2. The Creation of Knowledge Markets
2.1. An Offer No Scientist Can Refuse: Why Scientists Share The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has promoted a version of
the exchange model of the knowledge system by proposing an ele- mentary unit of analysis, credit, which is the amount of a scientist’s time, labor, and capital that she is willing to divert from her own research in order to contribute to the research of another scientist (cf. Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). This exchange of credit may take several forms, ranging from simply reading the other scientist’s work and citing it in one’s own work to subsuming one’s own work under the other scientist’s research agenda. Taken together, these exchanges constitute “cycles of credibility” (Latour and Woolgar 1979). Thus, you are a more “credible” scientist than I if I cede more credit to you than you to me. In that sense, the rate of exchange between you and me is a measure of the relative reducibility of our respective research programs to each other’s.
However, these tributes of credit are not done out of charity. The exchange of one’s own trajectory for that of another involves a tem- porary state of subordination, but one which the subordinated scien-
tist anticipates will enhance her own epistemic credit rating in the long term (Kelly 1989). In the terms introduced in Chapter 1, cycles of credibility are designed to make the rent-seeking aspects of knowledge production more dynamic by injecting a (financially) speculative dimension that brings organized inquiry closer to a profit orientation.
After all, there is always some uncertainty about the outcome of tying one’s own agenda so closely to that of another. Indeed, the harder sci- ences tend to have both the most clearly defined and the most rapidly changing research frontiers (De Mey 1982, 111–131).
Sociologists such as Robert Merton (1973) have made much of the fact that scientists (at least before our era of intellectual property) have freely shared data with and given credit to colleagues. It has been taken as evidence for a higher ethical sensibility that governs the conduct of scientific inquiry, comparable to the seemingly unselfish “gift-giving” of native tribes (cf. Hagstrom 1965). However, the spontaneity of the exchanges implied here is severely misleading.
An historically more perspicuous judgment is that these exchanges have occurred under threat of sanctions. When the first scientific soci- eties were founded in the 17th century, the threats were reciprocal, as scientists often presented the fruits of their inquiries in each other’s presence (Shapin 1994). However, these clear invitations to confor- mity (cf. Asch 1987, Fuller 1994a) yielded to subtler means that are reflected in the stratified citation patterns of articles written by sci- entists who hail from, and were trained at, a variety of institutions.
As we shall now see, a proximal and reciprocal threat has been replaced by a distal yet common one.
To their credit, economists do not immediately turn to the ethics of altruism when agents cede part of their market advantage for no clear return. Thus, Arthur Diamond (1996) has argued that scien- tists’ sharing behavior amounts to paying protection money so that their colleagues will not deny their grants, spread slander, or—worst of all—ignore their work altogether. These “acts of kindness” are not done in the spirit of generosity and respect, but rather in fear of what might result if the relevant gifts are not given. Yet, ironically, this is enough to convince economists that sharing is more rational than it first seems. However, a more pathological diagnosis is called for, if scientific communication is reducible to an elaborate pro- tection racket that reinforces a certain power structure, causes a certain amount of misrepresentation of one’s own research history, and creates a level of anxiety—especially among less powerful
researchers—that can compromise their innovativeness and indepen- dence (Fuller 1997, Chapter 4; Fuller 2000a, Chapter 5).
Be it rational or irrational, this phenomenon is not unique to science. Rational choice theorists call mutual protection rackets
“inscrutable markets” because of the high costs involved in deter- mining the quality of the transacted goods (Gambetta 1994). Thus, a shopkeeper may not know for a fact that the local Mafia boss will kill his business if he fails to pay protection money. Yet, since the boss has a reputation for being able to carry out such threats, it would be too risky to test the hypothesis. So, the shopkeeper pays the money, and presumes that the continued success of his business is due to the Mafia boss looking favorably upon him. Inscrutable markets work optimally as long as no one doubts the Mafia boss’s powers, and hence no violence breaks out. After all, even if the Mafia boss were to win during a violent exchange, he would have had to deplete some resources, not least his reputation for keeping the peace.
This would subvert the rationality of the mutual protection racket, the point of which is to use undischarged threats to immunize agents against the urge to disturb the status quo.
Mutual protection rackets work as long as the racket is closed. For example, the Mafia thrived because the Sicilian law enforcement agencies were relatively ineffective in protecting the villagers. The shopkeepers had no other source of protection than the Mafia. Sim- ilarly, some scientific specialties are dominated by a few “big men,”
which makes it unlikely that a young or low-status researcher will make headway in the field unless she appeases them in various ways, however much she may abhor their actual positions. However, nowa- days scientists are less willing to share data because they are finding alternative outlets for their work in the private sector—often because they are forced to do so by their corporate employers. Thus, science’s mutual protection racket is beginning to break.
Indeed, the emergence of intellectual property regimes in scientific knowledge production is implementing the kind of formal codes that typically drive out inscrutable markets for law enforcement. Never- theless, some see this development as no more than abandoning the frying pan for the fire. An omen in this respect is the recent settlement by transnational pharmaceutical companies to provide South Africa with drugs for the treatment of AIDS at discount prices, in exchange for South Africa not developing its own biomedical industries (Smith 2001). Although reported as a victory for South Africa (home to 15%
of AIDS sufferers worldwide), the settlement effectively strengthens the drug manufacturers’ control of the market by driving out poten- tial local competitors. The threat in this newly capitalized science, then, is not in terms of violence but in terms of affordable goods.
Finally, in science, one must distinguish sharing creditfrom sharing data, though a similar story can be told of each. Scientists often lavishly cite precedents, corroborations, and analogues to their own work—not necessarily because they were materially dependent on the cited works (in fact, they may not have even read what they cite), but because the authors of those works (or their students or follow- ers) expect to see their work cited. Such citations then function as protection, in case someone from the camp of one of the cited authors should be a peer reviewer of the citing scientist’s work. Of course, you may be lucky and never get one of those authors, but is it worth the risk of a bad grant decision and perhaps long-term, albeit subtly expressed, enmity from colleagues? In the case of sharing data, if you do not make your data public until the time your research is com- pleted, then others who are doing similar research may refuse to share with you in future, when their data turn out to be relevant for your work. Again, you can take a calculated risk, but are you likely to do so?
2.2. Materializing the Marketplace of Ideas: Is Possessing