230170 SE Collaboration and competition: On forms and formats of being together in science (2009W)

The Human Genome Project is an interesting example of increasing collaboration in science. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick together developed their model of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) in the Cavendish Laboratory in the traditional English university town Cambridge. Fifty years later the development of Human Genome Project shows a completely different world. The deciphering of the human genome entails the planning and management of a large and dynamic project with a clear mission, involving huge amounts of money, expensive instruments and collaboration between numerous scientists in laboratories all over the world. Moreover, the academic environment is substituted by an international and political setting, figuring academia, governments, funding bodies, business, media and the public.

By looking at scientific collaboration from different perspectives, the course will take you from the first forms of scientific collaboration, via the Large Hadron Collider and the Human Genome Project to the recent development towards e-science in the social sciences and humanities. And if the scientific field of your interest is not mentioned yet, you are invited to explore the ways in which this discipline or sub-discipline is working together. In addition, we will also pay attention to collaboration that crosses the borders of science, by looking into associations between academia, government and industry. Finally, we will focus on the relation between collaboration and competition in science and explore the limits of scientific collaboration.

The course consists of four parts:

1. In the first part on the history of science and collaboration the ideas on science and collaboration of early science studies scholars are presented.

2. The second part on the conceptualisation of collaboration will look into definitions of collaboration. Starting with Big Science, coined in the 1960s to describe increasing dimensions and collaboration in science, we will follow definitions of scientific collaboration up to date. Closely related to definitions of collaboration are the questions: why to collaborate and how to collaborate?

3. In the third part different forms of collaboration will be explored in physics, astronomy and space research, biology and the social sciences and humanities.

4. The fourth part on the politics of collaboration addresses science and innovation policy and collaboration with industry. Various ways in which competition takes place in the scientific system are mapped and discussed and we will look into the global distribution of large-scale research.