Good chemistry and its interruptions about caring scientists and uncooperative molecules

Science policy has increasingly organised science as if it were a training ground for excellent individual scientists who can be found through fierce competition for research money and publications. This focus on science as a competition for research excellence is embedded in a specific interpretation of what ‘good’ scientific practices are. Ethnographic analyses of scientific practices using the notion of care can elucidate what good science implies in practice and how it is perhaps hindered. In a Dutch chemistry lab, researchers cared for good science by working towards socio-material collaboration. They were responsible for each other, their materials, and their chemistry work. They shared knowledge and skills to affect the material world. And they were dependent on the actions of their colleagues, technologies and chemicals. Their work was exciting because of this socio-material collaboration, but also frustrating when resistance of materials or competition hindered their caring practices. That is, good science as a collaborative and knowledge sharing practice was hindered by current values about good science which emphasise research excellence and positive results, especially when chemicals did not collaborate. This asks for an understanding of care and good science that is not merely focussed on successful research practices, but also on the hard (sometimes slow, boring or frustrating) work that does not always feel ‘good’ or end ‘well’, but is still part of the research process.