Abstract
This chapter considers changes to research practices within contemporary dementia research. It considers how observational cohort studies are being repositioned as a form of promising sociality on which rest expectations of the future of research into Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders. Drawing on empirical research with cohort researchers and participants, Milne and Badger argue that taking the sociality of cohorts seriously involves recognising the heterogeneity of actors involved. They suggest that attending to and cultivating attachments between these actors provide the basis for the ‘responsible’ development of research, and argue that the drive to combine and blend studies risks detaching research from these relations and the conditions in which they and data are co-produced.
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Acknowledgements
Our thanks to all the interviewers who took part in the workshop and to Professor Carol Brayne, Linda Barnes, Rachael Barnes, and the CFAS management group for initiating and supporting this work. The research was funded through the Medical Research Council and the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. Our thanks also to the editors and the participants at the workshop from which this volume emerges, for their useful and constructive comments on previous versions of this chapter.
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Milne, R., Badger, S. (2016). Care and Responsibility in Building Futures for Alzheimer’s Disease Research. In: Boenink, M., van Lente, H., Moors, E. (eds) Emerging Technologies for Diagnosing Alzheimer's Disease. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54097-3_5
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