Disrupting Science by Kelly Moore

In the gateway seminar to the Technology and Society PhD emphasis, which this quarter is being led by Bruce Bimber, there was a discussion a few weeks back on the ethics of scientific participation in various kinds of military research. As luck would have it, I had been planning to read Disrupting Science by Kelly Moore, which examines how scientists in the late 1940s through early 1970s contested the relationship between the military and science (and scientists as individuals and universities as major employers of scientists for that matter).

After finishing the book over the Memorial Day weekend, I would recommend it to anyone interested in these issues. Moore extensively documents the growth of different groups—some led only by scientists and some that included scientists and non-scientists—and examines the different approaches the groups took to questioning the relationship between the military and science.

For instance, one major group that formed earlier in the period drew on Quaker roots and believed the individual scientists had to decide whether it was moral to work on various military projects and the goal of the organization was to provide support and fellowship for objectors who refused different types of work. On the other end of the spectrum was a group that argued that it was a collective and affirmative responsibility of scientists to use science to help the disadvantaged and to promote peace. Their tactics were far more confrontational and the group developed along side other New Left and civil rights inspired movements.

The history of the groups is fascinating as is Moore’s analysis of why and how scientists would participate in the “unbinding” of their profession (for STS readers, why scientists did not engage in boundary work to support their status but rather pursued goals that sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally looked quite the opposite of boundary work.) And, for folks who study social movements (as I do), there is a lot to think about in terms of strategic and tactical decision-making, movement spin-offs, movements within institutions and professions, etc. But, for folks in the gateway seminar, it may simply provide some very interesting and insightful history and context for the debate that unfolded in class (and some interesting history on status battles between physicists, engineers, biologists, and social scientists).