In the past twenty years, the field of science and technology studies (S&TS) has made considerable progress toward illuminating the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power. These insights have not yet been synthesized or presented in a form that systematically highlights the connections between S&TS and other social sciences. This timely collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field attempts to fill that gap. The book develops the theme of "co-production", showing how scientific knowledge both (...) embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. Accordingly, the authors argue, ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it. Through studies of emerging knowledges, research practices and political institutions, the authors demonstrate that the idiom of co-production importantly extends the vocabulary of the traditional social sciences, offering fresh analytic perspectiveson the nexus of science, power and culture. (shrink)

“Basic research” is often used in science policy. It is commonly thought to refer to research that is directed solely toward acquiring new knowledge rather than any more practical objective. Recently, there has been considerable concern about the future of basic research because of purported changes in the nature of knowledge production and increasing pressures on scientists to demonstrate the social and economic benefits of their work. But is there really something special about basic research? The author argues here that (...) “basic research” is a flexible and ambiguous concept that is drawn on by scientists to acquire prestige and resources. She shows that it is used for boundary work and gives examples of the work it does in different situations by drawing on interviews with scientists and policy makers on the category of basic research and the changes they have seen in it over time. (shrink)

One of the first frameworks developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to the economy has been the linear model of innovation. The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. The precise source of the model remains nebulous, having never been documented. Several authors who have used, improved, or criticized the model in the past fifty years rarely acknowledged or cited any original source. The (...) model usually was taken for granted. According to others, however, it comes directly from V. Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier. This article traces the history of the linear model, suggesting that it developed in three steps corresponding to three scientific communities looking at science analytically. The article argues that statistics is a main reason the model is still alive despite criticisms, alternatives, and having been proclaimed dead. (shrink)

Official science and technology statistics arefifty years old. Among industrial countries,the forerunners were the United States, Canadaand Great Britain. This paper traces thedevelopment and the construction of S&Tstatistics in these three countries, and theirsubsequent standardization, mainly by theOECD, in the 1960s. It shows how military andscience policy needs drove the construction ofstatistics, until economic considerations cameto dominate their development. It alsodiscusses how statistics interacted withpolitics by way of studies that documentedgaps between OECD Member countries and betweenthe OECD and the USSR.

Scrutinizes the fundamental myths that have guided the formulation of science policy for half a century myths that serve the professional and political interests of the scientific community, but often fail to advance the interests of society as a whole.

Relevant to a wide range of scientific disciplines, this is a practical guide for scientists, politicians and citizens to the relationship between science and politics.