VACCINOLOGY: An Industrial Science?

Abstract

j A ‘NEW PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE’? In the last few years numerous authors have claimed that changes are occurring in the relations between science and its application. Such changes have been sought, and found, in various ways and in various places. For example, the relations between patent and scienti® c literatures have changed (Narin et al., 1997). So too have those between universities and industry (Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz, 1998). The implications of market orientation for universities, and the threat that this may or may not pose to their traditions and values, have been discussed for decades. Rather newer is the claim that the traditional disciplines of science may be declining in signi® cance. The authors of The New Production of Knowledge argue that, alongside traditional discipline-based forms of knowledge production (`Mode 1’), a quite different `socially distributed’ alternative (`Mode 2’) is emerging (Gibbons et al., 1994). Mode 2 knowledge production is no longer limited to traditional laboratories; it takes place in various types of organizations, exibly linked by modern communications media. It is oriented to solving practical problems, and was created by the adaptive behaviour of the more entrepreneurial `old style’ scientists seeking to integrate their own research agendas with those of other organizations. According to this analysis, Mode 2 science weakens traditional modes of quality control. Good research is no longer de® ned by established disciplinary standards and disciplinary elites, but rather is guided by practical and social concerns. Though they may or may not continue to identify themselves in disciplinary terms, scientists no longer make their careers as `physicists’ or `physiologists’ . Instead,