Articulating Scientific Practice: Understanding Dean Hamer's “Gay Gene” Study as Overlapping Material, Social and Rhetorical Registers

Rhetoricians have tried to develop a better understanding of the connection between words and things, but these attempts often employ a logic of representation that undermines a full examination of materiality and the complexity of scientific practice. A logic of articulation offers a viable alternative by focusing attention on the linkages between the competing material, social, and rhetorical registers in which scientific knowledge is produced and discovered. An examination of extant criticism of Dean Hamer's “gay gene” study illustrates the utility of articulation theory as a guide to the rhetorical criticism of science.