2004 Science & Technology Policy Gordon Conference, August 16-20, 2004; Bozeman, MT.

Gordon Research Conferences, East Greenwich RI

Investigators

Abstract

Science and technology grow ever more complex and specialized, and scholarship exploring the various fields also grows more dispersed and fragmented. Not surprisingly, science and technology policy has become widely separated from the scholarship within science and about science, so that policy often follows the piecemeal opportunism of funding opportunities. The result is loss of consideration of the broader context and goals, and a failure to consider who wins, who loses, and why that matters. There is a basic need to consider, in particular, what should count as appropriate expertise, morality, and politics relating to science and technology policy. The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Science and Technology Policy provides an opportunity to develop that discussion, and to do so in a new community of scholars and practitioners who do not normally interact. Therefore, this proposal seeks funding for participants to attend the GRC on Science and Technology Policy in August 2004. The Conference will follow the GRC tradition of providing an international forum for presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies, in this case focusing on policy. With this conference, there is the opportunity to bring together academics in the social and behavioral science, historians, philosophers, ethicists, and others whose research explores science and technology policy in diverse ways, alongside professionals (including scientists) involved in making, implementing, and promoting policy. Though acknowledging the usual basic-applied or theoretical-activist distinctions as problematic, the proposal seeks to bring together a full range of participants, from the most basic or theoretical academic ends of a spectrum to those directly engaged in advocacy and action in the policy community. It seeks to promote systematic understanding of the character and development of science and technology policy, including cultural, intellectual, material, and social dimensions (much as NSF seeks to do with Criterion 2). Out of this process should grow a multidisciplinary network of participants whose own thinking, research, and actions are influenced by their participation. The goal is therefore twofold: to enhance the perspectives of each participant, and also to create a sustainable community of individuals with growing respect and understanding of each others' languages, interests, and values. If successful, the project will also be sowing seeds for a new kind of expertise among academics in the sciences, social sciences, ethics, and/or history and philosophy of science through their interactions with those setting, analyzing, and promoting policy by creating a new network able to communicate and work together to enhance everyone's thinking, research, and action into the future. Success will depend on persuading a dynamic group of outstanding thinkers to give up five full days of their precious summer research time and share the intense interaction and resulting communication and network-building. Getting the best people to attend requires funding. Therefore, on behalf of the entire Gordon Conference, the proposal seeks funding for Conference participants. All funds will be used for direct costs for those involved as speakers, discussants, planners, and poster presenters.