Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Frickel, S., & Moore, K. (Eds.). (2006). The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. London: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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Like many academic books, this work is a compilation of chapters written by various authors who share focus points of the title topic. Each chapter is grouped with others under three main topics: the commercialization of science; science and social movements; and science and the regulatory state. The editors note how many such books come from a compilation of papers presented at a given conference, and that this book does not follow that pattern. “We invited contributors to tender individual or comparative case study analyses that explain why events and processes in science happen the way they do” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. vii).

Referenced case studies include an examination of how social and political ideas shape how science is approached, and which scientific questions are examined. Likewise, there are examples showing how scientific work can influence political and social thought. Case studies include agricultural, biomedical research, alternative approaches to science, scientific consensus, ethics and training, political movements on specific diseases, and the list continues.

The ’creation’ or ‘discovery’ of scientific ‘facts’ is fraught with myriad decisions made by individuals and groups of people. Despite the assumed objectivity of the scientific approach, in reality the larger human world in which all scientists live plays an important role in what gets examined and how reliable the findings might be. Facts tend to be established through consensus, but consensus does not guarantee information is completely factual. The tensions among funding, policy, process, and priority are real as evidenced in the ideas and case studies offered in this book. What makes the ideas presented is simply that this is a later version of an earlier work by sociologist Stuart Blume. The earlier version from 1974 is titled Toward a Political Sociology of Science. As quoted by Frickel and Moore, the intent of that book was to offer an analysis “founded upon the assumption that the social institution of modern science is essentially political” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. 3). The motivation to update the ideas of the Blume book is that “the interconnections among the institutions he examined in deriving that claim have since undergone extensive transformation” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. 4).

Bibliography
Galison, P., & Hevly, B. (Eds.). (1992). Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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Like many of the books I read for my post-graduate studies, this is a compilation of papers. In this case, the chapters relate to scientific research projects that are considered big enough in scope to meet the editors’ speculative attempt at a definition of big. As one might suspect, the introduction is by one of the editors, Peter Galison, and contains the thought around how to draw the boundary between big and not big. Galison also spends time discussing why the topic matters. Like in most things, one’s perspective on what ‘big’ means depends a great deal on where one is. For example, Galison notes, “Seen from the inside – from scientists’ perspective – big science entails a change in the very nature of a life in science” (Galison & Hevly, 1992, p. 1). Is it the size of the team working on a given project? Is it the size of the budget? Is it a function of the hoped-for outcomes? Are big science projects only those funded by the government? Are they those that will do the most ‘good’? You can see the nature of the discussion covered in this book.

The questions above are tackled by a number of authors through the depiction of historical events in the scientific research community. There are five chapters about the growth of particle physics. Four more chapters discuss the tension between researcher priorities and those of funders such as governments and large corporations. The last four authors examine the relationship between research and national security. These are followed by an afterword by the other editor, Bruce Hevly.

When science is big enough to capture public attention because of the potential impact, some of the tensions mentioned above also grow. In the afterword, Hevly admits a clear definition of big science “remains an elusive term” (Galison & Hevly, 1992, p. 355). He further calls the term “conveniently murky” (Ibid.) in that something can be termed ‘big’ or ‘not big’ based on what’s to one’s advantage. For example, when seeking funding for grants perhaps big means having an important mission for humanity. When appealing to a private funder, maybe economic value has more appeal to be big. Yet, if one is looking for less attention perhaps the moniker is more troublesome. For example, if a work gains less attention by others then perhaps patents can be more easily obtained through reduced competition. Maybe the scientists involved can garner notability through being the first to publish on a given topic that others are not thinking about because it wasn’t big enough to get their attention. Whatever one calls ‘big’ in science, there are certainly many scientific efforts that have created impact on civilization in part or in whole. In the end the question remains. How big is big?
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Bibliography
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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This book speaks to a long-standing problem in both science and technology. When is a thing a thing, and not something else? Despite belief in clear categories, there is often ambiguity and continuum when it comes to pretty much anything we choose to measure. Even in something as ‘obvious’ as on or off. For example, in any electrical system (computers included) there is a voltage increase or decrease just after a switch is thrown. As immediate as the process may seem in human time, we have instruments that can measure the charging and discharging that goes on. What about when the power has a ‘brown out’. Is it on or off?

This dilemma is where the authors go in this book. They emphasize the effect that human choice has on establishing categories, and in deciding when something is in one category or another. In the world of the sociology of science, this idea is sometimes dubbed ‘boundary work’. Scientists are influenced by the professional and general societies they find themselves in. Different scientific organizations may approach the same ‘problem’ in different ways creating competing categories. For example, there a lots of different ways scientific disciplines name or describe anything from substances, to flora and fauna, to human traits. Pick pretty much any like-grouped things and you have created your own version of a category. The issue in terms of science is the addition of an authority that comes along with the supposed objectivity of scientists.
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Bowker and Star share examples as wide ranging as tuberculosis, apartheid, and nursing work. They conclude with a chapter on why classifications matter. “Classifications are powerful technologies. Embedded in working infrastructures they become relatively invisible without losing any of that power” (Bowker & Star, 1999, p. 320). Decided by convention over time, categories, by definition, create a form of hierarchy. Such hierarchy might be among humans in an organization (who’s a doctor and who’s a nurse?), or among which form of category will be accepted within a given society as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. For example, in evolutionary science specimens are often dubbed higher or lower forms of life based on the complexity of their cellular make up or their DNA structure. Bowker and Star point out that things are generally on some sort of continuum or other, and drawing lines within the continuum is arbitrary and tends to mislead. One classic example is the box on a form describing race. Which does a multi-racial person check when describing themselves?