Reviews

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

David H. Guston,Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrityand Productivity of Research(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000), xvii + 213 pp incl. index.

The early chapters of this book usefully set up the central problemof science policy. Guston sees science policy in terms of ‘principals’,who require services and ‘agents’ who provide them. He uses DashiellHammett’sThe Maltese Falconas just one colourful analogy, in which‘The Fat Man’ is the principal who employs Sam Spade as his agent tofind the statuette. How does he know that the agent has the skills to carryout the job and can find the falcon? How can he be assured that the agentwill carry out the job diligently and will really try to find the falcon? Howcan he know that the search will be carried out with moral integrity – thefalcon being delivered rather than exploited by the agent? The difficultyis that an agent is employed only because the principal does not have theskills to carry out the job. Yet these are also skills needed to resolve thedoubts. This is the problem for policy makers in general, and for sciencepolicy makers in particular.

In the case of science, ‘ignorant patrons worry about getting theirmoney’s worth for their delegation of funds to the researchers’ while‘[e]xpert researchers face the similarly unenviable task of performing forpatrons who might not appreciate it’ (p. 14). Thus ‘[t]he asymmetry ofinformation between those who would conduct research and those whowould govern it presents the central problem of science policy’ (p. 17).Guston quotes social theorist Stephen Turner that one ‘solution’ for theprincipal is to evaluate less esoteric aspects of scientific work rather thanthose the principal cannot understand. The substitutes can be trust, publicattestations, and financial accountability. As someone struggling with acase study of America’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Obser-vatory (LIGO), I found all this illuminating. In the latter case, because itis too soon to deliver any real science, a display of management respon-sibility, virtuosity, and transparency in facility building has been used toargue for more funding. Guston’s book has helped me see this process in awider context.

Minerva 38: 469–475, 2000.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

470 HARRY COLLINS

This book is a history of US science policy-making institutionsculminating in a discussion of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) andthe Office of Technology Assessment (OTT). Guston argues that these twooffices represent a change in the way that American science is managed.An era governed by a ‘Social Contract for Science’ between the SecondWorld War and the 1980s has been succeeded by an era of ‘Collabora-tive Assurance’. The ‘Social Contract’ allowed scientists freedom fromfinancial and political pressure, in the belief that society could gain fromtheir autonomy. In turn, scientists accepted a degree of organization wherelarge-scale projects were involved. Essentially, it was a market relationship– science was paid, in advance, in the expectation that it would provide aservice to society, the only control being the eventual delivery of the goods.The post-1980 arrangements, on the other hand, provide for more directshort-term supervision – rather as anti-trust institutions might be used tocontrol the excesses of a less-metaphorical market.

Much of Guston’s discussion turns on the boundary between scienceand society. He terms the ORI and the OTT ‘boundary organizations’.These institutions sit on the boundary facing both ways; they promise tocontrol science for society’s sake, and they promise to represent scient-ists fairly to society. Guston discusses the requirement, born out of socialconstructivism, to describe these boundary institutions rather than takepart in the building of boundaries themselves. With or without the socialconstructivism, Guston’s problem remains the policing of transactionsacross the science/society boundary so as to satisfy both sides. I supposethat what social constructivism brings is a new question about control,given that the internal mechanisms of cognitive control in science areneither straightforward nor autonomous. Nevertheless, I found the invoca-tion of social constructivism to justify the concentration on boundaryorganizations somewhat artificial; there are boundary organizations allover the place, and their mediating role is obvious without any referenceto epistemology.

The conclusion, which is surely correct irrespective of the more gran-diose aspects of the argument, is that the new boundary organizations aremore effective than the old social contract model in handling the policyproblem described in the first chapters. The existence of these organiza-tions reduces the temptation for individuals to make the damaging raidsacross the border, such as Senator Proxmire’s ‘Golden Fleece’ awards. Thenew institutions are now policing, and are seen to be policing, frauds andscams and can direct maverick energies into a controlling embrace.

HARRY COLLINS

THE GOLDEN FLEECE 471

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor in Sociology at Cardiff Univer-sity and author of books on the sociology of scientific knowledge and on artificialintelligence. Early next year Chicago University Press will publish his co-editedbook,The One Culture? A Conversation about Science.

Cardiff School of Social SciencesCardiff University, Glamorgan BuildingKing Edward VII AvenueCardiff CF10 3WTUKE-mail: CollinsHM@Cardiff.ac.uk

THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE

Jean-Jacques Salomon,Survivre à la Science: Une certaine Idée du Futur(Paris: Albin Michel, 1999). 373 pp.

Suppose one had been in Wittenberg in October 1517, and had read the95 theses nailed by Martin Luther to the church door. Would this call forinstitutional reform have seemed anti-religious? Similarly, does it seem anact of ‘anti-science’ to question the ethical stance of many scientific insti-tutions and their leaders? Professor Salomon remarks that ‘post-industrialsocieties may need a Luther to post up their theses against the pretensionsof the religion of science’. But it is not heretical to seek to ‘refound thelegitimacy’ of the convictions of researchers and their institutions. Hisbook should be read in that spirit. It entirely accepts the basic rationalityof the scientific endeavour, and in no way panders to mystagoguery orpseudo-scholarly populism. No doubt the diehards of scientistic certaintyand omnipotence will be affronted by it, for it exposes as fantasies some oftheir most self-congratulatory beliefs. But its message is reformist ratherthan revolutionary. It deserves to be taken very seriously by all scientistswho are not wilfully deaf to the clamour of public discontent that nowsurrounds them as they perform their scientific duties.

Of course, it is passionately polemical. Salomon has a well-trainedrhetorical voice, with which he can fill a large intellectual auditoriumwithout sounding shrill. Many of the targets of his wit fully deserve