Sketching together the modern histories of science, technology, and medicine

This essay explores ways to "write together" the awkwardly jointed histories of "science" and "me dicine"--but it also includes other "arts" (in the old sense) and technologies. It draws especially on the historiography of medicine, but I try to use terms that are applicable across all of science, technology, and medicine (STM). I stress the variety of knowledges and practices in play at any time and the ways in which the ensembles change. I focus on the various relations of "science" and "medicine," as they were understood for a succession of periods--from mainly agricultural societies, through industrial societies, to our biomedical present--trying to sketch a history that encompasses daily practices and understandings as well as major conceptual and technical innovations. The model is meant to facilitate inquiry across topics and across times, including those to come.     

National science training policy and early scientific careers in France and the United States

The economic health of nations and regions is increasingly coming to rest on the scientific and technical labor force conducting scientific research. As such, enormous social resources are directed to educating and training those who will fire the engines of economic growth. In the first part of this paper, we compare recent investment in the scientific and technical labor forces by two giants of nationally-supported research endeavors: France and the United States. We find that France is more invested in scientific and technical training, but that both nations invest directly and indirectly in the scientific and technical labor force. French policy is more likely to support the individual graduate student directly through a national grant, while graduate students in the US tend to rely indirectly on federal support through research grants to other researchers. We then use duration models on individual data to predict entry into a permanent academic position within three years of completing a Ph.D. We do not find that industrial support of graduate training has any effect on later success in obtaining a position. There is, however, evidence of different academic labor markets operating in each country. In France, entry into a position has not depended on period factors, while in the US more recent cohorts have been more successful in obtaining permanent employment. Furthermore, postdoctoral positions in France delay or deter academic careers, but have no impact on entry in the US: this suggest that two different modes of scientific human resources management operate in France and in the USA. In the USA, Ph.D.s are seen as an essential element in the process of knowledge transfer, and early mobility does not affect entry into permanent academic careers. In France, few incentives are given to encourage mobility, which merely deters the access to permanent jobs. Finally, we found that graduates of the most prestigious undergraduate institutions were systematically advantaged in obtaining permanent academic employment, suggesting that academic stratification occurs very early in the training path in each country.     

以跨学科大纵深研究策源重大原始创新：新一代集成电路光刻系统突破的启示

重大原始创新需要依托跨学科、大纵深的开创性研究拓展人类知识边界。作为国家战略科技力量的国立科研机构,在加快打造原始创新策源地、加快突破关键核心技术、努力抢占科技制高点方面,肩负重大责任和使命。文章以20世纪90年代末美国能源部国家实验室实施的新一代集成电路光刻系统重大原始创新项目为案例,通过对该项目实施过程中前瞻的战略定位、明确的顶层设计,以及高效的攻关与协同组织模式等方面的深度剖析,为进一步高效发挥国家战略科技力量,聚焦以重大需求目标为牵引的核心科学问题,建设跨学科大纵深的顶尖研究高地,形成多元主体协同创新的高效组织提供重要启示;并为我国在战略前沿推动集科学新发现、技术新轨道和产业新方向于一体的重大突破,真正打造原始创新策源地提供参考。     

马克思主义科学史学纲领的提出及其影响

苏联代表团在第二届国际科学是大会上首次阐述了马克思主义的科学史观,尤其是鲍里斯·赫森的“牛顿《原理》的社会与经济根源”探讨牛顿的科学工作与时代的社会经济语境之间的关联,与当时的科学史研究传统形成鲜明对比。尽管苏联人运用马克思的辩证唯物主义思想解释科学史上重要人物和重要事件存在教条化、庸俗化等问题,在大会上并未取得期待的交流效果。但他们的科学编史学方法在会后持续发酵,在史学界的猛烈批判和科学家们的盲目推崇中不断引发争论,最终为科学编史学的社会文化转向奠定了基础。     

Practice-Based Design of Information Systems: Notes from the Hyperdeveloped World

This paper offers reflections on information systems design based in everyday practices. Drawing on experience in what I name the hyperdeveloped world of industrial research and development in the United States, I outline a series of concerns, organized under the themes of information flows, local improvisations and work practices. I then offer a set of alternative understandings of change and innovation that underwrite a practice-based design approach. These include a view of innovation as indigenous to technologiesin-use, an emphasis on the investments needed to create sustainable change, and an orientation to artful integration as an objective for information systems design.     

Biomedicine in Edinburgh, 1887-1920

This paper examines the scientific work of the Laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from its foundation in 1887 to 1920. It looks in particular at the pivotal role of clinical cases in the work of the Laboratory, using the concept of 'triangulation' to analyse how cases served both as objects of scientific knowledge and as sites for articulating and aligning the concerns of medical practitioners and career scientists. It goes on to propose a general model for thinking about the role of cases in scientific knowledge production, based on a rereading of Kuhn as seen through the lens of the sociology of scientific knowledge. It concludes with some general reflections on how this analysis of the work of the Laboratory helps us to rethink the relations between basic and applied medical science in the period before the emergence of modern biomedicine.     

Impacts of COVID-19: A research agenda to support people in their fight

Grounded in the vast changes to work life (jobs) and home life that people are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic (hereinafter COVID), this article presents five research directions related to COVID’s impacts on jobs—i.e., job loss, job changes, job outcomes, coping, and support—and five research directions related to COVID’s impact on home life—i.e., home life changes, children, life-related outcomes, social life, and support. In addition to this, I discuss overarching possible research directions and considerations for researchers, editors, and reviewers, as we continue our scientific journey to support people through this pandemic and beyond. I organize these directions and considerations into two sets of five each: focal groups that should be studied—i.e., underprivileged populations, different countries and cultural contexts, women (vs. men), workers in healthcare (frontline workers), elderly and at-risk—and five general issues and special considerations—i.e., role of technology as the oxygen, pre- vs. mid- vs. post-COVID studies, constraints on data collection/research due to COVID, evolution of COVID, and focus on contextualization (generalizability is irrelevant).     

There and back again: Revisiting Vannevar Bush,the linear model,and the freedom of science

Despite its age, Vannevar Bushs Science: The Endless Frontier has remained a touchstone for science funding policy discussions. More specifically, many claim that Bush ushered in a new ‘social contract’ that allowed scientists to freely choose projects in accordance with their own interests while promising deliverables for the society that funds scientific institutions. Despite the prominence of The Endless Frontier, there are countless interpretations of its argumentative structure. Building off others, I develop an interpretation of how the linear model relates to the freedom of science in SEF. I critically assess this view and argue that it provides a valuable starting point for a social contract for the 21st century. To accomplish this, I clarify Bush's stance on the linear model and show that it bypasses the most common objections against its plausibility, consider the relationship between Bush's conception of the freedom of science and the rise of citizen science, and articulate a more nuanced approach to government intervention in research priority setting.     

高校科协的文化价值意义探析

采用文献研究法,首先分析了文化与价值的意义、科学研究的文化价值意义,即人类的存在与一定社会的文化及价值意识形态联系在一起,科学研究是一种文化现象并在价值观念等层次上深刻影响着文化,进而推导出高校科协的文化价值意义:高校科协是科技工作者的群众组织,是推动科学文化传播和先进文化建设的主要阵地;内部群体文化与同类价值意识对科技工作者个体文化人格的形成发挥价值导向功能;在学术文化交流过程中通过批判、继承和创造进行文化融合;在传播、普及科学知识过程中以自身的观念、意识、行为去影响公众。高校科协应构建具有感召力、影响力和凝聚力的文化价值体系,引领科技工作者开展科学研究,促进社会文化不断向前发展。     

近代世界专利中心转移的历史考察

近代科学中心转移是一个长盛不衰的研究话题。从时间上来看,近代世界各主要国家建立专利制度的顺序与之具有一定的相似性。为考证是否存在世界专利中心转移的现象,探寻世界专利中心转移的经济社会文化背景,揭示世界专利中心转移与科学革命、技术革命以及工业革命的关联,利用历史与逻辑相统一的研究方法,搜集整理大量历史数据,发现世界专利中心呈现出英法美德日不断更替又交叉共存的现象,既基本吻合思想解放-社会革命-科学中心-工业革命的波动规律,又体现出各国在促进本国经济社会发展路径上的不同特点。研究结论能够为我国知识产权强国的建设和社会主义现代化国家的建设提供历史经验和决策参考。     

Management,politics, and science: a nonseparable system

Philosophy of science, as understood by most social scientists, has given us an image of the scientific enterprise as a large hypothesis testing machine. One key unit within this enterprise is the individual scientist. He has learned or intuitively understands a set of logical rules which he brings to bear in ordering his thinking about a problem. Since he was pictured as operating within an unconstrained environment in an organizationally and morally simplistic world, his goal (scientific ‘truth’) was unambiguous, the organization and conduct of his work frictionless, and his only concerns were logic and measurements. Management and politics had no relationship to his pursuit of truth or the possibility of uncovering it. The other key unit, the scientific community, was equally autonomous from the world of management and politics. It was a social system in which problem definitions and decisions on truth are the joint result of open interaction among autonomous, rational, driven men and the impersonal automatic, application of the rules of evidence and logic.What guaranteed that this marvellous hypothesis testing machine actually operated in this fashion? The character and socialization of the individual scientist and the fact that interference in or imperfections of the process will result in erroneous truths which will eventually catch up with the perpetrators and punish them through individual, system, or societal failure, as in the inexorable workings of the market place of classical economics.If this was ever a very accurate picture of the scientific enterprise, the emergence of ‘Big Science’ has placed its adequacy seriously in doubt. ‘Big Science’ involves a research system in which (a) a consciously articulated goal exists; (b) there has been a commitment of resources and the organization and coordination of skills and institutions on a scale which only national governments can undertake; (c) the decentralized structures of the scientific community are replaced by planned administrative structures; and (d) it is rare that research problems or goals correspond to the neat disciplinary boundaries within science.Recognition of these developments in the scientific community is uneven and the reaction to them ambivalent and the philosophy and sociology of science have yet to come fully to terms with them.     

Hybridity, race, and science: the voyage of the Zaca, 1934-1935

In 1929 and 1934-1935, the physical anthropologist Harry L. Shapiro voyaged in the South Seas on the Mahina-l-Te-Pua and the Zaca, measuring mixed-race islanders, including the descendants of the Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island. His research in Polynesian hybridity reflects the growing cultural and scientific investment of the United States in the Pacific during this period. Shapiro's oceanic adventures and intimate encounters prompted him to discount typological speculation and emphasize instead the liberal Boasian program in physical anthropology, giving him the confidence to refigure his evaluations of racial difference. The seaborne investigatory enterprise came to influence U.S. racial thought, adding impetus to the condemnation of racism in science. On his return from the South Seas, Shapiro tried to get his fellow physical anthropologists to issue a manifesto opposing the harnessing of their science to racial discrimination and prejudice.     

Spas, mineral waters, and hydrological science in twentieth-century France.

This essay examines the survival of waters therapy in twentieth-century France with a view to understanding the conditions that make a therapy convincing in one national context and not in another. Part of the explanation for this survival has to do with the size and power of the spa industry. Where this industry was strong and economically powerful--as it was in France--its survival became a national priority. Of equal importance, however, was the role of the medical elite. In twentieth-century France, a small but influential group of elite physicians served as the chief architects of the continued survival and development of water cures. The primary mechanism for this process was a massive and successful campaign to introduce hydrology into the curriculum of medical schools. Once this was achieved, a large corps of academic hydrologists were in a position to produce significant amounts of convincing hydrological science that seemed to demonstrate the varied physiological effects of mineral waters. By the 1940s mineral waters had enough scientific visibility to ensure their inclusion without controversy in the national health insurance system that was being set up.     

Testing sex and gender in sports; reinventing, reimagining and reconstructing histories

Most international sports organisations work on the premise that human beings come in one of two genders: male or female. Consequently, all athletes, including intersex and transgender individuals, must be assigned to compete in one or other category. Since the 1930s (not, as is popularly suggested, the 1960s) these organisations have relied on scientific and medical professionals to provide an 'objective' judgement of an athlete's eligibility to compete in women's national and international sporting events. The changing nature of these judgements reflects a great deal about our cultural, social and national prejudices, while the matter of testing itself has become a site of conflict for feminists and human rights activists. Because of the sensitive nature of this subject, histories of sex testing are difficult to write and research; this has lead to the repetition of inaccurate information and false assertions about gender fraud, particularly in relation to the 'classic' cases of Stella Walsh and Heinrich/Hermann/Dora Ratjen. As historians, we need to be extremely careful to differentiate between mythologies and histories.     

基于多源数据的人工智能产业全链条态势研究

人工智能产业的发展将为其它产业带来颠覆性变化,对人工智能领域的定量分析能系统展现该领域发展态势,但当前数据来源单一,无法全链条反映该产业态势.基于文献或专利的定量研究,增加领域顶级会议论文、产业规模、投融资情况、科研项目信息等多来源数据,从基础研究、前沿热点、技术创新竞争情况、全球科技布局和产业态势等方面全链条挖掘分析全球人工智能产业的科技创新及产业发展态势.在此基础上,分析全球竞争形势和我国人工智能产业存在的问题,提出政策建议,为推动我国人工智能产业发展和提升政府治理水平提供决策参考.     

中国高校仍“重理轻文”吗？

“重理轻文”是长期以来积攒的科研弊病，那么从科研技术效率的角度来看是否如此呢？本文以2009-2014年中国大陆31个省高校科研活动为研究对象，采用随机前沿分析方法对中国大陆高校理工农医类与人文社科类科研技术效率进行测算与比较分析。研究发现：理工农医类的科研技术效率要明显高于人文社科类，且差距随着时间的推移而不断扩大；初始拥有较多科研资源的东部地区理工农医类与人文社科类的科研技术效率均较高，但后期被中西部地区赶超；不同省市的科研技术效率差异较大，少数省市依然存在“重理轻文”科研观念。因此，合理配置不同地域科研资源，实现不同学科的均衡发展，是今后一段时期内科研领域的工作重点。     

科技人力资源是否有效促进了中国工业的绿色转型？基于环境规制的视角

当前,中国人口、资源与环境问题迅速凸显,通过科技人力资源促进工业绿色转型是推动高质量发展的关键一环。本文基于Super-SBM系统分析中国工业行业绿色转型异质性结构,通过环境规制视角构建动态面板门槛模型,探析了科技人力资源对于工业绿色转型的影响效应。研究发现：中国工业绿色转型还有较大发展空间,粗放与集约发展并存,且存在显著异质性,其转型过程呈现明显波动特征。有趣的是,中国科技人力资源对于工业绿色转型的作用存在显著的环境规制异质门槛效应：较低程度的环境规制水平并不利于科技人力资源对工业绿色转型的促进作用,而随着产业环境规制强度的增加并超过“临界值”,在一定程度上降低了这种不利影响,进而推动了科技人力资源正向促进效应。     

凝聚、吸引、培养——论国家重点实验室人才培养

 国家重点实验室是代表国家级水平的科研创新基地和人才培养中心,既要出高水平的科研成果,也要出高层次高质量的人才。以汽车安全与节能国家重点实验室为例,探讨了国家重点实验室人才培养的模式,包括牵头建立跨院系学科交叉研究平台,培养学术带头人;经费进修双保障,培养青年学术骨干;重视博士后培养,形成后备青年学术骨干梯队;积极引进有国外研究经历的优秀人才;国际化办学培养研究生。通过以上模式,凝聚、吸引和培养了一批科研人才。     

Post-Soviet science: Difficulties in the transformation of the R&D systems in Russia and Ukraine

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was among the foremost leaders of world science, thanks in large part to its heavy involvement in military programmes. The USSR developed a large research infrastructure but it lacked effective mechanisms for the commercialization of research results. The main aim of the transformation of R&D systems in the post-Soviet states in the 1990s and early 2000s was the re-orientation of scientific activities away from military and towards civilian goals. Analysis of statistical data at the macro-level suggests that this attempt was not particularly successful. Indeed, most newly independent states could not even preserve a ‘critical mass’ of scientific activities in order to remain among the list of significant producers of research results. In the post-Soviet countries (and in this paper we focus on Russia and Ukraine as the largest states of the region), inputs from the R&D system have failed to generate wealth-creating outputs because of a systemic inability to use the resources for generating commercially viable results effectively. All post-Soviet countries, including Russia and Ukraine, urgently need not only a major transformation within the R&D system, but also important changes in the wider ‘environment’. It is important to stress that, in recent years, changes in R&D have been determined not only by the general economic situation itself but also by the general policy of the post-Soviet states. While Russia has expressed ambitions to regain its former influence as a great power and to use S&T to achieve this goal, Ukraine has no clearly determined objectives for the development of its national science system. However, both countries face certain common problems. The development of relevant institutes and the stimulation of demand for R&D results from the side of industry, broader involvement in the international division of scientific work, and the introduction of adequate legal protection for intellectual property rights are all of critical importance for S&T institutes and other research organizations in Russia and Ukraine. This paper shows that the reforms in the R&D sector have been relatively modest and rather unsystematic over the last one and a half decades. The key challenges, which relate to the inertia and the negative aspects of the previous period (for example, a extremely low level of replacement of aging manpower, largely outdated scientific equipment in research laboratories, and institutional mechanisms that are not relevant to the market economy), pose serious problems for the transformation of the R&D systems in both countries, despite new possibilities and a willingness to increase financial support for R&D.     

两岸文化创意产业园区之比较研究——以上海和台北为例

以上海和台北两地代表性的文化创意产业园为研究对象,通过实地调研和文献研究,对两岸创意产业政策加以梳理总结,一方面指出两岸文化产业园存在的差异,另一方面试图寻找两岸文化创意产业园差异化背后的原因,并对二者目前所存在的问题加以阐述。