Disciplining experts: scientific authority and liberal democracy in the Oppenheimer case
By: Thorpe, Charles.
Material type:
ArticlePublisher: 2002Description: p.525-62.Subject(s): Science and technology
In:
Social Studies of ScienceSummary: In 1954, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had emerged from World War II as America's foremost scientific advisor to government, faced a security hearing which stripped him of his security clearance and barred him from government work. This paper provides a novel interpretation of this event and its significance by arguing that the hearing exposed fundamental and endemic tensions in the place of science in liberal democratic politics. Science's image of impersonal objectivity makes it useful to the liberal democratic state. Scientific advice helps to legitimize executive power as a neutral tool of the public will. However, as it is appropriated by the state, science is itself held accountable to bureaucratic conceptions of objectivity. Personal trust and personal authority in science become problematic in the context of state administration and the use of science for political legitimation. The Oppenheimer hearing exemplified the way in which the incorporation of science into the administrative apparatus of government has involved disciplining scientific experts and fashioning scientific authority after the bureaucratic model of the state. - Reproduced.
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | Volume no: 32, Issue no: 4 | Available | AR55297 |
In 1954, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had emerged from World War II as America's foremost scientific advisor to government, faced a security hearing which stripped him of his security clearance and barred him from government work. This paper provides a novel interpretation of this event and its significance by arguing that the hearing exposed fundamental and endemic tensions in the place of science in liberal democratic politics. Science's image of impersonal objectivity makes it useful to the liberal democratic state. Scientific advice helps to legitimize executive power as a neutral tool of the public will. However, as it is appropriated by the state, science is itself held accountable to bureaucratic conceptions of objectivity. Personal trust and personal authority in science become problematic in the context of state administration and the use of science for political legitimation. The Oppenheimer hearing exemplified the way in which the incorporation of science into the administrative apparatus of government has involved disciplining scientific experts and fashioning scientific authority after the bureaucratic model of the state. - Reproduced.
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