Session D02: Connecting Science Policy with Science's History

Live

How do practitioners of science policy integrate history into their work? This talk will present examples of STEM policymaking and advocacy work enhanced by the history of science and technology.   

Live

Speaking as both a historian and as a writer for the American Institute of Physics' FYI science policy news bulletin, I will discuss how historical knowledge can improve our understanding of current events, as well as how attention to current events can inform our understanding of the history of science policy. While the success of science policy decisions is always peculiar to their immediate circumstances, limiting the applicability of historical parallels, invoking trendlines and precedents can enrich the way we speak about the nature of these decisions. Understanding history can also illuminate the significant gulfs between past and present, spotlighting aspects of the way we make policy decisions that we scarcely notice. Likewise, attention to current dilemmas in science policy can reveal a need to investigate previous attempts to grapple with such problems that historians have hitherto neglected. Examples will be drawn from White House, congressional, and federal agency levels of policy.   

Live

This paper explores how physicists of the Laser-Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) attempted to locate their research on former Cold War sites, LIGO's negotiations with the administrators of these sites such as the U.S. military, and LIGO's response to claimed national security concerns tied to the sites. As the Cold War wound down, governmental and military sites active during the Cold War were either abandoned or use of the sites restructured or reduced and in many instances placing them in the holdings of the Bureau of Land Management. In addition to exploring the unaddressed history of LIGO's site selection history and analyzing LIGO's experience with consideration of placement of a large-scale interferometer within these decommissioned spaces, this paper will also explore how the Cold War history morphed such sites into technical landscapes. Specifically, this paper will show that in the case of LIGO, these spaces were originally considered because they were perceived as wilderness or public land available to conduct nationally funded basic research and inexpensive due to government ownership of the land. However, in trying to locate their research, LIGO learned that the sites were heavily regulated and controlled by remnants of the Cold War. Thus, this paper concludes that although government lands may be less costly, such land may be nonetheless difficult to access due to each party's perceived administrative roles the land.