After WW2, the world was paralyzed with the consequences of being exposed to cruelty in a large extent. Soon after, due to the practices of Nazi scientists, medical doctors and Atomic Bomb experimenters in the US, the perception of science has been altered abruptly in a way that scientific activities can trigger the monstrous aspects of human nature, almost in a sense of the Frankestein’s creator. Interestingly, the dimensions of science policies, how science is identified by experts and public, and the reactions of the state towards scientists have been deformed/evolved during the war times. To that end, three different regimes are recognized in 20th century America: WW1-1940, 1940-1980, 1980-today (Mirowski, 2004, p. 290).
During the pseudo-peace times after WW1, the science scene in the US was ignited by a few industrial leaders who hired trained people to develop engines or early technologies. The state was allocating limited funding to research resulting in less participation of universities and that is why the condition of being trained was certified by getting degrees form the German universities. The rich families like Carnegies and Rockefellers canalized some funding for research with corporate manners. Large companies like General Electric and Dupont funded a couple of Nobel prize winners along with inviting researchers for in-house testing in their facility (Mirowski, 2004, p. 291). Dewey interpreted this common practice at that time as drawing a boundary between society and a group of experts exerting the scientific method. Being against this common tendency, he almost equated a democratic community as an ideal republic of science. In his imagination, citizens of a scientific democracy would be a perfect example for morally and intellectually advanced civilization; however, his hopes quickly have been broken during the war times in which scientific community separated themselves from democracy to embrace military, especially during the Cold War times.
Monsters have been reshaped during the Cold War since Soviets were the prime enemy of the US. The ideology of “The West” against Soviets was prompted to disgrace science in totalitarian states. In late 1940s, the absence of scientific freedom was correlated with Lysenkoism that referred to the geneticist Lysenko who worked under the Stalin regime on seeds and heredity. With the anti-communism propaganda, “freedom to pursue knowledge without political interventions” was the motto of this era. At the same time, CIA financed organizations (e.g. Asia Foundation, 1954), arranged conferences, and sponsored research in universities to promote “apolitical science”. Reichenbach, a key figure in this era and the founder of the Berlin cycle as a logical empiricist, arrived at UCLA in 1938 and then employed at the RAND corporation where actively took a part of the separation of science from society using statistics and praising math and physics. The generated confusion with numbers was the earlier step for agnotology and the suspicion of democracy. The apolitical characteristics of science has been restored by Merton who considered science as a social structure. Military-funded research was organized as basic science for greater good and applied science for money. During the Space Race against Soviets, The Apollo program aimed to reach Moon with technological advancements spending approximately $283 billion and operating 400.000 people to prove the US superiority on space exploration and it was planned with the NASA administration whose managers held positions in military fractions earlier (e.g. James E. Webb).
With the end of the Cold War, the US science policies have been updated to conform with the neoliberal strategies that label science as a market of knowledge as well as a market of ignorance. While federal funding was decreasing, private entrepreneurs provided financial support for research programs. Think tanks organized and reshaped future scientific research outside universities while companies contracting with technology transfer offices inside universities resulting in downsizing universities with increased tuition and decreased public funding. Research has become more collaborative (or radically collaborative as discussed in Huebner et. al. 2017) to distribute cost among partners that are corporations, universities, NGOs, and the state. The profit-oriented research has been amplified by allocating more money on STEM and cutting other disciplines. Even costly space flights is transferred to private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. The funding for future technological leaps, especially in computer sciences, is provided by private initiatives, such as Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The ideological shift during the neoliberal age is best captured through Philip Kitcher’s work where he hypothesized that the ideal science practices would be starting with agenda setting followed by research and application. Kitcher believed that in a democratic society, educated citizens would be able to set their goals and uncover unidentifiable oppression, whatever that means. The cognitive participation of citizens in a democratic society implying citizen scientists or citizen juries (for instance, practiced in Belgium) has been congratulated although this might trigger a hierarchical partaking.
The US science policies are not immune to neither the existence of a war (WW2) nor the possibility of a war (the Cold War). Th new front of the policies seem to be formed by the participation of public into science debates replacing experts and reshaping truth as they need. Policy makers now will choose their battle in that their win is guaranteed.
References
Mirowski, P. (2020). HPS 93772 Politics of Science Panopto lectures. How science became apolitical, University of Notre Dame.
Mirowski, P. (2020). HPS 93772 Politics of Science Panopto lectures. Kitcher on democracy, University of Notre Dame.
Mirowski, P. (2020). HPS 93772 Politics of Science Panopto lectures. Reichenbach Merton pt2, University of Notre Dame.
Huebner, B., Kukla, R., & Winsberg, E. (2017). Making an Author in Radically Collaborative Research (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190680534.003.0005
Mirowski, P. (2004). The scientific dimensions of social knowledge and their distant echoes in 20th-century American philosophy of science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 35(2), 283–326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2003.11.002