Rethinking the Commercialization of Modern Science Part 1: The Laboratory Based on draft chapter for New Handbook of STS Philip Mirowski © 2005.

Rethinking the Commercialization of Modern

Science

Part 1: The Laboratory

Based on draft chapter for

New Handbook of STS

Philip Mirowski

©2005

Cassandras bewail loss of virtue

Mertonian CUDOS gone Golden ivy withered on the

vine (nostalgia of Newfield, Hollinger…)

Science used to be self-organizing, but now its not (Krimsky, Kuhn(!))

‘political’ interference with ‘public good’

Lessig, Boyle, Eisenberg, on ‘enclosure of commons’

Promoters extol engaged science

Neoclassicals praise tech transferB schools push new paradigms of R&DMode 2, ‘Triple Helix’No harm to science, everyone better off‘Reform’ of universitiesDenial of basic/applied‘relevance’=accountable

My Story is Different

‘Science’ has never been a unified entity over timeStructures have been complex combinations of components, but ‘regimes’ can be characterized roughly according to who pays & organizes research + whyScientific research carried on at many ‘sites’, each of which has their own history: here I focus on ‘the laboratory’ and national systems of researchHowever, current globalization tends to homogenize payment structures, and this itself may have deleterious effects on the robustness of scientific inquiryMust identify major players: here, corporations, state & universities (but nothing inevitable about this), NGOs

‘Economics of Info’ Misleading

Science neither simply production of invariant ‘thing’, nor rational alteration of cognitive state of generic individual

Rather, a set of stylized activities integrated (or not) into the praxis of specific institutional players: science happens in many spheres

“Laboratories” have not always existed, nor found a secure home in many situations. How they get stabilized is culturally specific. This related to notion of ‘national systems’ of research

David & Dasgupta (1994) tacit/codified knowledge dichotomy totally inadequate to understand this point

Changes in regimes frequently unintended consequences of alterations in other institutions: corporations, military, legal, …

Different regimes tend to favor different areas of inquiry, alternate images of what a ‘progressive’ program looks like

American Regimes of Science Organization

I n the 20th Century

Per i od, Regi me

Corporati on evol vi ng

Government Corp. pol i cy

Government Sci . pol i cy

Sci ence managers

Hi gher educati on

Pi votal di sci pl i nary sci ence

1890- WWII Captai ns of erudi ti on regi me

1895-1904 great merger movement: Chandlerian firm of ‘Visible Hand’. Innovation of in-house R&D labs to control competition.

Massive expansion of corp prerogatives. Corps become legal agents; patents a major strategic tool. Beginning of anti-trust. Employers own research of employees.

Almost non-existent. NRC formed as trade assoc. lobby for natural sciences. General suspicion of gov’t involvement. NRE fails. Wartime patent bounty.

Charismatic PhD directs corp labs. Foundation officers run few elite univ. grant programs (on corporate principles).

Elite liberal arts. Research subord-inate to pedagogy. Science not a major priority. Foundations attempt reform. Labs founded.

Chemistry, Electrical engineering

WWII- 1980 Col d War regi me

M-form, conglomerate diversification. R&D units as semi- autonomous revenue earners (due to military contracts). Regulatory capture.

Corporate powers augmented; antitrust strengthened. IP weakened. Military contracts as industrial policy.

Huge expansion Federal military funding and control. Military promotes basic science to defeat enemies. Nat’l labs. NSF as non-military face of ‘pure’ science.

Military primary sci managers for: research univs, think tanks, nat’l labs, corporate contract research ‘Peer review’ a secondary inst.

Mass education at expanded research univs. Integrated teaching/research. Turn out democ. Citizens: academic freedom ideology

Physics, Operations research, Formal logic.

1980- ? Gl obal i zed pr i vati zati on regi me

Breakdown of Chandlerian model. Retreat from vertical integration, diversification. Corps outsource R&D, spin off in-house labs.

Transnational trade agreements expand corp powers to circumvent national control. Antitrust weakened; IP vastly expanded.

Privatize publicly funded research: Bayh-Dole, etc. Kill OTA. Science just one political resource amongst many.

Globalized corp officers control: univs, hybrids, CROs, startups.

Stock up human capital for those who can pay. Only entrepreneurs are free. Sever the teaching/research connection.

Biomedicine, Genetics, Computer science, Economics.

Lessons from this exercise

The modern commercialization regime is not a return to earlier formatsNeoliberal notions of market as ideal information conveyor are utterly irrelevant for scienceIn the modern transformation, universities have largely been passive reactors to initiatives mounted elsewhere, and thus vulnerable to eventual fragmentationMany previous forms of research will suffer under the new regime, but some will flourishThe means by which findings are validated and communicated will be completely revamped

Three American Regimes of Laboratory Science

Some German preliminaries (skip) 1890-1940 “Captains of Erudition” regime (in

honor of Veblen (1918)) as the beginnings of world-class American science

1940-1980 “Cold War” regime coincides with American hegemony (military, scientific, educational)

1980- ? “Globalized Privatization” regime as attempt to unmoor science from the nation state and evade controls by academics, regulators

Birth of American Industrial Lab

GE Research Lab, 1900 (Reich, 1985)

Bell lab, 1881-4 [1925] DuPont, 1904 (Hounshell

& Smith, 1988) Westinghouse, 1886 GM Research 1920 Smith Kline 1893 Parke Davis 1895*

Erudition Regime

Corp. & University labs arise simultaneously in USARole of Chandlerian narrative of rise of Am. CorporationsAntitrust initiatives promote in-house corporate R&D, discourage cartels, joint venturesLegal negation employee ownership of IP (Fish, 1998)Corp. employment of scientists (~1/2 total pop) requires serious expansion of trainingFoundations push ‘reform’ of science education, install corp-style labs and group-organized big scienceYet corp. subvention of academic science uneven, shown undependable in Depression

Erudition Regime Science

Contract research small: AD Little, Battelle, Mellon

Because research about m’ket control, kept mostly in-house

Big Univ labs taught to pattern themselves on corp units, esp. private univs

Friction between univs & corps Nat’l Research Fund fails 1932 Corp. Nobels 1932, 1937,… Strong empirical, not

theoretical (chem, elect. Engin)

WWII Science watershed

Massive transform of science policy begins with OSRD WWII

Continues with debate over postwar science: NSF stymied

Military fills vacuum: ONR, AEC, RAND, DARPA

Foundations dwarfed, corps become beneficiaries of fed science funding as well as Us

Military controls most science funding directly or indirectly (thru NIH, NASA, NSF, NSA)

Cold War Portrayal of Science

Pursuit of ‘useless knowledge’ as resonant with state objectives -- ideological exemplars of liberal democracy

Freedom of scientist -- unobtrusive control through military funding, classification

‘Basic/Applied’ distinction held to explain ‘natural’ distinction between university and corporate spheres of research (whatever the actual situation) [Arrow, V.Bush]

Cold War ‘Open Science’ (cont’d)

Stealth industrial policy by state: weak intellectual property rights & strong antitrust enforcement (dual source rule): no single firm controls mission-critical sci

State-sponsored subvention of dissemination of scientific information: e.g., page charge subsidies for non-profit journals [‘open’ vs. ‘closed’ literature], library subsidy

State subsidized universities to integrate and combine teaching and research functions: overhead charges, grad student subventions, hierarchical mass education

Operations Research as a theory of science policy

Cold War Labs

Nat’l labs, think tanks, semi-academic (Lincoln labs),… M-form corps: labs as semi-independent profit centers,

promoted by DoD contracts, lavish overhead (100%) Corp Labs as plush campuses w/out students (Bell, IBM

Yorktown, Xerox Parc, Merck Rahway,…) Tax laws concretize linear model (Asner) Corps don’t actively pursue IP (outside pharma) because

gov’t policy discourages them doing so Corp research becomes ‘decoupled’ from business

plans, does not help ‘competitiveness’

Breakdown of Cold War regime

Corporate manufacturing capacity no longer located in developed economies -- fears of productivity declines

Spread of Am. Corporate formats to major rivals (Djelic, 1998) prompts need to re-engineer transnationals

With fall of Wall, US military no longer the obvious chief administrative officer of science policy, backs off

Universities no longer obviously serve state-building objectives -- students no longer = citizens, corporate research transcends national boundaries

Shift of ‘cutting edge’ science from physics to biology

Globalized Privatization Regime

Breakdown of National Systems of Research

Shift from longer- to shorter-term horizons

Less fixated disciplinary identities, more flexible interdisciplinary teams

Major objective is control of access to knowledge

Postwar Intellectual Influences

Repudiation of educational ideal as a form of state-building: higher educ. simply another commodity

Public suspicion of science– cloning, global warming, evolution,… Science PR backfires in Science Wars

Increasing reification of ‘information’ as a thing (impact of computers, Web, cogsci)

Reconceptualization of public/private spheres of activity in triumph of neoliberal ideology

Market models come to dominate cultural understanding of science

Landmarks of GP Regime

Breakdown of Chandlerian corporation (less vertical integration, more outsourcing, joint ventures), re-engineered firm: a transnational phenomenon

TRIPS and WIPO strengthen IP throughout world under pretense of ‘free trade’

Crisis of higher ed (1975 enrollments plateau) Corpocratic Legislation: Bayh-Dole, NCRA, NTTA,… Antitrust neutered: joint R&D ventures promoted “Bloodbath of corporate in-house R&D” in 1990s(Buderi)

Displacement of Feds by Industry

How Can Corps Shed R&D Labs, and yet displace the state as primary patron of science???

Answer: For the first time in history, scientific research has been rendered fungible to such a degree that contract research can be safely and effectively outsourced to whatever might be the low cost and strategically consistent performer: domestic univs, foreign univs, contract research organizations, or other specialist firms. The research function has been ‘spun off’ from the post-Chandlerian corporation.

Bulletins from the Frontlines of Globalization

Tijssen RP2004: corp science pubs falling

# scitech pubs by US authors declining (NSB 2002)

Univs (even 3rd world!) being privatized

EIU report 2004: rise in out-sourcing to China, India, Brazil

Firms now ‘buy’ research of entire U departments: Novartis at Berkeley

Celera v. HGP totally misrepresented in media (Shreeve, 2004)

Globalized Privatization Regime

Universities don’t produce ‘citizens’, but stuff called ‘information’ (‘human capital’). Universities are flawed because they don’t efficiently turn their ‘outputs’ into economic support. They ‘must’ reform.

Freedom of scientists unimportant because they are employees. Only entrepreneurs are truly free.

Reverse stealth industrial policy: strong intellectual property guarantees, weak (or non-existent) anti-trust enforcement.

Science now overseen by lawyers: materials transfer agreements, prior restraints on publication,...

Contract Research Organization:Wave of the Future?

Mirowski & VanHorn (2005 SSS) discuss science in a CRO, and its deformations

Human subjects either commodities or displaced overseas where controls lax

Disclosure no solution to funder bias in results, since that is the objective

Ownership & control of research tools: MTAs ‘Guest’ and ghost authorship (what is an author?) Poor track record of discovery of truly new molecules,

but lotsa ‘me-too’ drugs (Angell)

How the Questions have Changed

No one asks any more: Why should private firms/individuals capture the benefits

of research subsidized by the state?

Now critics ask: Why should the state (via universities) inefficiently

provide commodities that are better provided by market-oriented organizations (cutting-edge research, education as human capital accumulation)?

A Dystopian Future?

Low-cost providers of ‘distance education’ for masses Research park + technology transfer office Libraries disappear Medical centers attached to clinics Contract research organizations (downmarket research for

hire) Expensive free-standing vocational schools (law, etc) Few generalist finishing schools for affluent resembling

shopping malls Very few elite rich universities, increasingly resemble

corporations while attempting to maintain non-profit status

What Prevents Fragmentation?

Money and will united diverse functions of Cold War University: it was never a ‘natural’ commonsMoney and will (ideology) now seeks to tear those functions asunderScience is not more ‘responsive’ than before; rather, it responds to a different set of objectivesUniversity has been too passive of late in response