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Citation counts are central to many studies in the sociology of science. Due to cost considerations and the format of the Science Citation Index, researchers often collect citations only to a scientist's first-authored publications (so called 'straight counts'), rather than to complete counts based on all published papers. This paper examines the consequences of using straight counts to study the careers of a sample of PhD biochemists. It is found that even though these two measures are highly correlated, there is a significant chance of making substantive errors when straight counts are substituted for complete counts. The problem is found to be more severe when citations are the dependent variable rather than an independent variable. It is argued that our findings can be generalized to other fields where multiple authorship is common. Accordingly, extreme care must be used in interpreting results based on straight citation counts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article articulates a theory of citing behavior, which might both illuminate the currently available empirical findings on characteristics of references in scientific papers and perhaps indicate interesting but previously unexamined aspects of citation. Current studies can be divided into three groups according to the different ways they have employed citation data. Some studies have used the number of citations as an indication of its scientific quality, significance or worth. Likewise, the number of citations obtained by an author has been used to measure the impact of his or her work on the scientific community. In other studies, citation patterns have been employed to derive maps of the structure of scientific specialties and disciplines. The third approach can be seen in two recent attempts to construct typologies of different varieties of reference and citations by content analysis. Various studies have made some interesting contributions to the understanding of science and scientific activity. Nevertheless, their achievements have been obtained without the aid of an explicit and accepted theory concerning reasons why scientists normally cite other papers, and why authors choose to cite particular papers rather than others.

Researchers interested in the structure of scientific fields have documented increases in specialization and collaboration. How, if at all, are these two trends related? Is specialization so severe that scholars cannot collaborate unless they share specific research interests? Or, have specializing tendencies promoted research that joins specialty areas and broaches new topics? We answer these important questions for a single discipline, sociology, using both qualitative interviews and latent profile analysis. We empirically identify three collaborative styles that depend on both the areas and extent of specialization in coauthors' research programs. The prominence of the reinforcing generalist profile suggests that specialization in science mainly serves to encourage scholars to work with others in their specialty area. However, the existence of two other styles - a more complementary one and one that is characterized by migration into new intellectual terrain - suggests that subfields within sociology are permeable enough to permit boundary-spanning, original research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results from four studies are reported separately to test the idea that influential articles in psychology will be more readable than less influential ones. This idea is upheld when the papers involved are ones that have been highly rated by fellow colleagues (Studies 1 and 2) but it is not supported when the papers involved are highly-cited journal articles (Studies 3 and 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article demonstrates that the highly cited documents which clustered together were significant documents according to specialists. The succession of cluster maps suggested that the specialty had undergone a rather radical shift in research focus. In this regard too, the data reflected accurately the perceptions of the specialists. The citations provided, in effect, a physical and measurable manifestation of a collective mental switch from a static to a dynamic conception of collagen. Several specialists interviewed stressed the close knit character of their specialty, a few major centers of research, a small number of leading researchers and a high level of informal communications among researchers. There seems to be little doubt that the co-citation clusterin methodology has identified, at least in this case, a research specialty with all the characteristics ascribed to "invisible colleges." On the other hand, the collagen specialty differs in one important respect. There is no evidence in collagen of a self-conscious or deliberate revolutionary program being carried out by a group of researchers when the specialty underwent its conceptual shift in the early 1970's.

This paper is reminiscence and a critique of Robert K. Merton's work in the sociology of science. The author got to know Merton very well as he served as his student assistant, and colleague for 15 years from 1960. Merton's works which are most discussed are his doctoral dissertation on Puritanism and science, his paper on scientific norms, and his paper 'The Matthew Effect'. He is criticized for not generalizing far enough from his work on the Puritan thesis and for not paying close enough attention to the empirical data, which cast doubt on the validity of his theory of the Matthew Effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents reply of the author to his critics. In this article, he expresses gratitude to David Bloor and Wes Sharrock for their lengthy responses to his article "Rule-Scepticism and the Sociology of Knowledge." According to the author, he has said a little about philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his paper. In his reply, Bloor speaks of "Wittgenstein's reductive approach to meaning" and aligns Wittgenstein with his own reductionist ambitions. Whether Bloor's move is defensible depends on what the author means by "reductionism" or "reductive approach." Bloor is surprised that the author finds his position vis-a-vis reductionism ambiguous. In order to make sense of his assessment, he assumes that he must, have ignored "half of the theory" that he puts forward in his article, "Wittgenstein: Rules and Institutions." The author agrees with Bloor that Barry Barnes' work on designation devices is of great interest. Bloor's discussion of Barnes' theory displays precisely the ambiguity that the author was worried about in his paper. According to Bloor, Barnes' paper shows that a structure of non-intentional processes can provide the underpinning and matrix for sustaining intentional processes and which derive their intentionality from it.

This article presents the response of Noretta Koertge to the recent discussion in the journal of the book she edited. She describes features of scientific method and explains that scientists devote much of their energies to trying to exclude their own biases from their observations, and she lists the familiar techniques that are used to accomplish a degree of what is commonly called objectivity. It is noted that those who work in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) not only know scientific method and its aspirations, they value and cleave to it. Thus, SSK tries to generalize so that its results can be repeated in other settings, historical details are checked with respondents and, where possible, sources are carefully documented so that they can be checked by others.

Recent technological advances such as microprocessors and random-access memory have had a significant role in gathering, storing and processing digital data, but the basic principles underpinning such data management were established in the century preceding the digital revolution. This paper maps the emergence of those older technologies to show that the logic and imperative for the surveillance potential of more recent digital technologies was laid down in a pre-digital age. The paper focuses on the development of the data point from its use in punch cards in the late 19th century through its manipulation in ideas about correlation to its collection via selfcompletion questionnaires. Some ways in which medicine and psychology have taken up and deployed the technology of data points are used as illustrative exemplars. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of data points in defining human identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Users or consumers have become increasingly prominent in sociological work on technology--as in the social sciences generally. This paper takes up and extends arguments developed by Steve Woolgar about how producers of technology 'configure the user'. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a recent technology (or methodology) for computer system development which emphasizes extensive user involvement throughout the development process. Drawing on ethnographic research of RAD, the paper develops four arguments. First, that decoding (by users) as well as encoding (by producers) is important for understanding technology production. Second, that designers configure users but they, in turn, are configured-- both from within their own organizations, and by users. Third, that the boundary between user and designer is fluid and, indeed, configured. Finally, it develops the case for an extended actor-network approach which encompasses users or consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a response to the comments of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer on the paper "What's Wrong With the Strong Programme's Case Study of the 'Hobbes-Boyle' Dispute?" The author points out that as the paper provides, there is sufficient evidence reasonably to conclude that Hobbes and Boyle were undecided on epistemological and methodological matters, and often enough on the same side of the emerging science of nature.

This article presents a brief response to the replies by Vicky Singleton and Brian Wynne. The author will base what he has to say on the original papers and his response to them, take account of the replies by Singleton and Wynne, and summarizes his main conclusions from the exchange. The two replies to the author's original response to the Special Issue of Social Studies of Science on "The Politics of SSK" carry on the debate in rather different ways. Hence, the author discusses them separately in this paper.

Introduces a series of articles that were published in the April 2005 issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science."

This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that arise for them arise just because of the way that they attribute a function to science. The paper concludes by considering local d-cog accounts. Here, too, the task is the crux of the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing role of science in public discourse on ‘race’ and racism, examining the contention that new biological accounts of human life (‘biologism’) are transforming how differences are lived and understood. The paper argues that recent developments must be interpreted in the context of two earlier periods during which science was integral to, first racism and then anti-racism. The growing ascendancy of biologism has prompted both utopian and dystopian accounts of the future: one in which scientific racism is revived, the other in which science finally abolishes race thinking. These futures resonate socially and politically, but lack plausibility when held up against either the historical experience of racism or detailed examination of the apparent direction of biologism. The paper argues, however, that there are significant changes taking place. The new biology challenges existing notions of relatedness, personhood and the nature/culture distinction, and is altering the terrain over which race is discussed. The paper highlights some the features of this new setting by exploring the emergence of novel expressions of racialized politics that both utilize biology in the construction of identity and see biology itself as a site of struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out some observations on the making, and use, of contemporary classifications of nature in the context of a simultaneous and on-going 'making' of Europe. It looks in particular at two classifications, one of British vegetation communities and the other of European 'biotopes' (a concept that closely relates to natural or semi-natural 'habitats') — respectively, the UK National Vegetation Classification (NVC) and the EU CORINE Biotopes Classification. It investigates aspects of the relationship between these two classifications which has come about through their use in a European conservation policy. The CORINE Biotopes classification, in particular, represents a new ordering of nature in a very active sense: it is a good example of a 'working archive', and is intimately tied into policy decisions at many levels in Europe. The paper addresses questions as to how contemporary classifications are being made and used, and whether certain tacit understandings and conceptual frameworks 'built in' to them reflect back upon the world at a later stage. It argues that these classifications do not always simply reflect the assumptions and understandings built into them: once in the policy domain, they are not as 'reversible' as that. Their categories quickly become unstable, mutating and interacting in sometimes unpredictable ways. The two classifications, through their relationship with policy, have a jointly evolving history. The continual renewal of meaning attached to classes within these classifications appears to reflect outwards rather than inwards — in chorus with the broader social and political context, rather than reflecting the condition of their making. In their evolving forms, they illustrate very well the complex nature of the dynamic between unity and diversity, centre and periphery, that lies at the heart of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much debate has taken place in science and technology studies (S&TS) regarding how to speak about the capacities of technology. Alternative approaches are bound up with questions over the merits of realist and relativist accounts of technology and their potential for analytical insight and practical engagement. This paper advances a basis for examining the link between politics and artefacts, one that draws on but reconfigures the work of post-essentialist authors. This is done by moving away from attempts to detail the social basis of technology to consider instead where the ambiguities associated with technology are resolved. These issues are examined through the case of a (re-)emerging class of devices called 'non-lethal' weapons and, in particular, the chemical incapacitant spray used by British police forces. In doing so, this paper reframes debates in technology studies over how far it is possible and desirable to pursue relativist lines of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this response to Ribeiro and Lima’s paper on interactional expertise, we argue that, by not incorporating the insights of constructivist social science, their analysis goes backwards rather than advancing the debate. We show that much of the evidence they present does not lead to the conclusions they draw. We also critically examine the idea of physical contiguity, which forms a central part of Ribeiro and Lima’s position. We show that its meaning is ambiguous. We conclude by suggesting that more research on the nature and influence of physical contiguity would be interesting in its own right but that it would not bear on the notion of interactional expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply to Hans Radder's response to the author's paper. Radder has carefully identified several points which invite clarification and elaboration. It is noted that Radder clearly situates the author as recommending that science and technology studies (STS) accounts should stick to descriptive analyses. Radder acknowledges that neutrality is an illusion and that taking sides can be politically and theoretically problematic, as well as being too narrow an approach for STS. The author's paper suggests that issues surrounding neutrality versus commitment and issues surrounding descriptive versus normative approaches are inextricably linked. However, Radder is able to separate these issues, as his stated aim is to deal only with the descriptive/normative issue which is for him, the neutrality/commitment issue had been dealt with adequately in this Special Issue.

This article focuses on the race-intelligence controversy. One can not understand the recent phase of the race-intelligence controversy without considering the professional backgrounds and disciplinary allegiances of its protagonists. In general, those adopting the hereditarian position have been either behaviorist psychologists or scientists from biological-oriented research areas. These environmentalists, in contrast, tend to come from the social sciences. According to such a boundary dispute hypothesis, then, hereditarians and environmentalists differentially recruit their adherents from, respectively, disciplines of the biological and the social sciences. In principle one could argue either that an individual's scientific conclusions dictate to some extent his political conclusion, or vice versa. The former explanation is open to several objections. Individuals with similar scientific views not uncommonly hold very different political views for reasons which can hardly be ascribed to faulty logic.

Public dialogue about science, technology and medicine is an established part of the activities of a range of charities, private corporations, governmental departments and scientific institutions. However, the extent to which these activities challenge or bridge the lay-expert divide is questionable. Expertise is contested, by the public and the community of scholars who study and/or facilitate public engagement. In this paper, we explore the dynamics of expertise and their implications for the lay-expert divide at a series of public events about the new genetics. We examine participants' claims to expertise and consider how this relates to their claims to credibility and legitimacy and the way in which these events unfolded. Using a combination of ethnographic and discursive analysis, we found that participants supplemented technical expertise with other expert and lay perspectives. We can also link participants' claims to expertise to their generally positive appraisal of genetic research and services. The colonization of lay positions by expert speakers and the hybrid positioning of lay-experts was characteristic of the consensus and conservatism that emerged. This leads us to conclude that public engagement activities will not challenge the dominance of technical expertise in decision-making about science, technology and medicine without more explicit and reflexive problematization of the dynamics of expertise therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the 1992 debate between David Bloor and Michael Lynch over the importance of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations for social studies of science. Lynch defended four points: (1) Bloor is committed to a rule- sceptical reading of Wittgenstein; (2) this reading is similar to that proposed by Kripke in 1982; (3) the criticism levelled previously against Kripke also applies to Bloor; (4) the problems besetting Bloor's rule-scepticism undermine his project of a causal-explanatory sociology of scientific knowledge. This paper takes issue with all four points. Concerning (1) and (2) this paper emphasizes that Bloor explicitly rejects Kripke's rule-scepticism in his 1997 book on Wittgenstein and rule-following. It is argued here that Bloor was wrong to do so. Bloor's meaning-finitism is an unsatisfactory answer to the meaning-sceptical challenge posed in Kripke's work. As concerns (3), this paper answers the criticism that Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker have directed against Kripke. This Is important since Baker and Hacker's criticism is given a particularly prominent position in Lynch's attack on Bloor. Finally, regarding (4), it is shown that Bloor's unsatisfactory treatment of rule-scepticism does not undermine his project for a causal-explanatory sociology of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the paper, The Third Wave of Science Studies, by H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, published in the 2002, Volume 32, Number 2 issue of the periodical Social Studies of Science. This commentary has been critical of Collins and Evans' focus on core-sets as being too sociological and in a sense naive, because they take the existence of core-sets as given. This article shows that the core-sets themselves should be evaluated as to their contribution. The other main issue raised in this commentary is how to recognize experience-based expertise at an early stage. Within the limits of this commentary, it was able to suggest how to broaden their approach, but did not resolve the issue any more than Collins and Evans could. A key point in broadening Colllins and Evans' approach was the identification of a new natural history as the new game in town. In new natural history, the dominance of core-sets, traditionally linked to laboratory or otherwise restricted approaches, is being undermined in a variety of ways. This adds further dimension to the attempt of Collins and Evans to distinguish types of sciences. The next step towards a normative theory of expertise is to look into the arrangements that are conducive to agonistic learning and robust outcomes.

This article comments on the paper, The Third Wave of Science Studies, by H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, published in the 2002, Volume 32, Number 2 issue of the periodical Social Studies of Science. The authors of this discussion paper offer a typically forthright normative vision for the Third Wave of science studies, after what they call the earlier waves of post-war rationalism, then the post Kuhnian cultural revolution from the 1970s. They propose to redefine the accepted qualifications for expert standing in the countless areas of decision-making in which scientific knowledge has held presumptive sway as exclusive public authority. This commentary argues that science has been allowed by default to be the agent of public meaning, in the ways that dominant institutions presume public issues to be scientific, and often particularly reductionist versions of scientific too. Of course it can be countered that, as is well attested, powerful bodies use science deliberately to advance other covert agendas. This has to be acknowledged; but it can be said to sustain a situation in which, rather eerily, public discourse with which no-one identifies is being used. It would be wholly inadequate to argue that the issue of negotiation of public meanings is a separate, political matter, because those very boundaries themselves a key issue, and because negotiation of meanings and frames is usually so embedded as an oblique, tacit kind of un-negotiated negotiation, within those ostensible scientific, propositional public discourse and interventions.

This article comments on the paper, The Third Wave of Science Studies, by H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, published in the 2002, Volume 32, Number 2 issue of the periodical Social Studies of Science. In this discussion paper the authors try to fit science studies within a three-fold schema. The stages in science studies now have become waves, but the authors' object is to position existing work within the first two waves and set the stage for the third one. The proposed Wave Three does not prefigure a leap toward a more ambitious research agenda. It seems very much a drawing in of the horns. The authors' primary concern is expertise. The bottom line advocated by Collins and Evans is that there can be too much as well as too little public involvement in technical decision-making, and social scientists need better conceptual tools with which to determine how much is just right in any given situation. To further this argument, the authors introduce an array of new terms, with several abstruse diagrams to supplement them. Expertise is divided into three types: interactional, contributory and referred. On the perennial challenge of democracy in the face of specialization, Collins and Evans offer two sets of reflections: one is to define and classify expertise more accurately, especially in relation to its counterpart of lay knowledge and abilities; the other is to prescribe for the field of science studies how it should organize future researchers into the problem of expertise, under the banner of Wave Three.

Since the late 1970s, there has been considerable debate surrounding the question of whether or not exposures to non-ionizing radiation and electric and magnetic fields (EMF), produced by powerlines and electrical and telecommunications technologies, are harmful to health. Whilst there has been some recent evidence of regulatory fatigue, and attempts to enforce closure, the EMF debate nevertheless still continues. This paper will explore the rôle played by competing images of scientific method in the argumentative strategies used by two of the main protagonists in an Australian public inquiry (held in 1990-91) which investigated the EMF issue: 'Inquiry into Community Needs and High Voltage (132kv and above) Transmission Line Development', the so-called Gibbs Inquiry. Apart from documenting some of the epistemologically intricate features of the EMF controversy, the following discussion will also consider the way scientific method discourses can contribute to enhancing the durability of knowledge claims in legal and regulatory settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a response to the arguments raised by Cassandra Pinnick in her paper "What's Wrong With the Strong Programme's Case Study of the 'Hobbes-Boyle' Dispute?" Pinnick maintains the judgment in her paper that the book "Leviathan and the Air-Pump" represents bad history. Pinnick first tried to show that Hobbes' and Boyle's epistemology and methodology were not systematically distinct to any degree. Hence, it is argued in this article that Pinnick cannot find in the book the views she would like to pick out. It is noted that the book gives close analysis of the principles which Hobbes and Boyle shared and gives lengthy accounts of the way in which protagonists transformed their programs in response to changes in experimental philosophy.

The importance of infrastructural work for the mobility of practices and for the capacity of centers to act on distant sites is stressed in both science studies and the sociology of state formation. Employing Kula's typology of metrological systems, this paper examines four areas of metrological reform in pre-Confederation Canada, stressing the existence of metrological hybrids. Metrological standardization is held to depend upon the exercise of sovereign state power at the same time as it extends the administrative capacity of state agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of neutrality versus commitment within the sociology of scientific knowledge was the direct cause of the Special Issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science." The set of papers as a whole embraces many aspects of the theme under discussion. In this brief Response, the author will focus on two central questions. The first is whether science and technology studies (STS) accounts should stick to descriptive analyses of the politics of science and technology, or whether they should also engage in normative criticisms, assessments or recommendations. It is concluded that a certain type of STS normativity is legitimate, and may constitute a specific contribution to political debates on science and technology. The second question concerns the realism-relativism issue. It is argued that this issue continues to integrate descriptively adequate and normatively engaged accounts of science and technology.

Previous studies of the allocation of publication credit in collaborative research have emphasized the name ordering patterns of scientists, but have largely neglected the allocation of publication credit to non-PhD subordinates. This paper examines the withholding of authorship recognition from non-PhDs and females. Quantitative and qualitative data from the social and natural sciences suggest that publication credit is not always accorded on the basis of universalistic principles. It was also found that females may have fewer opportunities in collaborative research to contribute to the same extent as do males and that when they do, they are frequently excluded from authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies of the organization and conduct of science havetended to rely on the separate measurement of production and citations.Since these measures are interrelated to the overall assessment ofscientific contribution, I have proposed a composite index whichcombines these two components into an overall measure. The simplicityand broad applicability of the index makes it an attractive candidatefor uniform measurement of scientific contribution to knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the scope of sociological literature. The analysis of citation has become common as a technique in the sociology of science almost without exception, however, studies concerned with one of the several varieties of caution analysis have been of empirical nature. Accordingly, despite the occasional cautionary note on the inadvisability of employing citation data without a sound theoretical underpinning, little progress has been made in constructing the theory of citation. The article is concerned to articulate a theory of citing behavior, which might both illuminate the currently available empirical findings on characteristics of references in scientific papers and perhaps indicate interesting but previously unexamined aspects of citation. Various studies have made some interesting contributions to one understanding of science and scientific categories. In developing a profitable approach in the note, the author considers scientific papers as tools of persuasion. A scientist who has obtained results, which he believes to be true and important, has to persuade the scientific community to share his opinions of the value of his work.

Divisions between variable oriented and person-oriented approaches in social and behavioral research are newly drawn. Yet few person oriented approaches have been fully articulated; those that have are predominantly quantitative This work presents an argument for a qualitative, person oriented study of careers; an approach identified as careers in context Based on a national study of scientists, this contextualist approach is grounded by three interacting, but analytically distinct, emphases to suggest how careers can be studied in and beyond science: (1) an emphasis on time and place as under-utilized dimensions on which to direct further study of careers; (2) an emphasis on the subjective career as a concept that qualitatively encapsulates temporal and spatial dimensions; and (3) an emphasis on career study in life course perspective. Subjectively (and objectively), careers are, of course, not static. By situating subjective careers in the times and places in which they occur, we are drawn to how those careers ‘play out’ over the course of the lives of the people leading them. This paper concludes by stressing ways in which contextual studies of careers in and beyond science will advance our understanding in five larger domains of social process: identity construction; institution building; social psychological differentiation; job satisfaction; and mystification of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply by H. M. Collins and Robert Evans to commentaries on their paper, The Third Wave of Science Studies, published in the 2002, Volume 32, Number 2 issue of the periodical Social Studies of Science. Bryan Wynne admonishes Collins and Evans for not understanding the full richness of civic epistemology. He thinks that they treat it as a matter of finding correct answers to propositional questions. Wynne, then, seems to think that Wave Three implies that the richness he has uncovered should be ignored. The whole idea is to get to a Wave Three that has forgotten nothing of what has been learned under Wave Two. Collins and Evans agree with nearly all of the points made in Wynne's critique, except that they bear negatively upon what they argued. Meanwhile Arie Rip points to a series of weaknesses and boundary problems in the work of Collins and Evans. He points out that the authors do not show exactly how to recognize expertise, how to recognize whether a specialism has continuity with Western science, and so fourth. Collins and Evans do not agree with Rip when he says that the only way to make a difference to the world is to involve oneself, become part of the messy process, and make the compromises that are necessary. There must be some role for the discussion of new ways of thinking or university scholarship might as well be closed down.

In recent years, social studies of science have developed a deep interest in the conduct of science in the field. However, studies of controversial field science remain relatively rare. This paper presents an analysis of a controversy about the origin of primate infanticide that began in the 1970s, and discusses the ways in which controversies in the field differ from those in the laboratory. Particularly important here is the inability of researchers to control the behaviour of their research subjects; to an important extent, the conduct of their research is dependent on the agency of their research subjects. Finally, it also points to the role played by the sciences of animal behaviour in the constructions of stories about the biological basis of human culture, a role that means that the investigation of controversy in these sciences is of paramount public importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project Camelot, a military-sponsored, social science study of revolution, was cancelled in 1965 amidst international and national discussion about the study's political implications. Subsequently, Camelot became the focus of a wide-ranging controversy about the connections between Cold War politics, military patronage, and American social science. This paper argues that following Camelot's demise, efforts to rethink the politics--patronage--social science nexus became an important part of what historian Peter Novick has called 'the epistemological revolution that began in the 1960s'. Novick claims that 'strictly academic' considerations provided the categories of analysis that challenged the scholarly mainstream's commitment to objectivity and related ideals, like value-neutrality and professional autonomy. In contrast, my analysis--which discusses post-WWII military patronage for the social sciences, Camelot's origins and cancellation, the ensuing controversy, and some long-term implications of this controversy--underscores the centrality of political developments and political concerns in that epistemological revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the April 2001 issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science."

Presents the index to the December 1999, volume 29 issue of "Social Studies of Science."

This article offers a response to the arguments raised by Cassandra Pinnick in the journal "Social Studies of Science." The author comments that when academics decide to take up the burden of defending truth or reason or good history, the strain often shows in lapses of civility. Taking up this burden also involves accepting responsibility for very high levels of accuracy, coherence, and care.

The article presents information for the scholars who are interested to contribute research papers in this journal and the journal's policies regarding the acceptance of such papers. It is informed that the journal "Social Studies of Science" is devoted mainly to the results of original research, whether empirical or theoretical, which brings fresh light to bear on the concepts, processes, mediations and consequences of modern science and technology. It encourages appropriate contributions from political science, sociology, economics, history, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, social anthropology, and the legal and educational disciplines. It welcomes studies of fundamental research, applied research and development of industrial science and other miscellaneous fields. It is further clarified that the general implications of any paper's findings should be clearly indicated. If authors are confident that their draft papers satisfy these criteria, then they should consider submission to this journal. However, if it is found that an essentially similar paper is under simultaneous review for possible publication elsewhere, the paper will not be published in this journal.

This paper takes the form of a double text which simultaneously investigates the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) through citation analysis, and investigates citation analysis using theoretical ideas from SSK and Foucault. One strand of the text performs an analysis of citation patterns in SSK. This text identifies the figures who have had the most impact through their articles and books, and examines the possible effects of cultural and linguistic bias. It also investigates the impact of SSK outside the field, asks whether this impact has changed over time, and identifies researchers who have had a particularly high impact outside SSK. The other strand takes citation analysis, as exemplified in the citation study of SSK, as its topic. This text focuses on the way the citation analysis constitutes its field of study, and on the way a citation is produced as a separable, countable category. It notes the 'realistic' idea of science categories which is deployed, and the individualistic model of scientific activity. It questions the involvement of citation analysis with power, both in the traditional sense of institutional control of science through funding changes, and in the Foucaldian sense of scientists adopting citation counting as a regime of self-regulation. The paper ends with a dialogue between the 'authors' on/in these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The citations to a citation classic dealing with the classification of citations according to their contexts were analyzed using the method of that citation classic. It was found that (a) the ratio of conceptual to operational citations is very much larger than in the cases studied before in the natural sciences; (b) the ratio of evolutionary to juxtapositional citations is much smaller than in the cases studied before in the natural sciences. The results are interpreted in terms of the following conclusions: (1) the technique of the original paper has been little used directly; (2) the specific results of the original applications of the original paper have been used to some extent as evidence; and (3) the conceptual idea of the original paper has been used in general to stimulate further, refined, and alternate investigations in scientometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents group of papers and related discussion arising from the workshop on "Federal Funding and Knowledge Growth in Subfields and Specialties of Science," held at the U.S. National Science Foundations, under the aegis of its Division of Policy Research and Analysis, in Washington D.C. region, as of February 1, 1986. The author expresses gratitude to Susan Cozzens, of that Division, who undertook the duties of Guest Editor for this "Theme Section." Her cheerful and efficient performance in this role is warmly appreciated. The author wonders about the content and balance of a journal such as "Social Studies of Science," which relies for most of its material on unsolicited submissions of research papers, are largely determined by the journal's image-- and that image may bear little, relation to reality. In entering the sixteenth year, changes have been made in the team of Editorial Advisers. The author is thankful to Michael Gibbons, Ian Mitroff, Marcel Roche, Jarlath Ronayne, Jean-Jacques Salomon and Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus: they have all given devoted service to us over the years, and they are counted as continuing friends of the journal.

In this paper Strawson's work on a linguistically based metaphysics is used to uncover fundamental similarities in the structure of argumentation in science and the law. It is shown that in both instances a practical judgement regularly has to be made between competing, exclusive vocabularies of freedom and determinism. The analytic significance of the existence of these vocabularies is developed conceptually to suggest how such vocabularies may underlie some of the empirical regularities observed by discourse analysts. These issues are then exemplified through a study of argumentative strategies found in geologists' writings. The paper concludes with proposals for extending the analytic impact of Strawson's work for science studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicolegal expertise raises many issues of sociological and political concern, some of which are discussed here in relation to the insanity defence and the plea of diminished responsibility. The paper describes the social process of attributing a crime either to punishable conduct or to mental abnormality in terms of voluntarist and mechanist accounts of motivation. This description explains some current difficulties. But the paper then criticizes logical and empirical shortcomings in this description and therefore reformulates mechanism and voluntarism as terms within a common scheme for classifying causes. It is then possible to analyze structural reasons for the difficulties facing psychiatric expertise and for the general failure to achieve a coherent theory of responsibility. The paper concludes by suggesting how a social psychology of causal attribution might link the intellectual process of classifying conduct with the social distribution of power and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and sociological studies have shown that precision measurement and metrology play an important social and scientific role. This paper contrasts the dynamics of four metrological configurations. The first concerns an instrument for routine car repair. It displays the network of institutions, conventions and procedures allowing for the conservation of legal metrological precision. Such resources are not yet available during the genesis of an instrument. Very often in scientific laboratories, instruments and their metrology are elaborated simultaneously. The three other case studies analyze this construction by looking at ordinary metrological operations: the collective elaboration of standards; the translation of scientific instruments in metrological laboratories; and the intercomparison of instruments. It appears that the diversity and heterogeneity of resources associated with metrological networks result in different ways of articulating the natural and conventional character of precision measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical analysis of the way in which a group of scientists sought to maximize the attractiveness of one of their papers. It records negotiations about the title, the introduction, and the second paragraph (in which a polymer was characterized). The analysis suggests that scientists array or 'network' particulars in a way which they hope will allocate appropriate relative value to elements of that array. In doing so, three factors-the citation of colleagues, the display of facts, and problem of syntax-have to be simultaneously juggled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's response to criticisms made by sociologists Barry Barnes and Donald MacKenzie in their papers related to explanation of interests. According to the author they both appear to have misunderstood certain key aspects of the author's arguments. Their general conclusion is that the author is negative. Barnes, according to the author, correctly recognizes that the basis for the author's critique of recent socio-historical theorizing in the social study of science has long been discussed in its application to sociology in general. The reformist reaction takes the position that the problem of descriptions is largely inconsequential because it represents a technical difficulty encountered in the course of explanation. Descriptions are acknowledged as unreliable, but the source of this unreliability is located in the process whereby descriptions are generated. Barnes points out that the author has engaged in theorizing. But the author wishes to draw to quite separate endeavors, and in order to do this it is necessary to maintain a vigorous antipathy to theorizing.

In this paper an attempt is made to widen the scope of the current debate about the possibility of subjecting scientific knowledge to sociological analysis. It is suggested that in identifying scientific knowledge as epistemologicallyepi special, and as exempt from sociological analysis, sociologists have tended to make two basic assumptions; namely, that scientific theories can be clearly validated by successful practical application and that the general theoretical formulations of science do regularly generate such practical applications. These assumptions, as customarily interpreted, pose a major challenge for any sociological analysis which views scientific knowledge as the contingent outcome of interpretative and context-dependent social acts. It is argued, however, in some detail, that the validity of these assumptions is doubtful and that the usefulness of science is no barrier to the full sociological analysis of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]