Precision Medicine: Historiography of Life Sciences and the Geneticization of the Clinics**

In 2013, Hans Jörg Rheinberger proposed that Mendelian genetics and molecular biology were “scientific ideologies,” that is, for him they are systems of thought whose objects are hyperbolic; they are not, or not yet, in the realm of and not, or not yet, under the control of that system. This article proposes that precision medicine today is a scientific ideology and analyses the implications of this statement for historians of biology, genetics, and medicine.     

Scientisme sur L’histoire D’un Concept Difficile

Today “scientism” is a pejorative concept in every language. But isn’t that just a projection made in order to exploit the fear of “science”? The article develops the argument that scientism is a historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It shows that the word goes back to the 19^th century and got its negative emphasis when “scientific” spiritism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science.     

Testing Methods of Record Linkage on Swedish Censuses

Abstract.

Research benefits a great deal when different kinds of registers can be combined. Record linkage is an important tool for connecting sources to create longitudinal databases of individual data. In this article, researchers test and evaluate different methods of record linkage used when linking two censuses. By comparing the results of the census linkage with other continuous Swedish parish registers, they find that applying constructed name variables and household links considerably increases the success rate without the risk of introducing bias. Missing links are mainly related to name problems, and appear most frequently among children and when the family structure has changed between the censuses. Faulty links are very few and must be regarded as only a marginal problem for analysis. The study underlines the importance of adapting the linkage process to the special characteristics of the sources.