mikerickson reviewed Rivals by Lorraine Daston
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3 stars
When you think about it, "the scientific community" is a really nebulous concept, and it is odd that it exists at all considering it ignores national boundaries, doesn't share a common language or faith, and doesn't have an overall "ruler" for lack of a better term. There's no "Pope" of science, and everyone who engages in that community are simultaneously in cooperation with each other peer-reviewing work and replicating others' experiments, but also in competition with each other over scarce grants and research contracts.
This short book did a good job giving an overview of the history of how scientists deal with each other. It felt a touch euro-centric, but when your starting point is in the 18th century when colonial powers were kinda at their height and already disproportionately important on the world stage maybe that's unavoidable. Also wish it had attempted to peek into the near future a …
When you think about it, "the scientific community" is a really nebulous concept, and it is odd that it exists at all considering it ignores national boundaries, doesn't share a common language or faith, and doesn't have an overall "ruler" for lack of a better term. There's no "Pope" of science, and everyone who engages in that community are simultaneously in cooperation with each other peer-reviewing work and replicating others' experiments, but also in competition with each other over scarce grants and research contracts.
This short book did a good job giving an overview of the history of how scientists deal with each other. It felt a touch euro-centric, but when your starting point is in the 18th century when colonial powers were kinda at their height and already disproportionately important on the world stage maybe that's unavoidable. Also wish it had attempted to peek into the near future a bit, and the possible outcomes of the replication crisis, but maybe it wanted to stay in a narrower lane than I did.