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Article
Law, Science, and the Economy: One Domain?
U.C. Irvine Law Review (2015)
  • David S Caudill
Abstract

In an effort to explore the theoretical and practical promise of ignoring or erasing conventional boundaries and distinctions—such as law/society or inside/outside—in accounts of legal processes and institutions, I consider the problem of financial bias in scientific expertise. I first draw an analogy with science studies, and particularly Latour’s notion of science as a coproduction, which challenges the boundaries (i) between science and society, and (ii) between natural and social influences on the production of scientific knowledge. I then acknowledge the efforts of Philip Mirowski, in his concern that privatization trends degrade science, to overcome an individualistic perspective on financial bias (conflicts of interest, fraud) and to identify indirect, systemic effects of the economy on science. However, as illustrated by Michel Callon’s network model of the economics of science, Mirowski retains a set of conventional distinctions, boundaries, and assumptions (including the primacy of science over technology, and the primacy of academic science over commercialized science) that render his critique ineffective— Mirowski’s examples of systemic effects tend to be individualistic. A more accurate description of the interactions between private firms and public laboratories, including the identification of boundary organizations and hybrid firm/laboratories, advances the effort to recognize and evaluate the systemic and not merely individualistic effects of the economy on science. I conclude that because scientific expertise is a coproduction of law, science, and the economy, and because each of the three enterprises is equally rhetorical, social, institutional, political, and historical, there is no priority or privilege of one domain over another—they are, in those senses, one.

Keywords
  • financial bias,
  • scientific expertise
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Citation Information
David S Caudill. "Law, Science, and the Economy: One Domain?" U.C. Irvine Law Review Vol. 5 (2015)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_caudill/124/