INCOMMENSURABILITY IN CYBERSPACE
by Steve Fuller
I will be briefer than Harnad, both to spare potential
contributors to this exchange unnecessary grief and to
acknowledge that Harnad and I have some fundamental
disagreements when it comes to 'defining the matter at
hand', to quote one of Harnad's favourite cliches.
Here are two questions to which Harnad and I give
fundamentally different answers:
(1) Does the trade/esoteric distinction capture anything
deeper in publishing than the obvious fact that some
texts sell, and some don't? Harnad thinks that there is
something deep about the distinction, which reflects the
unique goals of esoteric inquirers and the content of the
texts they publish. I doubt that the distinction is deep
in this way. However, I grant that the costs and benefits
of academic publishing are allocated somewhat differently
from commercial publishing. Part of the problem here, I
think, is that Harnad overestimates the extent to which
'fellow specialists' read the literature in a given field
and non-specialists do not (interestingly, many of the
examples of 'esoteric' research that Harnad cites in his
rebuttal come from medicine, which obviously fits into
this category).
(2) Is peer review medium-independent? Harnad says it's
the ideal form of pure inquiry, whereas I believe it's an
artifact of a world with scarce resources in which the
inhabitants (in this case, inquirers) decide to
discipline themselves rather than let someone else do the
job. If resources -- such as grant money and journal
pages -- were not scarce, inquiry could simply follow its
own course without setting up a talley sheet for who gets
credit for what idea.
A major obstacle to overcoming our incommensurability is
Harnad's inability to imagine that publishers might have
interests that go beyond making a profit. He writes as if
academics will be released from their Faustian bargains,
once it is realized that electropublication undercuts the
principal means by which publishers have been able to
profit from academic labours. However, publishers have
traditionally cast themselves in the role of independent
agents in the production and distribution of knowledge,
interested in -- but by no means beholden to -- academics
and other 'professional' inquirers.
It is true that many ambitious publishers have gone out
of business because their proactive approach to knowledge
production put them at odds both with academic and
religious authorities and with commercially savvier
competitors. However, recent years have witnessed the
rise of all-purpose media moguls -- the Robert Maxwells
and Rupert Murdochs of this world -- who can finance
academic publishing houses out of the profits made from
mass circulation tabloid newspapers and cable television
channels. While the moguls may streamline the management
of such houses, they usually have no illusion about their
ultimate profitability. Instead, the goal is to shape
and monitor learned opinion, which is often a potent,
albeit indirect, means of influencing policy. Moreover,
the multimedia character of these moguls' empires makes
it likely that, when market conditions appear right,
their publishing wings will make a relatively smooth
transition from trading in paper products to broadcasting
licences.
I certainly don't claim to know when or how the internet
will become completely privatised. I merely want to
emphasise that it doesn't make sense to discuss Harnad's
cyberplatonism as a global strategy for academic life
unless we have a clear sense of the material conditions
needed for sustaining it. There is actually considerable
controversy over who 'owns' the internet now, mainly
because there is no generally accepted legal-economic
model for assessing its costs and benefits. (The fact
that Harnad and I constantly mix metaphors when talking
about the electronic medium is symptomatic of the
problem.) However, one thing is clear: Academics don't
own it. Consequently, unless we academics are prepared to
enter into negotiations with those having a clear
financial stake in the medium, our cyberplatonist utopias
are little more than castles in the sky.
Perhaps the most amazing feature of Harnad's rebuttal is
his derisory treatment of the idea that the university
might start imposing 'access charges' for items and
facilities that are, for the most part, currently free to
staff and students. In fact, such discussions are taken
very seriously these days, and some universities employ
officers with the job of 'space management'. We may not
be far from the day when rental charges on one's
departmental office will be deducted from faculty
salaries.
As for the peer review process, my apologies to Harnad
for failing to see the point of the Socrates remark at
the end of my piece. It was meant to suggest that,
depending on how you select the 'peers', some rather
regrettable decisions can end up being taken on
unorthodox work. 'Peer review' is one of those phrases,
like 'democracy' and 'freedom', that is very hard to be
against, though one is never quite sure what one is being
for. It should come as no surprise to learn that the best
way to ensure that articles of a certain kind continue
being published in a journal is to have them selected by
people who have themselves been successful at getting
their articles published in that journal. However, when
people have their doubts about peer review, they usually
think that there is more to inquiry than self-
reproduction. In fact, it's pretty unlikely that peer
review would ever lead to the termination of research in
a given field or the redirection of research from one
field to another; rather, one would presume the field's
research aims and paradigms are legitimate, and then
select the best submitted work falling under those
rubrics.
This is not to say that 'peer review' must always have a
conservative skew, but rather that we shouldn't make
blanket appeals to peer review as if it were a panacea
for all academic ailments. It is also worth pointing out
that in the medical spheres where Harnad makes some of
his strongest appeals to peer review, models of
evaluation based on the actual track record of various
drugs and treatments in practical settings have been
posed as alternatives to peer review. Readers interested
in this angle should follow some of the 'credential
libertarian' literature on evaluating the efficacy of
science and technology in public settings.
I am heartened to learn that Harnad does not want to see
the entire internet paved as a peer review process.
However, elsewhere in his corpus (in fact perhaps in some
of the citations with which he liberally regales his
text) he has made a point of saying that the best minds
won't enter the electronic medium, unless they can be
assured that they will only be confronting minds of
similar calibre. And having the best minds on board is
one of the preconditions of Harnad's cyberplatonist
scenario becoming realized. One can imagine that a
stratification of this kind could lead to the
introduction of various charges and asymmetries on the
net. Like television once again, it may be relatively
cheap to receive messages but expensive to receive a
licence for transmitting them. I can even imagine one
sense in which Harnad might approve of such a scenario,
namely, if the broadcasting licences were decided by peer
review, i.e. the other licensed broadcasters. However, it
would be a mistake to think that such decisions would be
divorced from financial considerations. Being able to
circulate in cyberspace with the most prestigious people
in one's field is a sure-fire way to increase one's
visibility and influence, which can be translated into
such financial terms as subsidized research, conference
jaunts, etc. The promise of such benefits could easily
warrant a fairly hefty entry fee into the network.
Finally, the sociology of science literature comparing
the social structure of different disciplines is fairly
well established (Some typical books include Richard
Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the
Sciences, Clarendon 1985; Harry Redner, The Ends of
Science, Westview 1986; Stephan Fuchs, The Professional
Quest for Truth, SUNY 1992). High-energy physics is a
favourite field precisely because it represents an extreme
form of elitism. As for the literature on journal
refereeing, I wish Harnad could be more specific about
what it is in his anthology bears on the issues I raise.
My sense of authors' resistance to making substantive
changes in their views comes from my own ten year
experience of editing a journal and refereeing for 20
more.
Steve Fuller is professor of sociology and social policy at Durham
University. He is the editor of the journal "Social Epistemology "
(Taylor & Francis).
mailto:steve.fuller@durham.ac.uk
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