Social Studies of Science

In many laboratory sciences, issues of cleanliness and purity are everpresent concerns. In materials science, keeping things (instruments, materials, people) clean structures the knowledge-making process. Using the work of Mary Douglas, I examine various contaminants, impurities and defects that are relevant to materials scientists. Importantly, though, definitions of what constitutes `dirt' are multiple, overlapping and, often, formally contradictory; this means that impurities are as much positive resources as threatening pollutants. In materials science labs, where many kinds of actors and forms of life intersect, pollution may be used to rein in confusion and ambiguity. This paper traces various manifestations of laboratory dirt, then examines how (un)cleanliness enables certain moves in the materials science game.

New technologies profoundly change our sonic surroundings, the world's soundscape. However, research dealing with the sound of technology is scarce within Science and Technology Studies (S&TS). This study argues that such a silence should be broken, since the sound of technology not only tunes our sonic environment, but has also been a highly controversial aspect of technology loaded with symbolic significance. Research into such a symbolism of sound enhances our understanding of the responses to technology-related changes in early 20th-century Western cities. The importance of sound will be made clear by discussing the historiography and anthropology of noise and silence, and by analyzing a crucial episode in the history of noise abatement in European and North American cities. By showing how the symbolism of sound influenced the noise abatement campaigns and the measures taken in response, the paper illustrates how the study of technological culture can be deepened by focusing on sound.

Russian measurements of the quality factor (Q) of sapphire, made 20 years ago, have only just been repeated in the West. Shortfalls in tacit knowledge have been partly responsible for this delay. The idea of `tacit knowledge', first put forward by the physical chemist Michael Polanyi, has been studied and analysed over the last two decades. A new classification of tacit knowledge (broadly construed) is offered here and applied to the case of sapphire. The importance of personal contact between scientists is brought out and the sources of trust described. It is suggested that the reproduction of scientific findings could be aided by a small addition to the information contained in experimental reports. The analysis is done in the context of fieldwork conducted in the USA and observations of experimental work at Glasgow University.

This paper explores a dominant feature of the professional socialization of doctoral students in laboratory and field sciences: the harsh reality of struggling to get laboratory experiments and other forms of practical research to `work'. As undergraduates, young scientists have experienced success in their practical work because they are exposed to stage-managed experiments, demonstrations or similarly controlled environments. They encounter a world of stable and predictable phenomena under controlled conditions. In contrast, each generation or cohort of graduates has to learn that everyday research in the field or in the laboratory does not necessarily produce stable, usable results until they have mastered tacit craft skills. In turn, they then learn to remove all mention of those tacit, indeterminate aspects from public accounts of their research.

With data from a national survey of 3800 doctoral students in departments of chemistry, computer science, electrical engineering, microbiology and physics, and data from the Survey of Doctoral Recipients/National Science Foundation, we analyze the career-preferences and prospects of young scientists. We analyze patterns by field and gender of students, and assess the extent to which the preferences and subjective (reported) prospects of doctoral students reflect the objective (actual) employment experiences of recent PhD recipients. The findings point toward the intricacy of the relationship between subjective and objective career prospects; and to the ways in which individual inclinations and conditioned `expectations' rest upon what is regarded as feasible, by gender and by field in science.

The phenomenon of expertise produces two problems for liberal democratic theory: the first is whether it creates inequalities that undermine citizen rule or make it a sham; the second is whether the state can preserve its neutrality in liberal `government by discussion' while subsidizing, depending on, and giving special status to, the opinions of experts and scientists. A standard Foucauldian critique suggests that neutrality is impossible, expert power and state power are inseparable, and that expert power is the source of the oppressive, inegalitarian effects of present regimes. Habermas argues that expert cultures make democratic discussion impossible. Analogous problems arise with `cognitive authority', understood in Mertonian terms. Cognitive authority, as Merton sees it, allows us to ask about the democratic legitimacy of this authority, which appears to solve the problem (or part of the problem) because it returns ultimate `authority' to the people, who reject or accept the experts' claims. And many claims to expertise in fact do fail to gain acceptance. Through an examination of the type of expert that appears to evade the demands of legitimation, it is shown that expertise and liberal democracy can in principle co-exist, contrary to the claims of the critics.