R&D and the arms race : an analytical look

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The professions of science in America: their ambivalent history

Science started to become professionalized in the United States during the Jackson~an period. A principal aim of professionalization was to secure the goals and standards of research from interference by laymen by the institutionalization of scientific autonomy. Then and since, the scientific professions have sought to legitimate themselves by promising various quid pro quos to the society in exchange for the privilege of autonomy. The promises have included the claim that the study of science would foster morally disinterested habits of thinking and that the results of research would lead to practical., material benefit. Since the turn of the century, the claims of legitimation have in many respects been substantially validated, and the scientific professions have grown and prospered. But the very success of science, particularly after it became a favored ward of the federal government, combined with the arrangements of autonomy to provoke popular resentment and, in the era of Vietnam, rebellion. The turmoil revealed that the American scientific professions, at once respected and suspected, esoteric yet indispensable, were destined to live in tension with the larger society indefinitely

Huxley and the popularization of science

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Renato Dulbecco and the New Animal Virology: Medicine, Methods, and Molecules

Animal virology -- the study of viruses that prey on animals and human beings -- deserves historical treatment if only because since the 1950s it has become one of the most important fields in the biomedical sciences. Nowadays, it is central to the understanding of many infectious diseases, including AIDS, and the non-infectious scourge of cancer. Yet the development of the new animal virology -- "new" because it was a biological science as distinct from an arm of clinical practice in medicine -- is richly suggestive not only because of its salient importance to medicine but also historiographically. It provides an opportunity to examine the role of several important issues in the development of modern biology, not least the interplay between medical goals and the practice of basic science, the influence of patronage on scientific development, and the role of methods, techniques, and research schools in the advancement of a field

The sciences in America, circa 1880

For many years American science in the late 19th century was regarded as an intellectual backwater. This view derived from the assumption that the health of American science at the time was equivalent to the condition of pure science, especially pure physics. However, a closer look reveals that there was considerable vitality in American scientific research, especially in the earth and life sciences. This vitality is explainable in part by the natural scientific resources of the American continent but also in part by the energy given science from religious impulses, social reformism, and practicality. Furthermore, contrary to recent assumptions, the federal government was a significant patron of American science. The portrait of American science circa 1880 advanced in this article suggests that the nation's scientific enterprise was characterized by pluralism of institutional support and motive and that such pluralism has historically been the normal mode

The Enemies Without and Within Cancer and the History of the Laboratory Sciences

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The Debate Over Postwar Research Policy, 1942-1945: A Political Interpretation of "Science: The Endless Frontier"

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