Name: Science-mart
ISBN: 9780674046467

Science-mart

This trenchant study analyzes the rise and decline in the quality and format of science in America since World War II. During the Cold War, the U.S. government amply funded basic research in science and medicine. Starting in the 1980s, however, this support began to decline and for-profit corporations became the largest funders of research. Philip Mirowski argues that a powerful neoliberal ideology promoted a radically different view of knowledge and discovery: the fruits of scientific investigation are not a public good that should be freely available to all, but are commodities that could be monetized. Consequently, patent and intellectual property laws were greatly strengthened, universities demanded patents on the discoveries of their faculty, information sharing among researchers was impeded, and the line between universities and corporations began to blur. At the same time, corporations shed their in-house research laboratories, contracting with independent firms both in the States and abroad to supply new products. Among such firms were AT&T and IBM, whose outstanding research laboratories during much of the twentieth century produced Nobel Prize-winning work in chemistry and physics, ranging from the transistor to superconductivity. Science-Mart offers a provocative, learned, and timely critique, of interest to anyone concerned that American science -- once the envy of the world -- must be more than just another way to make money. - Publisher.

What Hacker News says

mmmmpancakesNov 2021

Science Mart by Philip Mirowski does a good job of laying out, for those in research but also for those who are not, the political-economic changes that are responsible for this.

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ajudsonMar 2020

I encourage everyone here to read the book Science-mart by Mirowski. It reveals a lot of limitations of adding markets and the search for "efficiency" in science.

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rshnotsecureDec 2019

So much of the modern corporation has been outsourced...including nearly all research. Most animal research today and Phase II trials are done...in China/India.

The evidence that these studies are largely faked due to the pressure put on the staff and management there has been piling up for years. I would recommend “Science Mart: Privatizing American Science” by Philip Mirowski for more on this.

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Top19Sep 2017

@justabystander wow your reply was long and very detailed and you put a lot of effort into it.

Let me add one more point, and see if what I said merges with what you said. If not I'm completely wrong.

A lot of books, like The Idea Industry by Daniel Drezner and also Science-Mart by Philip Mirowski say that the cutting of university budgets since the late 60's has led to such an undermining of their stability that Academics have had to engage in a stupid, pointless, survival battle of numbers, conformity, and politics. I'm sure the politics was there beforehand, but they make a convincing case that critical thinking and independent research is much more possible when you're not afraid of losing your funding all the time / scared in general about your job.

An additional point to this is that a lot of individuals see the cutting in college funding as the GOP's revenge for the 1960's, because a lot of the behavior of that era was seen as coming from college campuses. UCLA was actually free up until 1967 when Governor Ronald Reagan began the process of charging tuition.

So in conclusion, academia does have a lot of terrible things about it, but I think say 60% of it is fixable simply with a better relationship and funding style between universities and the government.

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