Philip Mirowski Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2011, 464 pages. $ 39.95, £ 29.95, hardcover, ISBN: 9780674046467.
‘It’s not easy making a living in the knowledge biz these days’ (page 1). Academics know this better than most. Caught ‘between the Scylla of Disneyfication of higher education and the Charybdis of Free EnronPrise’ we find a fictitious academic, Viridiana Jones, in search of a ‘patron, any patron, to support her inquires in an era of impending financial doom’ (page 1). The university she knew has changed. It is no longer home to pedagogical ideals intent on freeing research from the hands of those that made or funded it. A new neoliberal logic now reigns whereby truth is validated by what sells and access to it is left up to the Market.
Everywhere Viridiana looks, things that used to be free have become money-making opportunities. Even the staffroom offers little respite from the commercial miasma inflicting the academy. Notice boards flag up the dangers of sharing research tools/intellectual property without first speaking to the resident knowledge transfer officer; colleagues warmly congratulate each other on the floatation of yet another of their spinoff companies; and the alumnus magazine displays a glossy feature from the principal talking up the virtues of making its degrees fully sittable online. Money, of course, has always been needed to make science work, but who knew that science was just another way to make money?
Mirowski’s latest book, Science Mart: Privatizing American Science, takes that question to heart. For him, the U.S. Government’s changing management of scientific research, the emergence of intellectual property as the pinnacle of university life, and the global outsourcing of research capacity, have not only harmed academia but also weakened America’s hegemonic grip. Deeply unsatisfied by contemporary accounts of the commercialization of science, ‘tethered as they are to totemic monolithic abstractions of Science and The Market pushing each other around in Platonic hyperspace’, he seeks to rectify the situation (Mirowski and Sent, 2008: 636).
Such accounts, he argues, suffer from the same drawback: they present a stark before/after narrative for the changing organization of science. As a result, two opposing stances are produced. On the one hand, Mertonian Tories claim that the independence of science as a voice of impartiality and truth is slowly being eroded. On the other hand, economic Whigs contend that exposing science to market forces is the true arbiter of scientific success, creating freedom and prosperity for all involved (Mirowski and Van Horn, 2005). Lost in translation, Mirowski decries, are the historically complex interrelations between science and industry. A knee-jerk reaction is to immediately claim that scientists and their institutions have always been compelled to ‘sing the prince’s tune when taking the prince’s coin’ (page 89). That is, no great fall into the world of commerce has happened: science has always been commercial (see Shapin, 2003). Readings of this kind miss the bigger picture, however. Changes to the makeup of science affect its conduct and content.
Tying together a dazzling array of theoretical and empirical material, and drawing on everything from economic history, patent law, to the sociology of scientific knowledge, the book revolves around the changing governance of science and the effect this has on the quality of science being done. The book addresses those interested in the changing means of knowledge production, natural and social scientists alike. Unfolding in three parts, the book begins by asking three questions: first, why has the modern organization of science changed? Second, how has the privatized science regime embedded itself and has been enacted? Third, where will these changes lead us?
Tackling the first question head-on, Mirowski sets out the historic momentum behind neoliberalism as an organizing concept for knowledge. Offering a counter-narrative to the state’s management of science, Frederick Hayek amongst others is singled out for chipping away at the veneer of academic science. Accusing the state of picking winners and losers, via the funding it bestows, has instilled an institutional-political bias into the very fabric of the scientific base, and squeezed out competition from private R&D, which the Market would otherwise have provided. Neoliberal thinkers conclude that this state monopoly—denying a marketplace of ideas from flourishing—has held science back. The Market will set it free.
But why has the state served as the principal funder of science and why has that patronage slowly ebbed away? Economists of science, self-anointed as uniquely competent to pontificate on the best ways to organise and manage (state) science, lean heavily on the linear innovation model, public good, and growth theory to herald science as an economic catalyst. These efforts, rather than bolster state funding, have, surprisingly, undermined it. If science sparks economic growth, proving it should be easy, right? Alas, proof is hard to find. It is here that Mirowski is at his strongest and most provocative, arguing that STS scholars (e.g. Michel Callon and Bruno Latour) have been complicit in the spread of the neoliberal project, or at least arrived at the same conclusions via a different route.
Constructing science as a public good is a prime example. Justifying state intrusion into the marketplace to prevent under-provision or stimulate industrial uptake is tricky, Callon (1994) argues, while the traceability of its economic benefits remains elusive. If only scientific knowledge was made more visible via a physical-entity, disembodied thing, or commodity, it would be more auditable and accountable economically speaking, the argument goes. Science, in other words, needs to be made to fit the Market. But if science is no longer something special, separate from society, is state protection really needed? The answer, it seems, is no.
Science doesn’t operate in a historic vacuum though. For Mirowski, American science reflects particular social and organisational regimes: Captains of Erudition 1890s to 1945; Cold War 1945 to 1980; and Globalized Privatization 1980s onwards. That is, the structure of universities, and in turn, corporations have continuously changed. State funding, throughout much of the twentieth century, sought to build up research capacity, both public and private, within the U.S. Yet as military funding dried up in the 1980s new revenue streams sprung forth. Universities opened their doors to foreign students and with the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act were able to realise the value of intellectual property. Corporate labs took a different tact: why integrate R&D into the firm when it can be bought in at a fraction of the cost?
Assuming that scientific knowledge is a distinct commodity in a well-developed market supported by the proliferation of global trade treaties, corporations outsourced ‘research contracts to lower-wage countries, and easier regulatory environments’ (page 95). Given time, Mirowski suggests that other countries, making allowances for their own special historic circumstances, will pass through similar phases. ‘Resistance is futile’ (page 249). Picking up that thread, Mirowski moves on to the second question—how has the privatized science regime been enacted? A series of legal tools, such as intellectual property and Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), have emerged to manage modern science.
These tools, if enforced, radically redefine the relationship between scientists and their institutions. Collaboration, the lifeblood of scientific enterprise, can under the watchful eye of the resident knowledge transfer officer be stifled as findings are hidden away from public view. Romantic as it may seem to suggest that scientists in the Mertonian heyday unselfishly and unhesitantly provided their rivals with the equipment/materials needed to surpass them, as Mirowski comically puts it, a major difference today is that intellectual property and MTAs give scientists/institutions the right to sue each other over the unauthorized use/publication of proprietary data, or, if so inclined, enjoy a share of future spoils emanating from that research.
Patenting the oncomouse, for example, brought a halt to the ‘gift economy’ of low-cost standardized mice, which had allowed the U.S. biomedical community to dominate the field. Deaf to protests from the mouse modelling community, Harvard University, the patent holder, could structure and control research by getting oncomouse recipients to abide by its contractual obligations or restrict its use entirely. ‘Keep[ing] your eyes focused merely on the patents, you miss most of the real action in this era of globalized privatization’ (page 167) where the commercial entanglement of research tools actually transforms the scientific process itself and affects who gets involved (and at what cost).
These (legally-loaded) research tools hold little value if the science itself fails to turn a profit, however. Accusing the biotech industry of colluding on a ponzi scheme, Mirowski argues that these companies ‘never produce a drug or final product … [and] almost never make a profit’ (page 204). These firms are only attracted to easily fixable and commodifiable problems. Complex and interrelated conditions, such as dementia, ALS and some cancers are left for others to solve while problems with relatively low theoretical and empirical thresholds are targeted instead. The rise of Contract Research Organizations (CROs) has only reinforced that trend. Controlling disclosure, augmenting favourable findings, and the spectre of ‘ghost authorship’ to speed up the acceptance of publications, CROs have freed pharmaceuticals from the transactional costs of doing science (e.g. regulatory compliance, subject recruitment and laboratory costs). But questions are left hanging over who wrote these papers, and how robust the results are, as it becomes tougher to distinguish between what is ‘science’ and what is ‘marketing’.
Telling the difference between good and bad science becomes ever harder as these analyses come shrink-wrapped for public consumption, which is where the final question—where are we headed—comes in. Mirowski highlights the emergence of two new kinds of science: just-in-time and junk. The Human Genome Project, he argues, reflects the former. Wanting to patent the research, Celera, a commercial outfit, developed a ‘quick and dirty’ computer-sequence technique to map the genome (page 341). Lacking in detail and comprehensiveness, its key quality was speed. Concerned that the research community could be shutout if a patent was granted, the publicly-funded team scaled back its mapping to try and publish first. A race to the bottom ensued. The resulting, compromised, data discouraged users from paying for Celera’s services whilst the gaps left by the public-funded team now require more money and research to be filled. Neither side won.
Explaining this, Mirowski argues that the ‘Achilles heel of neoliberalism is that it gets the functions of markets in society all wrong: Markets are not only limited and intermittently unreliable information processes; they can equally well be deployed to produce ignorance’ (page 318). Manufacturing uncertainty—junk science—can be an effective delay tactics to avoid costly regulation compliance or compensation payouts, such as in the tobacco industry. Debasing science, and those who hold authority over it, becomes yet another creative way for corporations to engage in politics. Toppling these technocratic hierarchies, even with faith in the ‘wisdom of crowds’, simply replaces them with murkier, less transparent, and more strategic ones. A double truth doctrine, Mirowski suggests, gets revealed here: one truth for the elite who can afford to fund and made it, and another for the masses who can’t.
So where does this leave Viridiana Jones? Mirowski, regrettably, has little to say here. Should she retrain as a lawyer? Continue her quest for a patron? Join forces with her union brethren? Or is resistance futile? Well, maybe not. A major strength of the book is, ironically, also its weakness. Historicising the changing organization of science helps situate the institutional-political and socio-technical conditions that gave rise to the privatized science regime but rests heavily on the idiosyncrasies of one field: bioscience. Other scientific traditions do not map neatly onto that narrative. Climate science is a good example. The models, computer codes, and parameterizations are complex (and often nationally bespoke) but only serve a small audience/consumer. The market maturity, standardization of tools, and infrastructural demands do not, at this stage, lend themselves readily to commercialization.
Mirowski’s ‘big’ history account, it seems, falls into the same trap as other narratives on the coupling of science and commerce in failing to fit the particulars. Is this because the narrative itself is too complex, or because it can never be complex enough? Whichever it is, the book calls on researchers, unknowingly, to see how commercialization unfolds in fields outside of bioscience such as the environmental sciences. This is exactly where geographers of science (see Livingstone, 2003) come in. They remind us of the importance place plays in shaping scientific enterprise. Britain with its tuition fees, research assessment exercises, and vision for profit-making universities conforms nicely with Mirowski’s narrative. Yet, the creation of, and ethos behind, the Open University, RCUK’s insistence on making its research freely available through open access publications, and contradiction of trading funds like the Met Office raise the awkward question: is the commercialization of science truly a global phenomenon, or one that manifests itself differently depending on its spatial and temporal conditions? Yes, some questions are left unanswered but Science-Mart should act as a crucial catalyst for further enquiry in this and other directions.
References
Callon M (1994) Is science a public good? Science, Technology and Human Values 19: 395-424.
Livingstone D (2003) Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mirowski P and E Sent (2008) The commercialization of science and response to STS. In: E Hackett, O Amsterdamska, M Lynch and J Wajcman (eds) The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies Eds, 3rd edition. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, pp 635-691.
Mirowski P and R Van Horn (2005) The contract research organization and the commercialization of science. Social Studies of Science 35: 503-48.
Shapin S (2003) Ivory trade. London Review of Books 25: 19.
