Simone Turchetti

On thick ice: scientific internationalism and Antarctic affairs, 1957?1980

This paper focuses on the role played by scientific internationalism in Antarctica during the two decades that followed the signing and ratification of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961. The paper shows that the Treaty was a response to the threat to the ‘free world’ represented by the installation of Soviet bases in Antarctica. Scientific internationalism was used as a diplomatic weapon to respond to that threat. In the 1960s, the development of international cooperative research allowed the USA, the largest logistic operator in Antarctica, to gain control of local affairs by penetrating into strategic areas, influencing the policies of other nations, and defusing existing tensions between them. This was the case with the International Antarctic Glaciological Project, a multilateral glaciological and geological research effort in East Antarctica. In the 1970s a far more complex political situation developed, defined by changes in the US Antarctic policy and the rise of military regimes in South American countries.

Atomic secrets and governmental lies: nuclear science, politics and security in the Pontecorvo case

This paper focuses on the defection of nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo from Britain to the USSR in 1950 in an attempt to understand how government and intelligence services assess threats deriving from the unwanted spread of secret scientific information. It questions whether contingent agendas play a role in these assessments, as new evidence suggests that this is exactly what happened in the Pontecorvo case. British diplomatic personnel involved in negociations with their US counterparts considered playing down the case. Menawhile, the press decided to play it up, claiming that Pontecorvo was an atom spy. Finally, the British secret services had evidence showing that this was a fabrication, but they did not disclose it. If all these manipulations served various purposes, then they certainly were not aimed at assessing if there was a threat and what this threat really was

Sword, Shield and Buoys: A History of the NATO Sub-Committee on Oceanographic Research, 1959-1973.

In the late 1950s the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a major effort to fund collaborative research between its member states. One of the first initiatives following the establishment of the alliances Science Committee was the creation of a sub-group devoted to marine science: the Sub-committee on Oceanographic Research.This paper explores the history of this organization, charts its trajectory over the 13 years of its existence, and considers its activities in light of NATOs naval defence strategies. In particular it shows how the alliances naval commands played a key role in the sub-committees creation due to the importance of oceanographic research in the tracking of enemy submarines. The essay also scrutinizes the reasons behind the committees dissolution, with a special focus on the changing landscape of scientific collaboration at NATO. The committees fall maps onto a more profound shift in the alliances research agenda, including the re-organization of defence research and the rise of environmentalism.

Data in Antarctic science and politics

The internationalization of Antarctica as a continent for science with the Antarctic Treaty (1961) was heralded as bringing about international cooperation and the free exchange of data. However, both national rivalry and proprietorship of data, in varying degrees, remained integral to Antarctic science and politics throughout the 20th century. This paper considers two large field-surveys in Antarctica: first, an aerial photographic survey carried out by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition of 1946—8; and second, the Scott Polar Research Institutes radio-echo sounding survey of 1967—79. Both surveys involved geoscientific data but the context in which the investigations and the exchanges of their results took place changed. We argue that the issue of control of data remained paramount across both cases despite shifting international political contexts. The control of data on Antarctic territory, once framed in terms of geopolitics and negotiated between governments, became a matter of science policy and credit to be negotiated among scientific institutions. Whereas the Ronne data were of potential strategic value for reinforcing national territorial claims, the radio-echo sounding data contained information of potential economic and environmental value.

Production, Science and Epistemology. An Overview on New Models and Scenarios

During the XX century, the industrial and economic organization of developed countries has radically changed. First, the development of new technologies has moved production from linear mechanisms such as the Fordist assembly line to complex industrial networks in which information and communication play a central role. Moreover, this development has deeply modified scientific and technological R&D and more generally it has had an impact on the structure of scientific and technological research establishments and their epistemological framework. This new scenario opens still unquestioned problems. Has the end of the Fordist factory something to do with the end of obsolete Big Science institutions? Does the birth of new research establishments fit within a general change of production models? And finally, to what extent does this change affect the epistemological framework? The changes involving the context of production, science and epistemology are crucial to understand the development of model-based reasoning. Therefore we will try here to compare and contrast them.

Introduction: Science Studies in East and West—Incommensurable Paradigms?

This chapter opens the volume by recalling our lack of knowledge about the origins and foundation of science studies as a discipline. It thus examines the reasons for this gap, showing that it actually coincides with the fact that much of the science studies literature coming from non-US and non-Western European countries has been overlooked in the past. Thus reasoning on the compelling reasons that led to the project for this book, the introduction recalls the impact of the Cold War in the shaping of science studies in the West and the East and the variety of local approaches that eventually were brought together under the science studies umbrella. It recalls the content of each one of the chapters in the volume illustrating this diversity. The introduction concludes by highlighting two issues. First, that these approaches are by and large incomparable from the historical viewpoint, given their specificity in the Cold War context and—at times—their alignment to specific national policies. Second, that even if noncomparable, these studies bear important resemblances that reveal important transnational exchanges of knowledge before, during, and after the Cold War and even, at times, across the Iron Curtain.

Looking for the Bad Teachers: The Radical Science Movement and Its Transnational History

This chapter explores how the 1968 protest in US and European university campuses gave impetus to the “radical science” movement and, in turn, informed developments in the history of science studies. The focus of the study is Western Europe (Great Britain and Italy especially). In particular, the chapter seeks to explain how the protest forged new transnational links between scholars conceptualizing the “non-neutrality” of science and willing to use this notion in the critique of contemporary societies. This allowed them to move beyond traditional appraisals focusing on the controversial uses of science and pay greater attention to its making and implications for cultural and material production. In this way these intellectuals highlighted shortcomings in the management of scientific research both in the Western and Eastern blocs. Although the non-neutrality concept has found widespread application in the historical study of science, also informing the work of a new generation of scholars, the chapter argues that its political suggestions have hardly ever become a distinctive feature of this literature, thus trying to explain what has happened in the transition from political radicalism to academic work.

Tinker, tailor, physicist, spy?

Bruno Pontecorvo was the only nuclear physicist who defected from the West after contributing to Allied nuclear research during the Second World War.

Knowing the Enemy, Knowing the Earth

Surveillance is a subject on many lips. Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations, commentators around the world have questioned if anything remains undetected by the surveillance networks set up by the world’s most powerful nations. Documentation leaked by the former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor has revealed electronic ears and eyes spreading across the planet, enabling the rapid transfer of massive amounts of data to an army of intelligence operators, aided by some of the fastest computing machines on earth and their capacious hard drives. While emblematic examples such as German chancellor Angela Merkel’s tapped Nokia handset evoke the gadget-oriented espionage of an early 007 movie, the sheer scale and sweep of the operations have caused the greatest concern for most members of the public. Not only has it become apparent how much private information transferred through mobile phones, e-mails, Web portals, and social networking websites can be tapped into by security agencies, but we now also know that intelligence operators do not always discriminate between enemies and allies in tapping operations—something that has come to light in the most embarrassing circumstances for the Obama administration.1