The Grant Swinger papers [Unknown Binding]

Daniel S Greenberg (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 32 pages
• Publisher: Science & Government Report (1983)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006YEGFA
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,652,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Ever Satire on Big Science, April 22, 2008

By 

Foster Morrison "Foster Morrison" (North Potomac, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Grant Swinger papers

No one has ever captured the essence of the great technocratic make-work project as well as Daniel Greenberg. Billions of tax dollars are poured into academic and other labs to produce a lot of stuff that is trivial or even ridiculous. Researchers and journal editors play games of favor-trading, so that one guy's paper gets published and another's does not. And everybody cites his friends' papers, since that is how tenure committees and grant reviewers evaluate things. The fundamental problem with science is that the only people qualified to pass judgment on it are the few who produce it. Greenberg points out the absurdity and resulting waste from all this, but unfortunately, comes up with no solutions. At the very least the government needs to come up with a bureaucracy that has first-rate scientific literacy without being dependent on academe, the military-industrial complex, or any other such special interest group. The taxpayers need a hound dog to watch the chickens, not a fox. The only one they have now is Greenberg himself, in his more recent and serious books on the uses and abuses of science.