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Commercialization and the Limits of Well-Ordered Science

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Commercialization and the Limits of Well-Ordered Science Commercialization and the Limits of Well-Ordered Science Manuela Fernández Pinto The University of Helsinki Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences The aim of this paper is to show that Philip Kitcher’s ideal of well-ordered science has limitations when trying to implement it as a guide for current commercialized science. After describing Kitcher’s ideal, I give a critical assessment of the approach, uncovering three limitations. I then explain some of the major changes that science organization has undergone in re- cent decades and how they affect scientific research. I argue that the limita- tions of Kitcher’s approach follow from not taking these changes sufficiently into account. 1. Introduction In recent decades, philosophers of science have become increasingly con- cerned with the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. Philosophers such as Helen Longino (1990, 2002a), Philip Kitcher (2001, 2011), Miriam Solomon (2002), Heather Douglas (2009), and Janet Kourany (2010) have sought to incorporate the social aspects of science, while retaining the nor- mative commitments of philosophy of science. Some of the major theoretical approaches in social epistemology of science, however, tend to ignore or underestimate the role that the current state of science organization plays I am indebted to many for their comments on this paper, especially to Janet Kourany, who is directing my doctoral dissertation from which this paper stems. Thanks also to Phil Mirowski, Don Howard, and Anjan Chakravartty for their valuable comments on earlier chapter drafts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2013 EPSA meeting in Helsinki, Finland, August 28–31. Thanks to the European Philosophy of Science Asso- ciation and the University of Helsinki for organizing the conference, and to Martin Kusch and Alison Wylie for their useful comments. I would also like to thank Dan Hicks, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the paper and their useful comments. Perspectives on Science 2015, vol. 23, no. 2 ©2015 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00166 173 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00166 by guest on 26 September 2021 174 Commercialization and Well-Ordered Science in the production of scientific knowledge.1 The world has changed signifi- cantly in recent decades, and science has changed with it. The present re- gime of global commercialization and privatization of research has changed the way scientific knowledge is produced, raising new epistemological problems for the philosophy of science. Within social epistemology of science, Philip Kitcher’sworkonthe relation between science and democracy has attracted a great deal of atten- tion. Both in Science, Truth and Democracy (2001) and the more recent Science in a Democratic Society (2011), Kitcher examines the role of science in dem- ocratic societies, and builds an ideal account of the organization of science that he calls the ideal of well-ordered science. Kitcher is one of the few philosophers who have addressed directly the task of building a positive program in philosophy of science in view of the challenges posed by its social organization. Kitcher is thus a key representative of the type of socially concerned philosophy of science that I want to address. In the paper, I examine Kitcher’s ideal of well-ordered science. My aim is to show that the ideal has limitations when trying to implement it as a guide for current research, given the changes that the commercialization and privatization of science have brought about. The paper is divided in three sections. First, I briefly present Kitcher’s ideal of well-ordered science, emphasizing its procedural account of deliberation and the system of public knowledge in which it is embedded. Second, I give a critical assessment of the approach, uncovering three limitations. Third, I argue that the limitations follow from not taking sufficiently into account the current social organiza- tion of science. To do so, I also explain some of the major changes that science organization has undergone in recent decades. I conclude with some sugges- tions regarding the direction that well-ordered science, and social episte- mology of science more generally, could take to overcome such limitations. 2. The Ideal of Well-Ordered Science In his book The Advancement of Science (1993), Kitcher faced the challenge of providing a social epistemology of science able to identify “the properties of epistemically well-designed social systems, that is, to specify the conditions under which a group of individuals, operating according to various rules for modifying their individual practices, succeed, through their interactions, in generating a progressive sequence of consensus practices” (1993, p. 303). 1. Not all philosophers of science have been indifferent to the situation. See, for example, Justin Biddle’s work on pharmaceutical research (2007) and intellectual property (2012), Kevin Elliot’sworkonconflict of interest (2008), Sheldon Krimsky’s research on the privat- ization of science (2003), Rebecca Kukla’sworkonghostwriting(2012),andGüralIrzik’s work on the impact of commercialization on academic science (2013). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00166 by guest on 26 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 175 Without compromising the traditional goals of philosophy of science (e.g., the aim for truth, justification, and objectivity), his book became an impor- tant example of how one could think about the social dimensions of science in normative terms. In particular, Kitcher introduced resources from economic theory, i.e., rational choice models, to try to capture epistemological efficiency in terms similar to economic efficiency.2 In very broad terms, Kitcher tried to show that many of the motives that one could consider detrimental for decision making in science (e.g., desire for credit) can actually play a con- structive role in the process of knowledge production. In Science, Truth, and Democracy (2001), Kitcher moves away from ques- tions pertaining to the internal organization of the scientific community— i.e., what he calls the division of cognitive labor—to questions pertaining to the broad organization of science within a democratic society—i.e., the division of epistemic labor. The book poses one fundamental question: “what is the collective good that we want inquiry to promote?” (2001, p. 145), which Kitcher tries to answer with his ideal of well-ordered science. In general, the ideal is a procedural account of deliberation in which a repre- sentative group of tutored citizens discusses and decides which lines of re- search scientists ought to pursue given what is most convenient for society at large. According to the ideal of well-ordered science, scientific inquiry is divided into three phases. The first phase is dedicated to setting the agenda, i.e., to allocating resources among different possible scientific research projects. During the second phase the chosen research projects are pursued in the most efficient way within the scientific community. And, finally, results are translated into practical consequences during the third phase. For deci- sions to be made properly during the agenda-setting phase, Kitcher envisages aprocessofideal deliberation in which citizens with different initial preferences come together to discuss the available research possibilities and make the relevant decisions. Given that they are not scientific experts, but common citizens, they ought to be tutored to understand the epistemic and practical significance of the proposed research. As deliberation advances, the group establishes its priorities concerning the outcomes to which inquiry might prove relevant, and then the group assesses the possibilities of particular scientific ventures delivering what they collectively want. A disinterested arbitrator uses the information about probabilities together with the collec- tive wish list to draw up possible agendas for inquiry. Finally, the group determines appropriate budgets and research agendas (2001, 118–121). 2. The use of economic methodology to address philosophical questions has been a central concern for philosophers of economics (e.g., Hands 1997, 2007; Mirowski 2004; and Mäki 2005). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00166 by guest on 26 September 2021 176 Commercialization and Well-Ordered Science Initially, Kitcher does not give a detailed account of the research phase. He emphasizes the importance of pursuing scientific projects with an efficient distribution of cognitive labor though, suggesting that he is drawing from the account of the scientific process given in The Advancement of Science (1993). With regard to the application phase, Kitcher suggests a similar deliberation procedure to determine how to best apply scien- tific results. A general picture of the whole process is summarized in Figure 1. Through his ideal of well-ordered science, Kitcher favors a view of scientific organization in which decisions regarding research agendas and application of results are made by a group of tutored citizens that is familiar enough with scientific process and diverse enough to be repre- sentative of society. Ideal deliberations, however, leave the research pro- cess untouched: deliberators may choose pertinent lines of research over others and proper application of scientific results, but they have no say during the research phase,
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