Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • COMMENT

Can marketplace science be trusted?

Historian Paul Lucier traces the explosion and fragmentation of industrial research in the fifth essay in a series on how the past 150 years have shaped today’s science system, marking Nature’s anniversary.
  1. Paul Lucier

    1. Paul Lucier is an independent historian and author of the 2008 book Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890. His forthcoming book is Science and Capitalism.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Illustration by Señor Salme

Four years after the first issue of Nature was published, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) faced an existential crisis. In October 1873, one of its original members demanded the expulsion of another member for swindling. Josiah Whitney, California’s state geologist, accused Benjamin Silliman Jr, professor of applied chemistry at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, of accepting large sums from California oil companies in return for favourable, possibly fraudulent, science. Silliman responded forcefully that company funding for science was evidence of responsibility, not misconduct: companies needed objective “technical opinions”. Without science, swindling would be more common, he argued.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 574, 481-485 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03172-5

References

  1. Lucier, P. Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890 (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bud, R. Isis 103, 515–563 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Homburg, E. Isis 109, 565–576 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Israel, P. Edison: A Life of Invention (Wiley, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Mowery, D. C. & Rosenberg, N. Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Hounshell, D. A. & Kenly Smith Jr, J. Science and Corporate Strategy: DuPont R&D, 1902–1980 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Reich, L. S. The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876–1926 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Usselman, S. W. in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology (ed. Slotten, H. R.) Vol. II, 369–387 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Backhouse. R. E. & Maas, H. Isis 108, 82–106 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Grandin, K., Wormbs, N. & Widmalm, S. (eds) The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications (Science History Publications, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Knowles, S. G. & Leslie, S. W. Isis 92, 1–33 (2001).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Clarke, S. H., Lamoreaux, N. R. & Usselman, S. W. (eds) The Challenge of Remaining Innovative: Insights from Twentieth Century American Business (Stanford Business Books, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Landes, D. S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hounshell, D. A. in Engines of Innovation: U.S. Industrial Research at the End of an Era (eds Rosenbloom, R. S. & Spencer, W. J.) 13–85 (Harvard Business School Press, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  15. National Science Board. Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 Vol. 1, 6-35–6-36 (National Science Foundation, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Mowery, D. C., Nelson, R. R., Sampat, B. & Ziedonis, A. Ivory Tower and Industrial Innovation: University–Industry Technology Transfer Before and After the Bayh–Dole Act (Stanford Univ. Press, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Pisano, G. P. Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Chesbrough, H. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Mowery, D. C. Ind. Corp. Change 18, 1–50 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Arora, A., Belenzon, S. & Patacconi, A. Ind. Corp. Change 28, 289–307 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Mirowski, P. Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science (Harvard Univ. Press, 2011).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links