolved toward a framework for the entire research, development, and innovation life cycle. However, this research demonstrates that the uptake of RI by RAI has been slow. RAI has been developing independently, with three times the number of publications than RI. The objective and knowledge contribution of this research was to understand how RAI has been developing independently from RI and contribute to how RI could be leveraged toward the progression of RAI in a causal loop diagram. It is concluded that stakeholder engagement of citizens from diverse cultures across the Global North and South is a policy leverage point for moving the RI adoption by RAI toward global best practice. A role-specific recommendation for policy makers is made to deploy modes of engaging with the Global South with more urgency to avoid the risk of harming vulnerable populations. As an additional methodological contribution, this study employs a novel method, systematic science mapping, which combines systematic literature reviews with science mapping. This new method enabled the discovery of an emerging 'axis of adoption' of RI by RAI around the thematic areas of ethics, governance, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability. 828 Scopus articles were mapped for RI and 2489 articles were mapped for RAI. The research presented here is by any measure the largest systematic literature review of both fields to date and the only cross-disciplinary review from a methodological perspective.

"As a clinician, you have to be passionately involved": Advocacy and professional responsibility in gender-affirming healthcare

Previous research has studied how clinicians such as physicians, nurses, social workers, and nutritionists understand advocacy as a professional responsibility. Analyses have typically focused on individual healthcare professions and have viewed ambiguity around the conceptualization of advocacy as detrimental. Little research has considered how multiple professions within a single field of healthcare interpret clinician advocacy, nor how ambiguity might be productive in a multidisciplinary field. This article addresses these gaps by utilizing science and technology studies scholarship on buzzwords to analyze how clinicians in the field of gender-affirming healthcare have come to understand advocacy as a professional responsibility despite significant ambiguity around the goals, tactics, and targets of advocacy. Gender-affirming healthcare refers to any kind of physical or mental healthcare that transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people obtain to affirm their gender identity. Drawing on interviews with 30 U.S. clinicians, observation of nine transgender health conferences, and content analysis of 202 professional journal articles and 11 professional association statements, I argue that ambiguity around advocacy has been key to its uptake as a responsibility across multiple professions in this field. Foregrounding interview data, I show how polysemy allows clinician respondents across professions to reassert their expertise as they delineate what constitutes good gender-affirming healthcare and defend the emergent field in three problem domains: health insurance, the marginalization of TGD people, and the legality of gender-affirming healthcare. I also demonstrate how theoretical work on buzzwords explains why three clinician respondents rejected advocacy as a professional responsibility.

Translating tools and indicators in territorial RRI

Introduction

By a series of calls within the Horizon 2020 framework programme, the EU funded projects intended to deploy Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) at a territorial level, in regional research and innovation ecosystems. This paper presents efforts to document and evaluate the achievements in TRANSFORM, one of these projects.

Methods

Evaluative inquiry and theoretical reasoning.

Results

Noting the need for a general principle to be interpreted, adapted and translated in order to be rendered meaningful at a local level, we studied precisely these multiple territorial translations of RRI, the organizational and institutional orderings with which they co-emerge and the challenges that come with these translations. An important shared feature is that RRI work does not start from zero, but rather builds on pre-existing relationships and repertoires of collaboration. The RRI project is hence a way to continue ongoing work and follow pre-set purposes, aims and objectives, as a form of "maintenance work". In this very human sense, RRI is deployed with a logic of care in the regional context, while the Horizon 2020 calls and proposals above all are formulated in a logic of choice, to be assessed by indicators.

Discussion

We warn against undue standardization of RRI by toolification and use of quantitative indicators, and recommend that RRI performance is monitored by methods of evaluative inquiry.

Scoping review of stepped care interventions for mental health and substance use service delivery to youth and young adults

AIMS

Many young people with mental health and/or substance use concerns do not have access to timely, appropriate, and effective services. Within this context, stepped care models (SCMs) have emerged as a guiding framework for care delivery, inspiring service innovations across the globe. However, substantial gaps remain in the evidence for SCMs as a strategy to address the current systemic challenges in delivering services for young people. This scoping review aims to identify where these gaps in evidence exist, and the next steps for addressing them.

METHODS

A scoping review was conducted involving both peer-reviewed and grey literature. Eligible studies explored SCMs implemented in the various health care settings accessed by young people aged 12-24 seeking treatment for mental health and substance use challenges. After screening titles and abstracts, two reviewers examined full-text articles and extracted data to create a descriptive summary of the models.

RESULTS

Of the 656 studies that were retrieved, 51 studies were included and grouped by study team for a final yield of 43 studies. Almost half of the studies were focused on the adult population (i.e., 18 and over), and most did not specify interventions for young people. Among the SCMs, substantial variability was found in almost every aspect of the models.

CONCLUSIONS

Considering the current body of evidence, there is an urgent need for a consensus position on the definition, implementation, and outcome measures required for rigorously assessing the utility of SCMs for young people.

Gene Drives in the U.K., U.S., and Australian Press (2015-2019): How a New Focus on Responsibility Is Shaping Science Communication

Gene drive is a controversial biotechnology for pest control. Despite a commitment from gene drive researchers to responsibility and the key role of the media in debates about science and technology, little research has been conducted on media reporting of gene drive. We employ metaphor and discourse analysis to explore how responsibility is reflected in the coverage of this technology in the U.S., U.K., and Australian press. The findings reveal a rhetorical strategy of trust-building by evoking the moral attributes of gene drive researchers. We discuss the implications of these findings for the communication of new technologies.

Managing exactness and vagueness in computer science work: Programming and self-repair in meetings

The formulation of computer algorithms requires the elimination of vagueness. This elimination of vagueness requires exactness in programming, and this exactness can be traced to meeting talk, where it intersects with the indexicality of expressions. This article is concerned with sequences in which a team of computer scientists discuss the functionality of prototypes that are already implemented or possibly to be implemented. The analysis focuses on self-repair because this is a practice where participants can be seen to orient to meanings of different expressions as alternatives. By using self-repair, the computer scientists show a concern with exact descriptions when they talk about existing functionality of their prototypes but not when they talk about potential future functionality. Instead, when participants talk about potential future functionality and attend to meanings during self-repair, they use vague expressions to indicate possibilities. Furthermore, when the computer scientists talk to external stakeholders, they indicate through hedges whenever their descriptions approximate already implemented technical functionality but do not describe it exactly. The article considers whether the code of working prototypes can be said to fix meanings of expressions and how we may account for human agency and non-human resistances during development.

The contested meaning of "long COVID" - Patients, doctors, and the politics of subjective evidence

In our article, we reconstruct how the patient-made term "long COVID" was able to become a widely accepted concept in public discourses. While the condition was initially invisible to the public eye, we show how the mobilization of subjective evidence online, i.e., the dissemination of reports on the different experiences of lasting symptoms, was able to transform the condition into a crucial feature of the coronavirus pandemic. We explore how stakeholders used the term "long COVID" in online media and in other channels to create their illness and group identity, but also to demarcate the personal experience and experiential knowledge of long COVID from that of other sources. Our exploratory study addresses two questions. Firstly, how the mobilization of subjective evidence leads to the recognition of long COVID and the development of treatment interventions in medicine; and secondly, what distinguishes these developments from other examples of subjective evidence mobilization. We argue that the long COVID movement was able to fill crucial knowledge gaps in the pandemic discourses, making long COVID a legitimate concern of official measures to counter the pandemic. By first showing how illness experiences were gathered that defied official classifications of COVID-19, we show how patients made the "long COVID" term. Then we compare the clinical and social identity of long COVID to that of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), before we examine the social and epistemic processes at work in the digital and medial discourses that have transformed how the pandemic is perceived through the lens of long COVID. Building on this, we finally demonstrate how the alignment of medical professionals as patients with the movement has challenged the normative role of clinical evidence, leading to new forms of medical action to tackle the pandemic.

Public engagement with science-Origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy

‘Public engagement with science’ has become a ‘buzzword’ reflecting a concern about the widening gap between science and society and efforts to bridge this gap. This study is a comprehensive analysis of the development of the ‘engagement’ rhetoric in the pertinent academic literature on science communication and in science policy documents. By way of a content analysis of articles published in three leading science communication journals and a selection of science policy documents from the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU), and South Africa (SA), the variety of motives underlying this rhetoric, as well as the impact it has on science policies, are analyzed. The analysis of the science communication journals reveals an increasingly vague and inclusive definition of ‘engagement’ as well as of the ‘public’ being addressed, and a diverse range of motives driving the rhetoric. Similar observations can be made about the science policy documents. This study corroborates an earlier diagnosis that rhetoric is running ahead of practice and suggests that communication and engagement with clearly defined stakeholder groups about specific problems and the pertinent scientific knowledge will be a more successful manner of ‘engagement’.

The FDA's standard-making process for medical digital health technologies: co-producing technological and organizational innovation

As digital health technologies (DHT) have been embraced as a ‘panacea’ for health care systems, they have evolved from a buzzword into a high priority objective for health policy across the globe. In the realm of quality and safety standards for medical devices, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been a frontrunner in adapting its regulatory framework to DHT. However, despite the utmost relevance of quality and safety standards and their role for sustaining the innovation pathway of DHT, their actual making has not yet been subjected to in-depth social-science scrutiny. Drawing on the conceptual repertoires of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article investigates how digital health evolved from a buzzword into an ‘object of government’, or gained material meaning and transformed into a regulatable object, by charting the standard-making process of FDA’s medical digital health policy between 2008 and 2018. From this, we reflect on the mutually sustaining dynamics between technological and organizational innovation, as the FDA’s attempts to standardize medical DHT not only shaped the lifestyle/medical boundary for DHT. It also led to significant reconfigurations within the FDA itself, while fostering a broader shift toward the uptake of alternative forms of evidence in regulatory science.

Contextualizing Security Innovation: Responsible Research and Innovation at the Smart Border?

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security-a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities.

Urban Planning and European Innovation Policy: Achieving Sustainability, Social Inclusion, and Economic Growth?

Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. Funding schemes, research, and planning across all Member States are expected to be innovative. This article provides a critical analysis of the drivers and effects of this evolution. While positive results have been achieved due to innovation policies, this article proposes that taking a wider critical perspective reveals important caveats. The article zooms in on the EU’s innovation policies by analysing policy documents, projects funded, and on-the-ground impact on three citizen initiatives. The analysis asks whether and how the EU’s self-set goals of sustainability, social inclusion, and economic growth are approached and met in them. The findings suggest a problematic funnelling process. First, an emphasis on innovation is created with the objective of systematically unblocking resistance to the development and implementation of novelties in the name of competitiveness, job creation, and economic growth. Second, the idea of innovation is very loosely defined, while, when translated into urban planning, it is interpreted narrowly in terms of efficiency and behavioural change, digitalization, and smart technologies. As a result, (narrowly defined) innovation-led economic growth begins to supersede alternative values and visions for the future of European cities and regions. This can represent a problem for EU Member States as it creates a very limited, risk-based, and divisive direction of development. To contribute to the (re-)establishment of alternatives, this article finally offers policy recommendations primarily concerned with the reinstatement of the public interest beyond innovation-centred planning perspectives.

Comunicação científica na Política Nacional de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação em Saúde: análise do discurso oficial

Resumo A partir da indagação sobre as possibilidades de participação social e efetiva interação da população nas pesquisas científicas na saúde, buscou-se analisar como a Política Nacional de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação em Saúde aborda essa dimensão comunicativa. Deste modo, examinou-se o documento oficial desta política por meio da análise temática. A comunicação sobre ciência, tecnologia e inovação à população é tratada, principalmente, no item sobre a difusão dos avanços científicos e tecnológicos, sendo designada com diferentes termos, cujos significados e objetivos, embora distintos, são tratados como sinônimos. A ideia central de comunicação gira em torno de um conteúdo a ser transferido a determinados públicos, de forma unidirecional e verticalizada, de um “emissor” para um “receptor”. Tal perspectiva contrasta com a possibilidade de uma comunicação mais horizontalizada e participativa na produção de conhecimento e apropriação de tecnologias, como vislumbrado e desenvolvido por estudos e práticas sobre engajamento público na ciência ou letramento científico. Reconhecendo-se o mérito do processo que culminou nesta política e considerando o contexto político, social e cultural brasileiro é importante impulsionar propostas comunicativas de participação efetiva da sociedade nas questões de ciência, tecnologia e inovação na saúde, coerentemente com os princípios democráticos e participativos do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS).

Accounting for One Health: Insights from the social sciences

This paper discusses the relationship between One Health (OH) and the social sciences. Using a comparison between three narratives of the history of OH, it is argued that OH can be studied as a social phenomenon. The narrative of OH by its promoters (folk narratives) emphasizes two dimensions: OH as a renewal of veterinary medicine and OH as an institutional response to global health crises. Narratives from empirical social science work explore similar dimensions, but make them more complex. For political sociology, OH is the result of negotiations between the three international organisations (WHO, OIE and FAO), in a context of a global health crisis, which led to the reconfiguration of their respective mandates and scope of action: OH is a response to an institutional crisis. For the sociology of science, OH testifies to the evolution of the profession and veterinary science, enabling it to position itself as a promoter of interdisciplinarity, in a context of convergence between research and policy. In the Discussion section, I propose an approach to OH as an “epistemic watchword”: a concept whose objective is to make several actors work together (watchword), in a particular direction, that of the production of knowledge (epistemic).

Data as promise: Reconfiguring Danish public health through personalized medicine

'Personalized medicine' might sound like the very antithesis of population science and public health, with the individual taking the place of the population. However, in practice, personalized medicine generates heavy investments in the population sciences - particularly in data-sourcing initiatives. Intensified data sourcing implies new roles and responsibilities for patients and health professionals, who become responsible not only for data contributions, but also for responding to new uses of data in personalized prevention, drawing upon detailed mapping of risk distribution in the population. Although this population-based 'personalization' of prevention and treatment is said to be about making the health services 'data-driven', the policies and plans themselves use existing data and evidence in a very selective manner. It is as if data-driven decision-making is a promise for an unspecified future, not a demand on its planning in the present. I therefore suggest interrogating how 'promissory data' interact with ideas about accountability in public health policies, and also with the data initiatives that the promises bring about. Intensified data collection might not just be interesting for what it allows authorities to do and know, but also for how its promises of future evidence can be used to postpone action and sidestep uncomfortable knowledge in the present.

Risk analysis and technology assessment in support of technology development: Putting responsible innovation in practice in a case study for nanotechnology

Governments invest in "key enabling technologies," such as nanotechnology, to solve societal challenges and boost the economy. At the same time, governmental agencies demand risk reduction to prohibit any often unknown adverse effects, and industrial parties demand smart approaches to reduce uncertainties. Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is therefore a central theme in policy making. Risk analysis and technology assessment, together referred to as "RATA," can provide a basis to assess human, environmental, and societal risks of new technological developments during the various stages of technological development. This assessment can help both governmental authorities and innovative industry to move forward in a sustainable manner. Here we describe the developed procedures and products and our experiences to bring RATA in practice within a large Dutch nanotechnology consortium. This is an example of how to put responsible innovation in practice as an integrated part of a research program, how to increase awareness of RATA, and how to help technology developers perform and use RATA. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:9-16. © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

Humans, Other Animals and ‘One Health’ in the Early Twenty-First Century

This chapter explores the history of recent movements for One Health, which argue that because many of today’s pressing health problems lie at the interface of human, animal and environmental health, they can only be managed effectively by breaking down traditional disciplinary silos. It explores how Schwabe’s work influenced, and was reconfigured by, this movement, and locates its early development in several different research and policy networks, which produced not one but several different forms of One Health. The chapter also examines how human–animal health relationships have inspired and shaped One Health, and how they are represented—in sometimes contradictory ways—in the texts and images produced by One Health researchers and advocates. It argues that in foregrounding the roles of animals as transmitters of diseases to humans, and as experimental models of human disease, One Health rebrands existing longstanding research agendas that are more concerned with the health of humans than that of animals.

Synthetic biology, metaphors and responsibility

Metaphors are not just decorative rhetorical devices that make speech pretty. They are fundamental tools for thinking about the world and acting on the world. The language we use to make a better world matters; words matter; metaphors matter. Words have consequences - ethical, social and legal ones, as well as political and economic ones. They need to be used 'responsibly'. They also need to be studied carefully - this is what we want to do through this editorial and the related thematic collection. In the context of synthetic biology, natural and social scientists have become increasingly interested in metaphors, a wave of interest that we want to exploit and amplify. We want to build on emerging articles and books on synthetic biology, metaphors of life and the ethical and moral implications of such metaphors. This editorial provides a brief introduction to synthetic biology and responsible innovation, as well as a comprehensive review of literature on the social, cultural and ethical impacts of metaphor use in genomics and synthetic biology. Our aim is to stimulate an interdisciplinary and international discussion on the impact that metaphors can have on science, policy and publics in the context of synthetic biology.

A Mobilising Concept? Unpacking Academic Representations of Responsible Research and Innovation

This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be 'made of'. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI (motivations, theoretical conceptualisations and translations into practice) that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI's dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice-beyond what has been offered to date-is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI.

How differences matter: tracing diversity practices in obesity treatment and health promotion

Diversity has become a buzzword in medical care, denoting a re-evaluation of what it means to attend to differences among human bodies and lives. Questions about what types of differences matter and how they should be defined have become important normative and analytical challenges. Drawing on two case studies, we show how differences between patients and patient-collectives are not simply waiting to be recognised and addressed but also enacted within situated healthcare practices. Although concerns with diversity are present in both cases, they take different forms. In a Viennese health-promotion project for obese clients, care practices are both based on and reproduce large-scale categories that divide the population into distinct subgroups with specific needs. Conversely, in an outpatient clinic for bariatric surgery patients, a technical fix-oriented procedure leads to concerns over diversity becoming an add-on realised by tending to each patient's idiosyncrasies and personal stories. By tracing the practices of diversity and the tensions they produce, we show how classifications and understandings of human difference are based on infrastructures that enable and constrain them. Furthermore, we discuss how they become consequential in healthcare, thereby indicating the importance of remaining reflexive about the political implications of diversity discourse and practice.

Between hype and hope: What is really at stake with personalized medicine?

Over the last decade, personalized medicine has become a buzz word, which covers a broad spectrum of meanings and generates many different opinions. The purpose of this article is to achieve a better understanding of the reasons why personalized medicine gives rise to such conflicting opinions. We show that a major issue of personalized medicine is the gap existing between its claims and its reality. We then present and analyze different possible reasons for this gap. We propose an hypothesis inspired by the Windelband's distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methodology. We argue that the fuzzy situation of personalized medicine results from a mix between idiographic claims and nomothetic methodological procedures. Hence we suggest that the current quandary about personalized medicine cannot be solved without getting involved in a discussion about the complex epistemological and methodological status of medicine. To conclude, we show that the Gadamer's view of medicine as a dialogical process can be fruitfully used and reveals that personalization is not a theoretical task, but a practical one, which takes place within the clinical encounter.