Science without the Romance

Abstract

This is a commentary on William Lynch’s Minority Report, which is a synthesis of the last 75 years of STS writings with philosophical themes from Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others. The comment questions the continued relevance of older ideas of scientific opinion which rested on the supposed autonomy of scientists in the face of the present grant system and the bureaucracy of peer review. The magnitude of the funding of science, and its apparent biases, call the whole of the inherited view of science into question.