2011 Volume 8 Pages 96-112
This article intends to analyze the meaning of interface between the everyday practice of scientific research on the level of laboratory studies and the process of science policy on the level of administration. Laboratory studies have been extended from minute description of a single lab to the analysis of the dynamism of the web of laboratories, while the studies of the process of scientific policy have produced a couple of detailed studies, yet the number of those which focus on the intermediate zone where these two levels interact is limited. By focusing on how a lab of rapidly emerging research field of chemical biology is involved in the process of public policy of science, such as the formation of academic society as well as establishment of public library of chemical compounds, this article tries to describe the co-production of three levels, i.e., laboratory, community of researchers, and public policy, in reference to the notion of the policy window by Kingdon (2003). In this context, the author also refers to the importance of shared environments, i.e., the post-genome policy by the NIH in US, and the vague notion of drug-discovery (sô-yaku), both of which exert influence upon these three levels to converge to similar direction.
