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Science policy and democracy

Author

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  • Mitcham, Carl
  • Emeritus,

Abstract

Vannevar Bush's Science: The Endless Frontier (1945) continues to serve as the default statement of United States science policy and has been republished with an extended defense by Rush Holt, a research physicist, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and recent executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holt recognizes some challenges in Bush's conception of the science-democracy relationship but then makes his own case for a revised understanding of the relationship between science and the American regime. An unquestioned assumption of both Bush and Holt is that science benefits democracy, that democracy is even dependent on science. For Bush the dependency is strictly material, for Holt it is also procedural. Holt's particular appeal is to the value of science as providing evidence based knowledge that can increase rationality in democratic politics. This appeal is made, however, without acknowledging counter-evidence about the ways science can be socially destabilizing.

Suggested Citation

  • Mitcham, Carl & Emeritus,, 2021. "Science policy and democracy," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:67:y:2021:i:c:s0160791x2100258x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101783
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Briggle, Adam & Mitcham, Carl, 2009. "Embedding and networking: conceptualizing experience in a technosociety," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 374-383.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marek Kwiek & Wojciech Roszka, 2022. "Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3543-3575, June.
    2. Xinhua Chai & Qiang Wu, 2025. "What kind of research network configurations lead to high academic productivity for young management scholars?—A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(5), pages 2705-2748, May.
    3. Malte Hückstädt, 2023. "Ten reasons why research collaborations succeed—a random forest approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1923-1950, March.
    4. Deng Cheng & Zhang Xue & Yang Zhibo & Zhang Mingze, 2025. "Impact of interdisciplinarity on disruptive innovation: the moderating role of collaboration pattern and collaboration size," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(4), pages 2379-2401, April.
    5. Cinzia Daraio & Simone Di Leo & Loet Leydesdorff, 2022. "Using the Leiden Rankings as a Heuristics: Evidence from Italian universities in the European landscape," LEM Papers Series 2022/08, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    6. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2024. "The Prize Winner Index (PWI): A proposal for an indicator based on scientific prizes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4).
    7. Martin Mende & David Glen Mick, 2024. "A commentary on transformative consumer research: Musings on its genesis, evolution, and opportunity for scientific specialization," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 14(3), pages 182-193, December.
    8. Michael Färber & Melissa Coutinho & Shuzhou Yuan, 2023. "Biases in scholarly recommender systems: impact, prevalence, and mitigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2703-2736, May.
    9. Liang, Zhentao & Ba, Zhichao & Mao, Jin & Li, Gang, 2023. "Research complexity increases with scientists’ academic age: Evidence from library and information science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    10. Pedro Pessoa & Steve Pressé, 2023. "How many submissions are needed to discover friendly suggested reviewers?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(4), pages 1-17, April.
    11. Marton Gellen, 2021. "Development Through Intervention? Revisiting Criticism Of Hungarian Democracy," Public administration issues, Higher School of Economics, issue 6, pages 84-102.
    12. Lutz Bornmann, 2024. "Skewed distributions of scientists’ productivity: a research program for the empirical analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(4), pages 2455-2468, April.
    13. Liyin Zhang & Yuchen Qian & Chao Ma & Jiang Li, 2023. "Continued collaboration shortens the transition period of scientists who move to another institution," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1765-1784, March.
    14. Ingemar Elander, 2022. "Urban Renewal, Governance and Sustainable Development: More of the Same or New Paths?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-7, January.
    15. Martin Baily & David Byrne & Aidan Kane & Paul Soto, 2025. "Generative AI at the Crossroads: Light Bulb, Dynamo, or Microscope?," Papers 2505.14588, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2025.
    16. Stefan Wallaschek & Kavyanjali Kaushik & Monika Verbalyte & Aleksandra Sojka & Giuliana Sorci & Hans-Jörg Trenz & Monika Eigmüller, 2022. "Same Same but Different? Gender Politics and (Trans-)National Value Contestation in Europe on Twitter," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(1), pages 146-160.
    17. Cinzia Daraio & Simone Di Leo & Loet Leydesdorff, 2023. "A heuristic approach based on Leiden rankings to identify outliers: evidence from Italian universities in the European landscape," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 483-510, January.
    18. Baicun Li & Aruhan Bai, 2025. "The influence of grant renewal on research content: evidence from NIH-funded PIs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(5), pages 2617-2638, May.
    19. Zhou, Yuhao & Gong, Faming & Wang, Yanwei & Wang, Ruijie & Zeng, An, 2025. "Fusing structural and temporal information in citation networks for identifying milestone works," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    20. Garbe, Lisa & Selvik, Lisa-Marie & Lemaire, Pauline, 2021. "How African countries respond to fake news and hate speech," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-1.
    21. Manuel Goyanes & Márton Demeter & Aurea Grané & Tamás Tóth & Homero Gil Zúñiga, 2023. "Research patterns in communication (2009–2019): testing female representation and productivity differences, within the most cited authors and the field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 137-156, January.
    22. Alex J. Yang & Hongcun Gong & Yuhao Wang & Chao Zhang & Sanhong Deng, 2024. "Rescaling the disruption index reveals the universality of disruption distributions in science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(1), pages 561-580, January.
    23. Jiang, Zhuoren & Lin, Tianqianjin & Huang, Cui, 2023. "Deep representation learning of scientific paper reveals its potential scholarly impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    24. Rainer Frietsch & Sonia Gruber & Lutz Bornmann, 2025. "The definition of highly cited researchers: the effect of different approaches on the empirical outcome," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(2), pages 881-907, February.
    25. Weihua Li & Sam Zhang & Zhiming Zheng & Skyler J. Cranmer & Aaron Clauset, 2022. "Untangling the network effects of productivity and prominence among scientists," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.

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