Science, Interrupted

Abstract

During the Second World War, journal editors working under the American Advisory Committee on Scientific Publications (ACSP) struggled to reconcile new demands of secrecy with their commitment to open exchange of knowledge. ACSP referees’ dilemmas were most acute where the consequences of disclosure were least obvious. Their greatest disagreements emerged not out of nuclear weapons research, but rather from problems of lesser perceived military significance, which were nevertheless the subject of contracted work with the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Although civilian scientists could publish on these topics without consequences to national security, the ACSP frequently restricted civilian publications for the simple reason that military-contracted scientists were performing similar research. This paper examines three cases in which the priority claims of federally contracted researchers influenced decisions on censorship. In these cases, referees imposed censorship to ensure equal access to publication channels, when federal contracts had divided the American scientific community into civilian and military-adjacent subgroups. Uniform censorship preserved the image of a uniform scientific community.