Wikipedia as a tool for contemporary history of science: A case study on CRISPR

Omer Benjakob, Olha Guley, Jean Marc Sevin, Leo Blondel, Ariane Augustoni, Matthieu Collet, Louise Jouveshomme, Roy Amit, Ariel Linder, Rona Aviram

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Rapid developments and methodological divides hinder the study of how scientific knowledge accumulates, consolidates and transfers to the public sphere. Our work proposes using Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a historiographical source for contemporary science. We chose the high-profile field of gene editing as our test case, performing a historical analysis of the English-language Wikipedia articles on CRISPR. Using a mixed-method approach, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the CRISPR article’s text, sections and references, alongside 50 affiliated articles. These, we found, documented the CRISPR field’s maturation from a fundamental scientific discovery to a biotechnological revolution with vast social and cultural implications. We developed automated tools to support such research and demonstrated its applicability to two other scientific fields–coronavirus and circadian clocks. Our method utilizes Wikipedia as a digital and free archive, showing it can document the incremental growth of knowledge and the manner scientific research accumulates and translates into public discourse. Using Wikipedia in this manner compliments and overcomes some issues with contemporary histories and can also augment existing bibliometric research.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0290827
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume18
Issue number9 SEPTEMBER
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Benjakob et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding

Thanks to the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation long term partnership, this work was partly supported by the LPI Research Fellowship, Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, to RAv and OB. RAv’s work was supported in part at the Technion by a fellowship of "The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities”. In either case, the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We want to thank Dusan Misevic, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Marc Santolini, Mad Price Ball, Alex Webb, Gal Manella and all those who provided feedback.

FundersFunder number
Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicaleU1284
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Fondation Bettencourt Schueller

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