Fig. 1.

Patterns of deference in the sciences. Any practicing scientist, or lab group, is part of a richly interconnected massive net of deference relations. Here, an expert on cell movement depends critically on experts in topics ranging from microscopy, to gene regulation, to protein synthesis to lattice structures. Each of these experts in turn defers to other experts in both asymmetrical and symmetrical patterns in an ever more branching net of which this figure only shows a small fragment.