AO: Osseo-Asare notes that in contrast to the healers (who were open with sharing written records and recipes that had been published), scientists were wary of speaking to a historian interested in observing them in their place of work and asking them questions about their personal research narrative. “Most African universities abolished anthropology departments after independence, making a visit from a social researcher to their laboratories and offices especially ironic. Perhaps more secretive than the famously reticent healers, the scientists would rarely reveal the names of plants they were currently researching, even if publications were out and patents filed.” (26)
AO: Abena Osseo-Asare notes the shifts over time to find ways to compensate and acknowledge multiple contributors to drug innovation. She notes that originally colonial occupation allowed for the obfuscation of the names of plant medicine experts who advised visiting botanists and chemists. By the 1950s, African nationalist scientists sought to be added to the roster of discoverers, assigning their names to patents, papers, and products but they often continued to omit the names of traditional healers or family members who had less access to the language of the laboratory but who had assisted them in their research (200).
AO: Osseo-Asare notes the challenges with finding this information given the incentive not to notate the many different stakeholders involved in creating and producing the knowledge.
Due to the legal incentive to establish “priority” groups of plant experts have constructed narratives of priority, omitting details on the many protagonists participating in knowledge production (10)
AO: Osseo-Asare writes: “African scientists, trained in new universities in their countries and abroad, collected signs of their contributions to science to secure careers at national institutes or to maintain consultancies with NGOs and international companies. African scientists traced their intellectual lineage to European societies, where from the 1700s a class of noblemen, primarily white, codified their ideas in an elite discourse of natural philosophy. These early “men of science,” as they began to call themselves, met in salons and emerging schools to discuss new ways to or ga nize plants and animals and to test hypotheses about minerals. As membership in the science professions grew, practitioners became less likely to share their ideas widely. Twentieth- century scientists have protected their ideas through a mix of lectures, publications, and, increasingly, patents. Even in regimes of shared knowledge, such as open- source software development, participants have developed ways to track their unique contributions. Scientists in Madagascar, Cameroon, Ghana, and South Africa inherited approaches to knowledge management through school systems initiated during the colonial period, and they participated in global standards for information sharing after independence.” (12-13)