The Sociology of Science
HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
bout a decade ago, a distinguished his­
torian of science argued that science may
be the most significant social institution
in modern society. ‘ ‘It has transformed the lives
and destinies of more of the world’s peoples
than any . . . religious or political event’ ’ ; it con­
trols the “ economic and military” strength of
nations and ‘ ‘the quality of life of their popula­
tions” (Price 1976, p. 1). This strong statement
is, however, moot since there is no metric for
comparing the relative impact of social institu­
tions. Still, it is clear that science has significant
social consequences and it is also clear that un­
til recently, comparatively few sociologists have
paid much attention to it.
The sociology of science examines a variety of
connected matters: the effects of science on
society; in turn, the ways in which it is condi­
tioned by its social and cultural contexts; its
social structure, and the processes involved in
the production of scientific knowledge. As a
specialty, it resembles the sociologies of art, law,
religion, politics, economy, and the family,
since each examines institutional organization,
structure, processes, contexts, and products.
One way o f conveying a sense of what the
sociology of science is like is to describe it from
the perspective of a sociologist of science; that
Research for this chapter was supported by the Na­
tional Science Foundation (NSF-SES 84-11152) and the
Russell Sage Foundation.
is, to outline its distinctive social attributes, its
research agenda—what sociologists of science
study and why—and to indicate how work in
the specialty ties in with sociological research
more generally. This we shall do and then turn
in greater detail to a series of questions that have
occupied sociologists of science in the West over
the last several decades. (See Milic, 1980, for
developments in Eastern Europe).
Some Social A ttributes
o f the Specialty
As sociological specialties go, the sociology of
science is comparatively young. (See Cole and
Zuckerman, 1975, for an account of its origins
and development. Recent reviews include Ben-
David and Sullivan, 1975; Mulkay, 1980a; and
Collins, 1983. For a personal account, see Mer­
ton, 1979.) In the United States, at least, the
first doctoral degrees in sociology were given late
in the nineteenth century but the earliest
degrees in a subject at all resembling what we
now call the sociology of science were not con­
ferred until 1936, when S. C. Gilfillan presented
his dissertation on the sociology of invention at
Columbia. (It was published in 1935.) That
same year, Robert Merton received his degree
from Harvard; his dissertation analyzed the
emergence o f modern science in seventeenth-
century England and the social, economic, and
512 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
technological contexts shaping the selection of
problems for scientific investigation (1938/
1970). This is still the focus of much scholarly
attention and is one o f the longer-lived disser­
tations in American sociology. These auspicious
beginnings were not followed by much active
work for some time. The field of inquiry was
not widely cultivated in the 1940s and 1950s and
few sociologists were attracted to what was
emerging as the sociology of science, although
there were some exceptions both in the United
States and abroad. (See, for example, Barber,
1952; Merton, 1942/1973b, 1949/1973c, 1952/
1973d; among others.)
The sociology of science did not begin to
coalesce as a specialty until the late 1950s, when
it developed a theoretical orientation and a
research agenda together with a social infrastruc­
ture (arrangements for the support and train­
ing of new recruits, for communicating o f new
research through meetings and journals, pro­
viding research funding and linkages to the
larger discipline). It was then that a concatena­
tion o f circumstances, both outside and inside
the specialty, brought it into being. As had been
forecast (Merton, 1952/1973d), it was when
science and associated technologies had been
socially defined as a serious social problem as
well as great social asset that appreciable
numbers of sociologists would turn their atten­
tion to it. And, at that time, the field o f soci­
ology was flourishing; research in new areas
seemed promising and comparatively easy to
support.
Moreover, two theoretical developments in
the emerging specialty sharpened its cognitive
focus: the publication in 1957 o f Merton’s
“ Priorities in Scientific Discovery” and in 1962
of Kuhn’s Structure o f Scientific Revolutions.
Each set out new perspectives on the social
organization of scientific inquiry and its patterns
of growth, and each led to major lines o f in­
quiry. Most o f those who began work on the
sociology of science at the time were new
Ph.D.s, and as is often the case with new
specialties, many o f the major contributors were
quite young.
Now, in the late 1980s, these early con­
tributors, now in their middle years, have been
supplemented by a series of new academic
generations (which emerge quite rapidly). A
cadre of sociologists define themselves and are
defined by others as sociologists of science and,
since the field is still small, they are apt to know
one another, keep track of one another’s work,
and to engage in considerable informal as well
as formal communication. In the interim, a pro­
fessional association, the Society for Social
Studies of Science (4S) was founded in 1975 and
first met in 1976. It serves to advance inter­
disciplinary research on science. A batch of jour­
nals and annuals devoted primarily or entirely
to publishing research in science studies have
also come into being.1 Major departments of
sociology in the United States include sociolo­
gists of science. Federal agencies and private
foundations support research in the field, al­
though, of course, specialists find that support
far from copious. In short, the specialty is well
institutionalized with science considered a
legitimate subject of sociological study.
Still, science is decidedly not taken by many
sociologists to be a central concern of the disci­
pline. Most college and university departments
do not yet consider the sociology o f science as
central as more traditional specialties such as the
family, religion, and crime or juvenile delin­
quency. This is itself an interesting intellectual
and institutional phenomenon. There appears
to be a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward
the sociology of science; many sociologists pro­
fess an interest in the field, especially when the
science being studied is sociology itself, but most
seem unaware of its potential contributions to
the development of the discipline.
The specialty has two other important and
rather atypical attributes. What is known as the
social studies of science have become distinctly
interdisciplinary. The sociology o f science has
sometimes uneasy connections to the history and
philosophy of science, science policy studies, and
the still nascent field o f the psychology of
science. (On linkages between the history and
sociology of science, see Beaver, 1978; Shapin,
1982.) Science studies has also attracted the in­
terest of physical and biological scientists, some
o f them being avid consumers o f the research
literature. Having one’s “ subjects” of study be
actively interested in ongoing research in the
field adds a piquant note to the enterprise and
raises intriguing questions about the grounds on
which accounts of cognitive and social realities
by participants or observers should be taken as
valid.
Not unlike other specialties, this one is
marked also by warm and lively, if not always
cordial, interaction between adherents of dif­
ferent theoretical orientations, no one o f which
holds sway: constructivism, discourse analysis,
relativism, structural analysis, functional analy­
sis, and conflict theory. These diverse perspec­
tives are sometimes linked with differences in
foci o f attention and nationality, such that
cognitive conflict is sometimes transformed into
social conflict. Those focusing on the sociology
o f scientific knowledge—largely, though far
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
from all, being English and European re­
searchers—have often been at odds with those
focusing on the social structure of science—
largely, though far from all, being American
researchers. Distinct and sometimes conflicting
views are held within each ‘ ‘theory group,” this
tending to polarize discussion on complex and
subtle problems further. Indeed, as Collins
(1983a, p. 265) notes, even though work on the
sociology o f scientific knowledge “ has only
begun to fulfill its potential, disagreements are
now taking up more space than substantive con­
tributions.”
Almost a decade ago, Joseph Ben-David
(1978) observed that some o f these differences
in approach to the sociology o f science derive
from differences in the education and social
location o f American and British sociologists of
science-the one having typically been educated
first as sociologists, largely located in depart­
ments o f sociology and oriented to graduate
training in the discipline; the other, in contrast,
have often come to the sociology of science from
other fields, often been employed in science
studies units outside the traditional disciplinary
structures of universities, and often engaging in
undergraduate teaching, with its distinctive con­
cerns and rhetoric. Such differences, Ben-David
claims, have shaped the intellectual tenor of the
specialty; they have perhaps made for sharper
controversy than in more socially and cognitively
homogeneous specialties, where most have had
similar histories and structural positions.
The Research Agenda o f the
Sociology o f Science
Analytically, the current research agenda
divides into three parts: first, problems concern­
ing the social and cognitive organization of
scientific work; second, problems in the soci­
ology of scientific'knowledge; and third, the
reciprocal connections between science and its
social contexts—the social consequences that
flow from science and the influence o f other
social institutions and culture upon science. This
formal classification only hints at the range and
diversity o f problems sociologists of science ac­
tually study. It also can be taken to imply that
questions about the development of scientific
knowledge can fruitfully be isolated from its
social organization, that the cognitive and social
domains of science arc separable. This is not the
case. The two are intricately interconnected,
though some current research on the social
organization of science tends to underplay the
cognitive aspects of science, while some current
513
research on the sociology of scientific knowledge
tends to underplay the social organization of
science. This division of labor is understandable.
In fact, sociologists of science working in the
early period adopted the self-conscious research
strategy of addressing problems in the social
organization of science before tackling problems
o f the sociology o f scientific knowledge. As we
shall see, however, the sharp division that now
obtains is neither necessary nor, in the long run,
likely to be fruitful. I shall be examining both
classes o f work but will exclude many contribu­
tions since each has a copious literature to draw
on.2
Theoretical differences in the sociology of
science reflect marked differences in conceptions
of science, centering on the question of whether
it has any special cognitive warrant, more so than
other types of knowledge claims. As we shall see
in the final section of the chapter, that is a ques­
tion central to the sociology of scientific
knowledge. (See Bloor, 1976, for one view and
Ben-David, 1981, for another.) Putting these
matters to one side, it is nevertheless useful to
identify three ways o f thinking about the nature
of science: first, o f course, it is a body o f cer­
tified knowledge, comprising theories, observa­
tions, and empirical generalizations about the
natural and social worlds, provisionally accepted
by scientists in the given field at a given time
and forming the substance o f what has been put
the published archive.3 Science is also a set of
procedures for finding things out,4 which is to
say that scientific knowledge develops in accord
with a set o f rules—some mutable, others fixed;
with those that are fixed including the require­
ment that scientific knowledge be logically con­
sistent and confirmable, or in Popper’s terms,
falsifiable (see Popper, 1959, for the translation
o f Popper’s Logic o f Scientific Discovery, pub­
lished first in 1935). And third, science is a social
enterprise, a culture or tradition, and a set of
social arrangements for developing, certifying,
and communicating knowledge. Sociologists of
science are interested in all three accounts as they
apply to the physical, biological, behavioral, and
social sciences, these all being considered legiti­
mate subjects for sociological analysis.
Finally, the sociology o f science has the engag­
ing feature o f being self-exemplifying much of
the time (Merton, 1963/1973g, pp. 382; 1973a,
p. ix). The specialty exhibits the very character­
istics that its practitioners study. Thus the study
of modes o f problem choice in science, why
scientists elect to take up certain problems and
neglect others, is itself an example of problem
choice for the sociologists o f science who study
this matter. Or, as we shall see in the section
514 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
on growth and decline of scientific specialties,
the development of the sociology o f science as
a specialty exemplifies features o f specialty de­
velopment generally. And as I have suggested,
the analysis of theoretical controversy by sociolo­
gists o f science has itself not been free of
controversy.
The self-exemplifying character of the soci­
ology o f science marks it off from other socio­
logical specialties and enables sociologists of
science to draw upon their own experience in
thinking about the problems they study since
they are at once observers of this kind of be­
havior and participants in it.
M odes o f Connection Between the
Specialty an d the Parent D iscipline
Certain theories, concepts, problems and pro­
cedures used in the sociology o f science are
generic, found in sociology generally, while
others are subject-specific, limited to the study
of science alone. As an example of the first, a
considerable body of research has focused on
social stratification in science, on its structure,
determinants, and consequences for scientists’
careers. These studies are pertinent not just to
science but also to stratification in the society
at large. Similarly, studies of deviant behavior
in science—fraud and plagiarism—and modes
of their social control draw upon and enlarge
sociological knowledge o f deviant behavior.
Other problems, concepts, theories, and
methods are subject-specific, particular to the
sociology of science, and are not readily gener-
alizable beyond its subject matter, broadly con­
ceived.5 The nature o f replication or the filia­
tion o f ideas in science and methods for study­
ing them are distinctive o f the specialty. In ex­
amining the research agenda in die sociology of
science, I shall periodically indicate aspects that
are generic and spell out how they contribute
to the sociological enterprise and also periodi­
cally indicate concepts, problems, and proce­
dures that are subject-specific. This will convey
some idea o f the ties between specialty and
discipline and indicate how specialty develop­
ment proceeds independendy while drawing
upon and contributing to the discipline.
Problems in the Social Structure
and Culture of Science
M ost studies in the sociology of science readily
divide into three classes: the social structure and
culture of science, the sociology of scientific
knowledge, and the interaction o f science and
its sociocultural contexts. As I have noted, how­
ever, this division is both descriptive o f current
research and somewhat misleading insofar as it
makes for a separation of the social and cognitive
domains, which are in practice interconnected.
That caveat reiterated, this part of the chapter
treats five questions in the social structure of
science that have occupied the research atten­
tion o f sociologists.
Is There an Ethos o f Science ?
Do Scientists Conform to It?
D oes It Contribute to the Extension
o f Scientific Knowledge?
These seemingly innocent questions have
been controversial for decades. Centering on a
theory of the normative structure of science pro­
posed some 45 years ago (Merton, 1942/ 1973b),
the controversy did not develop immediately.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the theory was ex­
panded, reformulated, and subjected to limited
empirical tests (Barber, 1952; Hagstrom, 1965;
Storer, 1966; West, I960).6 When Kuhn’s
widely read Structure o f Scientific Revolutions
(1962/1970) appeared, some took it as an alter­
native theoretical orientation (unlike, as we shall
see, Kuhn himself). In recent years, criticism has
shifted from Kuhnian to phenomenological and
“ economic” accounts, reflecting increasing in­
terest among sociologists of science in these
other perspectives on scientists’ behavior.
Merton’s initial statement held that “ the in­
stitutional goal of science is the extension o f cer­
tified knowledge,” knowledge comprising “ em­
pirically confirmed and logically consistent
statements o f regularities (. . . in effect, predic­
tions)” (1942/1973b, p. 270). As a social in­
stitution, science is marked by an
ethos . . . [or an] affectively toned complex
of values and norms which are held to be
binding on scientists. The norms are ex­
pressed in the form of prescriptions, pro­
scriptions, preferences, and permissions.
They are legitimized in terms of institutional
values. These imperatives [or norms], trans­
mitted by precept and example and rein­
forced by sanctions are in varying degrees in­
ternalized by the scientist, thus fashioning
his scientific conscience.. . . Although the
ethos of science has not been codified, it can
be inferred from the moral consensus of
scientists as expressed in use and wont, in
countless writings on the scientific spirit and
in moral indignation directed toward con-
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
traventions o f the ethos [1 9 4 2 /1973b, pp.
268 - 269 ].
This compact paragraph lays out much o f the
theory: it holds that the institution o f science
has a distinctive set o f norms and values; that
these are legitimized by its principal goal, the
extension of certified knowledge; that these are
transmitted by socialization and reinforced by
rewards and punishments; that the ethos or code
of science can be inferred from what scientists
write about science and from how they behave,
particularly from scientists’ responses to depar­
tures from the posited norms.7
Furthermore, “ the mores [norms] o f science
possess a methodologic rationale, but they are
binding, not only because they are procedurally
efficient but because they are believed right and
good” (1942/1973b, p. 270). Here the double
claim is made that the ethos o f science con­
tributes to the institutional goal o f advancing
knowledge and also has strong expressive sig­
nificance.
What then are the norms o f science that ‘ ‘are
expressed in use and wont and in countless
writings” ? The ethos is composed o f two sorts
of norms: “ technical” and “ moral” or latterly,
cognitive and social. “ The technical [or cogni­
tive] norm o f empirical evidence, adequate and
reliable, is a prerequisite for sustained true
prediction; the technical norm o f logical con­
sistency, a prerequisite for systematic and valid
prediction. The entire structure of technical and
moral norms implements the final objective”
of extending certified knowledge (1942/ 1973b,
p. 270). The moral or social norms were also
treated briefly. Just four were proposed in the
original statement.
(1) The norm of “ universalism” refers to the
requirement that scientific contributions be
judged according to ‘ ‘preestablished impersonal
criteria.” Social attributes o f contributors such
as their race, religion, class origins, or gender
are deemed “ irrelevant” in such judgments
(1942/ 1973b, pp. 270-271). The norm o f uni­
versalism also requires that scientists be rewarded
in accord with the extent o f their contributions
to science (1957/1973e).
(2) The norm of ‘ ‘ communism,” or as Barber
retermed it during the McCarthy era, “ com-
munalism” (1952, p. 130), prescribes that
knowledge, which is the product o f collective
effort by the scientific community, must be
shared—not kept secret. Indeed, the only way
scientists can be sure that they will acquire prop­
erty rights to their contributions is, paradox­
515
ically, to give them away to their scientific
peers—that is, to publish them promptly (1942 /
1973b, pp. 273-275). As Hull (1985) observes,
science is organized so as to make group goals
and individual goals coincide; that is, that scien­
tists are “ forced” to make their work public or
forgo priority and credit for it.
(3) “ Disinterestedness,” or the curbing of
personal bias, involves institutional control over
the motives for doing science so as to advance
scientific knowledge. Put another way, the in­
trinsic reward of discovering new knowledge and
sharing it will elicit other rewards, notably peer
recognition. This prescription does not require
scientists to feel altruistic—social arrangements
depending wholly on altruism are notably un­
stable—rather, the reward and punishment sys­
tems of science generally make it in scientists’
own interest to act in such a disinterested man­
ner (1942/1973b, pp. 275-277).
(4) Last, "organizedskepticism” is “ both a
methodologic and an institutional mandate”
that calls for “ the suspension of judgment”
until the requisite evidence is there. Once again,
in this account of the normative structure o f the
institution of science, the emphasis is on its in­
stitutional arrangements. This calls for “ organ­
ized” skepticism, for arrangements such as
refereeing and other critical appraisals of work
by competent peers; not necessarily for each
scientist to feel uniformly skeptical.
Fifteen years later, Merton returned to these pro­
blems in his analysis o f priority disputes in
science (1957/ 1973e)—those frequent argu­
ments scientists have concerning who has been
first to make a particular discovery. Here, the
analysis examines the twin significance of both
“ originality” in science and collegial recogni­
tion—on being first in contributing new knowl­
edge and in being recognized for it—and often
the ironic consequences o f this institutionalized
pattern. Intense competition and, in certain in­
stances, even fraud and other forms of seriously
deviant behavior occur when the desire for
recognition outstrips commitment or capacity to
extend knowledge (1957/ 1973e, 1963/ 1973g,
1968, 1976a).
The ethos of science, as with norms generally,
specifies shared expectations or ideals, how
scientists should act in their work and vis-a-vis
other scientists. No more than in other domains
does every scientist uniformly live up to every
norm on each and every occasion. In science, as
in other institutions, there is often a “ painful
contrast” between normative expectations and
actual behavior (Merton, 1976a, p. 40). This
516 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
“ painful contrast” does not mean that the
norgns o f science do not exercise patterned con­
trol over behavior any more than occasional
homicides mean that norms prohibiting murder
are either absent or inconsequential. Sociologists
seldom need to be reminded that norms and
behavior are never perfectly correlated.
Why, then, has this proposal of norms in
science provoked such prolonged and heated
discussion? From the vantage point of the 1980s,
it seems to have provided an occasion for soci­
ologists of science adopting a relativist or phe­
nomenological stance to claim shortcomings not
just o f the normative theory but of the Merton-
ian research program, in general. It also became
an occasion for laying out alternative accounts
o f scientific practice; what norms are and their
role in the production of knowledge; and last,
how scientists behave in relation to them. (See
Toren, 1983, for a similar view.) Moreover, the
controversy has not occurred in a theoretical
vacuum. It has also reflected a growing tendency
in the discipline at large to question structural
and functional perspectives, closely associated
with Talcott Parsons and, in a variant, with
Merton, as well as a lack o f consensus among
sociologists on die character o f social norms,
their influence on behavior, and on modes of
studying normative structures.8 In short, it is a
self-exemplifying instance of the norm of organ­
ized skepticism in practice.
And, o f course, die normative theory as first
proposed is exceedingly brief, almost elliptically
so. It does not adequately anticipate potential
criticisms nor does it place the theory in the
framework of social and cognitive (or, in Mer­
ton’s terms, “ moral” and “ technical” ) norms
in science, much less in the larger framework
o f cultural structures generally.9 This left room
for critics and supporters to interpret the theory
in ways that were not necessarily consistent with
the expressed intentions of the author.
In the wake o f controversy, as I noted,' soci­
ologists o f science have splintered into several
contending groups—some of whom think most
headway can be made by examining the social
structure o f science, others who focus on its links
to the larger society, and a third and growing
group comprising those who take one or another
form of the sociology of scientific knowledge to
be the most fruitful focus for research. Few
sociologists of science do research combining all
these differing foci of attention. Divisions of this
sort may have developed in any event, but they
were surely encouraged by the controversy over
the ethos o f science. Since its early phase, when
a proliferation of programmatic papers appeared
calling for interpretative or relativist studies in
the sociology o f scientific knowledge, a con­
siderable literature of ethnographic, historical
case studies and discourse analyses has come into
being. I shall get to these in the last section of
the chapter.
THE CHARACTER OF THE NORMS
Most critics o f the Mertonian formulation are
not normative nihilists. Few think that science
has no normative structure at all but rather focus
on such questions as the nature of norms that
govern scientists’ actions; the purposes they
serve; the extent to which norms are shared by
scientists; the proposal that this configuration
of norms is unique to science; and the inter­
pretation that overt conformity to the norms
signals commitment to them.
Growing out of the Kuhnian mode of analysis
is the claim that only cognitive, not social,
norms really count in science. Cognitive norms
are said to derive from the paradigm prevailing
in a given field or specialty, along lines spelled
out by Kuhn (Barnes and Dolby, 1970). Just
what sorts of norms are contained in such
paradigms has not been explicated in detail but,
following Kuhn’s (1962/1970, p. 187) amplifi­
cation o f his initial views, it would seem that
forms of generally accepted problem solutions
provide the main constituents of cognitive
norms. Although this position reflects the “ im­
mense influence” of Kuhn’s writings, as Stehr
(1978) has put it, for his part, Kuhn finds the
supposed opposition o f his views and those of
Merton seriously “ misdirected” (1978, p. xxi).10
The conception that cognitive norms are para­
mount involves the hypothesis that these alone
are binding on scientists and the only ones to
which they actually conform (Dolby, 1975;
Mulkay, 1980a). Only cognitive norms are said
to be institutionalized since scientists are reward­
ed only for conforming to them (Mulkay, 1976,
p. 641) but not so allegedly for social norms.
The first assertion is an empirical assertion, of
course, on which the data are for from adequate.
For one thing, the imperfect evidence in hand
mainly concerns commitment and conformity
to social not cognitive norms. The evidence on
conformity to cognitive norms is limited mainly
to case studies and to what scientists put in
print.11 Not surprisingly, the published record
of science indicates widespread conformity to
cognitive norms, at least among those whose
papers are accepted for publication, else the
papers would hardly have been found accept­
able. The published archive is therefore a biased
source o f evidence on conformity to these
norms. When it comes to conformity to social
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
norms, the evidence, as we shall see, is mixed.
Scientists neither invariably act in accord with
them nor in opposition to them. As I have
noted, however, commitment and conformity
to norms are not the same; whether scientists
do or do not conform in particular instances is
quite distinct from whether they believe the
norms are legitimate. Were this not so, phe­
nomena o f guilt in violating accepted norms
would not be a familiar human experience.
Although Mulkay makes the claim that positive
rewards are given not for conformity to social
but only to cognitive norms, rewards appear to
be conferred for conformity to both sets of
norms; that is, those whose work accords with
prevailing cognitive standards and who con­
tribute to scientific knowledge, according to
standards prescribed by the social norms, are by
and large more copiously rewarded than those
who do not. Moreover, it is not the case that
institutionalization requires that acts of con­
formity be positively rewarded. Conformity to
all sorts of thoroughly institutionalized norms
—the prohibitions on forgery and theft o f data,
for example—are not rewarded, but detected
violations are o f course punished.
This is not all to Mulkay’s (1976) views about
social and cognitive norms. He goes on to con­
tend that scientists’ normative statements do not
express their own commitments, but they are
simply ideological statements designed to de­
fend die autonomy of science. They are “ vocab­
ularies of justification,” rationales for non­
interference rather than authentic ethical prin­
ciples. This account of the norms differs from,
but is not inconsistent with, the interpretative
or phenomenological perspective, which em­
phasizes that sociological observers must discern
not static rules or norms, but the process
through which actors negotiate, interpret, and
evaluate actions (Cicourel 1973). Drawing on his
detailed studies of the behavior of radio
astronomers, Mulkay has more recently claimed
that the normative statements scientists invoke
to explain their acts are highly contingent on
the context in which they are embedded.
Astronomers call on a complex repertoire o f rules
that they differentially apply depending on the
situation. The connections then between rules
and specific acts are said to be ‘ ‘indeterminate.”
There is then no single coherent code dominant
in science (Mulkay, 1980b).
Others (Barnes and Dolby, 1970; Schmaus,
1983) dispute the uniqueness o f the scientific
ethos. Universalism, organized skepticism, com­
munism, and disinterestedness each turn up in
other societal contexts and the norms can
therefore provide no solid ground for demar­
517
cating science from other activities. Perhaps so.
Scientists and philosophers have struggled for
some time with the complex issues involved in
demarcating science from nonscience and still
have not come to a satisfactory conclusion. But,
as Gaston (1978) has observed, the main point
with respect to the ethos of science is not the
uniqueness of this or that norm, but rather of
the entire configuration and the interdepend­
ence o f its parts.
Some 20 years have passed since the contro­
versy over the norms o f science began. It now
appears that efforts to oppose cognitive and
social norms are theoretically unsound and mis­
leading. The institution of science is a complex
set o f arrangements, cognitive and social, for
learning about nature and society with the
evidence on hand indicating that scientists are
committed to both the cognitive and social
norms, although not all invariably act in accord
with them.12 Nonetheless, cognitive and social
norms are analytically separable even if they are
intertwined in practice. It is useful to think
about the cognitive or technical norms as speci­
fying what should be studied and how and the
social or moral norms as specifying scientists’ at­
titudes and behavior in relation to one another
and their research.13 Both, it can be argued, im­
plement the goal o f scientific activity and both
are binding. We recall the Durkheimian rule
that expressions of moral indignation upon
(posited) social norms testify to their social
significance. Applying that rule to science, we
note the uniformly intensive and angry re­
sponses'of scientists to fraud, plagiarism, mis-
allocation of recognition, efforts to impose curbs
on free communication and to major errors of
procedure, analysis, or interpretation subjected
to “ organized skepticism.” This places these
norms at a great distance from merely ideologi­
cal statements designed to defend the autonomy
of science and from mere rationalizations of ac­
tion offered after the fact.
SCIENTISTS’ COMMITMENT AND
CONFORMITY TO NORMS
Expressions of moral indignation and con­
tempt for violations provide one sort of indicator
of scientists’ being committed to social and cog­
nitive norms. Another is provided by systematic
empirical studies of scientists’ attitudes and
behavior. Here the data are, to say the least,
sketchy. Two of the three pertinent studies
(Mitroff, 1974; West, I960) draw on very small
samples, and the indicators used in the third
(Blisset, 1972) often confuse behavior and ex­
pectations, making it difficult to draw condu-
518 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
sions about the extent and distribution o f scien­
tists’ commitments to the norms. This much
said by way of caution, West's (I960) study
shows that the 57 scientists he studied reported
being committed to certain norms but not to
others, while Blisset’s (1972) findings showed
considerable variation in attitudes toward the
norms among scientists in different disciplines
and types of universities. Mitroff s (1974) quali­
tative study examines the commitments to the
ethos expressed by 42 Apollo moon scientists
and finds both the Mertonian norms and
counternorms opposing the ethos being in­
voked, in accord with Merton’s (1963/ 1973g;
1976b) analysis of normative ambivalence in
science invoking a set of dominant norms and
a subsidiary set of counternorms.14 For Mitroff,
such opposing commitments advance science by
enabling scientists to maintain their own un­
conventional ideas in the face of collegial criti­
cism. Normative systems are never perfectly in­
tegrated and often call for conflicting behaviors
in differing contexts. Individuals adapt to such
conflicting normative expectations by oscillating
between normatively legitimated but inconsis­
tent behaviors, and in the process accommodate
to the special demands of given situations.15
Other empirical studies of the ethos focus
specifically on the norm o f communism and
behavior related to it: that is, on scientists’ com­
municating their work freely to fellow scientists
or keeping it secret. Hagstrom (1974, p. 9),
Gaston (1971, p. 118), and Sullivan (1975, p.
238) all report a readiness among most scien­
tists to discuss their work even before publica­
tion; the small fraction who restrict communica­
tion o f their ideas do so principally to protect
their claims to priority and recognition. Still
other studies have focused on the ethos of
science to examine the normative commitments
of industrial scientists (e.g., Box and Cotgrove,
1970; Krohn, 1972), reporting less marked com­
mitment among such scientists. In light o f The
growing share of scientists at work in industry
rather than the academy, such differences can
be consequential. Indeed, Ziman (1985) asserts
that the model in which scientists exchange
communications for professional recognition “ is
not yet out of date” but must be radically
modified to take account o f “ collectivized
science” —not only in industrial corporations
but also in the large-scale academic science that
requires considerable management and coor­
dination. Further comparative evidence finds
that scientists trained in the U.S.S.R. and the
United States share the ethos o f science but dif­
fer in their views about the proper role of science
in society (Toren, 1980).
The evidence on the extent to which scien­
tists, in the aggregate, subscribe to the norms
is also incomplete. The available data show
variability in the extent and depth o f commit­
ment to the norms , but in the absence of good
measures and good samples, firm conclusions
would be premature. The available evidence on
the extent to which scientists actually conform
to the norms is somewhat better but also not
free o f complexity. It might be said, for exam­
ple, that the superabundant evidence showing
that many scientists publish little or not at all
implies that they feel no obligation to contribute
to the advancement of knowledge. But of course
there are many roles besides research roles in the
domain of science. Publication of research is not
the only way o f contributing to knowledge.
Teaching and the administering of research are
indispensable to the system of science, and in
industrial science, proprietary or national con­
straints on publication are common. Publication
as an indicator is not all it is sometimes taken
to be.
The large literature on social stratification in
science, on inequalities in the distribution of
rewards and resources for research, also bears
upon the ethos of science, primarily on the norm
of universalism. The findings here are more
complex than uniformly clear-cut. Many studies
examine the extent to which universalism and
particularism obtain in allocating rewards to
scientists for their work. Universalism dictates
that scientific merit and the quality of role per­
formance be the sole basis for decisions on ap­
pointments, promotions, fellowships, publica­
tion, proposals for research funds, and honors.
Particularism, in contrast, takes personal rela­
tions, social origins, and social statuses as the
basis of such decisions. The studies show that
in practice, processes of allocation are neither
wholly universalistic nor wholly particularistic
(Cole and Cole, 1973; Gaston, 1971, 1978).
Cole, Rubin, and Cole (1977), Stewart (1983),
and Zuckerman (1977b) all report strong con­
nections between the extent to which scientists
have contributed to the advancement of knowl­
edge and the resources and rewards they have
received. However, Crane (1965); Reskin (1976,
1977,1978,1979); Long(1978); Long, Allison,
and McGinnis (1979); Zuckerman (1977b,
1978); Cole (1979); and Chubin, Porter, and
Boeckmann (1981) variously find that par­
ticularism modifies such decisions and is applied
along with quality o f role performance. Having
a degree from a prestigious university and hav­
ing powerful sponsors are advantageous for up­
ward mobility, while having been trained in a
less than distinguished department and being
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
female are decidedly disadvantageous; the last
of these is especially true in gaining appoint­
ments to tenured posts in major universities
(Cole, 1979; Zuckerman, 1987a). Similarly
mixed results appear in research focused on the
outcomes of the refereeing o f papers submitted
for publication.
All these studies of scientists’ behavior in the
aggregate imply that the ethos is neither con­
sistently honored nor consistently flouted.
Rather, studies of the reward system show that
particularism is most apt to operate in the
absence of convincing evidence on role perfor­
mance (as, for example, in the allocation o f jobs
to new Ph.D.s or in the choices between can­
didates whose role performance is about equal).
Next steps in research on this matter require
better specification of the conditions under
which the norms are binding and those in which
they may be abridged or outright violated, as
well as those calling countemorms into play.
More needs to be learned also about the invok­
ing of norms to account for various kinds of
behaviors and about the nature o f normative
repertoires. The connections between normative
commitments and behavior must also be ex­
amined to assess the claim that observed con­
formity to the ethos of science need not indicate
commitment to the norms since it might result
from self-interest and calculations o f how best
to survive the competition for resources and
rewards (Bourdieu, 1975; Mulkay, 1980b). This
last holds special interest as a theme that has
appeared in several ethnographic studies of
science. Latour and Woolgar (1979, p. 207)
draw a sharp distinction between normative con­
straints and self-interest. Thus they hold that
scientists assess the value o f colleagues’ contribu­
tions not because the norms require it, but
because they depend on those contributions for
their own work. They adopt a utilitarian mode
o f analysis o f exchange in science in which scien­
tists gain “ capital” that can be reinvested when
others use their work. As they put it, “ a suc­
cessful investment” for a scientist “ might mean
that people phone him, his abstracts are ac­
cepted, others show interest in his work, he is
believed more easily and listed to with greater
attention, he is offered better positions,. . . [his]
data . . . form a more credible picture.” Knorr-
Cetina (1981) does not subscribe to this account
but she too is inclined to think that self-interest
and competition for resources account for what
appears to be conformity to the norms. An
earlier theoretical formulation, however, refers
to the simultaneous operation o f these
analytically separate components as “ those hap­
py circumstances in which self-interest and
5 19
moral obligation coincide and fuse” (Merton,
1957/1973e, p. 293).
THE ETHOS OF SCIENCE AND THE
ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE
Does the ethos o f science advance scientific
knowledge? Two sorts o f evidence are germane
here: first, comparative data on the develop­
ment o f scientific knowledge in societies that
permit conformity to the ethos and in those that
do not and, second, data on the connections
between individual contributions to science and
commitment and conformity to the ethos.
Again, the evidence is complex and far from
satisfactory on both counts. Studies o f science
in totalitarian regimes, which limit conformity
to the ethos, suggest that science does not suf­
fer uniformly in such regimes; rather, some
sciences fare well and others do not. Such
regimes foster the development of some sciences
while discouraging others. The social sciences are
considerably more vulnerable to interference in
totalitarian regimes than the biological sciences
and both, in turn, fare worse than the physical
sciences and mathematics (Graham, 1981; Jorav-
sky, 1986; Mehrtens, 1987; Solomon, 1975).
“ Although the most diverse social structures
have provided some measure of support to
science,” comparative data are far from simple
to interpret since it is not just the survival of the
sciences that is in point, but the “ ratio of scien­
tific achievement to scientific potentialities.”
(Merton, 1942/ 1973b, p. 269). The proper com­
parative analyses have yet to be done.
The connections between individual commit­
ment to the ethos and role performance are even
less clear. For one thing, the normative theory,
as it was originally proposed, asserts the ethos
is “ procedurally efficient” at the institutional
level and makes no claim that this should hold
for individuals. Thus the assertion (Mitroff,
1974) that compliance with the norms stands in
the way o f scientists’ maintaining unorthodox
views and, as a consequence, can undermine
their contributing to science may not be
theoretically pertinent. [There is sdways the
question o f how efficient it is for the develop­
ment o f knowledge for scientists to continue to
hold views that remain unacceptable to their
peers, as Polanyi (1963) perceptively observed
long ago.] Beyond this, there is no evidence, pro
or con, to indicate whether major contributors
to scientific knowledge are also more committed
to the ethos and conform to it more assiduously
than others.
Research now in progress on the sociocultural
structure o f science focuses on the growing in­
520 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
volvement of scientists in industry and politics
and the growing importance of science in both
these domains. Such involvements produce a
good deal of strain and conflict for individual
scientists who experience incompatible role de­
mands, and this will exert pressure for the
emergence of new norms more consonant with
the hybrid activities of “ entrepreneurial sci­
ence,’ ’ as Etzkowitz (1983) has termed it. (On
this issue, see also Nelkin 1984). If so, the suc­
cess of science in generating certified or reliable
knowledge may have the ironic consequence of
undermining the normative arrangements mak­
ing for that success.
Deviant Behavior in Science
Sociologists’ interest in deviant behavior in
science (Merton, 1957/1973e; Mulkay, 1969;
Gaston, 1973; Hagstrom, 1974) long predated
the recent flurry of attention it has received in
the mass media (Broad and Wade, 1983) but
has accelerated since then.1617 Not only are de­
viance and social control important generic
problems in sociology, but they also provide
strategic sites for examining the ethos of science
in practice. Indeed, the “ great emphasis on
original and significant discoveries [in the
ethos], may occasionally generate incentives for
eclipsing rivals by illicit or dubious means”
(Merton, 1957/1973e). Paradoxically, while
prescribing the terms of conformity, the nor­
mative structure can also generate deviance.
FORMS OF DEVIANT BEHAVIOR
IN SCIENCE
Deviant behavior in science, as in other in­
stitutional domains, involves departures from
institutional norms: here, departures from both
social and cognitive norms specifying what in­
dividuals should and should not do in their role
as scientists.18 As noted earlier, social and cog­
nitive norms are analytically separable but em­
pirically intertwined in the ethos of science, and
this is patently so in the case o f deviance. Vari­
ous forms o f deviance involve departures from
both classes of norms simultaneously, high­
lighting their close connections. The social and
cognitive aspects are also tightly linked in the
modes o f social control of deviance. As we shall
see, replicability of scientific work, a central
feature o f cognitive control, is also a prime
mechanism for social control. Replication may
detect deviance after it has occurred and its
possibility may deter it before the fact, thus giv­
ing it double relevance in the system o f social
control.
As we have seen, cognitive norms comprise
both generic technical or methodological
canons, the requirements o f logical consistency
and empirical confirmability or falsifiability, and
also norms specific to particular disciplines and
specialties. Departures from the methodological
canons that mark off science from nonscience,
include adventures into such exotic areas as the
occult, astrology, and parapsychology. These are
commonly defined by scientists as deviant
because the phenomena they would examine
have not been scientifically established, cannot
be consistently replicated, and purported results
do not generally measure up to scientific
criteria.19
DEPARTURES FROM COGNITIVE NORMS
Discipline- and specialty-specific cognitive
norms designate the theories, problems, pro­
cedures, and solutions that are prescribed, pro­
scribed, permitted, and preferred. Scientific in­
novations involving departures are allowed, but
these must be within the framework of
methodological canons of the time. Scientists
who propose novel ideas or report unusual fin­
dings have the burden of persuading peers in
their sector of the scientific community that
their work can be connected with canonical or
accepted knowledge. Some fail to do so al­
together. (See Wynne, 1976, for the case of
Barkla and the J phenomenon.) Others ulti­
mately succeed only after a long period or re­
jection or neglect. As a major example, in the
early 1950s the biologist Barbara McClintock
proposed that genes are mobile rather than fixed
on the chromosome, like pearls on a string. In
doing so, she challenged widely held views
about the nature of genes and gene expression
(Keller, 1985). Yet neither she nor anyone else
at the time was able to link her ideas to prevail­
ing theories. Although most geneticists did not
know how to proceed with McClintock’s ideas
or indeed understand quite what they meant,
they were not defined as deviant. Although
departing from prevailing theoretical commit­
ments, they conformed to methodological
canons. When the significance of McClintock’s
work became clear years later, it was quickly in­
corporated into canonical knowledge and she
was rewarded copiously for it.20 The tension be­
tween tradition and change, conservation and
innovation (Kuhn, 1978), has been characteristic
o f science right along. This finds expression in
the seemingly incompatible requirements that
scientists conform to cognitive norms while
simultaneously being called on to innovate. But
when the rejection of prevailing theories and
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
findings occurs within the framework of the
methodological canons, this is plainly in line
with the institutional goal of extending certified
knowledge. It constitutes nonconforming but
not aberrant behavior—that is, behavior in
which nonconformers publicly announce their
dissent, challenge the legitimacy o f what they
reject, and openly aim to change those accepted
ideas, their departures are acknowledged to be
disinterested and often draw upon ultimate
values (here, the extension of certified knowl­
edge) in the process (Merton 1976a, pp. 29-31).
Violations of cognitive norms prescribing
proper research procedures are quite another
matter. Scientists recognize that occasional error
is to be expected; it is a hazard of doing science.
Even the most experienced and skilled investi­
gators can and do make mistakes. However,
scientists implicitly differentiate between “ repu­
table” and “ disreputable” errors (Zuckerman,
1977a, pp. 110-113). Reputable errors occur
even when investigators follow appropriate
scientific practice-that is, abide by cognitive
norms. Disreputable errors are those that occur
when cognitive norms are neglected or flouted.
Not using proper experimental controls or ran­
dom assignment of subjects, not protecting
samples from contamination, not arranging for
double-blind designs, not using replicate ob­
servers, or not making repeated measurements
are familiar violations of basic procedural norms
in certain fields and times.21 These are counter­
parts in science o f negligence.22 Since disrepu­
table errors can be avoided and since they en­
courage others to follow up on erroneous results,
they are taken as serious violations by the scien­
tific community when discovered. Such errors
greatly compromise the future credibility of
scientists responsible for them.
The discovery o f “ polywater” is one o f the
better documented examples of disreputable
error in science. After 10 years of work, it proved
only to be a contaminated sample, not an
anomalous new form o f water as originally
claimed (see Franks, 1980; Kohn, 1986). During
those 10 years, theorists attempted to account
for its structure and experimenters tried to iden­
tify its constituents. Once it became clear that
polywater was only an artifact, the credibility of
its “ discoverer,” Boris Deryagin, was seriously
damaged. He had broken two unwritten com­
mandments in the domain of science: “ Thou
shalt not mislead thy colleagues” and “ Thou
shalt not waste their time.”
Disreputable error arises from failure to live
up to cognitive norms specifying procedures that
build skepticism into the research process. Pro­
cedural norms, when followed, reduce the
521
probability that scientists will deceive themselves
and their colleagues. These procedural norms are
reinforced by the social norm of organized skep­
ticism, which requires investigators to be skep­
tical about their work and legitimizes the evalua­
tion system that assesses the probable validity
and value of new contributions. Disreputable
error thus violates both cognitive and social
norms.
DEPARTURES FROM SOCIAL NORMS
The two most serious violations of the social
norms o f science are fraud and plagiarism23—
making deliberately deceptive truth claims and
making deliberately deceptive claims to owner­
ship of intellectual property. Fraud usually in­
volves departures from the social norms of dis­
interestedness and organized skepticism. It oc­
curs when scientists knowingly engage in decep­
tive activities in order to receive peer recogni­
tion or financial gain. In the case of plagiarism,
the norms of communism and universalism are
violated because those scientists who are legiti­
mately entitled to credit for work have had it
taken from them. Applying the Durkheimian
principle, mentioned earlier, that moral indig­
nation signals the violation of an important
norm, scientists’ responses to fraud and plagia­
rism make it clear that they take these deviant
acts vqry seriously. The language they use is
sociologically significant: according to the im­
munologist Peter Medawar (1976), fraud is
‘ ‘heinous’ ’ ; for the molecular biologist Salva-
dore Luria, it is a “ scandal” with a “ quality of
desecration about it” (1975); it is, for the
medical scientist Robert Petersdorf, “ shocking”
(1986), and for the biochemist and editor of
Science Daniel Koshland, it is simply “ in­
tolerable” (1987). Scientists do not take these
episodes casually. Fraud and plagiarism under­
mine the widely held belief in the scientific
community that what other scientists say can be
taken as reliable most o f the time. That belief
makes it possible to avoid the immense—
indeed, the impossible—time and effort that
would be required to verify what others have
reported in each and every case. “ The institu­
tion of science involves an implicit social con­
tract between scientists so that each can depend
on the trustworthiness of the rest. . . the entire
cognitive system of science is rooted in the moral
integrity of individual scientists” (Zuckerman,
1977a, pp. 113).
Fraud, the generic term for deliberate decep­
tion, comes in three forms, as Charles Babbage
(1830/1976) put it—“ forging,” or data fabrica­
tion, “ trimming,” or data manipulation, and
522 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
“ cooking,” or data suppression. “ Cooking”
may seem a less serious threat to the integrity
of scientific knowledge than the other two since
no untruths are reported. Yet cooking misleads
since the whole known and relevant truth is not
told. Data suppression is difficult to identify;
scientists must make judgments about which
data are trustworthy and which are not. De­
viance occurs only when unreported data are
hidden and reasonable accounts cannot be given
for their not having been made public. Yet it
is sometimes difficult to distinguish fraud from
error. In principle, what separates the two are
scientists’ intent; whether they deliberately
meant to deceive. In practice, this test is not
readily applied (see Stewart and Feder, 1987,
on the wide array of errors and apparent frauds
detected in papers coauthored by John Darsee).
Plagiarism also involves deliberate deception;
credit is claimed where credit is not due. The
theft o f texts is relatively easy to detect but this
is not the case when evidence or ideas are ap­
propriated. The phenomenon o f multiple
simultaneous discovery (discussed later) makes
it possible that these ideas or findings were ar­
rived at independently. The normative status of
plagiarism is complicated further by the absence
of agreement on what constitutes property rights
in science and whether rights to ideas are as
strictly protected as printed text. This remains
an ill-defined normative area. It thus provides
the basis for profound disagreements among
scientists on rights to credit for contributions.
In any event, plagiarism, while a serious depar­
ture from social norms in science as elsewhere,
is also illegal. However, it does not alter the
fabric of scientific knowledge and thus is
described by Joravsky (1983, pp. 3-4) as “ a
pecadillo compared to the mortal sin o f fabrica­
tion.”
Other departures from the social norms of
science are variously serious. But none o f these
are as consequential as the three forms o f fraud
for the development of knowledge or for the
trust that scientists have in one another.
Plagiarism is also serious but makes only for in­
equity rather than undermining the cognitive
enterprise. Both, as we shall see, when dis­
covered, call forth severe punishment, often
severe enough to wreck the careers o f those
involved.
SOURCES OF DEVIANT
BEHAVIOR IN SCIENCE
Three kinds o f explanations have been pro­
posed to account for deviant behavior in science
and a whole host o f subsidiary conditions have
been identified that may contribute to it. These
in turn derive from major types of sociological
and psychological theories o f deviant behavior:
anomie theory, psychopathology, and conflict
theory.24 We have already noted that the great
premium science puts on originality and peer
recognition, producing intense competition.
Among investigators who believe that they can­
not achieve these goals legitimately, a few have
turned to illicit means, this being an applica­
tion of anomie theory designed to account for
deviant behavior in science (Merton, 1957/
1973e; 1968; 1984). Thus, on occasion, scien­
tists have falsified evidence, stolen others’ work,
become secretive, or falsely accused others of
plagiarism in order to gain recognition for them­
selves. It only seems paradoxical that in such in­
stances the source of deviance is an excess, not
an insufficiency o f commitment to values incor­
porated in science. These instances are also
marked by insufficient commitment to nor-
matively approved means of reaching the goals
to which they are so strongly committed.
A second explanation holds that deviance in
science typically results from individual psycho­
pathology—a view many scientists share. In
testimony before Congress, Phillip Handler,
then president of the National Academy of
Sciences, asserted that fraud is perpetrated by
the “ deranged” (testimony, March 31, 1981,
hearings before the House o f Representatives
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation
o f the Science and Technology Committee.) A
variant o f this explanation holds that fraud
results from pathological self-deception. Scien­
tists are said to believe that their ideas are cor­
rect and would be supported by the evidence,
if only the evidence could be properly mar­
shalled; hence, why not contrive or invent that
evidence? The line between such deviant be­
havior and routine behavior in science is clear.
Scientists know that good ideas are often not
supported by evidence and that the evidence,
not the ideas, may be at fault; even so, they do
not proceed to shape evidence fraudulently to
be in accord with what they believe must be so.
A third explanation is essentially Marxist and
tied to conflict theories of deviance. It holds that
deviant behavior results from the industrializa­
tion o f science in large corporate and academic
laboratories and the resulting alienation of scien­
tists from their labor. ‘ ‘Alienation does tend to
make it difficult to ‘live for’ science, to pursue
science ‘only in the cause of science itself,’ to
maintain ‘disinterestedness.’ And fraud is one
possible outcome when the ‘rigorous policing’
becomes loose” (Weinstein 1977, p. 643).
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
Others seek to account for deviant behavior
by specific structural sources. Fraud is said to
derive from the pressure to get grants and to
publish (Woolf, 1986), from the “ hyperkinetic
environment of science” and the absence of
time to supervise students and assistants and
from interdisciplinary research in which co­
authors cannot check one anothers’ work (Ken­
nedy, 1987; Petersdorf, 1986), and a host of
other observations about conditions in science
making for fraudulent practices. (See also
Koshland, 1987; Meadows and Meadows, 1983).
Theories o f deviance in science differ primar­
ily in the sources they identify: anomie theory
focuses on the immense value science places on
originality and peer recognition and the way
these exert pressures for deviance; psychopatho-
logical accounts put prime weight on the in­
dividual; and variants of Marxist theory point
to the industrialization o f science, which
alienates investigators from their work and leads
to the decline o f “ rigorous policing.” Each of
these theories implies that deviant behavior
should be more frequent in certain groups of
scientists than others. Yet there has been no
systematic effort to investigate the extent to
which the theories square with data on incidence
o f deviance or to investigate the structural con­
ditions held conducive to deviance. There are
good reasons for the absence of such research;
the actual frequency and distribution of deviant
behavior, in general, imperfectly estimated, is
altogether unknown in science.
THE INCIDENCE OF
DEVIANT BEHAVIOR
Scientists believe that outright fraud is rare
and, indeed, act in accord with that belief.25
Thus they do not routinely replicate the work
o f others they use in their own research. When
results appear implausible and prove not to be
replicable, scientists generally assume that error,
not fraud, intervened. Others, however, believe
that fraud is comparatively frequent. The science
journalists, Broad and Wade (1983), identified
a total o f 34 cases of “ known or suspected”
fraud from the second century BC to 1981 in
all fields of science, but go on to assert that the
actual numbers must be of far greater magni­
tude: “ For every major fraud that comes to
light, a hundred or so are undetected. For each
major fraud, perhaps a thousand minor fakeries
are perpetrated . . . every major case o f fraud
that becomes public is the representative of
some 100,000 others, major and minor com­
bined, that lie in the marshy wastes of the scien­
523
tific literature” (1983, p. 87). The grounds for
these estimates are not made evident.
Claims both o f high and low rates must be
treated with caution. No one knows the actual
frequency or distribution of fraud in science. No
method has been developed to gauge the ratio
between the small number of cases that have
come to public light and those that may lie
undetected. There is reason to suppose that
reported cases do not tell the full story since we
know that cases of error have remained un­
detected in the literature for some time and it
is therefore likely that the same holds for fraud.
The impression that fraud has become more
frequent may arise from the increased number
of reports o f such episodes in the press. This im­
pression may also be reinforced by the jour­
nalistic practice of reiterating charges every time
developments in the same episode are reported;
this of course amplifies the mentions rather than
the episodes. This pattern has been identified
in other instances o f press coverage, such as
Joseph McCarthy’s accusations against the physi­
cist E. U. Condon, and probably holds here also
(Klapper and Glock, 1949).
The absence o f data on the incidence of de­
viance means that there is no social epidemi­
ology o f deviance in science—no systematic
analysis of its distribution, sources, or control.
By way o f a poor substitute, one can only piece
together scattered quantitative evidence and
turn to qualitative case studies. For example, I
have already described studies in which scien­
tists were asked anonymously about their in­
clinations to be secretive. Few reported that they
withheld information about their work (Gaston,
1973; Hagstrom, 1974; Sullivan, 1975).26This,
in turn, implies that few of them believe their
work will be plagiarized.
Self-reports are one way of assessing the in­
cidence of deviant behavior; reports of having
been victimized, so-called victimization data,
are another. The only available data pertain not
to fraud in science but to the less serious infrac­
tion o f improper citation of prior work. Hag­
strom (1974) reports that about one-fourth of
the scientists he queried said their work had not
been properly cited by those who knew it; how­
ever, self-serving misperceptions may o f course
account for some of these instances. The third
sort of evidence traditionally used in studies of
deviance is official crime statistics; notoriously
biased, they are at least available for many forms
of deviant behavior. In science, however, official
statistics on deviance are not collected. Institu­
tionalized procedures for dealing with miscon­
duct are only now beginning to be put in place
and there are still no procedures for assembling
524 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
data of this kind. Finally, informants’ estimates
are sometimes used to gauge the incidence of
deviant behavior. But here, the few studies
available are based on such poor or nonsamples
that no sound conclusions on incidence can be
drawn from them.
Case studies cannot, of course, provide a basis
for judging the incidence o f deviant behavior,
but they do provide cues to the sorts of scien­
tists who engage in seriously deviant acts and
the circumstances that arc conducive to them.
The small number of current cases in hand im­
ply that junior scientists are more often directly
involved than seniors, that these episodes occur
more often in biomedical science, and in labora­
tories with conspicuously high rates o f publica­
tion (Woolf, 1986). But such materials cannot
of course answer such questions as: Do eminent
scientists depart from the norms more often or
less than others? Does serious misconduct oc­
cur more often in settings that put a high
premium on publication and grant getting, and
more often in interdisciplinary research, where
coworkers are not in a position to check on one
another?
Understandably, the historical cases of ap­
parent deviant behavior that have come to light
disproportionately involve figures of great stand­
ing in science, not junior investigators who hold
no great interest for posterity. These include
Ptolemy, Newton, and Mendel. Close scrutiny
of such cases indicates that it is difficult to deter­
mine with reasonable assurance whether miscon­
duct did or did not occur, according to standards
in force at the time. The verdict is still out on
Newton (see Cohen, 1974; Westfall, 1973). But
it appears now that neither Ptolemy nor Mendel
departed significantly from practices prevailing
in their times (Dunn, 1965; Fisher, 1936;
Gingerich, 1976; Kohn, 1986; Neugebauer,
1975). Other distinguished if less epoch-making
scientists have also been accused o f fraud. R. A.
Millikan, the great American physicist, may
have “ cooked” evidence on the oil drop experi­
ment. Experts disagree (Franklin, 1981; Holton,
1978). They also disagree in the case of Cyril
Burt, although Burt now has few supporters
(Dorfman, 1978; Hearnshaw, 1979; Stigler,
1979; see also Gieryn and Figert, 1986). Yet
these highly visible instances are too small in
number to shed light on the question of whether
famous scientists are more or less apt to deviate
than others.
There is no firm basis, then, for assessing rival
claims that deviance in science is frequent or
rare, that its rate is increasing, stable, or decreas­
ing, or that it is less frequent in science than
in other social domains. Such claims are plainly
based on impressions of varying degrees of
reliability. Indeed, the hard work of identify­
ing the pertinent units o f analysis has yet to be
done—it is not clear how rates should be
estimated—whether they should be figured per
capita, per experiment, per paper, or even per
finding, however these might be counted. In
light o f all this, it is tempting to settle for the
reasonable but impressionistic conclusion drawn
by the geneticist Norton Zinder (private com­
munication) that fraud, at least, can neither
have been very frequent in the past nor be very
frequent now; else science would scarcely be the
successful enterprise it has proved to be. How­
ever, this judicious conclusion leaves almost en­
tirely open questions o f the incidence of de­
viance and its epidemiology.
SOCIAL CONTROL OF
DEVIANT BEHAVIOR
Standard sociological lore has it that social
control o f deviance always involves procedures
for deterrence, detection, and punishment. The
inculcation of norms through socialization is one
means of deterrence. But in general, it is a
necessary though not wholly effective means of
preventing deviance. Thus the fact that scien­
tists learn early in their careers that various acts
are proscribed is doubtless not enough to en­
sure conformity. Probably more effective and
certainly more interesting sociologically is the
part played in science by the methodological
canon of reproducibility and by actual replica­
tion; the first serves as a mechanism for deter­
ring fraudulent evidence, and the second as a
means of detecting it when it does occur.27
Knowing that fraud in all its forms may be
detected at some time in the future in the proc­
ess of replication may deter some potential
departures from the norms.28
The reproducibility of scientific work does not
mean, o f course, that actual replication is com­
mon practice. Indeed, given the emphasis in
science on making original contributions and
receiving the rewards that go with them, and
given the expense and impracticality of replica­
tion in various sciences, it is not surprising that
deliberate replication does not occur routinely
(see Sterling, 1959; Bahr, Caplow, and Chad­
wick, 1983; Mulkay, 1984). This, however, does
not mean that replication is rare in any form.
Rather, it appears that as they go about their
work in attempting to extend others’ contribu­
tions, scientists engage in much inadvertent
replication. They do not carry out precisely the
same experiments or calculations as others before
them. Rather, as they work at related research,
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
inconsistent results of prior work can be iden­
tified and lead to questions being raised about
validity. Moreover, it appears that the more
significant earlier work is for the development
of scientific knowledge, the more often and the
more rapidly will others try to extend it and,
the more often it will be subjected to such in­
advertent tests of validity. Such inadvertent
replication will not distinguish fraud from er­
ror; it will call results into question. Scientists
are not apt to keep silent about important work
they find unreliable.29 From the standpoint of
the development of knowledge, this may be
enough.
Not all contributions are equally reproduci­
ble. There are great differences, associated with
cognitive texture o f scientific disciplines, in the
extent to which experiments are readily repli­
cated. There are differences in potentials for
replication, especially between the observational
and experimental sciences; differences also in
the nature o f phenomena being examined,
those subject to maturation effects, testing ef­
fects, and social change being less reproducible
than those that are not; and, of course, dif­
ferences in the cost of replication, with expen­
sive large-scale studies less likely to be fully
replicated. It follows then that opportunities for
engaging in undetected fraud vary in differing
fields and sorts of research. Whether such dif­
fering potentials are actually exploited, we can­
not say.
This line of analysis on the role of replicability
and o f inadvertent replication in the social con­
trol o f deviance (and indeed in demarcating
science from nonscience) is not shared by all
sociologists of science. Those who adopt a
radically relativist position hold that exact
replication is not possible. Collins (1975, 1982,
1985), an exceedingly articulate exponent of the
relativist view, argues that so much tacit
knowledge of experiments is required to repeat
an experiment that real replication simply can­
not occur. Rather, he holds, scientists decide
whether competent experiments have been done
and negotiate about the extent to which a given
set of experiments has or has not replicated
earlier work. Replication therefore provides no
firm basis for identifying error or fraud and also
no firm ground for marking off science from
pseudoscience. Knorr-Cetina (1977, 1981), an
ethnographer of science and advocate of the con­
structivist perspective, does not deny the
possibility o f replication but doubts that the
outcomes of research can often be validated.
This is so because scientific “ facts,” which are
constructed by scientists, are strongly affected
by their local contexts and thus scientists do not
525
produce a body of “ invariant knowledge.”
Discourse analysts take still a third view of
replication (and thus of its possible role in de­
tecting and deterring deviance) that is consis­
tent with their general position— “ there is no
single coherent story [about]. . . ‘replication,’
[it] has multiple meanings” (Mulkay, 1984, p.
278). Scientists themselves, Mulkay and Gilbert
(1986) say, deny engaging in “ mere replica­
tion.” Rather, Mulkay and Gilbert report that
scientists produce a complex combination of
“ realist” and “ constructionist” accounts in
describing what they take to be replication. One
can however just as easily identify scientists, even
sophisticated falsificationists, who reject the con­
structionist view. These scientists conclude that
replication does serve to deter error of all kinds
and thus provides adequate safeguards against
fraud (Franklin, 1984).
In the continuing absence o f systematic
analysis of what scientists in various fields ac­
tually make of replication, it is premature to
decide whether they believe in it in principle.
Given the divergent views about the nature of
replication, there can be no agreement among
sociologists about its effectiveness in detecting
error and fraud. This also holds for the effec­
tiveness o f peer review of papers submitted for
publication. Designed to assess the plausibility
of claims and the publishability o f papers and
not to detect misconduct, this procedure is
sometimes rejected as ineffectual (Broad and
Wade, 1983; Stewart and Feder, 1987) because
error and fraud sometimes appear in the
published literature in spite of its having been
peer reviewed. That surely does show that peer
review is imperfect. However, the published
record alone scarcely provides strong evidence
regarding the effectiveness of peer review in the
absence of systematic evidence on the relative
number of papers rejected for publication
because referees judged them not to meet ac­
ceptable evidentiary standards.
So much for deterrence and detection o f de­
viance in science. How is punishment meted out
and how severe is it? Science has been far less
organized in dealing with misconduct than
other learned professions such as medicine and
law. Codes of scientific conduct and procedures
for review and punishment been formalized on­
ly recently, not just for individuals but also for
the institutions with which they are affiliated.30
This does not mean that scientists judged to be
deviant have only recently been subjected to
system-exercised punishment. Those who have
been judged guilty of fraud or plagiarism have
generally been expelled from the scientific com­
munity. Their acts are defined as unacceptable
526 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
assaults on the social integrity of science. In
science, it is not common to have the slate wiped
clean after penance is done. But the system of
imposing punishments is still not formalized.
There is ambiguity, not just about the proper
match between crime and punishment, but
also about how far scientists’ responsibilities for
misconduct extend. Some would exempt senior
scientists whose assistants went astray without
their knowledge; others would not. The severe
line, taken by Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Yalow,
for example, holds that “ those who take the
fame, have to take the blame” (quoted in The
New York Times, July 13, 1987, p. 27).
It should be clear that the basic evidence is
lacking on the incidence, distribution, and ef­
fectiveness o f various controls of deviant be­
havior in science. Yet it provides a particularly
interesting and possibly unique domain for the
study o f deviant behavior. The very pressures
that make for deviant behavior, die intense
culturally reinforced ambition to receive credit
for original contributions, also makes for the
greater likelihood o f its detection, since the
more important the claim and the greater the
amount o f credit at stake, the greater the
chances that follow-up inquiry will occur and
deviance will be discovered. The same condi­
tions that provide incentives for deviance in
science then also provide for its detection.
Stratification in Science
The scientific community is not a company
o f equals. It is sharply stratified; a small number
of scientists contribute disproportionately to the
advancement of science and receive a dispropor­
tionately large share of rewards and resources
needed for research. Moreover, these inequali­
ties tend to be self-reinforcing over the course
o f scientists’ careers. All this is largely invisible
to outsiders, who see science as an occupation
o f comparatively high prestige and ample
rewards.31
Stratification in science has been a central
focus of research for sociologists o f science since
the early 1960s, a time when research on strati­
fication was flourishing in the discipline at large.
Yet the focus on stratification in science has
derived more from the research program laid out
in Merton’s ‘ ‘Priorities in Scientific Discovery’ ’
(1957) than from an interest in the generic prob­
lem. The issue posed then has pervaded
research on the subject ever since: Do scientists
live up in practice to the normative principle of
universalism in the allocation o f rewards—that
is, are they rewarded primarily or solely to the
extent that their contributions advance
knowledge? If not, what sorts o f particularism
obtain, which social attributes o f scientists and
o f their affiliations affect their life chances in
science? Some, though decidedly not all, early
research found that universalism largely did per­
tain; that rewards in science by and large went
to those who had contributed most (Cole and
Cole, 1967). This led to the speculation that
science was “ special,” as social institutions go,
not in being wholly meritocratic, but in being
more meritocratic than others. In the interim,
these early findings and the assertion that
science is special have been questioned, though
not entirely overturned.
THE STRUCTURE OF
STRATIFICATION IN SCIENCE
Stratification is ubiquitous in science. Indi­
viduals, groups, laboratories, institutes, univer­
sities, journals, fields and specialties, theories,
and methods are incessantly ranked and sharply
graded in prestige. Even awards for assessed con­
tributions are themselves graded. The topmost
layer of each hierarchy is made up of an elite
whose composition rests on socially assessed role
performance or, in the case o f fields, specialties,
theories, and findings, on their cognitive stan­
ding.32 While high-quality role performance in
science generally brings material rewards, as well
as peer recognition in science, the latter is par­
ticularly important.
The quest fo r peer recognition. Why is peer
recognition so important? It is simply this:
Recognition from those relatively competent to
judge is the prime indicator scientists have of
their having contributed to the advancement of
knowledge. The intrinsic pleasure of discovery
is one thing and their belief that what they have
done is new and important is another, but
recognition o f their work by the collectivity of
competent peers is the only unambiguous
demonstration that what they have done mat­
ters to science (Merton, I957/1973e). Thus it
is the ne plus ultra o f rewards in science. Scien­
tists are therefore greatly concerned about peer
judgments and this concern is institutionally
generated. (See Hagstrom, 1965, for a different
but congruent account of why scientists are con­
cerned with peer recognition.) One concrete ex­
pression o f peer recognition of work in science
is in its use—that is, by scientists first building
on contributions and then referring to them in
published work. Collegial recognition is also ex­
pressed in a vast array o f honorific awards in­
cluding all manner of prizes, fellowships, named
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
lectureships, and professorships and, in fairly
rare instances, by eponymy—the naming of ail
or part of a discovery after its discoverer, Hailey’s
Comet, Boyle’s Law, and Mendelian genetics
being familiar examples.33
This account of peer recognition and its im­
portance in science is more or less canonical; that
is, accepted by most sociologists of science in­
terested in its social organization. Most scien­
tists report that it accords with their own ex­
perience. Latour and Woolgar (1979, chap. 5),
however, have proposed an alternative “ eco­
nomic” account that emphasizes scientists’ con­
cern not with gaining peer recognition, but with
accumulating, using, and converting credibil­
ity into other resources. They portray science
as a market in which scientists “ invest” their
credibility in problems they believe will yield
further credible evidence, which in turn helps
them get more support for their work and in
the process enhance their career attainments—
the objective of the enterprise being to speed
up the credibility cycle, just described, as much
as possible. They claim that this model allows
for all sorts o f motivations in science and does
not require the analyst to posit scientists’ hav­
ing an interest in recognition. Latour and
Woolgar are correct, in the current period at
least, that scientists must be dedicated to main­
taining their laboratories, research funding,
research performance, and careers and that such
a cycle cannot be interrupted for long without
catastrophic results. Yet they also imply that
scientific activity is no more than an accelerated
and never-ending cycle of information produc­
tion. That model does not explain the intense
concern o f scientists in receiving peer recogni­
tion for their contributions. Such concerns are
not incompatible with their account even
though they play down the intrinsic significance
peer recognition holds for scientists and its in­
stitutional derivation and maintenance. (Knorr-
Cetina, 1981, has other objections to the Latour
and Woolgar thesis: They limit their focus to
scientific communities rather extend it to
“ transepistemic arenas.” And, as she terms it,
the thesis “ functionalizes” the relations be­
tween the credibility of the objects produced
and scientists’ positions, power, and domin­
ance.) But if patterned motives for doing science
are now at issue, the resulting structure of strati­
fication is not.
Recognition and rewards in science are not
just graded but highly stratified. They are
greatly concentrated among a relatively small
number o f recipients—a few scientists and a few
laboratories and a few universities get the lion’s
share. By way o f example, a crude but service­
527
able gauge of recognition is the extent of cita­
tion to scientists’ work in research publications
of their peers.34 Like other indicators of collegial
recognition, citation counts are highly skewed.
O f scientist-authors whose work was cited at all
during the two decades between 1961 and 1980,
62% were cited no more than five times, just
6% were cited as many as 100 times and at the
peak, 1% were cited 500 times or more (In­
stitute for Scientific Information, 1981).
When it comes to awards, Cole and Cole
(1973) report that about half of a national sam­
ple of American academic physicists had re­
ceived some award, with most o f these being
postdoctoral fellowships. Only 15% had re­
ceived an award other than a “ post-doc,” and
11% o f the physicists had received 70% of all
the awards. Although there are no sound
estimates of the distribution of awards across
fields, the Coles’s findings hold also for another
national sample o f American rank-and-file
physical and biological scientists (Zuckerman,
1977b). Similar concentrations of recognition
and standing appear also among organizations.
Just five universities employ half of all American
Nobel laureates (Zuckerman, 1977, p. 241).
Members o f the National Academy o f
Sciences—the principal honorific scientific
academy in the United States—are only slightly
more dispersed. Ten universities account for half
of all members of the Academy (Kash et al.,
1972).35 It turns out also that promising
students, or more precisely, students who later
became highly recognized for their scientific ac­
complishments, cluster at a few universities.
H alf o f all American laureates took their doc­
toral degrees from five universities (not quite the
same ones that later employ them); these same
five also graduated 18% of all Ph.D.s in the
sciences but as many as 46% of future members
o f the Academy (Zuckerman, 1977b, p. 90).36
Rewards in science are readily transmuted into
resources for research.37 Highly recognized scien­
tists and research institutions are more successful
than their less recognized colleagues in getting
resources for future research. Thus the same con­
centrations, noted earlier, also appear in research
funding. Ten universities were granted 21% of
all the funds available to American colleges and
universities in 1979-1980 with the next 20 hav­
ing an additional 43% ; the remaining 3000 or
so institutions thus shared the remaining 36%
(National Center for Educational Statistics,
1981, p. 1). These highly skewed distributions
o f resources have been in effect for many years.
Thus the same few institutions continue, year
after year, to be better supported than all the
rest, meanwhile attracting notable scientists and
528 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
the most promising students. The concentration
then o f human and financial resources in
organizations are plainly interrelated and con­
tinually reinforced. Thus scientists, differentially
located in the system, encounter vasdy different
structures o f opportunity to do research and to
contribute to knowledge. Those who have done
well in the past are given a better chance of
doing so in the future, and to that extent,
meritocracy makes for markedly steep structures
of stratification.
SOURCES OF INEQUALITY
Why is the distribution o f rewards so sharply
graded? How much does it reflect the distribu­
tion o f role performance in science, as the prin­
ciple o f universalism suggests it should, and how
much do other processes contribute to these
high concentrations?
No procedure now in hand satisfactorily
measures all aspects of scientists’ role perform­
ance. But not all aspects o f role performance are
defined as equally important. Given the empha­
sis in science on advancing knowledge, research
contributions are generally given prime weight.
The extent of scientists’ research publication, the
mere number o f papers they have published, is
often used as one rough measure of contribu­
tion. Although it does not hold, o f course, in
every individual case—many a scientist has
published much but contributed little—on the
average, the sheer number of publications has
been found to correlate with other assessments
o f quality o f contribution. Beyond the number
o f publications is the frequency of peer citations
to them as an indicator o f performance. These
measures clearly have their limitations. For one
thing, as we have noted, scientific role perfor­
mance is not limited to research and publica­
tion. Teaching, administration, and citizenship
in the community o f science also contribute to
the advancement of knowledge in less obvious
ways. For another, all published papers are of
course not equally important, nor are citations
o f a piece as indicators o f intellectual influence.
Still, sociologists of science have found these
useful measures of role performance, or more
specifically, o f research performance, inasmuch
as they have been found to be correlated with
other more direct gauges o f performance such
as ongoing assessments by peers. (Again, it
should be repeated: Correlation is not identity.
This holds in the aggregate but not in every in­
dividual case.) This correlation is not surprising.
Since scientific knowledge is public knowledge,
publication in science is important. New ideas
and findings do not qualify as scientific until
they are published, exposed to the scrutiny of
competent judges, and provisionally certified as
valid contributions to knowledge. As a result,
the work that scientists publish and the number
of citations to it become a useful if imperfect
indicator of their contributions to knowledge.
(See Fox, 1983, for a review of studies o f scien­
tific productivity.) Together and separately,
published productivity and extent of citation are
the mqst common measures of research perfor­
mance used by sociologists of science.
Judging from these indicators, there is enor­
mous inequality in the scientists’ research per­
formance and in the performance of research
organizations (Irvine and Martin, 1984). As we
have seen, most individuals publish little. Scien­
tists, on average, publish an estimated 3-6
papers over the course of their careers while only
about 1 % publish more than 10 papers (Price,
1986; Ziman, 1976, p. 105). In strong contrast,
the most prolific publish 40 or more papers a
year—a paper every two weeks or so. As Lotka
(1926) observed a half-century ago, the distribu­
tion o f scientists’ publications is described by
the inverse square law; the chances that a scien­
tist will publish as many as n papers is 1/n2. Put
another way, about 16% of scientists are respon­
sible for about half of all scientific publications
(Price, 1986).38
Citations are also highly skewed, as we have
seen, and strongly correlated with the extent of
publication.39 But as we have also noted, there
are important departures from the rule that the
more scientists publish, the greater the cognitive
impact o f their work; in fact, some scientists are
“ perfectionists” and publish few papers, each
of which is highly cited, while others are ‘ ‘mass
producers” who publish many papers but re­
ceive comparatively few citations (Cole and
Cole, 1973; Gaston, 1978).
THE RELATION BETWEEN RESEARCH
PERFORMANCE AND REWARDS
This brings us to central questions addressed
in studies o f stratification in science: How well
does research performance correlate with the
rewards individuals receive? Is the observed cor­
relation authentic or spurious?
Available evidence suggests an appreciable
connection between performance and reward
toward the upper reaches o f the stratification
system. For example, Nobel laureates-to-be were
cited 230 times a year before they receive their
awards; on average, two-and-a-half times as
often as scientists about to be elected to the Na­
tional Academy of Sciences, who received 90
citations in the same period. Future academi­
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
cians, in turn, were cited six times as often as
the average scientist-author. It is also the case
that “ perfectionist” authors tend to be more
copiously rewarded than “ mass producers” who
churn out great numbers of less consequential
papers. Such evidence suggests that universalism
does hold, that the greater the extent of assessed
contribution, by these measures, the greater the
recognition conferred. But, o f course, the most-
cited scientists o f all do not necessarily become
Nobelists and Academicians. In part, this results
from patterns o f citation; the most cited papers
in the literature report methods or procedures,
useful but not necessarily challenging or
theoretically significant work. But there are basic
structural reasons as well. There are far fewer
top-level awards available in science than there
are qualified candidates for them. Conse­
quently, when recipients are selected from the
pools of more or less equally qualified can­
didates, thus approximating the norm of univer­
salism, it appears that particularistic criteria are
often introduced as secondary criteria. Further
fine-grained research is needed to discover the
extent and distribution of this composite pro­
cess o f cognitive and social selection. What we
do know is that the scarcity of awards also con­
tributes to the skewness of the distribution of
rewards, as we shall see.
All apart from citation data, there is con­
siderable evidence showing that the more scien­
tists are judged to have contributed, the more
they are rewarded. The Coles (1973) found that
in a sample o f physicists’ research performance,
measured by published productivity and par­
ticularly by the extent o f citation, was the
strongest determinant of scientists’ reputations
among their peers and also of gaining a post at
a university department o f high prestige.40
Stephen Cole’s (1978) later research shows that
the findings for physics were much like those
for four other sciences. More than any other
variable, the “ quality” o f scientists’ contribu­
tions as perceived by fellow scientists influences
the allocation of rewards. He draws the double
conclusion that the assessed significance of scien­
tists’ research is the strongest determinant of the
honors they receive and that the structures of
the reward systems in the fields he studied were
remarkably similar. In short, a marked tendency
toward universalism does hold not just in this
or that science but in the sciences generally.41
The findings from the Coles’s work in mapping
out connections between the extent o f scientists’
contributions and the rewards they receive and
Stephen Cole’s (1970) analysis of the impact of
scientists’ standing on the speed of reception of
their research are borne out in Gaston’s (1978)
529
work on British physicists, in numerous papers
analyzing the connections between productivity
and the prestige o f departmental affiliation of
scientists, the relations between extent of cita­
tion and academic salaries (Diamond, 1984) and
my own examination of the careers o f Nobel
laureates compared with those of other scientists
(Zuckerman, 1977b).
In the allocation of research funds, univer­
salism in the form of peer judgments o f pro­
posals have been found to be the most impor­
tant determinant of their acceptance or rejec­
tion (Cole and Cole, 1977; Cole, Cole and
Simon, 1981; Mullins, 1985).42'43 It also governs
decisions on scientific publication—in some
measure. “ Problematic” papers submitted to
the outstanding journal of physics—that is,
papers considered questionable by referees—
were no more likely to be accepted when sub­
mitted by distinguished scientists than by un­
known ones (Zuckerman and Merton, 1971, p.
55). We also found that the disproportionately
large share of the literature published by well-
known scientists resulted from their submitting
more papers for publication and not necessarily
from their having received favored treatment,
as others have supposed.44 Yet the findings in­
dicating that universalistic standards largely
apply in the evaluation of scientists’ work and
the allocation of certain rewards are not the
whole story.
For one thing, not all scholars agree that the
correlation between research performance, as
measured by citations, and the rewards scien­
tists receive provides valid evidence of univer­
salism. Mulkay (1980, p. 33), for one, holds that
it is spurious or at least that universalism has
not been demonstrated. The connection be­
tween citations and awards “ merely . . . sbow[s]
that both kinds o f rewards tend to go to the
same people” (italics his). The fundamental
question why these scientists “ receive an un­
usually large share of both these types of rewards
. . . remains untouched” (1980, pp. 33-34).
Does some particularistic process underlie both
citing practices and the allocation of rewards?
Possibly. Yet in light of the way in which cita­
tions are generated, this seems unlikely. Al­
though a relatively few scientists publish a great
deal and therefore account disproportionately
for the number of citations conferred in the
literature, such vast numbers of citations are
conferred in the aggregate of most disciplines
within even a short time period that a few
authors cannot monopolize the citation process.
Citations are not exclusively controlled by an
elite (as many other rewards are), nor are they,
in the aggregate, the product of deliberate col­
530 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
lective decisions by particular groups. Indeed,
highly cited authors are referenced as often in
papers by comparatively uncited authors as in
those by highly cited authors (J. Cole, 1970).
Still, not enough is known about scientists’
citing practices to estimate the extent to which
they might result from particularistic or localistic
judgments. Yet, it seems unlikely that the rank-
and-file scientists who are responsible for most
citations are motivated to reward the elite,
beyond what they take to be their due.
However, there is more direct evidence for the
operation of some degree of particularism in the
allocation o f resources and rewards in science—
although these data, as do those indicating uni­
versalism, also contain their own ambiguities.
For example, the prestige of the departments
where scientists get their degrees is related to
the prestige of the departments where they find
jobs, particularly their first jobs, and this holds
regardless of research performance. Early re­
search by Crane (1967) and Hargens and Hag­
strom (1967) on the correlations between pres­
tige of degree-granting departments and current
affiliations, has been substantiated by careful
analysis o f longitudinal data by Long (1978);
Long, Allison, and McGinnis (1979); Reskin
(1976, 1977, 1978, 1979); and Chubin, Porter,
and Boeckmann (1981). They find that where
scientists start out (whether they studied in a
highly reputed department) and who they
studied with (whether they were sponsored by
a scientist of high repute) strongly affects where
they end up, even when the extent of research
performance is taken into account. Moreover,
Long and McGinnis (1981) show that the scien­
tists’ research performance is determined more
by the departments with which they come to be
affiliated than the reverse, and that scientists’
performance comes to resemble the performance
of those with whom they become associated.
This work is important. But it still leaves open
the question of the possible additional effects
o f self-selection, whether scientists choose
employment in departments that demand levels
o f performance they find congenial.
These data indicating the effects of par­
ticularism are consistent with my own studies
of Nobel laureates, which show the effects on
scientists’ careers of having a distinguished
sponsor. Half of all American laureates studied
with prior Nobel laureates. More in point, those
who did received the prize nine years sooner
than the rest, whose prize-winning work was not
done later and was, on average, apt to be no
less distinguished. More pertinent for the scien­
tific community at large, historical and socio­
logical research on the careers o f men and
women scientists shows marked gender dis­
parities in rank (except at the level of assistant
professor), salary, promotion rates, positions of
influence, and honorific awards. (See Rossiter,
1982, on the history of women scientists and
Zuckerman, 1987a, for a review of current
sociological research.) They also show great
disparities between men and women in pub­
lished research performance. On average,
women publish about 60% as many papers and
are cited at a similarly lower rate than men of
the same professional ages, in the same fields,
and with the same educational origins (Cole and
Zuckerman, 1984). In part, the gender dispari­
ties in rewards are attributable to gender dispari­
ties in performance. However, such disparities
in performance are found not to account for
women being promoted more slowly and less
often to posts in the most distinguished univer­
sity departments than men with comparable
records o f performance (Cole, 1979).45 Since
academic rank is both a reward and a resource
for continuing research achievement, such
gender differences are consequential for
women’s research performance later in their
careers.
In short, the evidence indicates that the strati­
fication system of science is neither exclusively
universalistic nor exclusively particularistic. Par­
ticularistic standards are often applied early in
scientists’ careers before they have had much
chance to demonstrate how they will perform.
At this stage, informal assessments of promise
by sponsors count in the allocation of resources
and rewards. Later, the impact of sponsorship
and o f the prestige of the department granting
the Ph.D. is attenuated and research perform­
ance, gauged by publication and citation,
become more important in shaping the alloca­
tion of rewards. However since current research
performance is in part the product in part of
prior experiences with particularism, evidence
o f the application of universalism later in the
career does not mean that it holds exclusive
sway.
In light of this mixed set of findings, is science
meritocratic? N ot entirely. Is it more
meritocratic than other institutions? Possibly,
but we cannot say without systematic com­
parative institutional analysis. At this reading,
it appears to exhibit some of the same structures
of discrimination as other occupations (Bielby,
in press; Fox, 1985), but it also is marked by
an intense commitment to achievement over
ascription. The compelling evidence is plainly
not in.
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
THE THEORY OF ACCUMULATION
OF ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE:
CONCENTRATION OF REWARDS
IN SCIENCE
Rewards in science are, as we noted, concen­
trated among a few scientists, a few laboratories,
and a few institutions. This results in some
measure, as we have seen, from skewness in per­
formance. It also results from the enormous
significance given to priority in science. The
recognition that goes to those who first make
a scientific discovery is incomparably greater
than what also-rans receive. The skewness of
rewards is also a product of their scarcity. But
most o f all, the marked concentration o f re­
wards and resources in science results from
processes of accumulation of advantage. These
shape the distribution of rewards in science and
lead to increasing disparities between the
“ haves” and “ have nots” over the course of
scientists’ careers.
The theory o f the accumulation of advantage
provides a dynamic structural account o f how
role performance and recognition in science, and
possibly other domains, come to be as sharply
concentrated as they are.46
Processes of individual self-selection and in­
stitutional social-selection interact to affect
successive probabilities of access to the
opportunity-structure in a given field. . . .
When the role-performance of an individual
measures up to demanding . . . standards
. . . this initiates a process of cumulative ad­
vantage in which the individual acquires suc­
cessively enlarged opportunities to advance
his work (and the rewards that go with it)
. . [those who find their] way into [elite]
institutions ha[ve] the heightened potential
of acquiring differentially accumulating ad­
vantage [Merton, 1977, p. 89].
Processes of accumulation of advantage there­
fore work in such a way that ‘ ‘certain individuals
and groups repeatedly receive resources and
rewards that enrich recipients at an acceler­
ating rate and conversely impoverish (rela­
tively) the non-recipients” (Zuckerman, 1977b,
pp. 59-60). In principle, it does not matter
whether criteria for allocating resources and
rewards are achieved or ascribed, “ these proc­
esses [which affect access to the opportunity
structure] contribute to elite formation and
ultimately produce sharply graded systems
o f stratification” (Zuckerman, 1977, pp.
59-60).47
531
The theory holds first that early access to
resources is singularly important in benefiting
particular individuals. The earlier they gain ac­
cess to various kinds of resources, the earlier they
develop and the earlier they gain a head start
over their age peers. Correlatively, the longer
they are kept from those resources, the more
hampered is their future development. Second,
the accumulation of advantage operates in
systems in which rewards can be transformed
into resources for further achievement. This pro­
duces an upward spiraling o f achievements and
rewards. Third, the opportunity structures that
scientists encounter at successive stages of their
careers to a degree reflect their past achieve­
ment, just as performance in the present shapes
opportunities in the future. Fourth, by making
past achievements the prime criterion for allo­
cating resources and rewards, the accumulation
o f advantage is, on the face o f it, universalistic
at any given time but also inadvertently par­
ticularistic over the long run since it greatly
enlarges disparities in performance and rewards
between recipients and nonrecipients, far be­
yond the disparities that pertained at the outset.
And last, the accumulation of advantage calls
attention to the impact of the rewards on per­
formance—not just the reverse—and the con­
tinuing interplay between performance, re­
wards, and access to the means of scientific pro­
duction. In short, the accumulation o f advan­
tage produces a “ class structure” in science
much as similar processes of stratified access do
in the society at large.
By and large, the evidence in hand squares
with the theory o f accumulation o f advantage.
As we have seen, there are marked disparities
in role performance in science, as well as in ac­
cess to resources and rewards. The data also show
that such disparities increase as scientists move
through their careers; that is, the gap in levels
o f performance among age peers is far greater
several decades into the career than it was in­
itially, and the same is true for the rewards con­
ferred on scientists. Other evidence is also con­
sistent with the theory: Disparities in scientists’
access to resources for research, including time,
research funds, assistance, and the like also grow
with time. Moreover “ reinforcement effects”
seem to be at work such that those scientists
whose work is recognized early in their careers
subsequently become more productive than
others with equivalent records of performance
who were not early beneficiaries of rewards (Cole
and Cole, 1973; Reskin, 1977; and Cole and
Zuckerman, 1984, find this is less true for
women scientists than for men).
 532 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
The Matthew Effect as a specialcase. Processes
of accumulation of advantage are accentuated
by the operation of the “ Matthew Effect,” in
which “ eminent scientists get disproportionately
great credit for their contributions . . . while
relatively unknown scientists tend to get
disproportionately little credit for comparable
contributions. . . .This complex pattern of
misallocation of credit for scientific work” is
named after the Gospel of St. Matthew: ‘ ‘For
unto everyone that hath shall be given and he
shall have abundance: but from him that hath
not shall be taken away even that which he
hath” (Merton, 1968, pp. 443,445). The Mat­
thew Effect is especially evident in cases that are
not just vaguely comparable but much the same:
collaborations between scientists of greatly
differing standing where credit goes to those
who are already eminent and in cases of in­
dependent multiple discovery (see later section
on theory of discovery), episodes in which the
same discovery arrived at independently and
more or less simultaneously are credited to the
better-known discoverer.
The Matthew Effect is the outcome of evalua­
tion and communication processes in science.
Having learned the value of attending to the
work of certain investigators in the past, and
faced with a literature of unmanageable propor­
tions, scientists tend to notice the work of well-
known scientists, take it more seriously, and
ultimately use it more intensively. The Matthew
Effect therefore enlarges differences in reputa­
tion and rewards over and above those at­
tributable to differences in performance and to
processes of accumulation of advantage, and
thereby introduces its own variety of particular­
ism into the system.
Processes of accumulation of advantage not
only shape the distribution of rewards in science,
they also provide for its justification. Because
those who are most copiously rewarded have by
and large performed at the highest levels, the
J accumulation of advantage fosters an ideology
claiming that evaluation processes are effective
and that the reward system is meritocratic and
fair. However, there is no way of knowing the
extent to which this is so, given the self­
confirming nature of the processes involved.
That is, there is no way of determining after the
fact how well those who had limited access to
opportunity would have done had they bene­
fited more than they did at the outset. In light
of this, the idea of accumulation of advantage
casts doubt on the assumption that marked dif­
ferences in performance in science invariably
reflect equally marked differences in capacity to
do scientific work.
THE REWARD SYSTEM,
STRATIFICATION AND THE
GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE
In principle, the evaluation and reward
systems and the resulting system o f stratification
have evolved through processes briefly sketched
out in these pages.
As we have seen, resources are allocated
largely on the basis of assessed prior achieve­
ment, with this being institutionally assumed
as the best criterion for doing so. But this has
not been decisively demonstrated. The reward
system does appear to reinforce scientists’ moti­
vations to work on important problems insofar
as solutions to such problems bring considerable
amounts of recognition. But the same rewafd
system may lead many scientists to focus mainly
on problems that can be solved rapidly. On this
reading, difficult, intractable but important
problems may tend to be bypassed by many
scientists as they seek immediate rather than dis­
tant rewards. Similarly, the system appears to
be arranged to inhibit extremely unconventional
views to the extent that recognition is given for
doing research that helps as many others as
possible get on with their own work. It may also
divert scientists from problems in applied
science and in comparatively unfashionable
fields and specialties. By conferring honors of
various sorts, the reward system does call atten­
tion to problems assessed as important and to
research assessed as excellent by making them
visible, both within and outside the community
of science. However, the comparative scarcity of
the most prestigious honors means, of course,
that only some of the highest-quality contribu­
tions are recognized and made visible by formal
awards. The connections between stratification
and mobility, the allocation of resources and
rewards, and the extension of knowledge have
begun to be studied by sociologists of science.
Hargens, Mullins, and Hecht (1980) made a
good start in showing the effects of cognitive
structure on stratification—on how working in
a new research area affects scientists’ productivity
and standing—while Hargens and Hagstrom
(1982) and Hargens and Felmlee (1984) have ex­
amined the effects of several aspects of cognitive
structure, such as the extent of consensus on
research priorities and techniques and growth
rates of the sciences, on patterns of status at­
tainment and the speed with which younger
people are upwardly mobile. These linkages be­
tween cognitive structure and stratification pat­
terns represent an important next step for
research. Another requires more intensive study
of the organizational bases of stratification in
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
science—the ways in which processes internal to
organizations work to rank and reward scientists
—a line of analysis now receiving much atten­
tion in studies o f stratification generally. Con­
versely, students of social stratification in the
discipline at large might take note of processes
of accumulation of advantage and disadvantage
and their effects, not least the unintended but
nonetheless potent contribution of meritocracy
to inequality.
Is Science a Young Person’s Gam e?
A widely shared belief holds that scientists do
their best work when they are young. Thus the
physicist P.A.M. Dirac versified:
Age is, of course, a fever chill
that every physicist must fear.
He’s better dead then living still
when once he’s past his thirtieth year.48
Many scientists also believe that the young are
more apt than others to adopt new ideas, par­
ticularly new revolutionary ideas. It follows then,
as the epochal theoretical physicist Max Planck
put it, that:
a new scientific truth does not triumph by
convincing its opponents and making them
see the light, but rather because its op­
ponents eventually die, and a new genera­
tion grows up that is familiar with it [Planck,
1949, pp. 33-34],
This proposes that major changes in scientific
ideas come about through the inevitable succes­
sion o f generations, not because scientists
change their minds about the validity o f new
ideas. An interesting and oft-quoted hypothesis.
In the final section o f the chapter, we take
up the possible connections between the out­
comes o f scientists’ research and their social
statuses and ideologies. Here, we examine the
two cognate questions presented to us by Dirac
and Planck: Do young scientists contribute more
than other age groups and is youth more recep­
tive than age to new ideas? Such age-stratified
patterns, if they actually occur, would plainly
be consequential not just for the research careers
of individual scientists but also, and more im­
portant, for the development of the corpus of
scientific ideas. (See Zuckerman and Merton,
1973, for an analysis of age and age structure
in science.)
The idea that science is a young person’s
game, that the young are the most “ creative”
age stratum in science, was greatly reinforced by
533
the studies of psychologist Harvey Lehman
(1953). These seemed to find that major works
in science and mathematics were mainly con­
tributions o f the young; further, this obtained
in music, poetry, and other creative endeavors,
as well. He suggested that there was something
special about being young that encouraged in­
tellectual daring and creativity.49
How well do these beliefs square with the
evidence? Not very well, in spite o f Lehman's
reports, which have since been shown to be
flawed. (See Zuckerman and Merton, 1973; and
Cole, 1979, for critical analysis.) Later investiga­
tions, using more exacting measures of the
quality of scientific contributions—published
productivity, citations and peer-assigned awards
—show little evidence that youth was related to
outstanding research performance (for reviews,
see Bayer and Dutton, 1977; and Reskin, 1979).
Rather, some research finds that the relations
between age and various measures o f research
performance are mildly curvilinear; that is, the
extent and impact o f scientists’ work increases
slighdy in middle age and then declines slightly
as scientists age (Cole, 1979; Zuckerman,
1977b), while other research finds markedly dif­
ferent patterns in different scientific disciplines.
In some sciences, individuals’ published produc­
tivity rises, declines, and then rises again in later
years, while in others, an initial spurt is followed
by slow decline (Bayer and Dutton, 1977; Black­
burn, Beyhmer, and Hall, 1978; Helmreich,
Spence, and Thorbecke, 1981; Horner,
Rushton, and Vernon, 1986; Over, 1982; Stern,
1978).50 These various patterns call for further
investigation but it is evident that in general not
all nor even most of scientists’ major work is
done when they are young. And, o f course, as
ample evidence testifies, scientists of the same
age vary considerably both in rates of publica­
tion and in the significance of their work.51 Thus
systematic inquiry of aggregates of scientists does
not find that age in itself either chronological
or professional age (that is, the number o f years
elapsed since the doctorate was conferred) makes
for patterned differences in rates and kinds of
creative scientific work.
Why, then, do some scientists believe that the
best work is done by the young? In part, no
doubt, because they know this to be true of par­
ticular major discoveries in science. Many of the
great heroes of science were quite young when
they did their transforming work. Thus Newton
was 24 when he largely invented the calculus
and took his early steps toward the law of uni­
versal gravitation. Just as Einstein was 26 when
he published the papers on the special theory
of relativity, the photoelectric effect, and Brown­
534 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
ian motion. Darwin was an advanced 29 when
he identified the essentials of the theory of
natural selection (which he delayed publishing
until he was 50). Moreover, 9 out of the 10
physicists generally credited with bringing about
the quantum revolution in physics were in their
twenties at the time (Zuckerman and Merton,
1973, p. 513). Monumental cases in point. Yet,
what is true for these epoch-making events need
not hold for the connections between age and
scientific contribution generally. These univer­
sally known incomparable instances understand­
ably invite the belief that it is generally the case
that scientists do their best work when they are
young. That belief may also be reinforced by
selective perception. Major discoveries by very
young investigators elicit much attention and are
then easily recalled and reiterated; the many
more discoveries o f like kind by middle-aged
scientists are not expressly linked to the age of
their discoverers. At this time, however, sys­
tematic study indicates that science is not a
young man’s or woman’s game but rather a
game of the middle aged. Thus, to take a sum­
mary example, Nobel laureates in physics were
on average 36 years of age when they did the
research that brought them the prize; those in
chemistry were 39, and those in the biological
sciences were 41, far from being precociously
young, but not old, either (Zuckerman, 1977,
p. 166).
Although the evidence so far makes it un­
likely that age in and o f itself influences scien­
tific performance, this still leaves open the
possibility that age-related social and cognitive
variables affect scientific performance over the
shorter run among subsets of scientists.52 Only
a few studies report on the social attributes of
scientists who exhibit particular patterns of
research performance throughout the life course
but reasonably good data show that a large frac­
tion of scientists spend a decreasing share of
their time at research as they age, and that this
apparently accounts in part for variously ob­
served declines in rates of scientific publication
with aging (Allison and Stewart, 1974; Zucker­
man and Merton, 1973, pp. 519-528). Selective
attrition of research scientists may also attenuate
possible relationships between age and the
ongoing extent o f new scientific contributions.
It has been noted that when their early work is
recognized and rewarded, scientists more often
continue to be productive, while those whose
earlier efforts were neglected are more likely to
stop research and turn to other activities. Thus
the reward system of science may help to explain
persisting and comparatively high rates of pub­
lication throughout the careers o f some scien­
tists, along with marked reductions in publica­
tion by others over the years (Cole, 1979; Cole
and Cole, 1973; Cole and Zuckerman, 1984).
Age-related patterns of research performance
may be linked to the cognitive structure of
science as well. Youthful contributions may be
more likely and more visible in the compara­
tively well-codified sciences—that is, the disci­
plines in which empirical knowledge is con­
solidated into “ succinct and interdependent
theoretical formulations” and “ particulars are
knit together by general ideas” (Zuckerman and
Merton, 1972, pp. 506-519). There, young peo­
ple can more readily learn what is needed to
make significant contributions than in less
theoretically integrated disciplines. Truly in­
novative work in well-codified fields may be
more readily identified, irrespective of source.
The bias o f the Matthew Effect may be less
severe, and youth more often given its due.
These conjectures are consistent with data on the
ages at which scientists in more and less codified
fields are elected to major academies and do
research of Nobel Prize caliber, but S. Cole
(1979) finds no support for them in his studies
o f the scientists in six disciplines. The jury is still
out on the interconnections between the
codification of scientific knowledge and age
stratification in research performance.
New work by Levin and Stephen (1986) also
links cognitive structure to age and research per­
formance. This suggests that entire age cohorts
may benefit from “ vintage effects” —that is,
being trained at a time when a science or special­
ty is just opening up and there are unusual op­
portunities for major contributions to be made.
In solid state physics, Levin and Stephen report,
beneficiaries o f “ vintage effects” are apt to be
more productive initially and throughout their
careers than those who came into the field in
less innovative times. This promising line o f in­
quiry awaits more comprehensive data and
analysis. Meanwhile, it and earlier work on the
codification of scientific knowledge illustrate
once again the intricate linkages between the
cognitive and social structures of science.
Possible connections between age of scientists
and receptivity to new ideas are also complicated
and they too are not in line with widespread
belief. Thus, Gieryn’s (1978) study of problem
choice among contemporary astronomers finds
no greater inclination for younger ones to move
into the newest areas of research. McCann’s
(1978) historical studies of the chemical revolu­
tion in the latter eighteenth century found that
younger scientists more readily accepted the oxy­
gen paradigm than their seniors. But on closer
inspection, those who accepted it first were mid­
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
die aged rather than young. Similarly, Hull,
Tessner, and Diamond (1978) found that Dar­
winian theory was accepted slightly more quickly
by young scientists than by older ones. Yet these
ideas were accepted by most English scientists
within the decade after they were published. In
the years after 1869, older scientists pre­
dominated among the few who continued to
resist the theory. Messeri’s (1988) analysis of
contemporary geologists’ responses to the revo­
lutionary ideas associated with plate tectonics is
consistent with the main import o f these earlier
studies. He reports a complex interaction be­
tween age, social position, and early adoption
o f new ideas. Age was indeed related to geolo­
gists’ responses to ideas associated with plate tec­
tonics. But contrary to widespread belief, it was
largely middle-aged and comparatively well-
established scientists who adopted these ideas
while they were still controversial and specula­
tive; younger scientists followed only after the
research potentials o f these ideas had become
clear. Thus age and social position are linked
to the reception of intellectual innovation in
ways that would elude those sociologists who
focus their research interest exclusively on the
cognitive or the social domains of science.
The Growth an d Decline
o f Scientific Specialties
The study of scientific specialties by sociolo­
gists o f science is particularly self-exemplifying.
During the late 1960s and all through the 1970s,
much research focused on processes o f growth
and decline of new specialties, comprising
groups of scientists working on similar problems
and regularly communicating with one
another.53 (For review o f research on specialties
and disciplines, see Chubin, 1976; Lemaine et
al., 1977.) Indeed, the study o f specialties itself
became a sort of specialty in the field. In the
1980s, however, with the shift in research at­
tention to the microsociology of scientific
knowledge, the study of specialties has declined
markedly among sociologists. By then, however,
an impressive array of case studies of specialty
development had appeared. These include the
Ben-David and Collins’s analysis o f the rise of
experimental psychology (1966), Mullins’s
Theories and Theory Groups in American Soci­
ology (1973) and Edge and Mulkay’s Astronomy
Transformed(1976). They were accompanied by
a spate of inquiries using co-citation analysis,
a procedure based on shared citations, devel­
oped by Henry Small (1973), in collaboration
with Belver Griffith et al. (1974), for identify­
5 35
ing the membership and cognitive foci of speci­
alties. But once these initial studies were done,
the next steps were far from clear. The study of
specialties evolved no well-defined “ research
programme” that is, no agreed upon “ paths of
research to avoid” and “ paths o f research to
pursue” (Lakatos, 1970, p. 132). As this illus­
trates, without an agenda or program, research
tends to falter and researchers tend to turn else­
where. Some sociological research on specialties
continues but not at the earlier pace. In marked
contrast, historians of science continue to think
o f specialties and disciplines as key social for­
mations in the growth o f scientific knowledge
(Fye, 1987; Kohler 1982; Thackray et al., 1987;
see Graham, Lepenies, and Weingart, 1983, on
uses o f disciplinary histories).
In the sociology of science, however, the study
o f specialties now shows the symptoms of incip­
ient decay typically found in later stages of
specialty development. Experienced researchers
have turned to other problems, few young re­
cruits have begun to work in the area, and there
is little agreement about problems needing fur­
ther investigation.
Yet the reasons that led sociologists of science
to study the development of specialties in the
first place still appear to be valid, in general,
if not in all specific detail. Specialties have been
identified as the “ building blocks of science”
(Small and Griffith, 1974, pp. 17-18).54 Special­
ty formation is therefore taken as a “ strategic
researdi site” (Merton, 1987) for examining the
connections between the growth of scientific
knowledge and its social organization since new
lines o f inquiry are developed and elaborated
in the social context of specialties. But these
were not the only reasons for thinking specialties
important. It is clear that the number o f invisi­
ble colleges, specialties, and disciplines have
multiplied greatly as scientific knowledge has ex­
panded and that this growing elaborate division
o f scientific labor calls for explanation and
understanding (Price, 1963/1986, chaps. 1 and
6). Empirical evidence, drawn largely but not
entirely from analyses of scientific literatures,
also showed that specialties and invisible colleges
do not live on indefinitely; they emerge, grow
up, mature, and often decline (Crane, 1972;
Goffman, 1966). At any given time, the sciences
comprise a multiplicity of specialties in various
states of development and decay. This fluid
structure is made all the more so by scientists
not remaining permanently wedded to one
specialty but often moving from specialty to
specialty (Gieryn, 1978) and occasionally even
from discipline to discipline (Harmon, 1965).
Thus the population of disciplines and special­
536 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
ties is in flux as is the population o f scientists
who work in them.55 In light of these structural
aspects o f scientific knowledge and its social
organization, systematic attempts to understand
the growth of scientific knowledge must take
boundaries and interactions of specialties into
account.
Research on specialties has focused on four
problems: What leads to their emergence? What
are their patterns of development? Why do cer­
tain specialties decline and die? And what can
be learned, if anything, about specialties and
the structure of science from the procedure of
co-citation analysis? After a brief review research
on these questions, we turn to further new direc­
tions of inquiry.
THE EMERGENCE OF NEW SPECIALTIES
In one of the earliest and still most pene­
trating accounts o f the emergence of new spe­
cialties, Holton notes that specialties arise out of
scientists’ intense competitiveness and interest
in making new discoveries (1962/1972). As he
puts it, “ the growth o f knowledge proceeds by
the escalation o f knowledge—or perhaps rather
of new areas of ignorance—instead of by mere
accumulation” (1962, p. 394). Or, as it has
been formulated in the notion o f * 'specified ig­
norance’ ’ : “ as the history of thought, both great
and small, attests, specified ignorance is often
a first step toward supplanting that ignorance
with knowledge” (Merton, 1957, p. 417; 1987,
pp. 6-10). Thus, says Holton, ‘ ‘the most original
people will transfer. . . to a new area of ig­
norance” and produce an air o f excitement in
it (1962, p. 394). One might say that this is
especially so when interesting problems in the
areas in which they have been working have
begun to be exhausted, much as a lode o f ore
in a mine will eventually thin out as numbers
o f active miners (scientists) work in it. Not sur­
prisingly, the speed with which interesting prob­
lems are exhausted is a function o f the numbers
o f scientists working in them. New specialties
thus branch out from old ones, as scientists
migrate from problem area to problem area. In
doing so, they engage in “ the socially defined
role of the scientist which calls for both the
augmenting of knowledge and the specifying of
ignorance” (Merton, 1987, p. 10).
In accord with Holton’s imagery, Mulkay
(1975) alone and with Gilbert and Woolgar
(1975) proposed a branching model of specialty
development in which scientists migrate from
old areas to new ones, but they emphasize the
special importance of borrowing ideas and tech­
niques that originate outside new specialties.
This model squares well with the evidence, as
Edge and Mulkay show in a detailed review o f
a half dozen studies of specialty development
(Ben-David, 1971; Ben-David and Collins,
1966; Dolby, 1975; Edge and Mulkay, 1976;
Law, 1973; Mullins, 1972). Taken together, the
Holton and the Mulkay-Gilbert-Woolgar
models help account for several pathways taken
by emerging specialties: those that arise from
“ new insights” within fields, such as nuclear
or particle physics, and those that arise from the
transfer o f previously unconnected ideas or tech­
niques, such as molecular biology or astro­
physics. (See Law, 1973, on types of specialties.)
PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT
If new ideas are the foundations o f scientific
specialties and research agendas are critical to
their maintenance, new ideas are not, in and
of themselves, enough. New specialties and dis­
ciplines also require the presence of a social in­
frastructure for research to become institu­
tionalized. The pioneering work by Ben-David
and Collins (1966) on the emergence o f ex­
perimental psychology indicated the need, first,
o f creating a new social role for the practitioners
o f the new specialty and second, for research in
the area to proceed, there must be positions for
them in the academy—or in some other his­
torically determined organizational framework.
That field o f experimental psychology, brought
into being in German universities in the nine­
teenth century, required physiologists wanting
to study mental phenomena to invent a hybrid
role (joining physiology and philosophy) and to
utilize the structure of professorial recruitment
so that they could become candidates for vacant
posts, not in their own field where there were
few openings, but in philosophy, where places
were available. This recurrent pattern suggests
that both new ideas and new structural ar­
rangements are needed for the founding of new
specialties.
Case studies o f the development o f other
specialties (Cole and Zuckerman, 1975; Edge
and Mulkay, 1976; Thackray and Merton, 1972;
Mullins, 1973) also examine the significance of
social arrangements for maintaining both
“ cognitive and professional identities” and dif­
fusing research in new specialties. They vari­
ously make the case for the need to establish in­
stitutional structures for training students, see­
ing to their employment, obtaining support for
research, providing for both formal and infor­
mal communication among workers in the new
field through journals, meetings, and special­
ized scientific societies. These interlocking in­
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
stitutional arrangements do not evolve auto­
matically. They are created, often at great ef­
fort (as in the case of George Sarton and the self-
exemplifying emergence of the history of science
as a university field of study). In conjunction
with the “ cognitive leaders” 56—scientists who
set the research agenda and whose ideas stimu­
late others to work in the new area—organiza­
tional innovators are crucial to the emergence
o f specialties. But there is no question that in
the evaluation system o f science, ideas are
prime. Those credited with being founders of
disciplines and specialties are almost exclusively
cognitive rather than organizational leaders.
Research on specialties has focused principally
on their stages of development.57 Accounts vary;
some have proposed three stages (Mulkay,
Gilbert, and Woolgar, 1975), others, four
(Crane, 1972; Mullins, 1973) but all agreed that
specialties mature in predictable sequence with
intellectual and social development tending to
go together. Thus Crane (1972) observed rates
of communication, interaction, and publication
in the specialties she studied to follow a logistic
curve, this leading her to Kuhnian (1962/1970)
ideas of paradigm development. The early phase
o f slow rise is taken to correspond with the in­
troduction of a new paradigm;58 the later rapid
upswing in growth, with exploration o f the
paradigm and the development of anomalies,
and the final leveling off of the curve, with
paradigm exhaustion. In his analysis o f the
development of theory groups in sociology,
Mullins (1973) also emphasizes the joint evolu­
tion o f social interaction, communication net­
works and the elaboration o f scientific ideas.
Cognitive development is facilitated by the
“ thickening” of communication networks and
leads to their further elaboration.
As Mulkay (1980a, pp. 18-22) observes, mid­
dle stages in the development of specialties in­
volve increasing consensus on problems to be in­
vestigated and the making o f significant con­
tributions that become exemplary for further
research. In this stage, work in specialties comes
to resemble what Kuhn (1962/1970) describes
as “ normal science.” Later, opportunities for
making major contributions decline, recruit­
ment o f the young slows down and, barring the
infusion o f funds on the large scale, as in the
“ War on Cancer” or new potentials for effec­
tive application of knowledge (one need look
only at the burst o f recent activity in genetic
engineering for an example o f such growth),
specialties tend to decline and ultimately to die
out. Should major applications materialize, the
research agenda of the specialty becomes increas­
ingly significant for and influenced by larger
537
societal interests all apart from those internal to
the specialty itself. The modes o f such develop­
ment have been explored by the Starnberg
Group, initially comprising Bohme, van den
Daele, and Krohn, under the title of the
“ Finalization” perspective (Schafer, 1983). In­
vestigators in the philosophy and sociology of
science are coming to assess this line o f inquiry
as a potentially fruitful direction for research,
not alone in the study of specialty development,
but in moving toward a general theory of scien­
tific change.
Understandably, accounts of the developmen­
tal stages of specialties were at first rather
schematic. Little effort was made to examine the
various patterns of the actual emergence of new
fields o f inquiry and their institutionalization,
particularly the variability attributable to the
relationship between new specialties and their
parent disciplines.59 Hagstrom (1965), Griffith
and Mullins (1972), Cole and Zuckerman (1975)
and Edge and Mulkay (1976) have severally
noted, for example, that new specialties do not
uniformly challenge prevailing views in their
parent disciplines. Some are cognitively radical
or rebellious; others, not, the latter being
oriented rather to the study of newly identified
phenomena or to the use of new techniques that
are quite consistent with prevailing theoretical
commitments. Rebellious specialties may suc­
ceed with a flourish, as in the case o f molecular
biology. Or they may split off when the larger
discipline is taken to be incorrigibly resistant,
as in the case of mathematical statistics break­
ing away from mathematics. Or, again, the new
specialty may become largely isolated from the
rest of the discipline, which considers their ideas
“ dangerous or foolish,” as Mullins (1973, p. 24)
suggests for the case of ethnomethodology in
relation to the parent discipline o f sociology.
Whatever their fate, the developmental patterns
o f specialties are much affected by their
cognitive relations with the parent discipline. As
Cole and Zuckerman (1975) have observed, the
speed and success with which specialties are in­
stitutionalized is also affected by their com­
patibility with prevailing university structure.
The specialties that fit into established depart­
ments are more apt to take hold than those re­
quiring structural innovation if they are to find
a home. Structural innovation in universities is
notoriously difficult and slow, and this is
especially so in times of financial stringency.
Edge and Mulkay (1976) also trace out in im­
pressive sociohistorical detail how administrative
arrangements at important centers o f research
foster cognitive developments along certain lines
and not along others.
538 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
THE DECLINE AND DEMISE
OF SPECIALTIES
Are specialties self-terminating? Apparently
so. Early accounts of the development of science
generally focus on the steady accumulation of
scientific knowledge, while modern treatments
stress discontinuities, displacements, and oppor­
tunistic adaptation in scientific growth. In the
case of specialties, as we have seen, some ob­
servers assert that “ population density” can
simply become too great. “ This refers not to the
obvious differences in the absolute numbers of
scientists at work in this or that . . . specialty
[rather it] refers to the numbers at work in rela­
tion to the significant problematics of the field,
some fields are more ‘crowded’ than others in
the sense that many workers are focusing on the
same problems” (Merton and Lewis, 1971, p.
157). After a time, the number of “ interesting
ideas” in a line o f inquiry seems to scientists,
at least, to thin out and the “ most original”
among them seek the easier and more stimu­
lating problems offered by new specialties rather
than to keep struggling with the recalcitrant
ones left over in older areas (Holton, 1962/1972,
pp. 393-394). This account o f problem choice,
emphasizing the diverse cognitive opportunities
offered by various specialties agrees in broad
oudine with Mullins’s (1973) observations about
the later stages o f the theory groups. Ideas that
were for a time exciting and fruitful come to be
routinized, the cognitive concerns o f members
diverge, and gradually the scholars who original­
ly comprised the core of the specialty disperse
and cease to interact at the earlier rate.60
Both Holton and Mullins assume that scien­
tists adopt an opportunistic stance in problem
choice and that old specialties lose out to new
ones in the ongoing competition for their time
and effort. This assumption is fairly consistent
with what scientists say about the criteria they
apply in problem choice (Zuckerman, 1977).
However, in many documented cases, scientists
prefer to avoid head-to-head competition with
large numbers of other investigators and choose
quieter, if less heady, domains o f work to keep
older or new but less fashionable specialties alive
for some time. Max Planck, for example, found
his colleagues’ lack o f interest in his work an
“ outright boon,” and went on to note that ‘ ‘as
the significance o f the concept of entropy had
not yet come to be fully appreciated, nobody
paid any attention to the method adopted by
me, and I could work out my calculations com­
pletely at leisure, with absolute thoroughness,
without fear o f interference or competition.”
Moreover, as Mulkay implies, not all scientists
are equally sensitive or demanding in the busi­
ness of problem choice since “ a major part of
the innovative work [to be done] is completed
before the field has begun to acquire a signifi­
cant portion of its eventual membership” (1975,
p. 197). Specialties decline and die out then in
response to changing cognitive and social op­
portunity structures. In that process, marked
changes occur in foci of attention, both for indi­
vidual scientists and for collectivities of scientists.
CO-CITATION ANALYSIS AND
THE STUDY OF
SCIENTIFIC SPECIALTIES
Various new research procedures have been
developed for comprehensive study of specialties
and complement the traditional case study
method. The technique of co-citation analysis,
developed by Henry Small and Belver Griffith,
is designed to identify specialties or “ nodes”
o f scientific work and the scientists at work in
them. This and related techniques can provide
cognitive maps not just of specialties but also
of disciplines and interdisciplinary areas. Co­
citation analysis earmarks groups of highly cited
papers that are frequently cited together. The
underlying assumption of the procedure holds
that research reports referring to the same papers
to some degree share similar subject matters,
conceptual schemes, and intellectual origins. “ It
is assumed,” Small says (1977, p. 141), “ that
co-citation is a rough measure o f association be­
tween concepts symbolized by highly cited
papers.” (For details of the procedure o f co­
citation analysis, see Small, 1973; Griffith et al.,
1974; Small and Crane, 1979; Small and Grif­
fith, 1974.) These assumptions have proved
reasonable when clusters o f papers generated by
the procedure have been examined, for exam­
ple, on collagen research, colloid chemistry,
nuclear reaction theory—and on scientific
specialties.
When first introduced, the procedure became
the subject of considerable disagreement as
critics argued that it did not in fact provide an
“ objective” technique for identifying special­
ties. It was said to ignore important sociological
aspects o f specialties. Co-citation analysis as­
sumed that aggregates of scientists who cite the
same published work were isomorphic with
groups o f scientists who interact with one
another as members of the same specialty. This,
o f course, ignores the informal relations among
scientists that enter into the development of
scientific ideas (Edge, 1977). Various studies
have been designed to check the findings of co­
citation analysis, with mixed results. Small’s
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
(1977) studies find that scientists’ independent
identification of the most important innovations
and the leading investigators in their specialties
square well with co-citation data. From quite a
different perspective, Mullins, Hargens, Hecht,
and Kick (1977) report that sociometric data
provided by scientists working in two specialties
(Australian Antigen and Reverse Transcriptase),
correspond reasonably well with co-citation data;
that is, co-citation clusters identify meaningful
social groups. They also find that the density
o f social interaction and of mutual awareness
among scientists in the specialties increase after
major discoveries are made and published.
Sullivan, White, and Barboni (1977), however,
report that co-citation data did not pick up cer­
tain events that participants in the history of
Weak Interactions took to be important, indi­
cating noted limits o f the procedure for recon­
structing detailed historical accounts of par­
ticular scientific developments.
Co-citation analysis proves most useful for
identifying nascent, growing, and changing
clusters of ongoing research on given subjects
and the linkages among them (Small, 1986). It
serves to sketch out evolving and fairly com­
prehensive cognitive maps. Obviously, as with
maps of all sorts, these need to be supplemented
by other detailed evidence to round out the
membership of specialties and to reconstruct
the extent, character, and content of the interac­
tions critical to the development o f knowledge.
Small himself has developed fine-grained con­
tent analyses of how scientists actually use the
works they cite. In a series o f important studies,
he has shown that highly cited papers become
“ concept symbols” (1978), shorthand notations
for complex ideas and findings with their sub­
stance being transmitted in this form rather than
in rich detail. The diverse perspectives on co­
citation analysis now seem to have led, in self-
exemplifying style, to a branching of cognitive
interests into bibliometric studies, on one side,
and studies in the sociology of scientific knowl­
edge, on another.
SPECIALTIES AND THE
STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
The study of specialties has left many ques­
tions unanswered. To begin with, are specialties
really a primary unit for analysis of how scien­
tific knowledge develops? If they are, how are
they socially as well as cognitively organized? To
what extent are they integrated by individual
and collective competition for resources and
rewards, and to what extent do their members
share cognitive norms, agreeing on what needs
539
to be studied and how this is to be done? This
leads directly to a third question: If specialties
and disciplines are structures fundamental to the
formation of scientific knowledge, how do they
operate as sources of collegial recognition and
control of access to resources? Finally, how are
these social and cognitive units linked together
to form the larger structures of science?
Specialties have proved to be effective units
for the sociological analysis of certain problems
and rather less for others. Whitley (1978) reports
that many of the scientists he studied were
unaware of specialty networks pertinent to their
work and not particularly interested in them.
This opens up the still largely unexplored varia­
tions in scientists’ orientations toward specialties
in which they work and translations of these into
sociocognitive behavior. Much historical and
sociological evidence suggests that specialties
have been prime audiences for many scientists;
they are the explicit and tacit audiences—the
reference groups—to which they address their
work, just as they are the prime sources of
wherewithal and rewards for that work. Such
evidence comes from investigators of otherwise
differing perspectives on the workings of science
(e.g., Bourdieu, 1975; S. Cole, 1983; Edge and
Mulkay, 1976; Ziman, 1968), all variously sug­
gesting that specialties are significant social and
cognitive formations in science. Knorr-Cetina
takes a somewhat different tack. She suggests
that specialties may be pertinent communities
for understanding communication, career mo­
bility, and antagonistic competition for re­
sources, but they are not the “ units within
which scientific action as observed in the labora­
tory is contextually organized” (1981, p. 69)-
In the laboratory, scientists become involved
with a great variety of others in what she calls,
‘ ‘ resource-relationships, ’ ’ relationships they
need to cultivate in order to get on with their
work. These are “ transscientific,” or as she has
also called them “ transepistemic arenas”
(1982). They are not composed only of those at
work on similar problems, though they may be
included, but of university administrators, in­
stitute personnel in control of resources, officials
in government agencies, editors of journals or
publishers—in short, all varied occupants of
positions scientists need to take into account in
the course o f constructing or “ manufacturing”
knowledge (Knorr-Cetina, 1981, chap. 4).
These observations ring true from the perspec­
tive of those dealing with the day-to-day re­
quirements of getting scientific work done.
Scientists (not excluding sociologists) inevitably
find themselves embedded in a variety of social
networks of which specialties are just one. More­
540 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
over, specialties do not loom large in the day-
to-day research enterprise. All this directs atten­
tion to working relationships beyond specialties
and the connections of these with the produc­
tion of scientific knowledge. None of these need
substitute wholly for specialties in the various
phases of research. As organized for some time
now, prospective scientific work in the form of
research proposals is assessed primarily by peers
drawn from the same specialty or interspecial­
ty, just as it is subjected to peer evaluation when
made public through the operation of socially
organized skepticism.
Just as the social division of labor in the soci­
ety at large has long been a prime focus for
sociological investigation, so—and for much the
same sorts of theoretical reasons—it will proba­
bly be a renewed focus of inquiry in the socio-
cognitive domain of science. Prior research and
reflection direct us to needed further research
and reflection on the structure, operation, and
sociocognitive consequences of the scientific
specialty and related modes of the organization
of scientific knowledge. Attention will, as a con­
sequence, need to be paid to how specialties are
actually organized and how correct our assump­
tions about them are; to what extent members
are mutually aware of one another’s work, how
much they actually agree on what research
should be done and how. Indeed, not much has
been learned about the social organization of
specialties and disciplines since the 1970s. Re­
cent studies by S. Cole (1983), designed to ex­
amine a quite different question, provide a case
in point. He finds high levels of disagreement
at the research frontiers o f the sciences about the
questions requiring research, disagreement
manifested in judgments about which researches
merit financial support—in distinct contrast to
the agreement found about the value of
knowledge of the cores of disciplines. Competi­
tion for scarce resources in support of research,
in turn .amplifies that disagreement. Studies of
this sort are germane to the social organization
o f specialties and disciplines and the nature of
their relationships; they also bear upon the prior
question whether specialties arc a useful unit of
analysis, as well as the question regarding
linkages between specialties as loci for the pro­
duction of knowledge and as crucial units in the
evaluation and reward systems o f science.
Since specialties and disciplines constitute the
prime audiences for scientific contributions and
since much weight in science is given to peer
review, members of these sociocognitive units
confer or withhold recognition for work ac­
complished and resources for work proposed.
Yet the connections between specialties and
disciplines as knowledge-generating formations
and as formations providing for evaluation and
the allocation o f rewards have hardly been in­
vestigated. Whitley (1984) is almost alone in
emphasizing the connections between specialty
and disciplinary control over reputations, their
role in allocating resources and the ways in which
these, in turn, shape the sorts of research that
gets done. Plainly, the evaluation and reward
systems do much to shape the directions, styles,
and pace of the development of knowledge just
as in reverse. But little enough is yet known
about these matters through exacting research.
Several sorts of preliminary steps have been
taken to enlarge our understanding o f the
linkages between specialties and disciplines. As
we have seen, Small and colleagues at the In­
stitute for Scientific Information (ISI) have em­
ployed bibliometric techniques to develop both
maps and histories of selected cognitive areas in
the sciences (1986). For some time, Eugene Gar­
field, founding president of the ISI, and col­
leagues have been developing a far more com­
prehensive and detailed Atlas o f Science. This
undertakes the massive task of harnessing the
vast ISI database of publications and citations
and interpretations of the generated cognitive
maps o f “ research fronts” with the interpretive
skills of scientists expert in these fields. Thus the
Atlas o f Science: Biotechnology and Molecular
Genetics, 1981/82 alone contains well over a
hundred chapters, each dealing with an especial­
ly active research front in those fields (where
“ activity” is initially gauged by the amount of
publication in each sector). These consolidated
quantitative and qualitative mappings o f cur­
rent cognitive areas in the various sciences begin
to provide a hitherto unavailable overview of the
enormously complex divisions and subdivisions
o f research work in the major disciplines of to­
day’s science (Garfield, 1985, pp. 313-325).
This is one sort of beginning.
Another is represented in Donald Campbell’s
(1969) now classic paper on the structure of the
sciences. Viewed up close, specialties are ar­
ranged rather like fish scales with overlapping
areas of expertise. No specialty is entirely auton­
omous, having total control over judgments of
worth and validity in its domain. Instead, each
can be and, to some unknown extent, is
monitored by experts in neighboring areas. This
structure and evaluative practice thus provide for
the exercise o f organized skepticism and serve
to knit together provisionally separate domains
of science. Efforts have also been made to meas­
ure the distance between specialties (Krauze,
1972) and to classify disciplines according to
their interdependence and task uncertainty, in
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
the process providing a comparative framework
for analysis (Whitley, 1984). These various ap­
proaches have not been pulled together, nor
have they been linked to processes o f joint
evaluation, along lines such as those laid out by
Campbell.
The systematic study o f specialties evidently
engages many of the principal sociocognitive
themes in the sociology (and the history) of
science.
The Sociology of
Scientific Knowledge
Sin ce its beginnings, questions regarding the
reciprocal relations o f scientific knowledge and
its sociocultural contexts have been central on
the research agenda o f the sociology o f science.
Central in the sense that it was clear that such
questions had to be addressed, although there
was no well-formulated research program then
for the sociology o f scientific knowledge. Early
studies focused on rates of discovery and inven­
tion (Merton, 1935; Sorokin and Merton, 1935)
and economic and military influences on the foci
of scientific attention; that is, on what scientists
actually studied at the time (Merton, 1938/
1970), Ben-David revived this line o f work with
his own penetrating studies (I960) and those
with Zloczower (Ben-David and Zloczower,
1962) on the connections between university
structure and the pace of discovery in the medi­
cal sciences in the nineteenth century and of the
impact o f culture on the emergence o f the em­
piricist scientific tradition and the modem scien­
tific role (Ben-David, 1971).
Studies in the sociology of scientific knowl­
edge now divide into two streams: those em­
phasizing social influences on the structure and
development o f scientific knowledge and those
focusing on the social construction of knowledge
itself. The former can be described as “ struc­
tural” and the latter as “ constructionist”
studies, these covering a great variety of in­
quiries, including analyses employing relativist
and constructivist perspectives, those treating
the impact of social and professional “ in­
terests,” and discourse and text analysis. The
two streams o f work differ, as we shall see, not
only in their foci o f theoretical and research at­
tention but also in the assumptions practitioners
make about the nature o f scientific knowledge
and the extent o f its social determination. Prac­
titioners in both streams, however, agree that
scientific knowledge is variously influenced by
the sociocultural contexts in which it develops
541
and that the central issues lie in determining just
what those influences are, which aspects of
knowledge are affected by them, and the proc­
esses through which such influences occur.
STRUCTURAL STUDIES IN THE
SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Recent studies focusing on the structure of
scientific knowledge, its growth, directions, and
pace of development have examined a variety
of problems: processes o f theory change in the
sciences and the extent to which they accord
with models proposed by Kuhn, Lakatos, and
Popper (S. Cole, 1975; Crane, 1980; Koester,
Sullivan, and White, 1982; Messeri, 1988;
Mullins, 1975; Nadel, 1980, 1981), forms of
discontinuity in scientific development, in­
cluding resistance to scientific innovation (Aron­
son, 1986; Barber, 1961; S. Cole, 1970; Stent,
1972), and the sociocultural and cognitive
sources o f neglect o f certain problems and areas
of investigation (Murray, 1986-1987; Zucker­
man and Lederberg, 1986); the cognitive struc­
ture of the sciences, including efforts to measure
the extent o f consensus, theoretical codification,
and their effects (Cole, Cole, and Dietrich,
1978; Hargens, 1988; Zuckerman and Merton,
1973; see also Piaget’s distinctive use o f this
concept, 1977); the comparative growth rates of
knowledge in various sciences and their connec­
tion, for example, to research funding (see
Cozzens, 1986); and most of all, the complex
body of research reviewed earlier on the rise and
decline o f scientific specialties. As noted
previously, the intercorrelations between the
social and cognitive aspects o f science are par­
ticularly evident in the development o f these
important formations in science, but the exact
nature o f these correlations have not been
worked out.
This swift inventory o f the sorts of studies be­
ing done in the structuralist mode hints at the
underlying assumptions many researchers make
about scientific knowledge and the respects in
which it may be influenced by social and cul­
tural processes. They accept the view that sci­
ence's pace, directions, modes of change, and
structure are amenable to social influences but
“ they stop . . . short,” as Ben-David puts it, o f
attributing to social conditions the determina­
tion o f the conceptual and logical structure of
scientific arguments. The possibility of the deri­
vation of scientific ideas from social conditions
in individual cases [is] admitted, but these [are]
not regarded as sociologically . . . instructive”
(1981, p. 43). Put another way, rationality and
542 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
rules of empirical evidence are regarded as
primarily determining scientists’ acceptance or
rejection of truth claims, although, on occasion,
nonrational social influences may reinforce that
acceptance.61 As we shall see, sociologists work­
ing on the developing structure of knowledge
differ from social constructionists in other
respects: assessments of the extent to which ex­
ternal realities constrain scientific observation,
whether there are important differences between
science, on the one hand, and magic and
ideology, on the other; the extent to which truth
claims in science are not only local but univer­
sal; and on an array of specific matters such as
the possibility of replication in science and the
significance o f the predictive power of scientific
theories in the matter of theory choice. These
perspectives will be examined in a later part of
the chapter. Here, however, we take up the
phenom enon o f m ultiple independent
discoveries in science and its implications for a
theory of discovery, as a case in point of struc­
tural studies in the sociology o f scientific
knowledge.
Theories o f Discovery:
M ultiple Independent Discoveries
as a Strategic Research Site
The history of science is crowded with epi­
sodes of much the same discoveries being made
independently and often at the same time by
two or more scientists. For just one conspicuous
example, the foundations for the calculus were
laid in the years 1665-1666 by the epoch-making
man of science, Isaac Newton, and simultane­
ously and independently by the epoch-making
mathematician, G. W. Leibniz. Multiple dis­
coveries (or “ multiples” as they are called)62 are
not confined to great discoveries, nor to any par­
ticular science, nor to any particular period.63
Scientists see them not as rare curiosities but as
predictable facts of the scientific life. Multiple
discoveries also provide “ strategic research sites”
for important problems in the sociology of
science (Merton, 1963/1973, pp. 371-382;
1987):
— Are scientific discoveries products of in­
dividual talent and genius or are they culturally
determined, bound to be made, if not by one
scientist then by another because the “ time is
ripe” ?
— Why are multiple discoveries a focus of
anxiety for scientists and also often the focus of
fierce rivalry and competition? And,
— What light do they shed on the view that
scientific discoveries are socially constructed, not
depictions of an external reality, but contextu­
ally determined and the outcomes of negotia­
tion between investigators in the laboratory?64
Such questions tie in, as we have seen with
both diverse and shared perspectives among
sociologists of science about the nature of scien­
tific knowledge, scientific discovery, and the
patterned motives of research scientists.
THE CONCEPT OF MULTIPLES
Whether two or more discoveries iare multi­
ples depends, of course, on the criteria taken
to qualify them as such. The most extreme set
of criteria would require total identity: that their
content be precisely the same, that they should
have been achieved in precisely the same way
and at the very same time, that their conse­
quences for subsequent scientific development
be the same, that their discoverers not have had
the least inkling o f one another’s work and that
the discoveries convey the identical “ central
message.” 65 To adopt such an extreme concept
means, o f course, that few if any discoveries can
qualify as multiples.
A less demanding but still quite astringent
set of criteria was instructively employed by
Thomas Kuhn, in his subtle analysis o f the
discovery of the conservation o f energy.66 Be­
tween 1842 and 1847 this fundamental princi­
ple was independently hypothesized by a dozen
scientists who worked on one or another aspect
o f the problem. Kuhn indicates that no two of
these contributions were precisely the same—
nor were they arrived at in the same way, nor
did they say the same things at the dates con­
ventionally assigned, nor were the scientists
totally ignorant of the other’s work. Yet, even
in this severely exacting case study, Kuhn finds
that, despite the distinct routes taken by this
array of scientists, there were significant overlaps
of background knowledge, available “ conver­
sion processes,” deep dispositions “ to see a
single indestructible force at the root of all
natural phenomena,” and possibly a variously
shared Naturphilosophie (1959 in 1977). By his
reckoning, then, even though the dozen con­
tributions were not identical, their occurrence
was related to cognitive and sociocultural con­
texts. He concludes the case study with an im­
plicitly general question that directs us to the
puzzle and theoretical significance of multiples:
“ Why, in the years 1830-50, did so many of the
experiments and concepts required for a full
statement o f energy lie so close to the surface
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
of scientific consciousness?” (1977, p. 104). In
short, why the convergence of intellectual in­
terest and the drawing upon a common
cognitive base?
Scientists themselves do not adopt the ex­
treme criteria of total identity in defining and
experiencing discoveries as multiples. Over the
centuries, many scientists have readily acknowl­
edged that their own discoveries were multiples,
often doing so against their own interests. This
they have done in the most emphatic possible
manner by entering into strenuous disputes to
establish that their discovery was temporally
prior to the same discovery by another scientist.
(Recent cases abound, though possibly the best
known of such disputes—some would say the
most notorious of them—is the one involving
the calculus, with the rival advocates o f Newton
and Leibniz engaging in agitated attacks on one
another.) In short, by seeking to establish their
priority, scientists define their discoveries as the
same, not as different from others. In the ac­
tual practice of science, independent multiple
discoveries need not be identical in every respect
in order to raise the question of how they came
to be, as well as the further question o f their
implications for an understanding o f how scien­
tific knowledge develops. It is enough that they
be defined as functionally equivalent, by knowl­
edgeable scientists o f the time and later, and,
not least, by the discoverers themselves. But this
still leaves open the question of the frequency
of multiples.
HOW OFTEN DO MULTIPLES OCCUR?
Often, many think.67 Indeed, Merton claims
that they are not only frequent but ubiquitous.
‘ ‘All scientific discoveries are in principle multi­
ples” (italics mine) he writes, ‘ ‘including those
that on the surface appear to be singletons”
(1961/1973, pp. 356ff). This “ extravagant”
and apparently “ incorrigible” hypothesis, as
Merton characterizes it, is actually held much
o f the time by scientists as they work to achieve
priority before others get to the same discovery.
There is varied evidence for this principled
hypothesis. First, once the historical record is
known, discoveries that for a time were taken
to be singletons turn out to be rediscoveries of
previous work that was unpublished or not
widely known.68 Second, scientists often discon­
tinue a line o f research once they learn that
others have already published the same work or
are about to do so. Third, though forestalled,
some scientists nevertheless publish their orig­
inal work, acknowledging that others have got
into print just before them. Fourth, potential
543
multiples have been transformed into single­
tons, as scientists join forces to work on the same
or converging problems. And most indicative,
as we have noted, scientists engaged in research
are evidently convinced that multiples are likely
since they act in accord with that belief. The
‘ ‘race for priority’ ’ is a familiar phenomenon in
science, as dramatically described by the biolo­
gist James D. Watson, in his widely read account
o f the discovery of the structure of DNA, The
Double Helix (1968).
Behavior designed to ensure recognition for
priority is also far from new. In the seventeenth
century, for example, newly institutionalized ar­
rangements emerged for British scientists not yet
ready to announce their work publicly to deposit
sealed and dated discovery accounts with the
Royal Society o f London for later use should
their priority be contested. A most modem ver­
sion of the same pattern involves use of a pro­
cedure, based on graph theory, by which mathe­
maticians can demonstrate having achieved a
full proof o f a mathematical theorem without
actually providing that proof at the time (Robin­
son, 1986). Such arrangements designed to pro­
vide evidence o f priority signal that scientists
have been and continue to be concerned about
matters of ensuring proper credit in light of
possible multiple discoveries.
Empirical studies o f American and British
scientists indicate that such concerns are not
groundless. Hagstrom (1965) found that 63%
o f a large sample of U.S. academic scientists
report having had others anticipate their work
at least once in their careers. Gaston’s (1978)
research on British high-energy physicists found
much the same, with 64% of these scientists say­
ing they have been anticipated. This suggests
that actual and potential multiple discoveries are
commonplace, enough so to be a predictable
pattern in scientific discovery. But there are no
bases for estimating the proportions of dis­
coveries that are multiples in various fields,
times, and places.
WHAT KINDS OF DISCOVERIES
ARE APT TO BE MULTIPLES?
The Hagstrom (1965) and Gaston (1978)
studies suggest that scientists of every kind, not
just eminent ones, find themselves involved in
multiple or near-multiples. Practically all con­
tributions to science are, of course, fairly rou­
tine—what Kuhn called “ normal science” —
with revolutionary or path-breaking discoveries
being exceedingly rare. We should therefore ex­
pect far larger numbers, if not higher rates, of
multiples in the usual run of scientific work. Yet
544 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
the historical evidence may seem to suggest
otherwise, giving the impression that the funda­
mental discoveries are especially apt to be mul­
tiples. That impression is, of course, an illusion.
Historical research tends to focus on important
discoveries and incidentally take note o f multi­
ples among them. There are reasons to suppose
that multiples may actually occur less often
among truly path-breaking contributions than
among routine ones. Presumably, the most
radical innovations more often involve a focus
on problems not widely identified by the perti­
nent community as soluble and significant and
therefore are not at the focus o f work o f com­
paratively large numbers o f investigators. The
more radical an idea or the more remote a line
of scientific investigation is from the consensus
in the field, the fewer are likely to work on it
and to draw upon a shared knowledge base. In
contrast, new but not path-breaking contribu­
tions arise direcdy from the consensus, from the
paradigm, exemplars, or research program, as
Kuhn (1962/1970) and Lakatos (1970) would
put it. This should therefore give rise to a higher
rate, not alone a larger number of multiples
among this class o f contributions.
A collective focus on the same scientific prob­
lems—whatever the source o f that focus—pre­
sumably increases the probability o f indepen­
dent solutions to them. Given scientists’ institu­
tionally reinforced concern with gaining recogni­
tion for their work, it is not surprising that
savage fights about priority have erupted over
multiple discoveries, both great and small (Mer­
ton 1957/ 1973e). All the claimants “ know”
that they have made the discovery on their own.
Yet they must share the recognition they feel
they alone deserve (see Cohen, 1974, for an ac­
count of Newton’s priority fights, and Cozzens,
1985, for a contemporary case). Even mild and
generous scientists have become fiercely com­
petitive in such circumstances. The renewed
cognitive point o f such conflicts is that working
research scientists do repeatedly identify dis­
coveries as multiples.
WHY DO MULTIPLE DISCOVERIES
OCCUR?: THEORIES OF
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
At the outset I noted that multiples have been
taken as prime evidence for the cultural deter­
mination of discovery. Once the main elements
of a discovery are available in the body of
knowledge and there is a collective focus of
research attention, discoveries become are said
to become “ inevitable,” if not by one scientist
than by another (Kroeber, 1917; Merton,
1961/ 1973f; Ogburn and Thomas, 1922). This
notion has long been assumed to oppose the one
that discoveries are the product of individual
genius. A quite different theory holds that the
phenomenon o f multiple discoveries tells
nothing about the sources o f discovery. Derek
Price (1963/1986) and Dean Keith Simonton
(1978, 1979, 1987) argue that multiple
discoveries are chance events. According to pro­
babilities, they say, most discoveries should be
the work of a single scientist, with successively
larger sets o f multiples declining in frequency,
this in accord with a Poisson or chance distribu­
tion. Using vivid imagery, Price (1963/1986,
pp. 60-61) asks us to imagine that discoveries
are like apples on a tree. If a certain number
o f blind men (that is, scientists) reached up at
random for those apples, the largest number
would not be picked at all, the next largest
would be picked by one, fewer by two, fewer
still by three, and so on. Indeed, Price
(1963/1986) found that the Merton-Barber sam­
ple of multiples approximates a Poisson distribu­
tion as did Simonton (1978) for his large array
of multiples over four centuries. Simon con­
cludes that multiples need not mean that
discoveries are largely culturally determined.
These theories have been subjected to critical
examination and empirical research. To begin
with, the evidence for the cultural theory seems
is based mainly on the existence of multiple
discoveries and their comparative frequency.
The very existence of multiples suggests that
discovery is not determined only by individual
genius. Evidence for the chance theory is more
shaky than for the other two. Apart from the
questionable imagery that discoveries exist in
nature ready to be plucked like apples from a
tree, the fact that multiples follow a Poisson dis­
tribution need not imply that they are chance
events, as Brannigan and Wanner (1983, p. 137)
have noted. They also suggest that if the cultural
theory is correct, the size of multiple sets (i.e.,
the number of scientists who have been respon­
sible for given multiples) should be larger in the
modern period with its exponentially increased
number o f scientists than earlier. Moreover, the
rate o f multiples ought to fluctuate and differ
among disciplines and specialties. By contrast,
if chance brought them about, they should be
approximately constant. Drawing on Simon-
ton’s list o f multiples, Brannigan and Wanner
examine these two hypotheses derived from the
cultural theory, and find support for the cultural
theory. They also propose a third hypothesis:
that the frequency of multiples and their timing
are affected by the efficiency of the communica­
tion system of science. The more efficient the
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
communication of scientific knowledge, the
shorter the interval between the announcements
of the first and the “ last” discoveries in sets of
multiples and the smaller the number of in­
dependent codiscoverers involved because other
potential discoverers will have heard about the
discovery and stopped work on it, just as the
original cultural theory assumed in its concept
of “ forestalled” multiples. The data also sup­
port this hypothesis. In response, Simonton
(1987) has argued that the same data and in­
dependent analyses of the Merton and the
Ogburn-Thomas data show no evidence for a
negative “ contagion” effect that would be re­
quired if the communication hypothesis were
correct. The lively controversy about the validity
of the three theories and their implications con­
tinues. Although the weight of evidence sup­
ports the theory of sociocultural influences on
scientific discovery, there is no agreement yet
on what multiples tell us about how scientific
knowledge develops.
THE ROLE OF GENIUS IN
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
The various theories all seem to m in im ize the
role o f individual talent or genius in scientific
discovery. At the extreme, the cultural hypoth­
esis suggests that discoveries are inevitable and
that particular discoverers are expendable. In­
deed, as I have indicated, the explanations of
genius and of culture have long been opposed
to one another. But Robert Merton argues that
this is a false opposition. The two can be con­
solidated into a single “ sociological theory of
genius in science.” “ In this enlarged concep­
tion, scientists of genius are precisely those
whose work in the end would be eventually re­
discovered” (1961/ 1973f, pp. 366ff). The idea
o f redundancy of discovery is turned on its head
here and made a confirmation rather than refu­
tation o f the importance of scientific genius.
This hypothesis holds that the greater the scien­
tists, the more discoveries they have made al­
together, and the more often they are also in­
volved in multiple discoveries. They have them­
selves contributed as much to knowledge as the
numbers o f scientists with whom they have
shared multiples. Rather than debasing the role
o f talent or genius in science, this composite
theory gives it great weight. It also suggests that
genius or talent may involve greater percep­
tiveness of the cultural components of discovery.
It is not only that genius often sees things that
others do not but that it sees more o f them and
more quickly. Merton goes on to note that near­
545
ly every important scientist has been involved
in many multiple discoveries—Newton, as we
have seen, Hooke, Lavoisier, Darwin, Faraday,
Kelvin, and Freud are some among the many.
With Elinor Barber, Merton studied 400 of
Kelvin’s 661 scientific communications, finding
him to be involved in 32 multiple discoveries
with an aggregate of 30 different scientists,
many o f them also scientists of stature (Merton,
196l/1973f, p. 367). Much the same pattern
holds among the talented scientists designated
as Nobel prizewinners. At least 11 Nobel prizes
have been awarded for multiple discoveries.
Moreover, 70 of 264 laureates whose work was
studied intensively were found to have been in­
volved in multiple discoveries with other
Nobelists, besides those with whom they shared
prizes, for the most part before any of them had
won the award (Zuckerman, 1977). The
laureates, in short, are outstanding men and
women scientists o f many multiples, typically
shared in turn with other outstanding scientists.
What then do multiple discoveries say about
the nature o f scientific discovery? First, that the
imagery o f discovery and of discoverers might
well be recast. Although each discoverer has the
psychological experience of having a creative in­
sight, this does not discount the significance of
the “ culture base” in focusing attention on cer­
tain problems and providing the necessary con­
cepts and tools needed for solution. Second, that
major scientists not only make unique contribu­
tions but are often engaged in making the same
discoveries as others. Third, that it is not yet
clear whether the cultural, chance, or com­
munication theory of multiples is preferable or,
indeed, that they are in thoroughgoing opposi­
tion. However, the nonuniform distribution of
multiples across disciplines, types of discoveries,
and across time makes an exclusive chance
theory less persuasive than the others. Fourth,
if we shift our attention from the sources of
multiples to their consequences, we note that
repeated or multiple discoveries are apt to elicit
repeated or enlarged attention. As a result, the
history o f science would not have been the same
if a given discovery was a multiple or a ‘ ‘single­
ton. ’ ’ The focusing of scientific attention on the
subject and findings of a multiple discovery may
reinforce its cognitive effects in ways not yet
determined. And, of course, the occurrence of
multiples provides occasions for periodic and
sometimes intense disputes over priority. In such
cases, social conflict derives from cognitive de­
velopments and the institutional value placed
on originality—still another demonstration of
the interconnections between the cognitive and
social domains o f science.
546 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTION OF
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Do multiple discoveries have any implications
for the conception that scientific knowledge is
socially constructed? As I have noted, they do,
but not for each and every one of the wide range
of views usually given the collective label of con­
structionism. The occurrence o f multiple in­
dependent discoveries would seem to create
analytical and theoretical problems mainly for
those who hold that scientific knowledge is
shaped by the specific local context in which it
is created. If scientific inquiry is “ locally situated
[and] occasioned,” that is, “ situationally con­
tingent” as Knorr-Cetina (1983b, pp. 124ff) has
put it, it seems unlikely that scientists working
in quite different locations would arrive at the
same discovery if this were little more than the
result of local events peculiar to this or that
laboratory. Evidently, conceptual schemes and
the phenomena under theoretically selective ex­
amination transcend these idiosyncratic contexts.
There are, of course, ancillary hypotheses
designed to counter the import of this observa­
tion. It might be argued, for example, that
scientists involved in multiples have “ simply”
shaped their independent discovery accounts in
the same of similar culturally prescribed molds.
Or, as Brannigan (1981) suggests, two or more
independent discoveries are not actually multi­
ples but a simply defined as such.70 Plainly, such
hypotheses that may “ save” the theory require
their own share of systematic investigation. All
this raises the question of how it is that certain
discoveries come to be defined as substantially
or functionally the same even though their
discoverers have worked in quite different local
contexts and at times with variant theoretical
commitments? Do the phenomena being
studied exercise no significant constraint toward
convergent observations? And how does it hap­
pen that scientists will themselves declare that
some o f their own culturally prized contribu­
tions have also been made independently by
others while identifying other contributions as
unique rather than duplicated? The phenomena
of multiple discoveries raise consequential ques­
tions and opportunities for investigation that
bears on current sociological theories of scien­
tific knowledge.
The conception that multiples arise from
shared ideas of what the scientific community
takes to be credible is not far removed from the
notion that discoveries are in significant degree
culturally determined. But this still does not ex­
plain cases o f long delayed rediscoveries or an­
ticipations by scientists working in vasdy differ­
ent historical and social contexts. Close analysis
of instances claimed to be multiple discoveries
will be needed to lay out the respects in which
they are authentic multiples, or actually unique
and only defined after the fact as similar in terms
o f a shared cognitive structure, or unique but
made to look similar in response to a common
cognitive structure. Anticipations and redis­
coveries by scientists widely separated in time,
place, and community take on a special signifi­
cance for this theoretical purpose.
Thus it is that multiple discoveries turn out
to be far more than esoteric or exotic episodes
in the history o f science; they are full of implica­
tions for an evolving sociology of scientific
knowledge.
Constructionist Studies in the
Sociology o f Scientific Knowledge
Constructionist studies are not all of a con­
ceptual piece;71 the problems they address dif­
fer, as do their methods and their theoretical
and epistemological orientations. Yet most ex­
emplify the view that “ the project of the soci­
ology o f scientific knowledge [is] to work out
in what sense and to what degree we can speak
coherently o f knowledge as being rooted in
social life” (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay, 1983, p.
6). Put another way, the sociology of scientific
knowledge “ is concerned . . . with what comes
to count as scientific knowledge and how it
comes to count” (Collins, 1983b, p. 267).72
Social constructionism calls into question the ra­
tionalist and objectivist accounts of science,
which hold that logic and evidence are prime
determinants o f scientific validity and of scien­
tists’ theory choice.
On the face o f it, constructionism, with its
focus on the social construction o f the content
of scientific knowledge, appears quite different
from the program examining the structure and
development of knowledge. Yet there are af­
finities between the two. Affinities, particularly,
between constructionism and structural studies
o f discontinuities in the development of scien­
tific knowledge, of the sociocultural sources of
resistance to scientific innovation and the neglect
o f certain problems and areas o f investigation.
The two streams o f work in the sociology of
scientific knowledge also share a common in­
terest in how the evaluation system in science,
variously construed, affects what comes to count
as knowledge and how it does so. As we shall
see, such affinities may provide a bridge bet­
ween the two sorts o f research that are often
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
viewed as proceeding on not only different but
wholly unrelated tracks (Collins, 1982, p. 300;
Knorr-Cetina, 1982a, p. 321).
Four variants o f constructionist studies of
scientific knowledge have evolved since the
papers introducing this perspective were pub­
lished in the late 1960s and early 1970s (See Col­
lins’s 1983 review). These are best characterized
by the terms used by the analysts themselves:
“ relativism,” “ the interests model,” “ construc­
tivism,” and “ discourse analysis.”
Relativist studies are so named because they
adopt the philosophical position that “ assumes
neither fixed points in the physical world nor
a fixed realm of logic that would compel agree­
ments between unbiased observers or thinkers
from radically different cultures. Neither Nature
nor Rationality is taken to be a self-evident
universal o f human culture” (Collins, 1981, p.
267). They begin with the assumption that logic
and evidence play little or no part in the con­
struction, transmission, and assessment of
knowledge and that these processes are entirely
social, or almost so. As a consequence of that
assumption, two principal problems are taken
as central: how debates in science are closed and
how scientists decide on validity even though
‘ ‘formal algorithms’ ’ (methods of control and
performance of experiments and their replica­
tion) fail to explain the outcomes (or “ pas­
sages” ) o f research (Collins, 1983, p. 273).
The philosophical and conceptual under­
pinnings of inquiries using the interests model
are closely allied to those of relativist studies.
However, the former emphasize the effects of
scientists’ social, political, religious, and profes­
sional interests, that is, the scientists’ concerns
about maintaining their standing among their
colleagues, on the content of knowledge—ob­
servations, interpretations, and theoretical pref­
erences and the ways that these in turn affect
the outcomes of controversy. Research on in­
terests continues the long tradition in the soci­
ology o f knowledge o f focusing on the social
determination of knowledge, while rejecting the
Mannheimian view that scientific knowledge is
exempt from social determination. Some, like
Restivo, call for a “ critical” sociology o f scien­
tific knowledge that would evaluate its social
role (Restivo and Laughlin 1987, p. 488), while
others, like Barnes and Shapin (1979, p. 10),
do not adopt a normative stance on the social
roots o f scientific knowledge or its social conse­
quences. Much, though not all, research in this
genre has been historical, and, indeed, it is now
often labeled the historical sociology o f scien­
tific knowledge.74
547
Constructivist studies focus on contemporary
scientific practice, the “ production” of knowl­
edge in the laboratory. Laboratory studies,
which draw mainly on ethnographic procedures,
emphasize the “ indexical and contextually con­
tingent properties” of scientific research. In­
deed, constructivism “ maintains that scientific
inquiry may be better understood as a process
in which the world is constructed [in the
laboratory] rather than depicted.” Findings
from these studies also challenge the distinction
between the social and technical aspects of
science (Knorr-Cetina, 1983a, p. 155). And last,
Discourse and TextAnalysis are two separate
but related kinds of inquiries. The former begins
with the observation that different scientists’ ac­
counts of the same event are highly variable and
context dependent. “ The central feature distin­
guishing discourse analysis from previous ap­
proaches to the sociology of science is that . . .
it treats participants’ discourse as a topic instead
of a resource. ’ ’ Thus sociologists cannot use what
scientists say, at least for the time being, as
evidence for what science is ‘ ‘really like’ ’ ; rather,
attention must shift to “ the methodologically
prior question, ‘How are scientists’ accounts of
action and belief socially generated?’ ” (Gilbert
and Mulkay, 1984, pp. 13-14). Discourse analy­
sis is related to studies of scientists’ writing and
the texts they produce—these including Latour
and Woolgar’s portrayal of “ laboratory activity
as the organization of persuasion through
literary inscription” (1979, p- 88), Knorr-
Cetina’s (1981) close analysis of the writing of
scientific papers as a process of “ conversion”
from the situationally contingent to the nonlocal
and universal; and Bazerman’s wide-ranging
studies o f the emergence and evolution of
literary forms in science, and how these, like
discourse, are context dependent (1984,1985).
These four types of work, now defined as con­
structionist, draw on diverse intellectual ante­
cedents: relativist perspectives in anthropology,
Thomas Kuhn’s enormously influential ideas
(1962/1970),75 and the continuing, if not always
respectable, interest in “ externalist” explana­
tions in the history of science. They also draw
on antirationalist accounts in philosophy, gen­
erally, and in the philosophy of science,
particularly.
Indeed, social constructionists take two im­
portant philosophical precepts as warrant for
their approach to the sociology of scientific
knowledge. First is the idea that facts are theory
laden, that what we take to be evidence is
shaped by our theories and their constituent
548 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
concepts, other related conceptual schemes, and
by our ideas about observation and measure-
m ent-a view often attributed to Kuhn and
Feyerabend but o f course older and not neces­
sarily associated with a strictly relativist perspec­
tive. The second is that scientific theories are
underdetermined by evidence (generally called
the Duhem-Quine thesis, but sometimes the
Duhem-Quine-Hesse thesis).76 Many theories,
it is said, can fit the same facts or, put another
way, empirical evidence does not provide firm
grounds for accepting or rejecting theories. If
theories cannot be rejected or accepted on the
grounds of the evidence brought to bear on
them, then scientists have a good deal of leeway
in theory choice. For social constructionists, this
means that a variety of nonlogical and possibly
social influences, including the process o f social
negotiation, affect the choices scientists make.
The constructionists’ views are not, as noted,
universally shared by sociologists of scientific
knowledge now,77 nor were they when construc­
tionists began work in the early 1970s. Social
constructionism developed in a intellectual con­
text in which social influences were thought not
to affect the content of scientific knowledge, but
instead were confined to scientists’ choice of
problems, ideas they had about how problems
might be solved, and their commitment to ideas
that already had evidentiary support. Joseph
Ben-David has been a vigorous supporter o f the
limits on the social conditioning of scientific
knowledge.
It can be concluded, . . . that although
ideological bias (socially determined or not)
might have played some role in the blind
alleys entered by science, the philosophical
assumptions that had become part of the
living tradition of science were selected by
scientists from the array of competing
philosophies for their usefulness in the solu-
tion-of specific scientific problems and not
for any socially determined perspective or
motive.. . . Certainly political and economic
pressures have directed the attention of
scientists to certain important practical prob­
lems, but the effect has been much more
limited than is usually believed.. . .[Indeed
the possibilities for either an interactiona
or institutional sociology of the conccptua
and theoretical contents of science are ex­
tremely limited [1971, pp. 11-12, 13-14].
Nonetheless, by the early 1970s, a number
of programmatic papers advocating the con­
structionist and relativist perspectives had ap­
peared (See Collins’s 1983 review). One of the
most forceful was David Bloor’s “ Strong Pro­
gramme in the Sociology of Science” (1976).,
Bloor, an Englishman trained in philosophy and
mathematics, proposed that “ all knowledge,
whether it be in the empirical sciences or even
in mathematics, should be treated through and
through, as material for [sociological] investiga­
tion” (Bloor, 1976, p. 1). Such investigations
should adhere to four tenets: they should be
“ caused' (they should be concerned with con­
ditions that bring about knowledge); they
should be “ impartial with respect to truth and
falsity, rationality or irrationality . . . Both sides
of these will require explanation;” they should
be “ symmetrical,” the same sorts o f causes
would “ explain true and false beliefs” and
“ [they] would be reflexive. In principle, pat­
terns o f explanation would have to be applicable
to sociology itself’ (1976, pp. 4-5; italics mine).
[See the philosopher Mary Hesse’s acute analysis
o f the strong program (1984).]
These tenets o f ‘ ‘the strong programme’ ’ ex­
press, in a general way, the views o f many who
work in the constructivist tradition. They also
share three other commitments: the need, first,
to treat the technical content o f science and
research practices of scientists; second, to do
detailed empirical investigations, almost always
on the microscopic rather than macroscopic
level, and, third, to examine how scientists do
what they do rather than why, as Knorr-Cetina
and Mulkay (1983, pp. 7-9) put it. This con­
cern with description rather than explanation,
they note, means that some investigators, par­
ticularly ethnomethodologists (for example,
Lynch, Livingston, and Garfinkel, 1983) have
self-consciously refrained from theorizing about
scientists' purposes and motives although
others, such as Knorr-Cetina, have not. Beyond
these general commitments, the problems con­
structionists study, their methods of research,
and their conclusions differ and merit separate
consideration.
RELATIVIST STUDIES
Had history been otherwise, Ludwik Fleck
might well have been a leading pioneer of
relativist studies in the sociology of scientific
knowledge. But history was otherwise. Com­
paratively unknown during his lifetime, Fleck,
a Polish physician and microbiologist, was a
highly original and perceptive observer of
science. His Genesis and Development o f a
Scientific Fact, published first in 1935, was prac­
tically unobtainable until it was translated and
republished in 1979; thus it did not contribute
to the emergence o f constructionist studies in
the early seventies. Fleck’s detailed case study
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE 549

of changes in ideas about syphilis and its causes, (Collins, 1981, p. 3). And last, the relativist
both within the scientific community and the program tries to show that the same scientific
wider culture, traces how the disease came to methods when applied in different circum­
be successively defined by the increasingly stances will produce different outcomes.
reliable outcomes of tests for the Wassermann
reaction. He proposes that scientists’ observa­ In one set of social circumstances “ correct
tions and their definitions of ‘ ‘facts’ ’ are shaped scientific method” applied to a problem
by the “ thought collectives,’ ’ or cognitive com­ would precipitate resultp whereas in another
munities, o f which they are members, and by set of social circumstances “ correct scientific
the “ thought styles” or assumptions shared in method” applied to the same problem
would precipitate result q, where perhaps,
these thought collectives. These ideas presage,
q implies not-p [Collins, 1982, p. 302,
o f course, Kuhn’s analysis o f scientific com­ originally in 1981].
munities and the paradigms to which they
subscribe.78
Fleck’s insistence on scientific knowledge as Empirical studies in the relativist tradition
socially and culturally conditioned is congenial have examined the production, transmission,
to relativist thinkers. Yet his notion of ‘ ‘passive’ ’ and assessment of knowledge claims in physics,
connections in knowledge prevent him from be­ mathematics, and biology, emphasizing the
ing a thoroughgoing relativist who sees scien­ controversial but also treating the uncontrover-
tific findings exclusively as social constructions. sial: TEA lasers, gravity waves (Collins, 1974,
Passive connections in knowledge, as opposed 1975); solar neutrinos (Pinch, 1977,1981); the
to active connections, which are socially con­ J phenomenon (Wynne, 1976); magnetic
structed, reflect objective constraints in nature; monopoles (Pickering, 1981); experimental tests
once certain assumptions are accepted by a o f quantum mechanics (Harvey, 1981); number
thought collective,79 reality will be observed in theory in mathematics (Bloor, 1976); and learn­
a particular fashion. Fleck’s work is still new and ing in planaria (Travis, 1981). Although studies
so rich and varied, so allusive and imaginative, of marginal science have also been undertaken,
that his influence cannot yet be assessed. While the primary strategy has been to select cases in
he appears to be a precursor of relativism, his the “ hard sciences” in order provide an a for­
ideas about the role of error in science, scien­ tiori demonstration of the social construction of
tists’ efforts to make observations increasingly knowledge. This strategy makes sense in terms'
reproducible, and thought-styles and thought- of the interest relativists have in persuading
collectives have relevance also for students of the others that knowledge is socially constructed
structure and development o f knowledge (see even in the sciences where that seems least likely,
Cohen and Schnelle, 1985). but, given relativists’ stated views about knowl­
Although many social constructionists adopt edge as simply being socially constructed, it
some variant of the relativist perspective, we seems odd to have them pay such careful atten­
focus here on those who emphasize processes of tion to the selection of cases for research and to
social construction of scientific knowledge within the marshalling of evidence.
the community of science, on “ how pieces of As noted, these empirical studies have ex­
knowledge gain acceptance within science” amined two sets of issues: how formal algo­
(Collins, 1982, p. 300, italics mine), and deal rithms (including rules of evidence and logic)
mainly, though riot exclusively, with contem­ fail to explain “ passages” of research or what
porary cases. Harry Collins, the principal expo­ came to be accepted or rejected as scientific
nent o f the empirical relativist program, advo­ knowledge and how scientific consensus is
cates a thoroughgoing relativist position. For established and maintained—more precisely,
Collins, the relativist program must put social how debates are closed in science. It is no easy
explanations of scientific knowledge prior to task to summarize the findings of these studies,
logic and evidence and must “ seek to explain much less to assess them. Relativist researchers
the content o f scientific knowledge as far as are persuaded that their studies demonstrate
possible in social terms. Rationality (whatever that: “ local interpretative flexibility” prevents
that means) must play little part in explaining experiments from being decisive in determin­
how the world comes to appear as it does” ing what is taken as scientific knowledge (Col­
(1983, p. 272). Relativism assumes then that an lins, 1981, p. 4). Moreover, since there is much
external reality has little effect on what comes “ craft” and tacit knowledge in experimental
to be considered scientific knowledge; “ the science, scientists are highly skeptical about
natural world has a small or non-existent role others’ results even if they are confident about
in the construction o f scientific knowledge” their own (Pinch, 1981). Replication is also said
550 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
to be impossible because so much tacit knowl­
edge is requited to do experiments. Thus what
is defined as replication amounts to no more
than what scientists can persuade one another
to accept as such (Collins, 1974, 1975). Such
findings are, as noted earlier, important because
they suggest that replication, a central cognitive
procedure in science, is socially negotiated and
thus cannot differentiate reliable knowledge
from fraud and error. We shall return to this
matter shortly.
Relativist studies also find that controversies
are not setded by recourse to unambiguous
criteria for assessing knowledge claims. Rather,
scientific evidence is ambiguous and so are the
criteria. Instead, controversies such as the one
over the existence of the magnetic monopole are
closed by scientists who are committed to pre­
serving the scientific culture; they decide on that
position which undermines as few preexisting
agreements on interpretation as possible (Picker­
ing, 1981). They also maintain the consensus
by “ concealing” results that might prove em­
barrassing and by using all sorts of rhetorical
devices to persuade their fellow scientists of the
credibility of particular claims (Wynne, 1976).
As we shall see in studies using the ‘ ‘interests
model, ’ ’ the conclusion that knowledge is soci­
ally negotiated and that debates are closed on
social rather than cognitive criteria is not univer­
sally shared. When other investigators examine
the same or similar evidence, they can come to
quite different conclusions (Frankel, 1979; Roll-
Hansen, 1979, 1980, 1983; Rudwick, 1985).
Thus the question is still open whether the find­
ings of these studies will hold up with further
analysis and inquiry.
Putting aside the matter of self-refutation and
its potential for undermining all relativist socio­
logical inquiries, three other aspects of these
studies merit further comment. First is the claim
that the same scientific methods when applied
in different social circumstances will yield dif­
ferent outcomes. Plainly, this is for many an em­
pirical question, if relativists will supply evi­
dence for their conclusions. (Rationalists would
counter, o f course, that ample evidence is
already available demonstrating that the same
methods yield the same results). Indeed, there
are natural experiments in science that provide
pertinent evidence in this regard, namely that
subset of multiple independent discoveries aris­
ing from research using the same procedures.
As noted earlier, the phenomenon of multiples
is problematic for social constructionists, who
contend that scientific inquiry is determined by
local social contexts. The point here is that cer­
tain multiple discoveries seem to show that the
same procedures do yield the same results in dif­
ferent social contexts.
Second, on the matter of replication: As Mary
Hesse observes:
The most noteworthy thing about Collins’
accounts is the immense trouble people
[scientists] went to wrestle with material ob­
jects in order to satisfy conditions of replica­
bility, and also the fact that some attempts
fail, whatever the antecedent social expec­
tations were. Is it conceivable that such prob­
lems should arise with sheer manipulation
if all questions of replicability could be set­
tled by social fiat without reference to the
world? [1986, p. 721],
Hesse’s observations are well taken and can be
extended to other cases in which evidence and
expectation do not accord. If such cases are
resolved merely by social fiat, why do members
of the community of scientists periodically con­
clude that their own as well as others’ expecta­
tions proved to be incorrect because they do not
square with the evidence even though they
would prefer things to be otherwise?
Moreover, with regard to replication and the
social control of deviance noted earlier, the issue
is not whether experiments can be precisely
copied but rather whether evidence from in­
advertent replications, related but not duplicate
experiments, is consistent with earlier reported
findings.
Third, the assumption that sociological ob­
servers must seek social explanations of scien­
tific knowledge and that “ rationality” must
play “ little part in explaining how the world
comes to appear as it does” (Collins, 1983, p.
272) seems only to prejudge the question of
when rationality plays a determining role and
how strong its influence is in given cases.
A final observation on relativist studies of the
formation and maintenance of consensus in
science. They have focused on what Collins calls
the “ core set,” not just on scientists in one
laboratory who do a particular experiment, but
on the social group who “ actively experiment
upon and theorize over the controversial topic,
and who eventually play a role in the emergent
consensus” (Pinch, 1986). Even if one accepts
the idea that the content of knowledge has been
socially negotiated by the core set, it has not
been demonstrated that such groups determine
the larger consensus in science. Studies of the
formation of consensus have to be extended
beyond such groups, especially when the knowl­
edge claim is of major significance to large
numbers of scientists. It is here that macrosocio-
logical studies are needed of how the evaluation
system operates.
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
STUDIES USING THE INTERESTS MODEL
As noted, studies in this perspective have
focused on the role o f scientists’ social class,
religious persuasion, political preferences, and
professional concerns in shaping their scientific
contributions, assessment of others’ research and
the conduct and resolution o f scientific con­
troversies. Historical research along these lines
has been ably reviewed by Shapin (1982), who
includes various investigations that examine the
“ contingency” of experimentation, the effects
of vested interests, professional and social, on
scientific knowledge, the uses o f cultural re­
sources by scientists, and the uses of scientific
ideas by the larger society. As he puts it, “ In
a sociological approach to knowledge-making,
people produce knowledge against the back­
ground of their culture’s inherited knowledge,
their collectively situated purposes, and the in­
formation they receive from natural reality”
(1982, p. 196).®°
What problems are addressed by newer
studies in the “ interests” mode, what are their
results, and how well do research findings hold
up when subjected to critical scrutiny? Recent
inquiries have focused on the social condition­
ing o f knowledge by ideology, on social proc­
esses involved in the closure o f debate, and on
the role o f professional interests in theory
choice, all questions quite compatible with those
studied by relativists. As it happens, recent
studies have also drawn on quantitative data,
largely absent from relativist and interests
studies, in order to examine the distribution of
intellectual positions in relevant scientific com­
munities; thus extending the more detailed but
necessarily more limited perspectives provided
by microsociological case studies. Four examples
should give a sense o f recent work examining
scientists’ interests and scientific knowledge.
MacKenzie’s (1981) historical study o f the
development o f statistics in Britain, 1865-1930,
argues first that the ideas of eugenics, the social
control o f hereditary qualities, was particularly
attractive to the rising professional middle class,
not just because it emphasized the need for pro­
fessional expertise in political decision making
but also because it proclaimed the biological
superiority o f that segment o f society. Second,
it traces the connections between the problems
taken up by Galton, Pearson, and Fisher, the
three great figures o f British statistics in the
period, and their interest in the eugenics move­
ment and its ideology. Last, it treats in detail
the effects, as the author sees them, of eugenics
on Galton’s ideas o f correlation, how the con­
flict between the biometricians (represented by
551
Pearson) and the Mendelians (represented by
Bateson) was influenced by Pearson’s involve­
ment with eugenics, and how eugenics ideas af­
fected Pearson’s proposals for measuring non-
continuous variables. (Fisher, having come on
the scene later, when the field was more mature,
was far less influenced by eugenics than the
other two.) MacKenzie’s historical analysis pro­
vides strong support for eugenics having played
a role in the development of statistics in Britain,
particularly in shaping Galton’s and Pearson’s
foci of attention and sustaining their interest
eugenically related problems. However, as
Stephen Stigler (1986, p. 267), author of what
is generally viewed as the definitive history of
statistics in this period, quietly reminds us, it
is impossible to say just what shaped Galton’s
ideas: his close family ties to die Darwins,
the fact that Darwinian theory captured his im­
agination, or the social concerns that MacKen-
zie identifies. If a commitment to eugenics
helped shape the problems addressed by statisti­
cians, it seems less clear that it shaped what they
found. Indeed, even a sympathetic reviewer,
T. M. Porter (1981)—also a historian o f statistics
—observes that MacKenzie’s illustrations of the
effects of ideology on the content of statisticians’
work are “ less impressive” than other instances
such as Forman’s (1971) analysis o f the ef­
fects o f philosophical views of causality on the
Weimar physicists.
Turning from statistics to high-energy physics
and from social to professional interests, the
“ charm-color” debate on the interpretation of
the J-psi particle is the focus of Pickering’s
analysis (1981). He suggests that that debate was
settled mainly by the proponents of charm find­
ing a way to tie their ideas successfully to many
other lines of inquiry in high-energy physics.
Pickering makes the point with admirable
clarity:
The triumphing of charm, then and the
eclipse of its rivals, should not be seen in
terms of static comparisons between predic­
tions and data. At no point. . . was charm
proved to be right or its rivals wrong. The
key to charm’s success lay in the social and
conceptual unification of HEP (high energy
physics] practice which was achieved during
the November Revolution. . . . [PJrogresive
social unification in the common context of
gauge theory was intrinsic to the establish­
ment of the new physics in its entirety [ 1984,
pp. 272-273].
Pickering tells us then that the debate was not
settled by recourse to evidence but rather be­
cause the proponents of one of the theories were
552 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
more successful in generating “ a context in
which other traditions could flourish” (Picker­
ing and Nadel, 1987, p. 89). In the process, this
made their work part of the interconnected
cognitive network of high-energy physics, led to
its being identified with the natural world rather
than being only a conjecture of its creators, and
helped physicists in different traditions get on
with their work (1981, p. 130). Pickering’s ac­
count is appealing; theories that are attractive
to large segments of a scientific community, that
serve many “ professional” interests, are more
apt to succeed than those that, other things be­
ing equal, have limited significance of that sort.
Yet one wonders whether this demonstrates that
social rather than cognitive factors accounted for
its success. And, o f course, experts disagree on
whether the color theory was proved wrong.
Gingras and Schweber (1986, p. 378) write that
“ the claim that the ‘facts’ (however constructed
and theory laden) did enter the scene and played
a final role in the testing of the theory is indeed
tenable, despite Pickering’s assertion to the con­
trary.” The question would appear to be open
still on whether this debate was or was not closed
without recourse to evidence. This is o f course
central to the thesis, though it does not under­
mine Pickering’s historical inquiry. Recent re­
search by Pickering and Nadel (1987) examines
the establishment of the charm theory using co­
citation analysis and finds support for Picker­
ing’s qualitative account o f the principal con­
tributions, the speed with which they came to
dominate, and their growth “ in symbiosis with
a constellation o f pre-existing streams o f HEP
practice” and this, they say, reinforces the earlier
interpretation that ‘ ‘the new data constitute an
additional constraint upon interpretative flex­
ibility” (1987, pp. 105, 106). Yet this does not
address the question of the role experiments
played in rejecting the color interpretation.
Quantitative techniques are also used to good
effect in Stewart’s (1986) analysis o f geologists’
responses between 1907 and 1950 to the idea
of continental drift. Using content analysis of
papers and data on geologists’ published pro­
ductivity and fields o f specialization, Stewart
finds that “ productive” geologists were more
apt than others to be hostile to the idea o f con­
tinental drift. This, he observes, might have
resulted from their having known more and thus
having had grounds to be skeptical, but, given
what is known now about the validity o f data
then available, their stance seems not to have
derived from knowledge of “ the facts’ ’ but from
their having a professional stake in other
theories. In response, R. Laudan (1987, p. 320)
observes that this need not be so since other
theories had “ greater evidential support than
drift’ ’ at the time and “ hence attracted the sup­
port o f most earth scientists.” Stewart has since
countered that geologists should at least have
cohsidered drift as a plausible hypothesis. (See
Frankel, 1979, for an alternate account.) As the
MacKenzie, Pickering, and Stewart cases in­
dicate, the implications of scientific contribu­
tions are not immediately spelled out in the
scientific publications that report them, but are
recast in continuing exchange, thus exemplify­
ing the importance of socially organized skep­
ticism in the evolving content o f scientific
knowledge and the need for sociological in­
vestigation to look beyond the original contribu­
tions themselves.
The fourth and last example of recent research
does not adopt the interests model of analysis,
but it is closely related to it. It considers the
validity o f ideas associated with the model, ex­
amines an instructive historical case, and ad­
dresses a major question in this line of work—
namely, how scientific controversy proceeds and
how closure is reached. This is found in Martin
Rudwick’s (1985) impressive study of the
Devonian Controversy, the dispute that lasted
from 1835 to 1850 and focused on “ the iden­
tification and the correct sequence o f strata in
the county of Devon . . .[whose implications]
from the start. . . were seen to be international,
and indeed global” (1985, p. 5). In this su­
perbly delineated case study in the history of
science and exemplar of sophisticated sociologi­
cal analysis of scientific knowledge, Rudwick
ultimately comes down on the side of nature and
geological evidence in settling the controversy.
However his analysis and conclusions tell much
about the inadequacy of either an exclusively
objectivist position or an exclusively construc­
tionist position. As he puts it,
neither “ discovery” nor “ construction” is
by itselfm. adequate metaphor for the pro­
duction of scientific knowledge. The out­
come of research is neither the unproblem­
atic disclosure of the natural world nor a
mere artifact of social negotiation. . . . the
Devonian controversy shows how new
knowledge is shaped from the materials of
the natural world, malleable yet often refrac­
tory; but it becomes knowledge only as those
materials are forged into new shapes with
new meanings, on the anvil of heated
argumentative debate. [T]he cumulative
empirical evidence . . . can be seen . . . as
having had a differentiating effect on the
course and outcome of the debate, con­
straining the social construction into being
a limited, but reliable and indefinitely im­
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
provable, representation o f a natural real­
ity. . . . What had been shaped by the social
processes o f argument and debate among
. . . specialists . . . had been a new piece
o f reliable scientific knowledge. (1985, pp.
454-456)81
So much for the claim that empirical evidence
cannot be prime when social influences are also
at work, even when empirical evidence is prime.
Several questions remain about the interests per­
spective in general and the assertion that scien­
tific knowledge reflects the interests of the
groups that produce it. Knorr-Cetina (1982, p.
322) is not alone in arguing that analyses at­
tributing the content of scientific knowledge to
social interests fail to “ demonstrate exactly how
and in virtue of which mechanisms social fac­
tors have indeed entered (and are hence re­
flected in) particular knowledge claims.” The
need to identify mechanisms relating interests
and ideology on the one hand and knowledge
on the other is, o f course, a longstanding re­
quirement in the sociology of knowledge. More­
over, scientists, like other members o f society,
have a great many interests since they all have
multiple statuses and roles. Interests studies in
the sociology of science have yet to address the
basic questions of which interests will be ac­
tivated in identified types of situations and how
it is that scientists o f evidently different social
“ interests” often maintain the same theoretical
position. Nor has enough attention been given
to those instances in which scientists adopt scien­
tific positions opposed to their apparent “ in­
terests,” as for example, when they reject
theoretical positions they would seem to have
a stake in maintaining. (Is this a counterpart in
science to false consciousness in the larger class
structure?) As we have noted, the general per­
spective requires further work on the conditions
in which social influences may be more likely
or less to enter into the production of knowledge
and about the strength of such influences rela­
tive to logic and empirical evidence.
Domains o f scientific knowledge that have
immediate social implications—for example,
knowledge about race, ethnicity, sex, and
gender—may be more subject to soaal construc­
tion than more remote domains.82 At least this
is the strong implication of recent claims by
women primatologists and physical anthropolo­
gists, which suggests the presence o f unex­
amined male bias in research findings on the
behavior of male and female animals in various
species, often in the form of neglecting certain
aspects o f female behavior altogether (see for ex­
ample, Bleier, 1978; Tiefer, 1978; for the radical
view that science, as a whole, is imbued with
553
masculine modes of thought, see Keller, 1985).
The evidence for such conclusions plainly re­
quires further analysis to determine whether
such interests involve bias in problem choice,
observation, interpretation, theory choice, or
some combination of these. In any event, re­
search on sex behavior and other matters hav­
ing direct social implications may serve as stra­
tegic research sites for the social construction of
knowledge even if they are not the less probable
a fortiori cases that have often been selected by
extreme or strong relativists. Finally, examples
of this kind indicate once again that the final
shape o f knowledge claims is not set when they
are first announced but that the sociocognitive
process of organized skepticism comes into play
to limit or revise the original claims.
CONSTRUCTIVIST STUDIES
Studies in the constructivist mode83 focus on
scientific practice within the laboratory on the
premise that the social construction of knowl­
edge begins there, and that is where the consti­
tuent processes are most readily observed. The
constructivist perspective on science, however,
involves more than the claim that the content
o f scientific knowledge is influenced by social
processes. Latour and Woolgar, on the one
hand, and Knorr-Cetina, on the other, seek a
reflexive understanding of science. As Knorr-
Cetina puts it, “ scientists not only accomplish
(construe) their ‘findings,’ they also accomplish
the meaning of this accomplishment” (1983a,
p. 16a).
Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979)
and Knorr-Cetina’s The Manufacture o f Knowl­
edge (1981) exemplify the genre. Each has had
considerable influence on subsequent research.
In these detailed ethnographic field studies of
biological laboratories, scientists and the world
o f the laboratory are viewed much as anthro­
pologists view an exotic culture. Largely consis­
tent in claiming that scientific “ evidence” and
its meaning are socially constructed, the two
studies nonetheless emphasize somewhat dif­
ferent aspects of laboratory practice, draw some­
what different conclusions about how scientific
knowledge comes to be constructed, and also
about scientists’ motives for getting on with
their work.
In both investigations, nature or reality is ac­
corded a decidedly second-order role in the proc­
ess o f constructing knowledge. As Latour and
Woolgar put it: “ reality is the consequence
rather than the cause of this construction, this
means that a scientist’s activity is directed, not
toward ‘reality,’ but toward . . . operations on
554 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
statements” (1979, p. 237) that is, toward mak­
ing them seem more and mote ‘ ‘out there.’ ’ And
for Knorr-Cetina, “ nature is not to be found
in the laboratory, unless it is defined from the
beginning as being the product o f scientific
work” (1981, p. 4).84 Indeed, she vividly
demonstrates that, in important respects, scien­
tists’ research materials are not “ natural” but
“ constructed.”
All of the source-materials have been special­
ly grown and selectively bred. Most of the
substances and chemicals are purified and
have been obtained from the industry which
serves science or from other laboratories. But
whether bought or prepared by the scien­
tists themselves, these substances arc no less
the product of human effort than the
measurement devices or the papers on their
desks [1981, p. 4]
Both investigations also emphasize that scien­
tific knowledge is the outcome o f “ locally
situated, occasioned . . . selections” (Knorr-
Cetina, 1983a, p. 161) or of “ circumstance”
(Latour and Woolgar, 1979, p. 240), although
Knorr-Cetina goes on to make the point that
this means that science does not operate accord­
ing to ‘ ‘universal standards and criteria” (1983a,
p. 163), while Latour and Woolgar emphasize
the processes by which “ circumstance” disap­
pears from accounts of knowledge. As with most
other theoretical perspectives in the sociology of
science, scientific knowledge is considered not
as an individual achievement but as “ interac­
tively achieved” ; however, Latour and Woolgar
and Knorr-Cetina go on to describe this as the
negotiated outcome of discussion between co­
workers of what has been observed. Scientists
discuss, argue about, and ultimately decide what
they have perceived in the welter of informa­
tion that is provided by complex- instrumenta­
tion. Knowledge is not the straightforward out­
come of experiment (Knorr-Cetina, 1983, p.
162). Moreover, both studies make much of the
ways in which laboratory equipment processes
and constructs information rather than reflect­
ing or depicting nature, and is itself the out­
come of earlier investigations and social con­
structions.
Calling on evidence from their fieldwork in
a neuroendocrinology laboratory at the Salk In­
stitute as well as from citation and publication
data, Latour and Woolgar draw special atten­
tion to what they take to be the essentially
chaotic character both of scientific practice and
also of the evidence scientists try to understand:
a body of [scientific] practices widely re­
garded by outsiders as well organized, logi­
cal, and coherent, in fact consists of a dis­
ordered array of observations with which
scientists struggle to produce order . . . we
argue that scientists . . . are routinely con­
fronted by a seething mass of alternative in­
terpretations. Despite participants' well-
ordered reconstructions, . . . actual scien­
tific practice entails the confrontation and
negotiation of utter confusion. The solution
adopted by scientists is the imposition of
various frameworks by which the extent of
background noise can be reduced and
against which an apparently coherent signal
can be presented [1979, p. 36-37].
Reconstructing the history o f one significant
discovery in great detail (the structure of TRF
or TRH, thyrotropin releasing factor or hor­
mone, a substance released by the brain), Latour
and Woolgar report how, for a long time, the
evidence was complex, confused, and ambigu­
ous. They suggest that the directions researchers
took were far from dictated by the evidence; in­
vestigators could have taken routes other than
the ones they did on equally logical grounds.
They go on to take the much stronger position
that “ the list o f possible alternatives by which
we can evaluate the logic of a deduction is
sociologically (rather than logically) deter­
mined” (1979, p. 136).*’
They also make much of the movement of
truth claims from a stage in which the origin­
ating scientists describe them only as conjectures
to a stage in which their status as “ facts” is
taken for granted (1979, pp. 75ff). As claims
move through this process, the language used
to make them changes; qualifications about
their factual status are removed and their associ­
ation with particular investigators is erased,
making them seem objective and external. This
has the consequence, Latour and Woolgar
observe, of obliterating traces of the socially con­
structed nature of scientific knowledge and of
making it difficult to detect (1979, p. 175).
Finally, Latour and Woolgar make the case that
the principal activity of laboratory scientists is
writing and their principal objective, publica­
tion. Scientists are described as “ compulsive and
almost manic writers” (1979, p. 48). The pro­
cess of research involves a “ chain of writing
operations” as well as the use of “ inscription
devices,” which “ transform matter into written
documents” (1979, pp. 51, 71). All this serves
to produce publications designed to persuade
others that what they are saying is true, impor­
tant, worthy of support, and dictated by an ex­
ternal reality.
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
Drawing on her study of a plant protein
research center located in Berkeley, California,
Knorr-Cetina also concludes that the transfor­
mation of private laboratory constructions into
public products or papers is central to scientific
inquiry. That transformation begins with the
“ conversion” of locally contingent observations
into “ social objects,” that is, into argumenta­
tion, and from argumentation into finished
papers. One outcome then o f the process of
“ conversion” is the marked disparity between
what actually goes on in the laboratory and for­
mal accounts of research that appear in print,
an outcome noted not just by sociologists but
by scientists themselves, as Latour and Woolgar
(1979, p- 28) and Knorr-Cetina recognize (1981,
p. 95). Peter Medawar (1963), the immunologist
and deeply perceptive observer, calls attention
to the gap between science in print and science
in the laboratory in his paper, “ Is the Scientific
Paper a Fraud?” while Robert Merton com­
ments:
the rock-bound difference between the fin­
ished versions of scientific work as they ap­
pear in print and the actual course of inquiry
followed by the inquirer. The difference is
a litde like that between textbooks of ‘ ‘scien­
tific method’ ’ and the ways in which scien­
tists actually think, feel and go about their
work. The books on method . . . do not
reproduce the typically untidy, opportunistic
adaptations that scientists make in the course
of their inquiries. Typically, the scientific
paper or monograph presents an immaculate
appearance which reproduces little or
nothing of the intuitive leaps, false starts,
mistakes, loose ends, and happy accidents
that actually cluttered up the inquiry. The
public record of science therefore fails to pro­
vide many of the source materials needed to
reconstruct the actual course of scientific
developments [1967, p. 4].
Knorr-Cetina goes on to characterize the
“ conversion” process as also involving “ perver­
sion” ; a rejection of the original “ faith, the
original language or the preceding level of
organization” (1981, pp. 130-132) of actual
laboratory practice. That original practice, she
repeatedly emphasizes, is contextually contin­
gent and haphazard (1981, p. 152). Scientists’
decisions are opportunistic and draw heavily on
tacit knowledge; they are not rational, well
planned, or rule governed. She makes the im­
portant observation that “ scientists do not ‘ask
questions to nature.’ ” They
555
try to make something work in terms of in­
struments, materials, and interpretations
that result from the constructions of other
scientists, and they try to make it work in
discursive interaction with others within and
outside the laboratory. This is ... . [just one]
sense in which the “ cognitive” core of scien­
tific work appears to be thoroughly social
[1983a, p. 169].
The emphasis on research practice as a proc­
ess o f making things work suggests that theories
o f innovation in science may need to be recast
such that innovation is seen as the “ transient
and temporary end-product of the process,” not
its beginning (1981, p. 66). Knorr-Cetina’s pro­
vocative analysis calls for reconsideration o f im­
portant widely held conceptions of scientific
work; as noted, of the universality of rules and
decision criteria, the disjunction between the
cognitive and social and, indeed, the differences
between the natural and social sciences. She sug­
gests that since the natural sciences are the out­
comes of practices that are ‘ ‘reflexive and con­
structive, . . . socially occasioned, subject to an
indexical logic, and embodied in discourse
which includes its own reference, then a large
portion of the presumed distinction between the
two sciences disappears” (1983a, p. 171).
These significant proposals, consistent with
findings by Latour and Woolgar and other con­
structivists, merit serious consideration, most
particularly in the form of additional field
studies of cases chosen with an eye to unan­
swered questions—for example, about the lati­
tude with which the meaning of experimental
evidence can be constructed. Knorr-Cetina and
Latour and Woolgar observe that scientists are
always alert to possible responses that others will
have to their work, suggesting that truth claims
are socially constrained before publication, an
observation in line with earlier inquiry.86 But
this still leaves open the question of what hap­
pens to claims once they are published. The
question of why it is that experimental work is
so often “ frustrating and disappointing” is also
left open. As Donald Campbell notes, “ The
laboratory facts may not be speaking for them­
selves, but they certainly are not speaking for
[the investigator’s] hopes and wishes” (1979, p.
198). And as we have noted earlier, the phe­
nomenon of multiple independent discoveries
is troublesome for those who claim that the pro­
duction o f scientific knowledge is largely or en­
tirely contingent and local.87 Indeed, Knorr-
Cetina observes that the “ complexity of scien­
tific constructions. . . does seem to suggest that
scientific products are unlikely to be reproduced
556 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
in the same way under different circumstances
. . . it seems highly improbable that the [re­
search] process could be repeated, unless most
of the selections are either fixed or made in a
similar fashion.” Yet she goes on to say, “ Given
that scientists working on a problem are related
through communication, competition and co­
operation, and often share similar educations,
instruments and interest structures, the latter
situation is not really unusual” (1981, p. 6).
This statement suggesting that perhaps repeti­
tion is not “ really unusual” is amplified by a
footnote in which Knorr-Cetina remarks
This explains the occurrence of simultaneous
“ discoveries” by scientists who in fact i d
not steal from one another. Note that scien­
tific institutions and the familiar forms of
social control in science can be seen as a com­
prehensive structure to assure that selections
remain to a large degree fixed, and that the
remainder are made in a similar, compati­
ble and repeatable way [1981, p. 28, note
25].
Knorr-Cetina then would attribute multiple
discoveries in science to constraints imposed not
by nature but by socially patterned understand­
ings, processes of communication, competition,
and shared scientific culture. This, after all, is
not very different from the explanation, ex­
amined in an earlier section, which attributes
multiple discoveries to a shared knowledge base
and a shared research agenda within the acutely
competitive social framework of science. That
this is so does, however, raise questions about
the extent to which scientific practice is simply
local and not significantly shaped by the larger
social institution of science.
DISCOURSE AND TEXT ANALYSIS
Discourse and text analysis focuses on what
scientists say about scientific knowledge, scien­
tific practice, and custom, and how they say it,
on what scientists write, and the forms in which
they write it. As we have already noted, social
constructivists take the production of scientific
papers as a central activity of scientists. This line
forms one strand of work in text analysis. Latour
and Woolgar pay sustained attention to the
scientific paper as an effort to persuade the
reading audience that a given piece of research
is credible, useful, and a reflection of nature.
They also attend to the language scientists use
in describing the status of truth claims and the
progression of claims through stages from possi­
ble artifact to provisional truth to taken-for-
granted fact. We have also noted that Knorr-
Cetina sees the writing of papers as a process of
decontextualization of scientific practice. In a
detailed chapter on the evolution of scientific
papers from preliminary drafts to final form, she
focuses on the marshalling of arguments, on the
artful differentiation o f scientists’ own research
from prior work, and on their setting Out claims
to originality in the body of papers (1981, chap.
5). As we have noted elsewhere (Zuckerman,
1987a), there is good reason both for scientists
and sociologists o f science alike to pay attention
to publication. Scientific knowledge is public,
not private knowledge; contributions are not
scientific until they are made public and sub­
jected to evaluation by qualified experts.
A second related strand o f investigation of
scientific texts is historical, often taking as prob­
lematic the development o f the scientific paper
itself (including the form of graphic material).
Indeed, such research is not remote from struc­
tural and historical analyses o f the emergence
and evolution of the scientific journal and the
scientific paper, although their theoretical justi­
fications are distinctly different. Structural
analyses have focused on the rise of the scien­
tific journal in seventeenth-century England as
a device that would allow scientists to claim and
safeguard intellectual property rights, to induce
them “ to accept the new norm of free com­
munication through a motivating exchange:
open disclosure in exchange for institutionally
guaranteed honorific property rights to the new
knowledge given to others” (Zuckerman and
Merton, 1971, p. 70). Drawing on the writings
of the seventeenth-century natural philosopher
Robert Boyle, who did much to establish the
character of scientific writing in that period,
Shapin (1984) examines Boyle’s distinctively rich
accounts o f experiments as “ virtual witnessing”
as a way of “ objectifying” truth claims and of
helping readers to envision experiments. By do­
ing so, an audience was created for his own
writings and those of other scientists.
Bazerman (1984) adopts a wider focus on
scientists as writers and as readers. In one study,
he examines the evolution from 1893 to 1980
o f the experimental report in physics (with the
specialty of spectroscopy taken as a case in
point). In this century-long period when physics
was, of course, entirely transformed both in­
tellectually and socially, Bazerman finds that
physicists’ arguments have become increasingly
“ theory based and knowledge embedded” and
that the arguments have become increasingly
couched in theoretical terms. This, he suggests,
contributed powerfully to the formation of the
discipline and indeed the institutionalization of
publication is seen as an achievement of scien­
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
tific disciplines. Correlatively, in another study
drawing on interviews with physicists about the
ways they read scientific texts, Bazerman finds
that reading is “ permeated with individual pur­
poses and schema.” They read with “ maps”
of the field in mind and actively assess promis­
ing lines of research and potentially effective
methods. Such purposes and schema evolve
dialectically in response to texts; texts are not
static but are perceived in light of evolving re­
search activity (1985).
Discourse analysis, pioneered by Michael
Mulkay and Nigel Gilbert (Gilbert and Mulkay,
1984; Mulkay, 1985; Mulkay and Gilbert,
1982), focuses on informal speech but has also
treated published text. It begins with the obser­
vation that the scientists they interviewed about
one development in biochemistry produced
disconcertingly variable accounts of the same
events, accounts that appeared to be context
dependent. Furthermore, what scientists said in
informal conversation not surprisingly differed
greatly from what they wrote. Mulkay and
Gilbert therefore conclude that sociologists can­
not use what scientists say as evidence until there
is a better understanding of what produces
variability (a conclusion that others who bring
together data from observation, interviews, and
biographical and bibliographic sources do not
share). The sociologist’s problem, they say, is
pushed one step back to what can be learned
about the patterned character of scientists’ por­
trayals of science (Mulkay and Gilbert, 1982, p.
315).
In their own inquiry, they have mainly em­
phasized two kinds o f discourse or “ interpreta­
tive repertoires,” empiricist and contingent. The
empiricist repertoire is the impersonal mode of
expression, long recognized in the institutional­
ized published text but also, they observe, used
in informal conversation as well, in which ‘ ‘the
physical world often seems literally to speak and
act for itself.” The contingent repertoire, used
exclusively or nearly so, in informal speech,
‘ ‘emphasizes the part played by social and per­
sonal contingencies in scientific action and
b elie f’ (Mulkay, Potter, and Yearley, 1983, p.
197). Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) observe that
scientists use the empiricist repertoire, for ex­
ample, in accounting for their own correct
beliefs, and the contingent repertoire in ac­
counting for others’ errors. This has the conse­
quence o f making it difficult—at times, impos­
sible—for scientists to come to agreement on
what is valid and what is erroneous. Discourse
analysis has been used, at times with perceptive
wit, to describe such orthodox subjects as scien­
tists’ theories of discovery, replication, and the
557
development of specialties, and such less or­
thodox subjects as ceremonial discourse and
scientific humor. One conclusion to be drawn
from the Gilbert and Mulkay work is that scien­
tists provide multiple and often conflicting ac­
counts o f scientific inquiry and that there are
no firm grounds for choosing among them.
Another is that sociological investigators will
have to pay more attention to using multiple
indicators of scientists’ behavior and not rely ex­
clusively on data from discourse or texts. It is
still too soon to generalize about the extent of
variability in scientists’ accounts o f the same
research and the conditions and processes bring­
ing about differing degrees of variability. It is
also too soon to say what brings about the
observed patterning of empiricist and contin­
gent discourse; this is plainly an important item
on the research agenda of discourse analysis.
Reprise
T h e sociology of scientific knowledge, with its
focus on the reciprocal connections between
cognitive development, on the one hand, and
social structure and culture, on the other, has
been central in the field since its beginnings.
Recent research has focused on selected aspects
of the structure and growth of knowledge and
on the social construction of knowledge, these
separate lines o f work mirroring the division in
the sociology of science between those adopting
the position that the content of scientific knowl­
edge is mainly determined by logic and evidence
and those adopting the position that it is socially
constructed. The first set o f studies finds that
the growth of knowledge is often discontinuous
and need not have taken the directions it did.
Scientific attention gets preempted, scientists’
focus on certain aspects o f phenomena and
neglect others, and resistance to innovation is
not unknown. The second set of studies finds
that decisions made in the course o f research in
the laboratory are “ locally situated” (Knorr-
Cetina, 1983b, p. 123); that “ science does not
have a set of methodological techniques that can
quickly or decisively prove or disprove the ex­
istence of natural phenomena . . . [and] that
replicability of results does not establish a firm
link between theory and observation” (Collins,
1983, p. 280); that decisions scientists make on
scientific questions are, in important respects,
“ sustained by social and political interests”
(MacKenzie and Barnes, 1979, pp. 204-205) and
that scientist-participants provide multiple ac­
counts of the same events, employ two distinct
558 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
repertoires in different contexts, and use one to
account for correct belief and the other to ac­
count for error (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984).
There are marked differences o f opinion on
the validity o f these findings and on the epis-
temological assumptions that underlie them,
among those working in the constructionist
mode as well as between them and others. There
are also areas o f overlap in foci o f research at­
tention, if not in theoretical interpretation, be­
tween those adopting the structural and con­
structionist perspectives: for example, on the sig­
nificance o f the competitive quest for recogni­
tion, credit and standing in science,88 also called
“ professional interests’ ’ ; on the importance of
scientists’ prestige and authority in the recep­
tion of truth claims and the settling of disputes;
on the central role of publication in scientists’
activity and the disjunction between actual
scientific practice and published scientific
papers. These areas o f common concern provide
possibilities for convergent development often
not recognized.
The findings of constructionist inquiries have
also set intriguing directions for further in­
vestigation. Specific next steps might include in­
quiry into the processes by which new
knowledge claims are subjected to socially or­
ganized skepticism and negotiation once they
are published. Scientists do, o f course, anticipate
others’ responses to their work before making
it public and such anticipated responses affect
the shape and content of their claims. Yet scien­
tific knowledge does not enter the ‘ ‘consensus’ ’
precisely in the form that it first emerged from
the laboratory, as Collins (1983) and Zuckerman
and Lederberg (1986) have variously observed.
A related line o f inquiry would involve more
detailed study of how scientists assess the relative
efficacy of opposing knowledge claims in dif­
ferent types of research, for example, whether
“ interests” have particular influence on the ac­
ceptance of claims with significant social im­
plications. Another productive line of investiga­
tion would focus on the role o f power and
authority in the settling o f disputes, as Collins
has noted (1983, p. 275), recognizing, o f course,
the difficulty of separating the effects of power
and authority from those o f logic and evidence
where the two overlap, as they often do. Finally,
more attention needs to be paid to finding ways
of demonstrating to the satisfaction of the un­
converted that social structure and process af­
fect the content o f scientific knowledge, and if
so, how. Short of persuading scientists who work
in different contexts to address the same prob­
lems, closer study of multiple independent dis­
coveries would seem to be in order.
Evidently, the social and cognitive domains
of science are intricately interconnected in
studies that focus on the sociology o f scientific
knowledge just as they are in studies of the social
organization o f science. Yet recent research in
the sociology of science has seen a sharp divi­
sion o f labor between studies of the social struc­
ture of science and the sociology o f scientific
knowledge. As we have learned, while the divi­
sion of scientific labor often advances knowl­
edge, periodic consolidation can have the same
effect. So it would seem in the self-exemplifing
specialty o f the sociology o f science.
APPENDIX A
Lines of Research In the Sociology of Science
Not Examined in This Review
(1) The emergence of modem science
(2) The professionalization of science
(3) Patterns of growth of the population of
science and its demography
(4) Informal communication in science
(5) Comparative analysis of science in different
societies
(6) Science policy
(7) Public attitudes toward science
(8) The reciprocal relations of science and
politics
(9) The reciprocal relations of science and the
economy
(10) The reciprocal relations of science and the
academy
(11) The connections between science and tech­
nology
(12) The uses of science in the law
NOTE: Each of these areas of research has its own
literature. For pertinent bibliography, see Spiegel-
Rosing and Price (1977).
NOTES
1. These include Social Studies o f Science; Scien-
tometrics; Science, Technology and Human Values;,
Science and Technology Studies (the official publica­
tion of the professional society); Sociology o f the
Sciences Yearbook, and several more in various stages
of planning.
2. See Appendix 1 for a brief listing of areas of work
in the sociology of science not treated here.
3. Sociologists of science also examine knowledge
claims that have been widely rejected as pseudo­
science, including parapsychology and creation
“ science.”
4. The existence o f such rules does not imply that
scientists follow what has been called ‘ ‘the scientific
method.” See the later discussion of cognitive norms.
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
5. This indudes the sociology of knowledge since
the sociology of science overlaps in large part with
it. On links between the sociology of knowledge and
the sociology of science, see Milic (1984).
6. Both Hagstrom (1965) and Storer (1966) pose
the important question of how sodal control in sdence
operates: why scientists conform to the norms, do
research and publish their work. Both proposed ex­
change models to deal with that question. For
Hagstrom, scientists make gifts of new knowledge to
the scientific community in the hope o f receiving
recognition in return, while for Storer, scientists seek
“ competent response” to their work, which they can
receive only if they make contributions public.
7. This Durkheimian indicator o f the significance
of norms is often overlooked in writings about the
ethos of sdence. This is particularly so for those daim-
ing that since scientists often violate the norms, there
can be no normative code to which they subscribe.
Since social relations always involve interaction, sodal
responses to violations are as pertinent as the viola­
tions themselves (see Zuckerman, 1984).
8. Rossi’s (1979) imaginative development of “ vig­
nette analysis’ ’ is a new departure in the empirical
study o f norms and may help make for a consensus
on these complex matters.
9. Although this brief paper suggests that die sodal
and cognitive domains of science are interconnected,
this line o f analysis is not well developed, leading to
the daim that Merton neglects the cognitive aspects
of science. However, it is odd that the critics make
so much o f this in light of his early systematic ex­
amination of the sodal, economic, and technological
influences on fod of research attention in seventeenth-
century English sdence (1938/1970).
10. Kuhn emphasizes that the sodal aspects of
sdentific communities “ must be discovered by ex­
amining patterns of education and communication
before asking which particular research problems
engage each group” (1978, p. xxi). To this, Mulkay
has responded that Kuhn’s views are of ‘ ‘no particular
significance . . . Kuhn has supplied no more than
. . . a flexible interpretative resource which sodologists
have used and revised in a great variety o f (and not
always) compatible ways” (1980b, p. 12).
11. The published archive of sdence is a highly
ritualized and, some contend, partly fictitious, ac­
count of how scientists actually do their work (Knorr-
Cetina, 1981; Medawar, 1963; Merton, 1968, chap.
1). Case studies of scientific practice provide further
evidence on the extent to which sdentists are com­
mitted to cognitive norms and behave in accord with
them in the privacy of their laboratories. These could
be fruitfully combined with analysis of the same sden­
tists’ expressed attitudes and behaviors in public—
in meetings and in print—to get a more complete
view of the connections between the norms and public
and private acts.
12. This statement would, of course, be rejected
by those who see norms only as interpretative accounts
and that sociologists can study only what scientists
say about what they do.
559
13. The methodological canons are generic in the
sense that at any given time they are much alike in
the actual research practices of scientists in all fields.
14. The tensions inherent in sdence between skep­
ticism and authority and tradition and innovation are
enduring themes. Polanyi (1963) eloquently defends
the procedural effectiveness of relying on authority
(even when theories it rejects ultimately turn out to
be accepted), while Kuhn (1978, chap. 9) calls the
tension between tradition and innovation “ essential”
to the enterprise.
15. Ben-David’s (1977) observations on the special
applicability of the dominant norms once contribu­
tions are made public has darified the norm and
counternorm discussion considerably. Mitroffs analy­
sis focuses on scientists’ normative commitments in
the private phase o f their work, not the public one.
The developing ideas on normative ambivalence
overlap in part with Mulkay’s analysis of the contex­
tual contingency o f norms.
16. These reports have given some the impression
that corruption in sdence is frequent, that its rate is
increasing, and that procedures for curbing it are
working poorly (Broad and Wade, 1983). Conversely,
these same reports can also be taken to mean that
fraud is so rare that when it occurs it merits dispropor­
tionate attention of the media.
17. See Bechtel and Pearson (1983); Chubin
(1987); Gaston (1983); Kilbourne and Kilboume
(1983); Merton (1984); Mulkay (1980); Mulkay and
Gilbert (1986); Schmaus (1983); Suttmeier (1985);
Weinstein (1977); Woolf (1981,1986); among others.
The analysis here follows and updates my 1977 treat­
ment o f the subject.
18. Other forms of deviance sometimes found in
sdence include the abuse of human and animal sub­
jects, the theft of research funds, and departures from
offidal government regulations of research. These are
large and complex subjects deserving separate treat­
ment. On sodal control of experimentation on human
subjects, see Barber et al. (1972).
19. Some who argue that there is no reasonable
way of demarcating science from nonsdence also take
the position that there can be no deviant sdence; that
is, that astrology, for example, does not differ from
astronomy and magic from modem sdence (Bloor,
1976; Collins and Pinch, 1979; Dolby, 1979; Pinch,
1979; see the collection on deviant sdence edited by
Wallis, 1979). See Westrum (1978) for analysis of how
deviant ideas are transformed into respectable sdence
as new knowledge becomes available. Schmaus (1983)
makes the cognate point that deviant behavior in
sdence differs in no important respects from depar­
tures from any occupational norms and thus has no
features that mark it off from other violations of oc­
cupational integrity (see Zuckerman, 1984, for
comment).
20. McClintock received the Nobel Prize in 1983.
Accounts in the popular press have claimed that her
proposals were dismissed at the time as wrong-headed
or false because she was a woman. Careful analysis
of references to her and her ideas in writings in that
560 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
period indicate otherwise.. McClintock was highly
respected, if not well understood. As one geneticist
put it, “ It seemed pretty obscure but if Barbara said
it, it was probably right.” (See also Caspari, 1951.)
21. Cognitive norms of this sort evolve; many re­
search procedures now considered necessary are com­
paratively new. As a consequence, accusations of
neglect of such procedures in the past are merely
anachronistic.
22. The law differentiates between simple and
willful negligence, between cases of inadvertent
negligence and those involving “ reckless disregard”
of duty (Black, 1933, p. 1229). Science does not make
this distinction.
23. Other less serious departures from social norms
include depriving contributors of authorship and
gratuitous coauthorship; particularism in judging the
significance of contributions, not giving scientists
credit that is due because they come from the
“ wrong” religious group, race, gender, or political
party; secrecy in order to enhance financial gain, and
making unjustified claims to priority. This list can
easily be extended.
24. A fourth major theory of deviance, labeling
theory, is not germane here since it accounts mainly
for the persistence of deviance. In science, once an
individual is labeled as seriously deviant, his or her
research career is usually ended. For further discus­
sion of the relevance of anomie theory to deviance
in science, see Bechtel and Pearson (1983).
25. Scientists express surprise when misconduct oc­
curs. Moreover, the number of reported episodes of
misconduct is exceedingly small. The National In­
stitutes of Health, which has about 20,000 grants in
operation each year (and thus supports a much larger
number o f investigators), reports it received an
average of two reports a month between 1982 and
1987 of possible misconduct of all kinds and about
“ half of these have proven to be factual” (Meiers,
1985).
26. As we have noted, the norm of communism
does not apply equally at all stages of research. Scien­
tists are not obliged to make their results public before
they are judged ready. Nor are scientists obliged to
be skeptical or disinterested in the private phases of
their researches (Ben-David, 1977, p. 265).
27. Deviance may also be detected by planned and
unplanned scrutiny and then made public by ‘ ‘whistle
blowing.” The difficulties encountered by Stewart
and Feder (1987; see Chubin, 1987) in getting their
review of Darsee’s publications into print suggest that
very great persistence is needed for whistle-blowers
to make their case public. A thankless and costly art,
whistle-blowing is scarcely a reliable means of social
control.
28. There is no statute of limitations in science.
It can take a long time for fraud or hoax to be dis­
covered, as in the case o f the Piltdown man. In this
instance, modem methods were needed to demon­
strate that the remains had been doctored.
29- Efforts to replicate are far more common when
the scientific or social stakes of research are high. Re­
search on AIDS therapies, for example, has been the
subject of multiple efforts to replicate (Barnes, 1987).
30. Agencies providing funds for research have
played an important role in encouraging their estab­
lishment (Greene et al., 1985).
31. Various studies show that scientists rank near
the top o f the prestige hierarchy and that rankings
o f occupational prestige have remained quite stable
over many decades in the United States (Hodge,
Siegel, and Rossi, 1964).
32. In general, the more “ fundamental” the sub­
ject matter o f a science, the closer it is to the nature
o f matter, and the more its work is mathematized,
the higher its standing.
33. Only seemingly in jest, Stigler (1980, p. 147)
asserts that ‘ ‘no scientific discovery is named after its
original discoverer,” calling attention to the distance
in time between the discovery and the eponymous
attribution by the scientific community.
34. The Science Citation Index and its younger cor­
relative, the Social Science Citation Index, were
established to improve the retrieval o f scientific in­
formation. Sociologists of science have used these in­
dexes with their millions of entries of scientific
reference for the quite different purpose of gauging
the cognitive impact of particular contributors and
their work. That use as an indicator of impact, let
alone o f “ quality” or significance of scientists’ con­
tributions, is being continuously investigated through
new analytical procedures. Mere counts are flawed in
several respects, as Eugene Garfield, the founder of
the Science Citation Index has emphatically observed
(1979, chap. 10) and as others such as Edge (1979)
have vigorously noted. However, carefully developed
citation analyses remains the best available procedure
for assessing the intellectual influence of compara­
tively large numbers o f scientists (Zuckerman, 1987b).
35. The concentration of eminent scientists in a few
universities is even more marked in England. Cam­
bridge, Oxford, and London dominate die member­
ship of the Royal Society of London, one of the oldest
and most distinguished of honorific academies. In
I960, 65% of the Fellows were affiliated with Ox­
ford or London alone, a proportion that has remained
stable for half a century, the same period in which
a declining proportion of scientists were employed
by these institutions (Mulkay, 1976, p. 450).
36. J . Cole (1979, p. 62) reports that, on average,
ability scores of scientists are correlated with the
prestige of the departments from which they received
degrees but the differences are not large.
37. It will be noted that the Latour and Woolgar
(1979) model does not depart very much from the
longstanding concept of the mutability of resources,
rewards, and standing in science. Note too that in
certain instances—research fellowships and professor­
ships, for example—resources and rewards are not just
mutable but one and the same (Zuckerman, 1970).
38. Lotka’s Law holds for for the aggregate of scien­
tists but not for particular subsets (Potter, 1981).
39- Citations are so skewed, in fart, that the Coles
(1972) once held that science could manage just as
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
well with smaller numbers than it then had. Recendy,
citation counts have been challenged as biased against
less well-known scientists (MacRoberts and Mac-
Roberts, 1987), a challenge yet to be demonstrated
(Zuckerman, 1987b).
40. The great bulk of research on role performance
and rewards in science is limited to academic scien­
tists in the United States and Great Britain. Com­
paratively little work has been done on the majority
of scientists who work in industry or for the govern­
ment. Not only is the academic career comparatively
uniform across institutions, it is also well understood.
Moreover, since academic scientists contribute dis­
proportionately to the advancement of fundamental
knowledge about science, this focus is scarcely
frivolous.
41. S. Cole (1978) also concludes that the cognitive
structures of the sciences apparendy have little in­
fluence on the distribution of rewards, an important
finding in light of our poor understanding of dif­
ferences and similarities among the sciences.
42. The patterns o f concentration o f funds among
scientists of varying levels of prestige are reversed
when it comes to the distribution of funds among
types of research. Much larger amounts of money are
spent on applied science and development than on
the more esteemed fundamental research. O f the
$106.6 billion spent on research and development in
1985, 66% went to development, 21% to applied
research, and a mere 13% to basic research.
43. Cole, Cole, and Simon (1981) also report con­
siderable randomness in referees’ decisions on pro­
posals submitted for funding. Since referees disagree
on funding decisions and since “ luck” governs the
assignment o f referees to particular proposals, many
decisions on funding depend on the chance selection
of referees. Given the high degree of self-selection
among those applying for research funds (many are
highly qualified), this is less surprising than it may
seem at first.
44. These data on access to publication must be
seen in light of high rates of acceptance of papers sub­
mitted for publication in many of the sciences (see
Hargens, in press, for recent data) and the multitude
of journals that are published. Should a paper be re­
jected by one, scientists may submit them to another.
In conjunction, the moderate degree of universalism
and high acceptance rates in the sciences make for
an open—perhaps too open—publication system,
with its flood of publications.
45. Comparable data on the careen o f women
scientists in industry also suggest that women are less
apt than men to hold managerial posts, that they
receive lower salaries and are promoted less rapidly.
However, data on role performance are not available
and therefore do not permit fine-grained analysis.
46. First stated in a truncated fashion by Merton
(1942/ 1973b) and developed more fully in his later
work (1968, 1977), the theory has been elaborated
and subject to considerable empirical investigation
by Allison, Long, and Krauze (1982); Allison and
Stewart (1974); Gaston (1978); Cole and Cole (1973);
561
Mittermeir and Knorr-Cetina (1979); and Zuckerman
(1977b, in press a, in press, b), among others.
47. In practice, it matters a great deal whether proc­
esses of accumulation of advantage rest on par­
ticularistic or universalistic processes of allocation. If
resources go to those who are no more able to use
them than the rest, advantage accumulates but not
nearly as rapidly as it does when universalistic criteria
apply; that is when those who receive resources are
not just more qualified by past achievement but can
use resources more effectively. In the first instance,
advantage accumulates additively, and in the second,
multiplicatively (Zuckerman 1977b, pp. 60-61).
48. Quoted in Zuckerman (1977b, p. 164). As
noted there, it is fitting that Dirac developed the
mathematical theory of the positron at 26 and won
his Nobel prize at 31.
49- See Waldman and Avolio (1986) for a critical
review of studies of age and job performance in other­
wise different spheres. Sociologists of science have
practical reasons for being interested in age stratifica­
tion in the production of new ideas: First, in the cor­
relations between age and job performance, and sec­
ond in the consequences of declining rates of entry
of young people into science in the 1970s and early
1980s. (See S. Cole, 1979, on possible consequences
of the “ aging” of the scientific population.)
50. Diamond (1984) reports that rates of publica­
tion in economics do not vary much over the life
course but that rates of citation do, suggesting that
the intellectual significance of work by older econo­
mists declines even if their output does not. These
data are not consistent with those reported by Cole
(1979).
51. There is also evidence that disparities in publi­
cation within age cohorts increase with age—that is,
that the differences between the most and the least
productive scientists become ever larger. However, it
is less clear that disparities in the impact o f scientists’
work grow with age (Allison, Long, and Krauze,
1982; Allison and Stewart, 1974).
52. Simonton (1983) departs from others in posit-
ing age-related differences in rates of ideation and
elaboration. He has proposed that the true relation­
ship between age and creativity is one of constantly
decelerating decay.
53. There are no canonical analytical definitions
of specialties, sciences, or disciplines. Both are loose
groupings o f scientists working on similar problems
who identify themselves and are identified by others
as working in the smaller division, socially and cogni­
tive defined and labeled as a specialty, or in the larger
division, similarly defined as a science or discipline.
Specialties are comparatively small and fluid, while
disciplines are more stable and more often institu­
tionalized in the structure of universities and formal
professional societies. The extent to which members
of specialties share a “ research programme” (Lakatos,
1970) varies, as does their size and the extent of in­
teraction of their members. It is generally agreed that
members o f specialties are know or know o f one
another’s work, more so than research in their disci­
562 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
plines as a whole. They need not interact often but
do interact more often than randomly selected
members of disciplines. Still smaller groups of scien­
tists who regularly share information with one another
are members of “ invisible colleges,” the evocative
term, first used for the “ unofficial pioneers” who
banded together to found the Royal Society of Lon­
don in 1660, and adapted by DerekJ. de Solla Price
to describe these fairly close-knit groups o f scientists.
Price estimates that an “ invisible college” rarely ex­
ceeds 100 scientists; after that, communication be­
comes unwieldy and less effective (1986, pp. 74-76).
54. Two other developments encouraged sociolo­
gists’ interest in the study o f specialties. Empirical
studies of communication, published productivity,
and stratification in scientific disciplines, to select just
a few examples, have produced a set of puzzling find­
ings. So much so, that many have come to believe
that specialties might be more promising than disci­
plines, which appear not to be the proper units for
sociological analysis. Some philosophers and historians
of science have come to similar conclusions. Lakatos
declared that the history of science is not the history
o f theories but of “ research programmes” (1970, p.
132), while Kuhn shifted his attention to “ disci­
plinary matrices,” smaller units than the disciplines
he originally believed were carriers o f paradigms.
Toulmin (1972), however, has made a powerful case
for disciplines being the socially and intellectually
meaningful units of science.
55. In an elegant study of astronomers, Gieryn
(1978) found that these scientists continually add new
problems to their “ problem sets,” the array of prob­
lems they are studying at a given time, while con­
tinuing to work on some old ones. This makes for
continuities in the population o f specialties and also
for a degree of novelty in the work of individual
scientists.
56. Cognitive and organizational leaders need not
be the same individual. The skills required for the
two roles differ significandy. Although, on occasion,
they come together in an exceptional individual who
sets out the agenda for the field and also does the
hard work of setting up arrangements so that others
can get on with their work in the field. This familiar
division of scientific labor is distandy akin to the em­
pirically based distinction between “ instrumental”
and “ expressive leaders” in small groups (Bales,
1950).
57. As Holton (1972) suggested, an enduring
theme in science is the life cycle as an organizing
analytic scheme. This is much the case in the study
of specialties.
58. Paradigm development was measured here by
the number of new variables appearing in the litera­
ture of the specialties under examination—a rough
but imaginative effort to quantitate a complex set of
ideas.
59- For example, certain new perspectives not only
challenge prevailing theoretical commitments but also
the authority structure and goals o f the parent disci­
pline. These may lead to “ schools” of thought rather
than simply to the successive specification o f ig­
norance. See Amsterdamska (1985) on schools of
thought and their dependence on larger institutional
structures.
60. Fisher (1967), however, notes that in the case
of “ invariant theory in mathematics,” decay and
death set in primarily because no new workers were
recruited rather than because the array o f interesting
problems decreased.
61. This position derives both from Mannheimian
(1936) and Durkheimian (1912/1934) traditions in
the sociology of knowledge, which hold that the
emergence o f objective” scientific knowledge is made
possible by the development of appropriate social
structures, but that once established, its concepts and
logic develop independently of its social context. This
view is also consistent with that of “ rationalist”
philosophers of science such as Popper.
62. Robert Merton observes that the hypothesis that
discoveries and inventions are inevitable with cultural
accumulation is itself a multiple (196l/1973f, pp.
352-356). He identifies no fewer than 18 indepen­
dent instances in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in which multiple discoveries and inventions
were noted and some of their implications identified.
I draw heavily here on his extended work on the
sociological analysis of discovery. (See Merton 1957/
1973e, 196l/1973f, 1963/1973g, 1973a.)
63. The phenomenon is also found in technology.
One o f the sociological earliest studies of multiples
is entitled, “ Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on
Social Evolution” (Ogbum and Thomas, 1922).
64. His language here presages the concerns both
of interests analysts and constructivist sociologists of
scientific knowledge. Multiples supplement current
emphases in research on the behavior o f scientists by
conceiving that behavior as a resultant not only of
the idiosyncratic characteristics and the local ambiance
of scientists, but also o f their place in the within the
wider “ social structure and culture” (1963/ 1973g,
p. 376). In addition to these problems, Merton
(1961/ 1973f) also noted the usefulness of multiples
for comparing patterns of development in the various
branches of science and for formulating science policy.
Policymakers, he observes, might consider fostering
rather than trying to eliminate redundancy of dis­
covery in an effort to ensure that scientific advance­
ment will occur along certain lines.
65. The economist Don Patinkin argues (1982,
1983) that that new ideas will stimulate further
work—a significant matter for science—if they are ex­
plicitly set out as the “ central message” of the
reported work; that is, the central problems being ad­
dressed and the solutions proposed for them.
Discoveries are thus equivalent only when they have
the same central message. His analysis has focused
on whether Keynes’s general theory was anticipated
by the economist Kalecki and the Stockholm School.
He concludes it was not, since neither made all the
main elements of the theory their ‘ ‘central message.’ ’
66. Kuhn is not alone in taking this severe posi­
tion. The historian o f technology, Jacob Schmookler
 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
(1966), and the historian o f science, Yehuda Elkana
(1970), also adopt these extremely strong criteria for
multiples.
67. Students of multiple discoveries have compiled
lists of multiples in science and technology of vary­
ing length and for various purposes (Kroeber 1917;
Ogbum and Thomas, 1922; Merton in collaboration
with Elinor Barber, 1961.) More recendy, Simonton
(1979) has collected a set of 579 episodes of indepen­
dent simultaneous discovery for the purpose of quan­
titative analysis.
68. The most famous of these was the rediscovery
of Mendel’s work in 1900 by three scientists in­
dependently. Recent scholarship suggests that one of
these may have known about the work o f another
(Weinstein, 1977, pp. 362-363). Brannigan (1979)
argues that the idea o f these being three rediscoveries
of Mendelian genetics is a later social construction but
this is still moot.
69. See Brannigan’s (1981) extended discussion of
the social determination of discovery.
70. Cozzens’s (1985) analysis o f the dynamics in­
volved in the the congeries of discoveries of the opiate
receptor identifies the social definition of these
multiples. This is not taken to mean that the various
researches were not related to the same or similar
natural phenomena.
71. So much so that finding an appropriate term
to cover all variants of constructionism is no easy task.
Gieryn uses the label relativistI constructivist program
(1982, p. 280), one he describes as “ clumsy.” In
response, Mulkay and Gilbert, the principal advocates
o f discourse analysis, contend that Gieryn has
‘ ‘divided the field in quite the wrong way. The major
division is between discourse analysis and everything
else. In particular, it was extremely misleading to put
our recent work on scientific discourse in the same
category as the ‘relativists’ or ‘constructivists’ ” (1982,
p. 309). Such are the difficulties of trying to locate
different strands of inquiry and the scholars who pur­
sue them. I trust that Mulkay and Gilbert and the
many others whose work is discussed in the ‘ ‘construc­
tionist” rubric will not be permanently offended by
the label.
72. Collins (1983a, p. 267) contrasts this to socio­
logical studies of the social organization o f science,
‘ ‘Inquiry based on this program concerns how cer­
tain views about the physical and mathematical world
come to count as correct within society, rather than
how a society can be arranged so that truth will
emerge” .
73. This is the terminology Pickering (1982, p. 125)
uses, though his particular concern with professional
or cognitive interests is more focused than Barnes and
Shapin’s (1979, p. 10), both of whom are interested
in the social conditioning of knowledge more gener­
ally. They have used the term naturalism to describe
their perspective, in contrast to traditional Marxist,
“ evaluative” analyses o f science. But this term seems
too general to convey the particular concerns o f this
sort o f inquiry.
74. Although it had long been evident that much
563
could be learned about the development o f scientific
knowledge by bringing together the perspectives of
the history and the sociology of science, there were
few, if any, explicit efforts to lay out the problematics
o f such an undertaking. One such effort, involving
Yehuda Elkana, Joshua Lederberg, Robert K. Mer­
ton, Arnold Thackray, and Harriet Zuckerman got
under way in 1973 at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences under the tide, “ Historical
Sociology o f Scientific Knowledge.” The group’s in­
tent was to examine “ the cognitive and social proc­
esses in the development of scientific knowledge” and
to ‘ ‘work toward the goal of developing an analytical
and interpretative framework through the study of
cases in point.” (POSTS, 1974, pp. 9-10). With the
rapid growth of the field, “ the historical sociology
o f scientific knowledge” has become a matter-of-
course expression, as one sees in Shapin’s (1981, p.
158) exacting and comprehensive paper.
75. As noted earlier, Kuhn is far from comfortable
with the notion that his work encouraged those who
rejected die significance of norms and values in science
and adopted a radically relativist position.
76. Philosophers far from agree that the Duhcm-
Quine thesis makes it impossible to reject theories on
the basis o f evidence under all conditions.
77. Nor were many philosophers of science in ac­
cord with these ideas. For one example, see Laudan
(1977, chap. 7).
78. In his foreword to the English edition of Fleck,
Kuhn observes that he had read Fleck and indeed had
cited Genesis and Development in the Structure o f
Scientific Revolutions but that he is "almost totally
uncertain’ ’ as to what he took from him . . . for some
years . . . I knew of no one else who saw in the history
of science what I was myself finding there. Very
probably also, acquaintance with [his] text helped me
to realize that the problems which concerned me had
a fundamentally sociological dimension.” Yet as
Kuhn also observes, he found Fleck’s “ sociology of
the collective mind . . . vaguely repulsive” (Fleck,
1979, p. viii, ix).
79. One example Fleck gives of a passive connec­
tion is that once syphilis is actively defined as a ‘ ‘car­
nal scourge,” the typically unreliable effect of mer­
cury on the carnal scourge is “ inevitable” and “ seems
real’ ’ and ‘ ‘objective. ’ ’ Thus the active and passive in
knowledge are connected (Fleck, 1935/1979, p- 10).
80. Shapin also observes that there is no reason to
equate “ the social with the ‘irrational’ ” unless one
wishes to adopt a normative attitude toward rational­
ity. “ The role of the social . . . is to prestructure
choice, not to preclude choice” (1982, p. 198).
81. Pinch (1986), in his review of Rudwick’s book,
observes that the evidence was not altogether un­
problematic since not all geologists found it convinc­
ing, albeit it was marginal scientists who rejected the
consensus. However, marginality is itself a social
definition and Pinch wonders whether the opinions
of marginal scientists would have been considered
unimportant had they accepted prevailing views.
82. See Gould (1981, p. 66) for a telling example
564 PART III: MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
of how bias affected his own misreading of the evi­
dence on the ctaniai capacity of various races.
83. For others, see Lynch (1982); Lynch, Garfinkel,
and Livingston (1983); Zenzen and Restivo (1982).
84. The authors of both studies also eschew a
relativist position. Latour and Woolgar observe: “ We
do not wish to say that facts do not exist nor that there
is no such thing as reality. In this simple sense our
position is not relativist. Our point is that ‘out-there-
ness’ is the consequence of scientific work rather than
its cause’ ’ (1979, pp. 180-182). While Knorr-Cetina
observes that the ‘ ‘constructivist interpretation . . .
[is] non-subjectivist exactly in the sense that it con­
siders the self-referential reflexivity of knowledge not
in itself as a matter of detached reflection, but as a
matter of ‘fact,’ that is, as a meta-philosophical prob­
lem of research” (1983, p. 160).
85. Even so, it is not self-evident that the research
decisions they describe, such as Guillemin’s an­
nounced strategy to go for the structure of TRF, were
principally determined by social and not by logical
or evidentiary considerations.
86. “ Social interaction is related to the develop­
ment of science in several other ways . . . although
the idea of ‘other persons’ is not employed explicitly
in science, it is always tacidy involved. In order to
prove a generalization, which for the individual scien­
tists, on the basis o f his own private experience, may
have attained the status o f a valid law, . . . the in­
vestigator is compelled to set up critical experiments
which will satisfy the other scientists engaged in the
same cooperative activity” (Merton, 1938/1970, p.
219).
87. Latour and Woolgar apparently do not think
that scientific practice is so local as to preclude multi­
ple discovery since the very case they examine in
detail, the discovery o f the structure o f TRF (TRH),
was in important respects a multiple discovery by
Roger Guillemin and his colleagues and Andrew
Schally and his colleagues. They say that ‘ ‘we our­
selves have used the two terms interchangeably. . . .
In fact, these alternative formulations corresponded
directly to those used in each of the groups led by
Guillemin and Schally. It became apparent to us that
these terms were different names for the same thing”
(1979, p. 111).
88. Paradoxically, Latour and Woolgar report that
‘ ‘our scientists only rarely assessed the success o f their
operations in terms o f formal credit . . . they were
only marginally interested in questions of credit and
priority” (1979, p. 207). At the same time, they
describe in detail their scientists’ arguments with the
Schally group about alleged misappropriations of
credit and issues of priority. Indeed they report that
“ some bitterness [about the allocation of credit] was
apparent as much as seven years later. In response to
our sociological enquiries (which undoubtedly had
the effect o f rekindling the dormant conflict) mem­
bers of each group carefully set out to compare publi­
cation and submission dates so as to establish the ‘cor­
rect’ and ‘definitive’ allocation of priority” (1979,
p. 112).
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