Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce

Afterword

Afterword Some years have has passed since I completed my fieldwork in the Handelsman lab. Some things have changed. The composition of the Handelsman group is different. Most of the students who were in the lab when I was there have moved on to teaching positions or professional jobs. To the biocontrol and microbial ecology projects that were underway when I was in the lab, Handelsman scientists have added another initiative. In treating the “midgut” of the gypsy moth as an ecosystem, they are trying to understand the microorganisms within it and are asking questions about the relationship between these organisms and their host, the gypsy moth. But the overall context in which the Handelsman lab and others like it undertake research has changed very little since I started my investigation. I believe my analysis captures some basic features of university biology today—a biology now inextricably intermeshed in the “new knowledge economy.” At the most basic level, I made two arguments in this book. First, I contended that understanding university biology today requires attention not only to the direct effects of the world of commerce on academic scientific practice, but also to the influences of indirect factors. Second, I engaged some of the most prominent theoretical strains in science studies and argued that to understand technoscience demands study not only of processes of construction , but also—and perhaps more importantly—of the ways in which the already constructed features of the social world shape practices in the scientific field and beyond. In this context, we 160 should pay attention to structures, organizations, institutions, and power.1 Although I cannot provide more than an outline here, let me sketch two sets of suggestions for future research and action that follow from my investigation. On the research front, I believe the science studies field would be invigorated if more work at the center of debate and discussion took the role of technoscience in the new economy as a pivotal object of study. Of course, there is work that does engage this subject matter, but in my view too much science studies scholarship still treats contemporary technoscience as if it took place autonomously. Second, I believe that science studies could learn a great deal from recent work in organizational analysis, political sociology, and political economy. There is research that treats these literatures , of course. But typically, it seems that scholars who study technoscience from an organizational or political perspective tend not to talk to science studies scholars.2 Beyond future scholarly research, my study has a host of implications for policies and practice that should guide the university as the new millennium proceeds. Let me outline a few. First, university administrators and policymakers should work to create research portfolios that are more balanced than those of many American research universities. Decision makers will need to make an effort to correct current patterns of imbalance in funding and to compensate for years of research support that has created some vibrant areas of investigation while stunting the development of other fields with real potential. This will require a longer view than policymakers often take, as the funding of areas like biocontrol research are long term investments. Second, policymakers and academic administrators should consider establishing what might be termed institutionalized reflexivity—a set of mechanisms that will allow universities to monitor (and therefore protect from) the clear and egregious influences of university-industry collaborations, and also to systematically explore, for example, whether the time spent by academic scientists seeking intellectual property protection is compensated for by the return from licensing of inventions. The question of whether patenting truly enhances university scientists ’ control over their research should be addressed. In this Afterword 161 context, my study suggests that for many scholars the return on the time invested seeking intellectual property protection is low, and that patenting by academic scientists does not always enhance their control over their inventions. Finally, I believe that the failure of intellectual property protection to pay off for a great many universities and academic scientists should lead state and federal governments to support research on the economic costs and benefits of intellectual property protection and to provide economic incentives for companies and individual researchers who keep their inventions in the public domain. Overall, I worry that universities in the United States are increasingly seen as engines of economic growth and not institutions of higher...