ArgumentWe expand upon the notion of the "credibility cycle" through a study of credibility engineering by the food industry. Research and development (R&D) as well as marketing contribute to the credibility of the food company Unilever and its claims. Innovation encompasses the development, marketing, and sales of products. These are directed towards three distinct audiences: scientific peers, regulators, and consumers. R&D uses scientific articles to create credit for itself amongst peers and regulators. These articles are used to support health claims on products. However, R&D, regulation, and marketing are not separate realms. A single strategy of credibility engineering connects health claims to a specific public through linking that public to a health issue and a food product.

Laboratory ethnographies have provided valuable insights in the workings of contemporary science and technology and about facts in the making. Nearly all these ethnographic studies have been conducted at nonprofit research institutes. In this article, the authors argue that it is time for science and technology studies (STS) ethnography to direct its gaze toward for-profit knowledge production sites. The authors do so, based on a long-standing recognition that nonprofit academic laboratories do not have a monopoly on knowledge construction. First, they historicize STS’ focus on public knowledge production, distinguishing between two roles for STS. Second, they argue that relationships between industry and society have changed, resulting in increasing corporate transparency. Third, they argue that this change enables STS ethnography to enter corporations and corporate laboratories. The authors conclude by proposing a research agenda for the social study of corporate science.

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In this article we discuss the development of a practice of screening, preventive treatment, and presymptomatic testing for individuals at risk of Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP), a specific hereditary predisposition for colon cancer. We describe this development as a process of co-evolution, showing how this practice has been gradually taking shape in a new network of actors, routines, rules, institutions and technologies. We further argue that, looking at the emergence and transformation of this practice, we can distinguish two different regimes: a regime of prevention and a regime of self-determination. In each of these regimes the autonomy of patients and individuals at risk is shaped in a different way, that is, through a different complex of ideals, procedures, institutions, technologies, and routines. In our view, the interference between these two regimes is an important characteristic of the emergent new genetics and is reflected in the growing debate about non-directivity in genetic counselling. However, as our argument implies, when facing the challenges of the new genetics we should not restrict the debate to the quality and ethics of counselling, but extend our view to the whole complex of elements and activities which shapes individual autonomy in the context of different regimes.