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seclement's review
4.0
I really enjoyed these essays, but I wanted more. This book is certainly one that leaves you with more questions than answers, and thought i knew that before I read it, I found it frustrating in the end. Whilst I agreed with many of the critiques in the book, I found the few strategies to address them to be unsatisfactory, and I expected more from Sarewitz. The critiques of the supposed objectivity of science and science policy are spot on, but I felt that more could have been done, even in an essay format, to provide clearer and more articulate steps forward. If you haven't read or thought much about the underpinning assumptions of scientific research and policy, then this book is an excellent, well-written primer. If it's something you've thought a lot about, the book will likely leave you with more questions than answers, but those questions will get you thinking even more, and peraps in new ways.
mburnamfink's review
3.0
The Rightful Place of Science series is an interesting attempt at a new form of scholarly writing; short, handbook-like pieces on a single topic-energy, climate, change, or in this case, politics. They're more permanent than a think piece in a major magazine, more readable than an academic monograph, short introductions for rookies and developments.
Politics is about science policy first and foremost, and opens with a manifesto against the rather stagnant and indirect measures by which science policy is conducted in America. The lobbying efforts and rhetoric of scientific advocacy groups is all about marginal budgets--if they're growing science is healthy, if they're not, science is unhealthy. However, it is a matter of historical fact that Federal R&D expenditures closely track 10-12% of the Federal discretionary budget, and are driven more by inertia than any good idea. Likewise, the idea of the "social contract between science and society" obscures more than it illuminates. In a world that is defined by planetary limits, and attempts to work around them or near them via large technological systems, the proper governance of science and technology should be a major priority.
However, a plan for that proper governance is lacking. Science is done by human beings (to paraphrase Clausewitz), and while human beings might not notice if the aggregate budget is $240 billion or $250 billion, scientists will notice if they're working for mission-driven agencies like NASA, center-driven agencies like the NIH, or grant-driven agencies like the NSF. For a book titled "politics", major political issues involving science are entirely avoided, such as the use of scientific knowledge to settle policy questions, and the unsettlement of major issues such as climate change and GMO safety. While the book assumes a bipartisan consensus that scientific funding matters, even to Newt Gingrich's 1994 Republican wave, partisan polarization and identity politics has only grown, and scientists (who tend to cluster around major research universities and innovation districts like Silicon Valley and Route 128) are being reduced to just one part of the Democratic coalition on purely demographic grounds. This is a short book, and there are good reasons to just stick with a conventional to scientific budgets, but for the series flagship and one approaching a topic as messy as the rightful place of science in politics, I was hoping for something a little stronger, more along the lines of Allenby & Sarewitz's Technohuman Condition.
((Disclosure: I am a grad student with CSPO and know pretty much all the authors. However I paid for this book myself, and as you can see, I'm not terribly kind.))
Politics is about science policy first and foremost, and opens with a manifesto against the rather stagnant and indirect measures by which science policy is conducted in America. The lobbying efforts and rhetoric of scientific advocacy groups is all about marginal budgets--if they're growing science is healthy, if they're not, science is unhealthy. However, it is a matter of historical fact that Federal R&D expenditures closely track 10-12% of the Federal discretionary budget, and are driven more by inertia than any good idea. Likewise, the idea of the "social contract between science and society" obscures more than it illuminates. In a world that is defined by planetary limits, and attempts to work around them or near them via large technological systems, the proper governance of science and technology should be a major priority.
However, a plan for that proper governance is lacking. Science is done by human beings (to paraphrase Clausewitz), and while human beings might not notice if the aggregate budget is $240 billion or $250 billion, scientists will notice if they're working for mission-driven agencies like NASA, center-driven agencies like the NIH, or grant-driven agencies like the NSF. For a book titled "politics", major political issues involving science are entirely avoided, such as the use of scientific knowledge to settle policy questions, and the unsettlement of major issues such as climate change and GMO safety. While the book assumes a bipartisan consensus that scientific funding matters, even to Newt Gingrich's 1994 Republican wave, partisan polarization and identity politics has only grown, and scientists (who tend to cluster around major research universities and innovation districts like Silicon Valley and Route 128) are being reduced to just one part of the Democratic coalition on purely demographic grounds. This is a short book, and there are good reasons to just stick with a conventional to scientific budgets, but for the series flagship and one approaching a topic as messy as the rightful place of science in politics, I was hoping for something a little stronger, more along the lines of Allenby & Sarewitz's Technohuman Condition.
((Disclosure: I am a grad student with CSPO and know pretty much all the authors. However I paid for this book myself, and as you can see, I'm not terribly kind.))
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