COLE. Voodoo Sociology. Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science

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V O O D O O S O C I O L O G Y

Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science

I

S T E P H E N C O L E

Department

of

Anthropology and Sociology

University of Queensland

Brisbane. Australia

U

UNTIL THE 1970s sociologists of science did not examine the

actual cognitive content of scientific ideas, as they believed that these

were ultimately determined by nature and not a product

of

social

processes and variables. Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group

of European sociologists, adopting a relativist epistemological position,

began to challenge this view.

At

first they called themselves “relativist-

constructivists” and later, more simply, “social constructivists.” Their num-

bers were few, but within the short time span of roughly one decade, this

group has come to completely dominate the sociology

of

science and the inter-

disciplinary field called the social studies

of

science. Although some like to

deny this dominance because ideologically they do not like to see themselves

as the power elite, their control

of

all the major associations and specialty

journals is clear

to

anyone participating in the field. This dominance may

easily be seen in the recently published

Handbook

of

Science and Technology

Studies ’

published by the Society for the Social Study of Science. Virtually

all the contributors are either constructivists

or

political allies of the construc-

tivists. Tom Gieryn, a former student of Merton, but now a convert

to

con-

structivism, in his contribution to this handbook claims as an aside, “If

science studies has now

convinced everybody

that scientific facts are only

contingently credible and claims about nature are only as good as their local

performance. . ”z

It is very important to point out that social constructivism is not simply

an intellectual movement, a way

of

looking at science, but it is an interest

group that tries to monopolize rewards for its members or fellow travelers and

exclude from any recognition those who question any

of

its dogma. In fact,

the editors

of

the

Handbook

discussed above refused to include a chapter on

the important topic of social stratification in science (in the most prestigious

general journals of sociology like the

American Sociological Review

more

articles have been published on this topic than any other), claiming at first that

they could find no one willing to write such a chapter. When I volunteered,

an invitation to contribute was never forthcoming.

In the leading monographs that established the social constructivists-the

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had to the constructivist approach. Historians also began to raise questions

about the accuracy of the constructivist portrayal of the development of

science, Among the critics were Stephen Brush,“) Martin Rudwick,’I Peter

Galison,I2 and ultimately Kuhn himself. In Kuhn’s

1992

Rothschild Lecture

he stated:

“the strong program” [another term for the relativist-constructivist approach]

has been widely understood as claiming that power and interest are all there are.

Nature itself whatever that may be has seemed

to

have no part in the develop-

ment

of

beliefs about

i t .

Talk of evidence

or

the rationality

of

claims drawn from

i t

and of the truth or probability of those claims has been seen as simply the

rhetoric behind which the victorious party cloaks its power. What passes for sci-

entific knowledge becomes then simply the belief of the winners.

I

a m among

those who have found the claims

of

the strong program absurd: an example

of

deconstruction gone mad.

3

It is interesting that many members of the constructivist school do not see

some of the scholars mentioned above, such as Rudwick and Galison, as being

opposed to their position.

In

fact these two are frequently positively cited by

constructivists. This is because all of the people I have mentioned have re-

jected the stereotyped view of positivism that the constructivists have set up

as a straw man and therefore on some issues can be seen as having the same

views as the constructivists. Virtually everyone writing about science today,

th e constructivists and their critics (including myself), reject t he overly ration-

alized and idealized view

of

science that was prominent prior to the

1970s.

But although scholars like Galison and Giere will reject the same stereotyped

positivism that Kuhn rejected, they are also just as opposed to the relativism

that is at the heart of the constructivist program.

Although virtually all of the leaders of the social constructivist school are

or

claim

to

be sociologists, criticisms by sociologists have been almost

non-

existent. In 1982 Thomas Gieryn, a Merton student, published a criticism of

the relativist-constructivists, arguing

I

believe incorrectly) that all the major

insights

of

the constructivists had been made by Merton.I4

Soon

after, Gieryn,

sensing the increasing power of the constructivists, had a conversion and

today is proudly displayed as

a

member

of

that school as converts were dis-

played during the cold war. In fact, it was not until 1992 with the publication

by Harvard University Press of my book Making Science: Between Nature and

Society that there was any significant cri tique by a sociologist of the construc-

tivist school.

Why were sociologists of science

so

late in coming to the party? First, as

I pointed out above, many sociologists disliked th e so called “Mertonians” for

political reasons and were glad to see the rise

of

any school that would chal-

lenge Merton’s perceived control

of

the specialty. Although Merton is widely

respected by nonsociologists and sociologists in many countries abroad,

I

many of his ideas are currently “out of fashion.”

Second, many correctly perceived the constructivist approach as an attack

on the natural sciences and were pleased to see these sciences, which have

long lorded it over the social sciences, knocked

off

their pedestal. The most

eminent leader of the constructivists, Bruno Latour, readily admits that the



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deligitimization of the natural sciences was one

of

their goals. For example,

in a recent debate with Collins, Callon and Latour argue that:

The field

of

science studies has been engaged in a

moral

struggle

to

strip science

of its extravagant claim

to

authority. Any move that waffles

on

this issue appears

unethical since it could also help scientists and engineers to reclaim this special

authority which science studies has had

so

much trouble undermining.’b

And in the same piece they go on to say: “we wish to attack scientists’ hege-

mony

on

the definition of nature, we have never wished to accept the essential

source

of

their power: that is the very distribution between what is natural

and what is social and the fixed allocation of ontological status that goes with

i t . ” I 7 And a few pages later when they list their goals, the first listed is “dis-

puting scientists’ hegemony.”18

Third, most American sociologists

of

science lacked the philosophical

training of the European constructivists and either did not really understand

much of the constructivist work or were afraid to engage in a battle that

would necessarily involve philosophical argument-an area where they felt

distinctly disadvantaged. I t

is my bet that more than fifty percent of those

citing the work of Latour could not give a coherent explanation of that work

if asked to do so. People have jumped on a bandwagon that they do not really

understand.

Fourth, Merton himself has a well-known dislike for controversy and has

never made a public statement

on

the social constructivist school . Thus, the

“Mertonians” were left without a leader in the debate. And finally, up until

the last five years, the constructivists had very little influence in the United

States and thus could safely be ignored as a European phenomenon that had

no effect on the ability of nonconstructivist sociologists of science (a group

dwindling in size all along) to do their quantitative more traditional work and

have that work published in mainstream journals where the rewards for so-

ciologists lie. American sociologists of science, for the most part, considered

themselves to be primarily interested in sociology, with science used as a re-

search site. The European constructivists were primarily interested in science

and in many (not all) cases were abysmally ignorant of more general sociolog-

ical issues and concerns.

Let me now briefly summarize my critique of the social constructivist ap-

proach to science. If a sociologist wants

to

show that social variables influence

the cognitive content of science, she must be careful in specifying exactly

what about the cognitive content is being influenced. There are three different

ways in which social factors could influence cognitive content. The first has

been called the foci of attention or what problems scientists choose to study.

There is no question that problem choice is influenced at least to some sig-

nificant extent by social factors. This was illustrated well by Merton in his

classic study

of

seventeenth-century English science’s in which he showed

how practical military and economic problems of the day played a strong role

in determining what problems scientists attempted to solve. A second way

to

look at how social factors influence the cognitive content is to look at the rate

of advance. How does the social organization of science and the society in



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which it is embedded influence the rate at which problems will be solved. The

centers of scientific advance have changed over time; how can we explain

this? This was also analyzed by Merton in his study of seventeenth-century

science when he asked the question of what influenced the dispersion

of

tal-

ent within a society. The question has also significantly been addressed by the

late Joseph Ben-David20and Derek de Solla Price.21Tom Phelan, a former stu-

dent of mine, and

I

are currently investigating this problem using nation states

as the unit of analysis and the number of highly cited papers written as a mea-

sure of the dependent variable.

The third way to look at cognitive content is to look at the actual substance

of solutions to specific scientific problems. For example, in

Laboratory Life

Latour and Woolgar try to show how the discovery

of

the chemical sequence

of

thyrotropin releasing factor (TRF) made by R. Guillemin and A.

V.

Schally

was socially constructed. The scientific community came to believe that TRF

was made up of the sequence Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2rather than some other

sequence. I t is this latter sense of cognitive content that the social construc-

tivists are interested in. And they claim that since science is not constrained

by nature, the solution to the chemical structure of TRF could have been dif-

ferent and that the specialty of neuroendocrinology would have progressed

to the same degree or perhaps an even greater degree had some other structure

been identified.

I

argue in my book that there is not one single example in the

entire con-

structivist literature

that supports this view

of

science. In order to demon-

strate the credibility

of

their view, one must show how a specific social vari-

able influences a specific cognitive content. In all of their work there is always

at least one

or

another crucial piece missing. In some of their work they il-

lustrate well how social processes influence the doing

of

science; but they fail

to show how they have had a significant effect

on

what I call a knowledge

outcome or a piece of science that has come

t

be accepted as true by the sci-

entific community and thereby entered the core knowledge of that discipline.

In order to demonstrate this, it is necessary to do a very close reading

of

the texts produced by the constructivists. First, 1 will give an example of how

they discuss the social processes influencing scientists as they go about their

work; but fail to show how these processes influence any scientific outcome.

In

Laboratory L@e

probably the most heavily cited and influential work

done by constructivists, Latour and Woolgar present a long description of the

social negotiation taking place between two scientists, Wilson and Flower.22

They succeed in showing that scientists engage in social negotiations about

their work in the same way as any other people negotiate about other aspects

of their interaction. But what they have decisively failed t show is how

this social negotiation influenced any aspect of science. They have in effect

“black boxed” the science; the very thing they so indignantly accused the

“Merton ans

of

doing.

This is not just one example. Much of the work in which the constructivists

talk about how scientists engage in social negotiations or are “human” fails

to show how such negotiation

or

“humanness” influences any piece

of

com-

munally held science in any way. Knorr-Cetina does the same thing when she



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describes social negotiation between a Watkins and a Dietrich23-but she

never says how it influenced the scientific outcome. Also, in her famous

analysis of how scientists negotiated fifteen different versions

of

a paper they

are writing, she does not say whether

it

made any difference. Was the last pub-

lished draft a significantly different piece of science than the first draft? And

even if it were, if no one paid attention to this particular paper (if, in other

words, it was a trivial piece of science she was analyzing), what difference

would all the negotiation make for the scientific community?

In other cases, constructivists analyze scientific conflicts but fail to show

how the resolution of these conflicts were influenced by social variables. I t

is a sad commentary on the constructivist program that the example they like

to cite most frequently is the now well-known work by Andrew Pickering,

Constructing Quarks. In this book and several earlier papers, Pickering dis-

cusses the debate theoretical high-energy physicists had over two theories-

one was called “charm” and the other “color.” The former theory won o u t ;

but Pickering fails to show that this was a result of social factors. His own

analysis leads to the opposite conclusion that it was data from experiments

that led to the resolution of the “conflict.” And research recently done by

some students of mine in an undergraduate seminar suggests that there may

never have been a “conflict” at all. There were almost no citations to the

“color” theory other than by its two proponents. If there ever really was a

conflict, we would expect to see some citation to both theories and then,

when the conflict was resolved, a drop in citation

to

the “loser.” Whom, we

may ask, ever believed the “color” theory, or did Pickering manufacture this

“conflict” because it would be an easy one to deal with? The primary point,

however, is that if there was or was not a conflict, it was resolved, as Pickering

himself points out by empirical evidence.

In what the constructivists would call the naive and outdated language of

positivist sociology, they either fail to have an adequate dependent variable,

an adequate independent variable, or to demonstrate the link between these

variables. Even the constructivists frequently show that they are aware that

their theoretical approach cannot explain what they empirically observe. For

example, consider another case from Laboratory

Lqe.

Latour and Woolgar tell

us that Schally was about to publish the formula that eventually turned out

to “be” TRF; but he believed in Guillemin’s work more than his own and held

back in publication. Guillemin was at that time arguing that TRF might not

even be a peptide. Essentially what Latour and Woolgar are saying is that

Guillemin’s authority was

so

great that it served to delay the “discovery” of

TRF by several years. But what they decisively fail to say is that the structure

of TRF would have been anything other than Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2whether

or not this discovery would have been made several years earlier or at the time

that it was. In other words, they have sneakily changed the dependent variable

to

be the rate of advance rather than the cognitive content of knowledge.

A s

a general rule, readers

of

the work

of

the social constructivists should

always ask 1) have they identified a real social independent variable? and

2)

have they shown that it has influenced the actual cognitive content

of

some

piece of science rather than the foci

of

attention or the rate of advance? By



a0 A N N A L S New

York

Academy of Sciences

influence, we mean that the cognitive content (as it was accepted by the sci-

entific community) turned out one way rather than another because

of

some

social process. Of course, processes like those described by Latour and

Woolgar effect how long it takes for a particular discovery to be made; but

they have failed to give a single example where the social processes influence

the content of such a discovery.

A frequently used constructivist rhetorical trick is to argue that it is impos-

sible to separate the technical from the social; that all science is inherently

social. This turns their entire argument into a tautology. If science is inher-

ently social, this means that the technical aspects

of

scientific discoveries by

necessity must be determined socially. This is indeed the question we are

examining-the extent to which the technical aspects of science have social

determinants.

If

we take as an assumption one answer to the question we are

researching, then we might as well all pack up o u r bags and go home because

there would be nothing more to research.

If there is only one correct outcome

or

solution to a scientific problem,

like the structure of TRF, before the actual discovery i s made then this gives

no room for social factors to influence it. If the constructivist position is cor-

rect, this means that it would have been possible that some other structure

of TRF could have been accepted as fact and that the discipline in both its pure

and applied aspects would have proceeded with just as great success. But even

Latour and Woolgar show their skepticism about such a belief. In discussing

the story of TRF, they point out that at one time it looked like the scientists

might have been forced to abandon the program by inability to obtain enough

research material:

It was then feasible that partially purified fractions would be continued to be

used in the study of modes of action, that localization and classical physiology

could have continued, and that Guillemin would merely have

lost

a few years

in working up a blind alley. TRF would have attained a status similar

to

GRF or

CRF, each of which refers

to some

activity in the bioassay,

the precise chemical

structure of which had not yet been constructed. 4

Note again that they are not saying that the chemical structure of TRF would

have been any different; but

only

that the problem would not have been

solved.

They fail to explain why some local “productions” (as researchers like

Knorr-Cetina likes to call the results of laboratory science) are successful in

the larger community and others are not . Latour’s discussion of strategies and

power clearly fails to explain cases like DNA in which the discovery was ac-

cepted into the core almost overnight. Its authors were both unknown, and

their opponents were leaders of the field. What made opponents such as

Pauling, Wilkens, and Chargaff enroll in the Watson and Crick bandwagon?

My book

is

full of many examples, based upon detailed readings

of

other

constructivist texts, that show how in each and every case they fail to d o what

they claim. An examination

of

what happened to this book is good evidence

of how the constructivists treat criticism. First, all reviews by constructivists

were harshly negative including one by Shapin in Science and one by Picker-



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281

ing in the Times Literary Supplement. Fuller actually wrote two negative re-

views in two different journals. All the reviews of the book in mainstream

American sociology journals that

I

have seen were moderately to strongly posi-

tive, including an extremely positive review by Mary Frank Fox in

Contem-

porary Sociology.

But the most noticeable aspect of the constructivists’ re-

action to the book was to ignore it. Where they have to review it, they will

give it a good bashing, but where they have any control, they feel the best

course of action is to keep the book unknown. Thus the book has gone un-

reviewed in the two leading specialty journals in the field, the

Social Studies

of Science

and

Science Technology and Human Values.

It is quite probable

that considerably more than half of the members of the Society for the Social

Studies of Science do not even know of the book’s existence.

Besides out and out distortion of what is said in the book and using the

review as an occasion for general “Mertonian” bashing, the most frequent

tactic taken is what I call the “we never said that (or meant that)” tactic. Most

of

the constructivist leaders criticized in my book are not stupid; far from it.

They know that what they say cannot hold water and, when pushed to its real

foundations, is logically absurd. Therefore, the only way to defend themselves

is to say that they never said what I said they said (or if they said it they did

not mean it). There are two answers to this rebuttal. First, sit down with my

book and their texts and read both closely and then determine whether they

did

or

did not say what

I

said they said. For example, a recent review25 says

that my criticism “relies on misreadings” of the constructivist works. “He in-

sists that the constructivist research program is premised on denial that the

realities

of

nature play any part in scientists’ deliberations, whereas his antag-

onists merely presume that these realities cannot be abstracted from the the-

ories and technologies that frame them.”26 Statements such as these make me

wonder how the reviewer ever got out of the eighth grade. Can she

or

can

she not read the direct quote from Collins above in this article? Or does she

want to accept the claim that he did not really mean it? To the extent that con-

structivists do not “really mean” their statements

of

relativism, then there is

nothing contradictory between their beliefs and my own.

Shapin is another one who is notorious for putting a sugar coating on the

constructivist pill.27For example, in a recent piece on the sociology of scien-

tific knowledge, Shapin describes Latour’s work as showing that there were

more “politics” within the walls of scientific workplaces than there were out-

side and that

to

secure the support of other scientists for a scientific claim was

a thoroughly social process.28There is no “Mertonian” sociologist of science

who would disagree with such conclusions. In the long review article, he fails

to deal at all with the relativism that is at the core of the constructivist pro-

gram. Shapin himself, who used to write polemics supporting the constructiv-

ist pr0gram,~9 s now doing fairly traditional social history of science on

topics that Mertonians studied more than twenty years ago. In his most recent

book,30 he essentially asks what social processes were involved in estab-

lishing authority in seventeenth-century science. He emphasizes the impor-

tance

of

the “gentleman” as an individual who could be trusted. There is no

discussion, anywhere in the book, of how any social process influenced the



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Sciences

content of science. The science is virtually black boxed throughout the book.

He is arguing against the rationalistic view of science that rejects trust and

authority as mechanisms that influence belief as opposed

to

direct observa-

tion. Consider the following quote:

According

to

the classical view of the history and philosophy

of

science con-

sensus is determined by the empirical phenomena themselves. Theories sup-

ported by empirical observation would become part

of

the consensus; theories

at

odds with observable ”facts” would be discarded.

.

Once we accept the

notion that consensus does not automatically spring from nature we are forced

to

pay more attention

to

the sociological processes through which consensus is

developed maintained and eventually shifted. One of the primary mechanisms

through which consensus is maintained is the practice of vesting authority in

elites.

There is one problem here; this quote is not from Shapin’s book. Rather

it

is

from a book published in 1973 by Jonathan and Stephen Cole, entitled Social

Stratification in Science.31This latter book is not cited by Shapin. Now the

point is not to say that we have priority on this matter. Clearly we never did

the type of detailed and admirable historical work conducted by Shapin

to

show how the mechanisms of authority may have developed in a particular

society at a particular time. I t is, however, to point out that without the rela-

tivism, there is no great gap between contemporary work done in the social

studies of science and the past work of the misguided “Mertonians.”

What is the current state of constructivist sociology

of

science?

It

is a field

that is in intellectual disarray but stronger than ever in its political control of

organizations, journals, and science studies programs within universities.

After the constructivists’s unexpected and amazingly easy takeover of the so-

ciology of science, when it was no longer fun to flog the “Mertonian” bad

boys, they fell out among themselves and split into a bunch

of

warring clans.

One problem always faced by the constructivists was that of reflexivity. If

in the natural sciences facts were not based upon empirical evidence from the

external world, then how could they be said to be

so

based in the sociology

of science? Why should anybody bother reading the works of Latour et

al.

if they only represented an attempt to push a point

of

view by power? Some

constructivists such as Woolgar and Ashmore and to some extent Mulkay went

off in the direction of taking their own work as the subject of analysis.32 In

the mean time Bruno Latour, who had become the demigod

of

the construc-

tivist movement, and his French sidekick Michel Callon, began to recognize

the problems inherent in their relativist position and turned on a dime and

claimed they are not now and never have been relativists. Instead, he and

Callon are now developing what they call actor-actant network theory. The

most interesting part of this work is that what used to be considered the object

of study; quarks, for example, now become equal to the humans. Scientific,

and indeed social, outcomes are a result of interaction among a network of

scientists, practitioners, other people, and things.

In a famous paper by Callon in which he analyzes some applied science

on scallop fishing,33 he concludes his story by saying that the reason that the

experiment failed was because the scallops would not cooperate. In a vicious



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and amusing polemic between Latour and Callon on one side and Harry

Collins and Steven Yeareley on the other, Collins correctly accuses Latour of

abandoning the relativist-constructivist program. As Collins and Yearley say:

“T he crucial final quotation [in Callon’s article on scallops] is: ‘To establish

that larvae anchor, the complicity of the scallops is needed as much as that

of

the fishermen.’”3* It does not take very much insight to see that this is a

nifty way to bring nature back into the analysis. Latour and Callon have no

answer to this, although they do successfully make some criticisms of

Collins’s work which privileges sociology while trying to attack the privi-

leging of the natural sciences. For example:

That scallops do not interfere

at

all in the debate among scientists striving to

make scallops interfere in their debates-is not only counterintuitive but empiri-

cally

stifling.

It is indeed this absurdposition that has made the whole field of

SSK [social study of scientific knowledge-another term for constructivism]

look

ridiculous

and lend itself to the “mere social” interpretation.35

An

intelligent reader of this polemic between Collins and Yearley on the on e

side a nd Callon and Latour

on

the other can do nothing other than agree with

both sides. Their work if taken seriously is nothing other than absurd or

voodoo sociology. The sociology

of

science with its many potentially interest-

ing questions has gotten lost in a tautological mess of philosophical arguments

that, as many of even the constructivists have now seen, lead nowhere.36

Latour’s latest b0o k3 ~s an obscure philosophical essay (which h e proudly

proclaims has n o examples because

of

his “Gallic” tradition) that does not

answer the pressing problems facing the sociology of science today an d goes

little beyond Callon and Lat0ur3~ n developing actor-actant network theory.

In both pieces, Latour argues that modernists have tried to locate things along

a nature-society polarity and this has made it impossible for them to deal with

“hybrids” or with phenomena that move back and forth between the nature

end of th e continuum and the social en d

of

the continuum as they develop.

Thus, he would argue there is n o way to deal with a phenomenon like TRF,

which is social as the scientists struggle to define it and becomes a result of

nature once it has been defined. Latour suggests throwing in another dimen-

sion, which is time. But this does not solve any

of

the problems because it

does not tell us why certain objects become stabilized and others do not and

why some become stabilized at the nature end

of

the pole and others at the

social. It is perhaps because of th e deep obscurity of Latour’s latest book that

his followers are defining it as his “best contribution yet.”

I find it exceedingly strange when my book can be criticized for addressing

itself to the following type of questions:

Can the rate of scientific innovation in a nation be counted a linear function of

the sheer number of scientists

it

manages to sustain (and, by implication, is

sci-

entific advance somehow linked to national development)? Can non-scientists

whose decisions affect the direction of research be provided with quantitative

measures of the quality of scientific work?

Do

universalistic criteria inform rou-

tine procedures for evaluating proposed projects, so that the most deserving ap-

plicants are funded?Do status differentials within disciplinary communities im-



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pede the free flow of communicationso necessary to the growth of knowledge,

possibly

to

a

degree

that

precludes recognitionof outstanding work done by per-

sons who toil in professional obscurity?

Do

scientists’creative powers diminish

as

they

age,

so

that

an

individual

of

relatively advanced age should,

ceteris

paribus be

presumed an unworthy recipient of support?

And,

even if there is

no association between creativity and age

should

younger grant applicants re-

ceive

preferential consideration, lest the scientific community become mori-

bund

through failure to promote young talent (and the population as

a

whole

thereby cease to enjoy the fruits of scientific progress)?jy

Are not these indeed the type of questions that sociologists of science should

be interested in and representative of a type of work that has literally been

wiped ou t by the dominance

of

the new social constructivists?

In my book,

Making Science

I call for a rapprochement between the social

constructivists and the more traditional sociologists of science. Much of the

work

of

the constructivists has been useful in pointing

out

that science is not

the type

of

rational endeavor as depicted in the introductory philosophy

of

science chapters in science courses. It clearly is not easy to determine what

is true

or

false, worthwhile or trivial. In my own work,

I

make a distinction

between the frontier and the core. The core consists of a small set of theories,

analytic techniques, and facts that represent the given at any particular point

in time. Core knowledge is that which is accepted by the scientific community

as being both true and important. The other component

of

knowledge, the

research frontier, consists of all the work currently being produced by all ac-

tive researchers in a given discipline. The research frontier is where all new

knowledge is produced. On the research frontier, science is characterized by

a lack of consensus. In fact

I

have shown that at the frontier, there is no more

consensus in the natural sciences than there is in the social sciences. The lack

of consensus is so great that whether or not one receives a National Science

Foundation grant is fifty percent a result of the quality of the proposal and

fifty percent a result of luck-which reviewers ou t of the pool of eligibles

happen

to

be sent your proposal.40

Clearly social factors play an important role in the evaluation of new knowl-

edge; but

so

does evidence obtained from the natural world. The sociologist

of

science should study how social factors and such evidence interact in the

evaluation process. This is perhaps the most crucial question of the discipline.

And if one abandons the frequently programmatic and polemic relativism of

the constructivists, their work is of use in answering this question. In fact,

I like to think

of

myself as a realist-constructivist. Yes science is socially con-

structed, but yes how it is constructed is

to

various degrees and extent con-

strained by nature.

My work in the sociology of science has led me to strongly reject the con-

clusion that the natural sciences are entirely socially constructed; but my life

in the social sciences has made me more amenable

to

the possibility that these

sciences may indeed be entirely socially constructed. Ideology, power, and

network ties seem to determine what social scientists believe; evidence is fre-

quently entirely ignored. I have recently begun

to

address this problem in an

article entitled “Why Sociology Doesn’t Make Progress Like the Natural



Voodoo Sociology C L E

2 8 5

Sciences.” That social science is completely or almost completely socially con-

structed helps explain how the social constructivist view of science could

have become

so

powerful in the absence

of

any good supporting evidence and

in the face

of

such devastating empirical critiques as those found in books like

Peter Galison’sHow

Experiments

End.

N O T E S

1

S. Jasonoff, G. D. Markle,

J.

C. Peterson T. Pinch, eds. , Handbook of Science and

Technology Studies.

2 Ibid.,

p. 440

(emphasis added).

3

Harry M . Collins, “Stages in the Empirical Program of Relativism,” p. 3 (emphasis

added).

4 David Bloor, “Durkheim and Mauss Revisited: Classification and the Sociology

of

Knowledge.”

5

Boris Hessen, “Th e Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia.”

6 For a critique of the social constructivists and a discussion

of

similar attacks made

in oth er fields of scholarship see Paul Gross Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition:

The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science.

7 Larry Laudan, Science and Values: The Aims of Science an d Their Role in Scientific

Debate; Relativism and Science.

8

Ronald Giere, Explaining Science.

9

David Hull, Science as Process.

10 Stephen Brush, “Should the History

of

Science Be Rated

X ? ”

1 1 Martin Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping

of

Scientific

Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists.

1 2

Peter Galison,

How Experiments End.

13

Thomas

S

Kuhn, Rothschild Lecture, pp.

8-9

(emphasis added).

4 Thomas Gieryn, “Relativist/Constructivist rogrammes in the Sociology of Science:

15

So much so, that he probably would have to be considered the most eminent living

16 M .

Callon

B.

Latour, “Don’t Throw the Baby Out with th e Bath School A Reply

17 Ibid., p.

3 4 8 .

18

Ibid.,

p. 351.

19 R . K. Merton, Science Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England.

2 0 Joseph Ben-David, “Scientific Productivi ty and Academic Organization in Nineteenth-

Century Medicine.”

2 1 Derek de Solla Price, Little Science Big Science . and Beyond.

For

a review of

literature

on

the rate of scientific advance see Stephen Cole, Making Science: Be-

tween Nature and Society

ch.

9 .

2 2 Bruno Latour Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction o Scientific

Facts pp. 154-158.

2 3 Karin Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture

of

Knowledge: An Essay

o

the Constructiv-

ist and Contextual Nature of Science.

24 Latour Woolgar, Laboratory Life

p. 128

(emphasis added).

25 H. Kuklick, “Mind over Matter?”

6 Ibid.,

p.

370.

27

Unfortunately, because as the deadline for this article approached and passed my

reply to Shapin’s review of my book in Science remained somewhere in transit be-

tween Stony Brook and Queensland,

I

will be unable to include here details of his

misinterpretations. But certainly one

of

the most important is

to

say that construc-

tivists do not really mean their relativist manifestos.

Redundance and Retreat.”

sociologist.

to Collins and Yearley,” p. 346.

2 8 S Shapin, “Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.”

29

S Shapin, “History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions.”



286 A N N A L S New

York

Academy

of

Sciences

30 S . Shapin, A Social History

of

Puth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century

3 1

Jonathan Cole Stephen Cole, Social Stratificaiton in Science pp.

77-78.

32 See Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture;

S

Shapin’s review

article on he sociology of scientific knowledge in Annual Reviews of Sociology;

S .

Jasonoff, G. D. Markle, J. C. Peterson T. Pinch, eds., Handbook of Science and

Technology Studies for discussions of recent trends in social constructivism.

33 Michel Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication

of

the

Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieux Bay.”

34

Harry M. Collins Steven Yearley, “Epistemological Chicken,” p. 314.

35 Michel Callon Bruno Latour, “Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath School

36 Andrew Pickering, Science as Practice and Culture.

37 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (originally published in French in

1991).

38 Callon Latour, “Don’t Throw the Baby Out.”

39

H. Kuklick, “Mind over Matter?” p.

369.

40 Stephen Cole, Making Science: Between Nature and Society ch.

4.

England.

A

Reply to Collins and Yearley,” p. 353 (emphasis added).

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Documents

COLE. Voodoo Sociology. Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science