The integration of ideas, methods, and data from diverse disciplines has been a transformative force in science and higher education, attracting policy interventions, program innovations, financial resources, and talented people. Much energy has been invested in producing a new generation of scientists trained to work fluidly across disciplines, sectors, and research problems, yet the success of such investments has been difficult to measure. Using the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation as a (...) strategic research site, we conducted an experiment to determine whether and how the process and products of research of IGERT-trained scientists differ from those of scientists trained in disciplinary graduate programs. Among scientists in the early years of graduate study we found substantial and consistent differences suggesting that interdisciplinary training improved the quality and process of research, but this pattern was equally strongly reversed among students in the latter years of graduate study. Using systematic observation and other data we suggest why this might be so, then discuss the implications of these results for the design and conduct of graduate education and research. (shrink)

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what (...) was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain. (shrink)

This article evaluates the social contract theorizing of Professors Thomas DonaIdson, Thomas Dunfee and Michael Keeley. This theorizing is tested with G.E. Moore’s concept of moral authority, with moral psychology, and by managerial utility. Both strengths and weaknesses are found in the theories and the author concludes that while there is great potential, much work in theory development remains.

In the late 1800s, Charles Darwin and other naturalists supported a blending view of inheritance whereby offspring possess a middling mix of their parents' traits. Many of these naturalists also argued that individuals pass at least some of their acquired characteristics to their descendants. Darwin proposed that acquired characteristics and other environmentally induced changes in a parent's hereditary material account in large part for the inheritable variations that drove evolution. Inspired by the evolutionary theories of his first cousin, Darwin, Francis (...) Galton developed hereditarian notions that helped to lay the foundation for both genetics and eugenics. Eugenics was endorsed by evolutionary geneticists such as August Weismann, Karl Pearson, W. F. R. Weldon, William Bateson, and Hugo de Vries, which, as a result, gave it enormous scientific credibility in America and Europe. This chapter explores the role of biology in the emergence of the eugenics movement in the Anglo-Saxon world. (shrink)

This paper assesses possible reasons why Hermann J. Muller avoided peer-review of data that became the basis of his Nobel Prize award for producing gene mutations in male Drosophila by X-rays. Extensive correspondence between Muller and close associates and other materials were obtained from preserved papers to compliment extensive publications by and about Muller in the open literature. These were evaluated for potential historical insights that clarify why he avoided peer-review of his Nobel Prize findings. This paper clarifies the basis (...) of Muller’s (Muller HJ, Sci 66 84-87, 1927c) belief that he produced X-ray induced “gene” mutations in Drosophila. It then shows his belief was contemporaneously challenged by his longtime friend/confidant and Drosophila geneticist, Edgar Altenburg. Altenburg insisted that Muller may have simply poked large holes in chromosomes with massive doses of X-rays, and needed to provide proof of gene “point” mutations. Given the daunting and uncertain task to experimentally address this criticism, especially within the context of trying to become first to produce gene mutations, it is proposed that Muller purposely avoided peer-review while rushing to publish his paper in Science to claim discovery primacy without showing any data. The present paper also explores ethical issues surrounding these actions, including those of the editor of Science, James McKeen Catell and Altenburg, and their subsequent impact on the scientific and regulatory communities. This historical analysis suggests that Muller deliberately avoided peer-review on his most significant findings because he was extremely troubled by the insightful and serious criticism of Altenburg, which suggested he had not produced gene mutations as he claimed. Nonetheless, Muller manipulated this situation (i.e., publishing a discussion within Science with no data, publishing a poorly written non-peer reviewed conference proceedings with no methods and materials, and no references) due to both the widespread euphoria over his claim of gene mutation and confidence that Altenburg would not publically challenge him. This situation permitted Muller to achieve his goal to be the first to produce gene mutations while buying him time to later try to experimentally address Altenburg’s criticisms, and a possible way to avoid discovery of his questionable actions. (shrink)

Michael Faraday’s laboratory experiments have dominated traditional histories of the electrical sciences in 1820s and 1830s Britain. However, as this article demonstrates, in the mining region of Cornwall, Robert Were Fox fashioned a very different approach to the study of electromagnetic phenomena. Here, it was the mine that provided the foremost site of scientific experimentation, with Fox employing these underground locations to measure the Earth’s heat and make claims over the existence of subterranean electrical currents. Yet securing philosophical claims cultivated (...) in mines proved challenging for Fox, with metropolitan audiences, including Faraday, loath to give credit to the results of these underground experiments. This article explores how Fox developed a way of modeling his mine experiments, using clay samples, to communicate knowledge from industrial Cornwall to urban centers of elite science. It argues that the mine was an epistemologically complex venue of scientific activity, at once seeming to provide a way of examining nature directly, without recourse to laboratory contrivance, while simultaneously being a place where knowledge claims were hard to verify without access to these physically challenging locations. In exploring Fox’s work, this study contributes to a growing literature of spatial investigation that takes the vertical as its unit of analysis. (shrink)

Stimulated by Kenneth Pimple’s “Six Domains of Research Ethic”, this paper examines four aspects of the responsible conduct of research and scientists’ social responsibilities. I argue that scholars and decision-makers concerned with the responsible conduct of research should take notice of the rapidly growing body of scholarship on the social organization of science and the behavior of scientists, integrating that work with ethical principles. Of particular concern are the increasing heterogeneity and interdisciplinary of research, the ambivalences in the practice of (...) peer review, the social tensions of research life, and the heightened concern for social and economic returns from federal research investments. In all, the paper echoes and develops Pimple’s call for integrative thinking about the responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

:Opportunism impacts the behavior of firms in market situations where they purchase goods and services externally and create dependency relationships with other firms. Opportunism as a business issue is addressed in economics and marketing literature as an important factor in transaction cost analysis and market governance. Management and business ethics scholars, however, do not address this issue in depth, if at all.The recent bankruptcy of MCI WorldCom highlights some of the risks inherent in a world economy where customers and companies (...) of one society are dependent upon the business practices of partner companies in other societies. Telecommunications customers and companies in Asia, Europe and other places, who depended upon MCI WorldCom for connections to North America, now have important areas of their business in jeopardy because of the uncertainty about the fate of a critical business partner.MCI WorldCom’s situation appears to be the result of an attempt to obtain personal gain, at the expense of others, by at least one senior manager. This is called opportunism. Williamson defined opportunism as “self-interest seeking with guile.” It can wreak havoc with companies, customers, stock markets and economies and is demonstrated regularly in press accounts of misstatements on financial reports and other ways senior managers use their positions to enhance their personal wealth and influence.This paper will focus on the ethical issues surrounding business relationships and how Confucianism, with its focus on trust, reciprocity and mutual benefit in relationships, can offer a moral foundation to the inter-firm arrangements that are so much a part of the contemporary business landscape. (shrink)

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory (...) work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences. (shrink)

In the famous Correspondence with Clarke, which took place during the last year of Leibniz's life, Leibniz advanced several arguments purporting to refute the absolute theory of space and time that was held by Newton and his followers. The main aim of this book is to reassess Leibniz's attack on the Newtonian theory in so far as he relied on the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. The theological side of the controversy is not ignored but isolated and discussed in (...) the last three chapters, which deal with problems connected with the notions of omnipotence and omniscience. (shrink)

This paper responds to Antje du-Bois Pedain’s discussion of the wrongfulness constraint on the criminal law. Du-Bois Pedain argues that the constraint is best interpreted as stating that φing is legitimately criminalised only if φing is wrongful for other-regarding reasons. We take issue with du-Bois Pedain’s arguments. In our view, it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of legitimate criminalisation that φing is wrongful in du-Bois Pedain’s sense. Rather, it is a necessary condition of legitimate criminalisation that φing is (...) what we call bare wrongful —that is, that the reasons in favour of φing are defeated by the reasons against. Though du-Bois Pedain is critical of this view, we argue that her criticisms do not convince. (shrink)

This paper presents reports on discussions among an international group of science and technology studies scholars who convened at the US National Science Foundation to think about data sharing and open STS. The first report, which reflects discussions among members of the Society for Social Studies of Science, relates the potential benefits of data sharing and open science for STS. The second report, which reflects discussions among scholars from many professional STS societies, focuses on practical and conceptual issues related to (...) managing, storing, and curating STS data. As is the case for all reports of such open discussions, a scholar’s presence at the meeting does not necessarily mean that they agree with all aspects of the text to follow. (shrink)

Biobanks hold out the prospect of significant public and private benefit, as genetic information contained in tissue samples is mined for information. However, the storing of human tissue samples and genetic information for research and/or therapeutic purposes raises a number of serious privacy and autonomy concerns. These concerns are compounded when one considers the possibility that a biobank or its owner might go bankrupt. Insolvency impairs the ability of enforcement regimes, and liability-based regimes in particular, to enforce legal norms. The (...) goal of this essay is to develop guideposts for thinking about private and public enforcement of privacy imposed by donors on tissue samples and/or genetic information when a biobank becomes insolvent. (shrink)