The nominating committee wrote this assessment:
This is a model of how to write an essay for Scientia. It focuses on a science issue in Canada, noting key details and peculiarities, but without forcing a reading qua a distinctively Canadian situation. The author’s footnotes are fulsome and generous, provoking and enabling follow-up scholarship from readers. The prose style incorporates an authorial voice that remains persuasive without ever cajoling. The author connects global issues and local narratives without straining. We especially liked how Carstairs linked a decidedly local story about STOP to a broad shift where both scientists and activists moved away from the individual body to the ambient environment as the locus of study. Finally, in addition to the narrative, the paper clarifies the issue of fluoridation as a historical question, where understanding what’s at stake requires following differential chronologies. This is a paper we would return to both to see how it’s crafted and to see whether the method could be fruitfully used to study other issues
Congratulations Dr. Carstairs!