Social Construction of Scientific Facts

``Let us turn now to the social construction of scientific facts. Again there is a question of how this sort of thesis could be established by sociologists. How could any scrutinizing of the activities of human scientists have determinate implications as to whether certain chemical substances, for example, exist independently of interactions among such scientists? Yet this is exactly what Latour and Steve Woolgar imply in their book Laboratory Life: The [Social] Construction of Scientific Facts (1979/1986). Latour and Woolgar claim that the "reality [of a scientific entity or fact] is formed as a consequence of [the] stabilization [of a controversy]" (1986: 180). In other words, the reality does not exist prior to the social event of stabilization, but is the result of such stabilization. How can they ascertain this without being trained, qualified biochemists as opposed to sociologists? How can the study of macro-events of a social nature establish that certain alleged biochemical substances do or do not exist independently of those macro-events?''

From SEP.

Yesterday I heard a colleague say: Atoms do not exist, they are concepts.

I didn't feel like joining.