An Orientation to Disorientation

Welcome to science & Power

I. What is this newsletter about?

science & Power is a newsletter about mathemagical rhetoric, argument-shaped bullshit, and science-adjacent propaganda.

In the U.S. today, people tend to express one of two views about science: that it is largely fake, or that it is entirely objective. This newsletter is for people intrigued by or already committed to a more nuanced, ‘retro’ view of science—science as a human enterprise inseparable from personal, social, industrial, and political forces—endorsed by such ‘fringe’ 20^th-century figures as Carl Sagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Albert Einstein.

science & Power is premised on the rather unprovocative idea that science is actually a human enterprise inseparable from personal, social, economic, and political forces. Basically:

Scientific endeavor is a human behavior. Human behavior is shaped by individual psychology. Individual psychology is shaped by society. Society is shaped by power.

Therefore, science is shaped by power.

To be frank, even this last point seems incontrovertibly true to a lot of people I talk to—most especially, to scientists I talk to. Why, then don’t most of us ever talk about it? Because it’s been made to seem crazy, even though it’s not.

The purpose of this newsletter is to tell stories and make arguments that make clear that the ideas in the preceding paragraph are neither radical nor fringe nor new, with the larger goal of normalizing conversation in and around this subject. These things can be hard to talk about. People who use power to distort the work of scientists obviously don’t want to admit (or perhaps even believe) that they do that. Ditto scientists whose work is compromised by pressures from above or by structural forces, plus these folks are rarely in a safe (or effective) position to speak up. But it’s a thing, and a lot of people know it’s a thing, and a lot people talk about it over post-lab drinks that maybe certain people aren’t invited to because they’re part of the problem.

Many of the pieces I post here may not fit squarely within the topics of science or power; instead, they’ll provide lenses that can be used to peer into those areas. So like:

II. Two stories, or possibly just two versions of the same story

A big-deal Professor at a prestigious university once told me that being a science professor at a major research institution is like running a small business. His description was more apt than he might have liked: After retiring at the top of the academic ranks, he accepted a research director role under someone else’s direct management and immediately found himself with no dedicated, line-item research budget. The organization—which called itself a research institute—just kind of had an all-purpose kitty that he had to ask the finance team if perhaps he could use some of its funds for the research office.

How does that happen?

The standard explanations for situations like these tend to focus on symptoms rather than systems. Perhaps mismanagement, or a shrinking donor base, or a lack of consistent revenue played a role. But these kinds of explanations are like diagnoses of an opportunistic infection that ignore the more serious root causes. These explanations beg the question of how scientific research has become so compromised that administrators and board members and corporate partners can kill even a literature review?

So here’s where we need to talk about seemingly unrelated subjects like modern business empires, as described 1972’s Pulitzer-prize winning The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business.

In the 19^th century, owners of smaller butcheries found themselves under the thumb of massive meatpacking conglomerates, who decided to save some dough by becoming railroad moguls, which said moguls made more cost-efficient by acquiring coal and oil companies. In the 150 years since then, the managerial revolution has spread its doctrine across all sectors of society.

Now, research scientists who want nothing more than to conduct research and mentor students end up in some twisted version of The Jungle, or There Will Be Blood, or some other Upton Sinclair novel that Paul Thomas Anderson may (Oil! / TWBB) or may not (The Jungle) have adapted into a movie and which I may or may not write about here for reasons that aren’t necessarily obvious.

And what is my point?

III. Back to the what’s-this-newsletter-about theme

My point is that such seeming aside-pieces are actually fundamental to understanding how Science functions. Under managerial capitalism, researchers who run labs are middle managers. Different organizations and sectors have different conventions, but for every dollar of grant funding a researcher at a prestigious university pulls in, the university typically takes 60 to 70 cents. Like half of that goes to overall university facilities like labs and football stadiums, and the other half goes upper-management-type administrators.

And how is that relevant to you?

It’s relevant because anytime you hear about a university investigation of a researcher—and a couple of these stories hit the big news outlets every year—the institution is actually investigating whether whatever happened was so egregious and so blatant that the institution is willing to forgo 60-70% of all funding that researcher might attract in perpetuity. From the perspective of the university, the investigation’s ultimate goal—whatever the individual investigators’ best intentions may be—is not to improve the climate for students or enhance opportunities for employees; its goal is to determine if there’s enough cover to keep the cash. Enough cover, and a serial bad guy might be cleared; too little cover, and an innocent researcher might get bus-thrown.

And under these conditions, the objective search for truth ostensibly commences.

So come on in, close the door, and—instead of speaking truth to power—let’s talk about power, truth, propaganda and all the rest.