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Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments Scientific Characters was neither a stationary nor a solitary endeavor.Portions of this book unfolded on a boat, in high- altitude hippie cafés, in downtown Denver coffeehouses, at seaside resorts, by a lake in Quebec, on frequent airplane trips to Chicago and the East Coast, in my yellow campus office and my green study at home, and on balconies and back porches in Denver, Boulder, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.Three much- abused laptops ,numerous creative baristas,and various wireless connections facilitated the entire process.But more than these necessary background materials,the people and institutions that nourished me during the last several years deserve more thanks than I can offer on these pages. The ideas for this project originated at the University of Pittsburgh, where numerous mentors nurtured my intellectual development and set the stage for the book’s completion.Thankfully, this manuscript has grown a great deal from the study that originally inspired it. Nonetheless, John Lyne’s insightful critiques of my work and his belief in me and this project buoyed it from conception through revision.John first urged me to pursue the original examination of Fisher’s ethos in the Kiva Han coffee shop on Craig Street in Oakland,while Lester Olson,Ted McGuire,Joan Leach, and Pete Simonson boosted the initial project in decisive ways.Other characters from Pitt who shaped me into the thinker and writer I am becoming include Kevin Ayotte, Anand Rao, Lisa Parker, Elizabeth Chaitin, Paul K. J. Han, Henry Krips, Brad Lewis, Gordon Mitchell, Don Egolf, Tim O’Donnell, John Poulakos, David Barnard, Eli Brennan, Omri Ceren, Jukka Keränen,Weiming Yao, Marcus Paroske, and Karen Taylor. Portions of two summers spent shadowing physicians,surgeons,and ethicists at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) as part of my bioethics training viii Acknowledgments were particularly influential. I also appreciate the unnamed hospital workers , research integrity officers, physicians, lawyers, nurses, and other people affected by federally funded breast cancer research who spoke to me un officially or off the record and thus cannot be recognized here in any formal way. Most importantly, Lisa Parker and David Sogg gave me shelter at a crucial time. The earliest stages of this book- to- be unfolded in their third- floor study with Zulei the cat for company and David’s bassoon echoing through the house. Friends, colleagues, and students at the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder have been especially supportive. My summer research assistants over the years—Robert Coombs, Joshua Ehrenreich, Alison Vogelaar, Merrit Dukehart, and Katherine Cruger—assisted with research for this book and many other projects in between. Merrit Dukehart deserves special note for checking my quotations during a flurry of summer activity,and Lauren Archer helped with the bibliography. Meanwhile, the interdisciplinary Rhetoric Workshop, sponsored by CU’s Center for the Humanities and the Arts (CHA), provided a testing ground for several chapters in this book, and Karen Tracy, Robert Craig, Jerry Hauser, Rolf Norgaard, John Ackerman, Willard Uncapher, Pete Simonson, the late James McDaniel, and Frank Beer, at various times and in varying degrees, provided first- rate feedback and advice. Throughout, Karen Tracy was my “book buddy”—we traded chapters while she completed Ordinary Democracy, and she has since become a cherished friend. At CU–Boulder, my former department chairs, Robert Craig and Michele Jackson,provided structural support while members of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR) enriched my thinking, especially Roger Pielke and Adam Briggle. Back in the Communication Department, Jane Elvins commented on my French translations and supplied a steady stream of hugs and smiles while Paula Dufour, Katie County, Chris Karman, Josephine Kapatayes, Celia Sinoway, and Julie Blair kept me organized. In the final stages of this project, I had the great fortune to receive a faculty fellowship from the University of Colorado at Boulder’s CHA to begin work on my second book manuscript, a rhetorical history of twentieth- century U.S. biological weapons. During the 2008–2009 academic year, I met every other Wednesday afternoon with a dynamic group of scholars and teachers under the direction of Michael Zimmerman. Although the CHA seminarians helped me envision portions of a different project, they nevertheless provided great cheer and inspiration as I was completing this book. Friends all along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains fostered a vibrant intellectual community. Whether we were trying microbrews, ski- Acknowledgments ix ing, or discussing our foibles over dinner, Greg Dickinson, Brian Ott, April...