2000 Articles

Issues in Science and Humanities

Pollack, Robert

I work at the junction of science as it is practiced, and science as it is studied, managed and funded. To most people who study science as well as practicing it, the practices of a science are the picture; the study, management and funding of a science are its frame, and the operating hypothesis is that those who manage the frame can move it around, but that they cannot paint the picture. That is, that managers can influence which problems get studied by those in the picture, but that they cannot have any real effect on the process – the model building and model testing – by which the work of science progresses.