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Re: :-(
Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Tue, 23 May 1995 17:06:36 -0400
Here goes. I wanted to stay out of this and can't. Much of what Nick
Corduan has expressed strikes me as verging on the infantile. I don't
mean infantile in the personal 'childish' sense either, but rather that
his view of the historical relationships that have developed in the US
between business, Academia, and Government, and the resulting synergy
that now is a structural fact and has existed for decades is simply
undeveloped or infantile. I just received my copy of the Society for
Neuroscience Newsletter. The membership now is over 24,400 souls, and
these are almost totally academic research people who compete for funds to
continue their research, some of it developed by their mentors, some not,
but involving a hundred or so years of accumulated knowledge now being
explored in many different ways, thanks to a burgeoning cornucopia of
technological advances in imaging techniques, biochemical and microbial
markers, etc., etc. The brain is "in", like it or not, and can no longer
be taken for granted in any of the sciences, and I would argue, most
particularly, the social sciences.
If Corduan thinks this magnificent hugh structure will take care of
itself without govermental stimulation in the form of grants, he must
have a store of knowledge regarding the private sector that I know
nothing about, and I have worked in it, e.g. AT&T, Lockheed, Pan Am
Petroleum, etc., etc. If one wishes to assert that "science" has grown
too big, and needs some recision, well, perhaps. But the knives being
brandished these days go far beyond some careful pruning, and social
science is really on the top of the 'hit' list. I regard his cheering as
a retreat into the Dark Ages. Ralph Holloway.
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