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Annotated Bibliography

How Does the Transition In Scientific Funding From Largely Government

Sources to Private Sources Affect the Publics Trust of Science?

Aaron Angel

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103

October 17, 2016

Annotated Bibliography

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Nelkin, Dorothy. What are the science wars really about The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 26 July. 1996, http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-theScience-Wars-Are/76675. Accessed 23 October 2016.
This is a newspaper source called The Chronicle of Higher Education. This
article describes the dispute that has been going on between social scientists
and scientists. It tells how scientists have recently been objecting to the
work of those intellectuals that evaluate science. Scientists blame social
scientists for the loss of government funding in research and development.
Scientists are looking for a sacrificial lamb, someone to blame, for this. In the
past the government was a large contributor to scientific research. This was
based on the premise that science was beneficial to society and that
scientists were unbiased meaning that politics and culture did not affect their
research. Recently, in the 90s, government funding has started to decrease
in-part because of the political climate changing with the end of the Cold War
and the increasing national deficit. The funding has also been affected by
public opinion of scientists which is changing from a trustworthy, unbiased
standpoint to an untrustworthy, biased standpoint. This is due to falsification
of data in scientific journals and mishaps in human-scientific studies. While
government funding for science is decreasing, private and corporate funding
of science is increasing. Corporations provide a consistent alternative to
government funding and many scientists have been tapping in to this. This
private funding has only deepened the feelings of distrust of science among
the public who view this funded research as biased towards the profits of
these companies and not to the well-being of the public. As another result of
this change, Congress has created committees to regulate science and to
investigate research fraud. Because of the changing opinion of science,
scientists have been trying to place the blame on social scientists who write
about science in an effort to restore their previous views as unbiased and
trustworthy. Even though scientists have perceived this shift as the downfall

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of support for science, there is much evidence to prove otherwise. For

instance government funding for science is in the billions, the majority of the
public value science as necessary for society, and most of the scientific
writers evaluate scientific research positively. Because scientists have been
attacking the people who write opinions on science, they have projected a
view of science on the public as being always right, and not responsible for
any of the consequences of their actions. This article was submitted to the
Chronicle of Higher Education which is a newspaper source for students and
faculty at universities. It was submitted by Dorothy Nelkin who is a professor
of sociology at the University of New York. I think that because she is a
professor of sociology, which is a branch of social science, she is a little
biased towards social scientists in the war between themselves and
scientists. I do think that she provided a good view of both sides of the
argument however. She explained why scientists have been attacking the
work of social scientists and made a good point as to how this war is
beneficial to either scientists or social scientists. I think that this article was
very important in helping me to understand reasons for the shifting public
view of science. It detailed factors such as corporation funded-research,
scientific fraud, scientists arrogance which have been giving scientists a bad
image.

Nowonty, Helga, et al. The public nature of science under assault. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg, 2005.
This chapter of The Public Nature of Science Under Assault describes the role
of science in modern society and how much of a role should the public play
in scientific advances. The rest of the book goes into greater detail about the
role of science in society, whether it should be very open or private. In this
chapter the issues between the public and science is compared to the use of
ownership rights by members of the globalization movement who use these

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rights for their economic growth with disregard for the publics interest.
Scientists and scientific research has grown more towards the interests of
the private sector. In response to this the government has reduced its
scientific funding which holds scientists accountable to the public. The
relationship between science and society is changing. In order to successfully
adapt to this change science needs to be more open with the public so as to
assure the public that it is acting in its best interest. This is a chapter of an
ebook called The Public Nature of Science Under Assault. It was written by
Helga Nowonty. This source describes the tensions that are occurring
because of the shift of scientific research towards private funding. It is
sparking debates and questions on how open science needs to be. This fits in
well with my research on the shift of scientific funding from the government
to the private sector.

Chapter 3: Support for Government Funding. Pew Research Center,

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/01/chapter-3-support-for-governmentfunding/. Accessed 23 October 2016.
This article contains statistics related to public support of basic research and
of engineering and technology. Most Americans believe that the government
should be funding science. Although most Americans think that we need
government funding, there is a significant number of Americans who think
that private investment is enough. Gender, age, race, and ethnicity all show
different trends in terms of support for government funding. Women over
men, Hispanics over blacks and whites, and younger over older all support
government funding more so. College graduates over other education levels
tend to support government funding more. Democrats and liberals are more
likely to support government funding over republicans, moderates, and
conservatives. This article is a pew poll. The Pew Research Center is
nonpartisan organization. This article is very factual which makes it unbiased
in terms of my research. This article provides an opposing view of most of my

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research. It uses statistics to show that the majority of Americans in support

government funding of science. This provides a good counter-argument to
my research which is that most Americans have a growing negative view of
science because it is becoming more privatized.

Myhrvold, Nathan. Basic Science Cant Survive without Government

Funding. Scientific American, 2016,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/basic-science-can-t-survivewithout-government-funding/. Accessed 23 October 2016.
Some people in government have been using the idea that competition
breeds innovation to argue against government funding of research and in
favor of privately funded research. Some people believe that the government
spends too much money on science. They think that science should be
supported by companies and corporations. Nathan Myhrvold thinks
otherwise. Some basic science that is just research does not turn a profit but
is beneficial to society in other ways. This sort of science would lose funding
all together if the only source of funding was private. Many companies in the
past have done basic research that others profited from. Nowadays these
companies do not see basic research as profitable and because of this they
do not fund it. This article is from a scientific journal which has been peer
reviewed. Its author, Nathan Myhrvold, founded Microsoft Research. I think
that he has a unique perspective. He has been a part of corporations that
profit from research so one would think that he would support privately
funded research over government funded. This is not the case though. He
knows that the government is one of the few willing to support basic
research and with respect towards basic research he supports government
funding. This article fits in well with my research. It supports my argument
that government funding is beneficial to the public good whereas private
funding looks after the interests of the respective corporations profitability.

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