The implications of scientific mobility between France and the United States

Minerva 33: 211-250, 1995. �9 1995 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in The Netherlands.

The Implications of Scientific Mobility Between France and the United States

T I M O T H Y C A R L S O N A N D D O M I N I Q U E M A R T I N - R O V E T

EVERY YEAR some 5,000 young French scientists can be found in the United States pursuing graduate, doctoral or postdoctoral training. Crossing their path, only 100 or so Americans arrive in France to occupy a postdoctoral position in research, virtually none of them to take an advanced degree. 1 Scientists in mid-career working for a spell in a French laboratory approximately double this handful. This marked difference can in turn be contrasted with the waves of American undergraduate students who arrive in France for a year or more of study, typically in the humanities: some 3,000, as opposed to approximately the same number of French graduate students--who study mostly science--in American universities. 2

Although the United States has an active tradition of welcoming foreign university students, France hosts three times more foreign students in relation to its national student population than does the United States? Nor can American scientists be simply said to be "allergic to foreign languages"; even adding together all foreign sojourns, including those in anglophone countries, the pattern of international mobility of American scientists is very weak. The mobility of European scientists is larger, having grown in the recent past. 4

What is to be made of these disparate glimpses? In an earlier study, one of the present authors examined in detail the phenomenon of young French scientists studying or working in the United States. 5 Later, we looked at American scientists visiting or living in France. 6 In both cases a combina- tion of quantitative and qualitative methods was used, as the best way to reveal the nature of scientific mobility in individual careers. We attempt

1 Martin-Rovet, D., Carlson, T., Richardson, T. and Brennan, K., American Scientists in France (Paris: CNRS/Washington, DC: NSF, 1991); for an analysis of this report, see Martin- Rovet, Dominique and Carlson, Timothy, "The International Exchange of Scholars: The Training of Young Scientists Abroad. Part II: American Scientists in France", in Reports and Documents, Minerva, XXIII (Summer 1995), pp. 171-192.

2 Zikopoulos, M. (ed.), Profiles 1989-1990: Detailed Analysis of the Foreign Student Population (New York: Institute of International Education, 1991).

3 Zikopoulos, M., Sutton, E. and Julian, A. (eds), Open Doors 1990-91: Report on International Exchange (New York: Institute of International Education, 1991),

4 Halary, C., Les exilds du savoir, les migrations scientifiques intemationales et leurs mobiles, in Fuchs, A. and Desjeux, D. (eds), Science et Soci~t~ (New York: L'Harmattan, 1994).

5 Martin-Rovet, D., "Formation par la recherche, l'exp6rience am6ricaine des boursiers fran~ais", Les Dossiers des Cahiers du CEFI, XXI (1988), pp. 1-32.

6 Martin-Rovet, D. et al., American Scientists in France, op. cit.

212 Timothy Carlson and Dominique Martin-Rovet

now to dissect more thoroughly Franco-American patterns of mobility, by comparing the results of the earlier two studies, and by further analysis in the light of, inter alia, the literature on the practice of the profession of science.

Very soon we found the notion of independence figured importantly. Consequently we used the framework provided by the concept of a profession, i.e., the exchange of expert services in return for payment and privilege, 7 to help explain the struggles of most scientists to maintain their sense of independence. Free inquiry is less free in several ways when sold as a professional service. An interesting refrain heard in both studies claimed that changing sides of the Atlantic had increased the scientist's research freedom in some way. Many French scientists felt freer doing their scientific work in the United States, while a number of their American counterparts felt freer in France. At the same time, a young Japanese scientist explained her decision to resettle permanently in the United States in terms of the greater research freedom she found there compared with the restrictive atmosphere of Japanese science. 8 That remark echoed the voices of young and older American scientists who talked about obstacles their research projects face, or faced, in the United States.

For the purposes of both these studies, scientific mobility was defined as a stay abroad of at least three months for research purposes. Results and views are exchanged during conferences, seminars and other short visits, but collaboration or the kind of exchange that alters or affects a scientist is usually the result, at least initially, of a longer stay. The data suggest that three years is a natural maximum, above which there is a step into much longer "mobility" or migration. Particularly in the study of Americans in France, we encountered this separate phenomenon of long-term or permanent mobility; it provided an insight into the individual costs, benefits and motives of scientific mobility.

Mobility most often occurs at the beginning of a career in research as a part of training, and/or it may occur a good deal later in mid-career in the case of well-established scientists. Mobile scientists in their thirties are rare, apart from those who have emigrated. On the other hand, some mobility in late career was observed, especially among older scientists who had continued active research and found mobility a stimulant or a source of fresh perspectives. Among Americans in France, there were four times as many in the 26 to 33 age-group as in the 34 to 40 age-group. There were roughly as many over the age of 40 as under 34. The data for French scientists in America present approximately the same picture, but a visit in mid-career was less frequent than the postdoctoral visit.

7 Gibbons, M., "The Changing Role of the Academic Research System", in Gibbons, M. and Wittrock, B. (eds), Science as a Commodity: Threats to the Open Community of Scholars (Harlow: Longrnan, 1985), pp. 2-21.

8 Friedman, R. S. and Friedman, R. C., "Science American Style: Three Cases in Academe", Policy Studies Journal, XVII, 1 (1988), pp. 43-61.

The Implications of Scientific Mobility 213

The reasons given for undertaking research abroad led us to cast our analysis, at least partly, in a framework of centre and periphery. Scientists are drawn to centres where "they are doing good science". But if, as we argue below, the world of research internationally constitutes a society only imperfectly, so too the model of centre and periphery is applicable to that society only with modification and qualification. In scientific research, one person's centre can be another's periphery. Before going further in that direction, we want to establish the individual and career-oriented nature of scientific mobility as the most dependable way to grasp it.

MOBILrrY AS A CAREER DECISION

Freedom to do research is a very important goal for scientists. Scientists, like others, move to reduce constraints. In deciding to travel in order to do research, a leading factor----direct or indirect--is often whether this will advance an individual's career. Will opportunities be missed at home, or an advantage be gained over those who remained at home? Will new publications result? Will research which could not otherwise be pursued become possible?

Scientists give at least rhetorical importance to freedom, and concerns about freedom are closely related to concerns about careers, at all events in the case of scientists who move between Western countries. Where political, economic or other external limitations do exist in Western countries, individuals can react by making individual decisions; for example, the majority of American scientists permanently in France came in two refugee-like waves coinciding with the height of the Vietnam War and the Reagan era. 9

A career is more or less measured by the degree of research freedom-- including financial support--provided by a particular position. But as research has become a career, a subtle conflict has arisen between the pursuit of a career and pursuit of an idea. Perhaps the conflict can best be described as the difference between the freedom to do research at all and the freedom to carry out a particular programme of research.

Scientific Mobility and Pressures on the Scientific Career

Despite its own antipathy to myth, science has allowed the rise of certain scientific beliefs that a closer look tends to mitigate. It is unclear, for example, how large a role intellectual curiosity plays in decisions to pursue a career in research--much less passion for a particular exploration---or how alloyed it is with other considerations such as attraction to laboratory life, the prospect of turning intellectual gifts into a well-respected career, etc. The drive to do research may be a preference for earning one's living in

9 See Martin-Rovet, D. and Carlson, T., "American Scientists in France", op. cit., p. 183.


a particular fashion, or profession, rather than a burning need to know. A hint of this is found in the marked effects of financing policies on research design. 1~ Science is an expensive activity and scientific success is at times measured in terms of ability to continue the activity. As a concept of career comes to dominate the scientific endeavour, reputation becomes one of the important products of a scientist's work. Even for the most impassioned scientist, professional credibility is essential to get a hearing for one's results.

Much of this springs from the professionalisation of scientific activity, because what a profession offers, in part, is the confidence it inspires, the faith in its reputation. This faith also keeps a profession independent and unhampered. 1~ All in all, concerns about career are a central part of scientific decision-making and are closely, but not in a simple way, connected to the important matter of research freedom. The circle described by a production of facts to gain credibility to produce further facts is more vicious perhaps in the United States than in France because of the former's funding process; it can be rendered less vicious in both by such means as international exposure, or the development of fund-raising skills. In any case, the loop connecting production, reputation, financing and production is a pressure on research regardless of how much the quest is for a professional career, status, or security and how much it is for knowledge.

International scientific mobility is primarily the result of individual decisions by scientists about their careers. The phenomenon is best understood in light of the various benefits that some scientists in particular situations perceive as arising from a working visit abroad. The patterns of mobility observed in the two studies under comparison can, therefore, be better understood if scientists' concerns about their careers are kept foremost in mind. In addition, the dissonance between a scientist's attitude towards mobility--based on considerations of career--and that of the science policy-maker ought to be noted. Such dissonance springs from divergent views on science in general held by policy-makers and scientists. What policy-makers expect from international mobility is unclear; behind the call for international co-operation, lies the hope of help with problems of scientific manpower and a fear of being "left behind". Scientists view mobility meanwhile in terms of accruing reputation, facilitating production or even access to cultural backgrounds. French or American scientists, at the beginning or the middle of their careers, nearly all report the broadening experience of a different culture and the benefit of a differenti- ated perspective specifically for their research.

As to the need to secure and advance a career in research, our findings corroborate a number of the views of those who study the activity of doing

10 Mukerji, C., A Fragile Power: Scientists and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

tt Gibbons, M., "The Changing Role of the Academic Research System", op. cit., p. 9.


or making science. 12 The larger context for this inquiry is the role that career decisions play in determining "what science is". The sociology, and even the philosophy, of science have come to identify science not so much as an objective, independently existing entity that beckons to the inquirer but rather as the total product of the actions of research scientists. These actions in turn are influenced by the need to secure and advance a research career, with all of its obstacles. An example can be drawn from the preponderance of women among French postdoctoral students in the United States; an "American label" seems to provide an edge in a field where women still experience difficulty. For the same reason, young female American scientists can little afford to distance themselves from opportunities for employment for the sake of a stay abroad that may not be well regarded at home. Women represented less than 20 per cent of young American scientists visiting France, although they account for almost one third of the doctoral degrees taken in the fields most likely to be represented in visitors to France, i.e., natural and social sciences. 13 Our study of visiting American scientists in France found virtually no women in mid-career. The pressures of career are likely to be 'a large part of the explanation.

From Laboratory to Laboratory

Exchange visits, international or not, have always been important in the world of learning, and, more recently, to research. The distinctly local nature of much research practice, TM with individual laboratories possessing their own style of production, strengthens the role of exchange in the making of successful science. Scientists spend a significant amount of time comparing, criticising, refuting or synthesising results and documents from external sources. 15 Exposure to another way of doing science can increase their productivity, or give them a competitive edge. If this experience is international, and positive, the results will generally be greater because the difference in perspective is more pronounced. Two thirds of visiting American scientists in France, for example, came seeking a scientific or technical goal, yet over two thirds cited non-professional considerations as central to the decision to do research abroad. French postdoctoral students in the United States regularly testified to the benefit of experiencing the bracing "American research environment", with its long hours, frequent inter-group seminars and other techniques and traditions unfamiliar to them.

12 For example, Latour, B. and Woolgar, S., La vie de laboratoire, la production des faits scientifiques (Paris: Les l~difions La D6couverte, 1988); Knorr-Cetina, K.D., The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on Constructivism and Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1981); Mukerji, C., A Fragile Power, op. cir.; Cole, Stephen, Making Science: Between Nature and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

is Martin-Rovet, D., "Formation par la recherche", op. cir. 14 Knorr-Cetina, K.D., The Manufacture of Knowledge, op. cir. 15 Latour, B. and Woolgar, S., La vie de laboratoire, op. cir., pp. 35ff.


At the same time there were widely divergent views on the value of scientific mobility, from laboratory to laboratory. In other words, mobility is part of that strongly local culture of a laboratory. In some American laboratories, for example, international mobility is seen as a waste of time. In others it is simply not a possibility. Many American scientists reported that their home laboratories were ignorant of work in their subfield in Europe and had no notion why anyone would want to do research abroad. In another view it is seen as a form of tourism. In France, some scientists see value in a tour of duty in an American laboratory but not in another European laboratory. Others reverse that priority.

Meanwhile, most of these scientists are in some way participating in the "invisible college" of their speciality. While they regarded such a college as coextensive with the best work being done in their subfield, the reports of the internationally mobile made it clear that invisible colleges can be multiple and divisible and therefore incomplete as well. Standard work on the subject of scientific colleges assumes perfect information within a subfield or speciality, a6 Our findings do not substantiate this. The need for this state of perfect communication within a subfield has been offered as justification for the existence of elite journals. The argument we develop, when we look at mobility and publishing, is that quite often the reverse is true: a core literature restricts the view of core scientists and colleges remain fractured. A young American molecular biologist from one of the best universities reported that the director of his laboratory was at a loss to name anyone in France in Lhat field! Finally, the examination of motives and attitudes to mobility also made it clear that in research it functions as counterbalance to local culture and even to local "colleges", particularly when for a longer visit for research and not just for a conference or seminar.

American scientists abroad emphasised the lack of awareness in the United States of work of high quality being done elsewhere. Conversely, French academics Who travel decry the tendency to pose the "French exception" as a kind of rejection of the international dominance of the United States. Collegiality may be seen as essential to science, and research as a tension between competition and collegiality. 17 The comments of mobile scientists show that international mobility raises the latter and dampens the effect of the former. Professor John Ziman makes the same point concerning targeted or "instrumental" science, namely that collegiality or responsibility towards colleagues balances the effects of "the collectivisation and instrumentalisation of science". TM Mobility--again, as a

16 Crane, D., Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 99-114.

v Knorr-Cetina, K.D., The Manufacture of Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 68ff questions the conventional picture of a college, stressing the element of competition.

18 Ziman, J., "What Are the Options? Social Determinants of Personal Research Plans", Minerva, XIX (Spring 1981), pp. 39ff.


"college-builder", based on respect--likewise dampens the effects of instru- mentality or targeting.

The notion that scientists travel or even emigrate to decrease constraints on their research is corroborated by our findings. Careers in research are constrained by lack of money (especially discretionary funds), lack of access to equipment, other demands on scientists' time, challenges from competing groups, the need to work according to approved or generally accepted fashion, and insufficient scientific credibility to get ideas or proposals accepted. All were mentioned by visiting scientists as problems they hoped to reduce, directly or indirectly, by working abroad temporarily or permanently.

Young scientists, particularly, face increasing difficulties in gaining the freedom to pursue their research because of collective pressures, size of groups, size of equipment, etc. 19 Concern is increasingly expressed that a training in such a climate will not produce mature scientists, as opposed to research workers who are good at obtaining grants, and technical opportu- nists. 2~ Encouraging international mobility early in a career may have a positive effect on independence at this stage and therefore result in a better trained investigator. 21

The Uses of Scientific Mobility

As scientists struggle to reduce the constraints on their work and therefore to increase their freedom, including the freedom achieved through mobility, it becomes interesting to ask what this freedom is for: is it freedom to research or freedom to do certain research? We found that international mobility is used for both purposes. Some scientists find that work abroad helps increase their credibility, their attractiveness as scientists, etc; therefore it increases the likelihood of being able to continue to do a particular piece of research. Others travel for reasons pertaining to a particular programme of research, a technique or collaboration or "data set" that would otherwise be unavailable. More often than not, French scientists go to the United States for a time, particularly when young, because of its perceived central role in many scientific fields. Meanwhile, the relatively few Americans tempted to do research in France are drawn by a specific project or piece of equipment or person, which will help them in some specific way.

Similarly, some scientists are mobile on the general principle that international exposure is good, while others move about only for a specific

19 1bid. 20 Salomon, J.J., "Science as a Commodity: Policy Changes, Issues and Threats", in

Gibbons, M. and Wittrock, B. (eds), Science as a Commodity, op. cit., pp. 78ff, gives an example of an unwanted effect of economic policy on science: "good minds miss their trajectory." John Ziman talks about young scientists "adapting research plans to employment"; see '!What are the Options?", op. cit., p. 26.

21 Gros, F. and Toccini-Valentini, P., "In Search of European Excellence", Nature, CCCLXIX (5 May, 1994), pp. 11-12.


reason. An illustration of the former is the observation that mobility in European neuroscience might be more intra-European and less transatlan- tic simply if continental air fares were deregulated. 22 A dependable level of mobility could be directed one way or another. The accelerator at CERN provides a specific reason for mobility, with its broad international community of scientists who are there.solely because of the unique equipment and not because of national competitive concerns. 23

If research in general and international mobility in particular are to be looked at as career decisions, it is useful to keep in mind the different types of careers in research. The following different careers could serve as examples: the principal investigator (PI) or "entrepreneur type", requiring good political skills; the explorer or "ideas person" who sees the "big picture", but is not especially good as an entrepreneur or fund-raiser; the technically adept "engineer type", good at procedural problem-solving; and the individual scientist doing smaller scientific tasks, within a less structured group. Reasons, as well as opportunity, for doing research abroad vary according to the type of career. A research organisation that is relatively larger, better funded and more hierarchical may limit opportunities for travel for a number of its members by its emphasis on assigned functions. Mobility as a part of training is difficult in this intense environment-- characteristic of American sciencembecause of the distance it would put between the young scientist and "soft financing", job opportunities, and so forth.

While the survey of American scientists in France was not equipped to distinguish by type of career (a "soft" category), interviews of those in mid- career made it clear that they were predominantly the more independent scientists from smaller groups with enough career "capital" to afford to travel and make international contacts, but they were not yet "big fish" tied by heavy responsibilities. A few of those at a later stage in their careers, however, fitted this description but had lately given up their entrepreneurial responsibilities in order once again "to do research", including sojourns abroad.

Finally, if decisions on mobility are regarded as individual, particular and career-oriented, they are a good example of the blurring of the social and cognitive elements of research life. A decision to do research abroad for a time or for good may be made for cognitive reasons ("how it will advance my work on a certain question") or for social reasons ("how it will advance my possibilities of pursuing questions"), or even for personal reasons. These decisions and their outcomes are often clear instances of what is

22 Anderson, A., "Neuroscientists Struggle to Achieve a Critical Mass", Science, CCLVI (24 April, 1992), p. 468.

23 Flam, F., "Europeans Confident in the Battle of the Big Machines", in ibid., p.466.

The Implications of Sciennfic Mobility 219

called the social epistemology of science, that is, that mixture of motives which result in new knowledge. 24

SCIENTIFIC MOBILITY AND ITS INSTrrWfIONAL SETTING

Looking at Franco-American scientific mobility from both sides of the Atlantic provides a rich and somewhat contradictory set of viewpoints on the different institutional settings for research that exist in each country. It makes clearer the strengths and weaknesses of each system, and also the institutional factors which prompt scientific mobility and emigration.

The French system is a central administration, subdivided by scientific domain, the main feature of which is the lifelong research position with no teaching obligations. The American system is of course more closely allied with teaching, involves few purely research positions, and is administered indirectly by financial decisions by government or foundation and non- centrally by the local institution. Private sector research plays a much greater role in the United States where it employs 81 per cent of all scientists, in contrast to 46 per cent in France. In France 20 per cent of all scientists are publicly employed, as compared to seven per cent in the United States. 25

Research in France and the United States

Commentary and criticism gathered by the two studies can be roughly grouped according to the two main groups of mobile scientists: young, for purposes of training; and mid-career, for collegiality. We found younger American scientists visiting in France to be appreciative of a more reflective atmosphere than they were used to. The quality of the French research staff and the atmosphere of collaboration were the major advantages of working in France. Meanwhile they were critical of, bemused by or impatient with the slowness of the response to requests, whether for paperclips, repair of equipment, or decisions on new directions of research. Almost two thirds of the younger scientists cited lack of equipment and low technical support as the chief disadvantage of the French laboratory.

We found that American scientists in mid-career, whether visitors or emigrants, were relieved to be spending less time seeking financial support and justifying their decisions on research. Older visiting and permanent American scientists in France rated French working conditions at almost four on a scale of one to five (from being "an obstacle to research" to

24 Yearley, S., "Understanding Science from the Perspective of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge", Public Understanding of Science, III (1994), pp. 245-258, cites Fuller, S., Social Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988) as one of the "few to take an explicit s t and . . , that science studies should aim to re-take the advisory ground left vacant by philosophers of science".

25 OECD, Main Science and Technology Indicators (Paris: OECD Publications, 1993), Vol. I.


"strongly supportive of research"). In general, American scientists in France are freer from the burden of grant applications and teaching but meet administrative blocks; while they are freer from financial worries, they have less of the equipment and facilities that money can buy. The major complaint of older or permanent American scientists was the inefficiency and obstructiveness of the administrative hierarchy. The complaints this group most often reported from their American colleagues that were not true for themselves, included frequent grant-writing and financial problems, heavy teaching loads, competition, pressure and "burn-out", and job insecurity.

Young French scientists in American laboratories were excited by the lively atmosphere, intensity, and the links between teaching and research in university laboratories. They cited the advantages of the "total immersion" possible in an integrated environment, the excellent equipment, the strong emphasis on communication, the weekly seminars, the daily perusal of the literature, the life of the campus and the relaxed social milieu. Apart from their scientific enthusiasm, however, they were disappointed at the generally low level of cultural or intellectual exchange in American universities. Conversations that strayed from work or sports were rare. But, above all, the French visitors noticed the clear role that money plays as a regulator of the research system in the United States, as well as the "natural selection" that operates when money and competition are so predominant.

Our findings culled from scientists moving between the two systems, do not bear out the conjecture that administrative models are the more restrictive, z6 A large majority of the American scientists permanently in France felt that the decision to pursue research there had had a positive effect on their careers. The visiting scientists largely reported that their goals for the sojourn had been fully or nearly fully met, and in general they reacted very favourably to what they had found in French laboratories. The consensus was that technical and material constraints counted for less than the gains in research freedom from a collaborative, well-trained, research staff with wide horizons who spent less time on financing projects or trying to design fundable ones.

A "Wave" Theory of Research Policy

One negative feature that both systems have in common according to the comments we heard is the tendency to establish "in" and "out" areas of research. French biologists talked ruefully of the time when little importance was attached to the study of viruses--so little, in fact, that the onslaught of the Aids epidemic saw a scramble to retrain in a neglected subfield. An American senior scientist long resident in France and working in a leading institution complained of the ill-effects of the French tendency

26 Cole, S., Making Science, op. cit., p.205.


to administer intellectual life according to fashionable "waves" or la mode. At the same time, the literature on American laboratories demonstrates how financial decision-making promotes accepted approaches and favoured topics. In France the problem arises from restrictive or misguided---or unpopular--directives, while in the United States it seems more an effect of the conservatism engendered by a financing process where less and less can one afford to appear eccentric. Peer review can add to this "wave effect" by penalising independent thinking. In any case, the outcome is similar: the creation of "hot" topics and the inevitable side-effect of topics left to grow "cold" regardless of their merit or interest.

The '%vave" theory of scientific advance can easily be overlooked or treated lightly. John Ziman claims for instance that knowledge cannot be lost or subtracted. 27 However, "wave" studies reveal some cause for concern over forgotten or lapsed specialities and techniques that have fallen out of favour, including ones that may prove useful later. 2s Fads may be seen as short-lived and merely "media-fuelled". 29 This position seems to ignore both scientists' complaints to the contrary and the literature on financing decisions.

Mobility is relevant to this discussion in two ways. First, it is to the international labour pool that policy-makers turn for short- or long-term help with shortages, such as those created by "waves". 3~ This may have repercussions for supplier countries. Second, looking at mobility provides a clearer grasp of the reality of the phenomenon and its size; whether for training or for collegiality, scientists in "cold" topics are attracted abroad-- or rather, a significant number of mobile scientists are those whose speciality or approach is not in high favour officially. Time and again we heard American scientists in France talk about out-of-favour topics they were working on, or about methods, techniques or approaches that were not taken seriously in the United States, or about control of access to journals and other critical points by a certain institution. This was especially true among Americans permanently established in France, and was some- time stated explicitly as the reason they stayed. In addition, the effect of "waves" on young scientists differed from the effect at mid-career. In the United States, in the case of waves encouraged by financial decisions, it is important for young scientists to learn the rules and not to rely on the brilliance of their ideas alone. 31 A number of the young American scientists

27 Ziman, J., "Can Scientific Knowledge be an Economic Category?", in Puzzles, Problems and Enigmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 167-172.

28 Goonatilake, S., "The Voyages of Discovery and the Loss of Rediscovery of Others' Language", Impact of Science on Society, CLXVII (1993), pp. 241-264, demonstrates how a particular conception of scientific knowledge was responsible for "loss" of knowledge.

29 Piganiol, P., "Laying the Foundations of French Science Policies", Science and Public Policy, XVIII, 1 (1991), p. 28.

30 See Andler, M., "American Mathematics and the Rest of the World", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, XXXVII, 7 (1990), pp. 853-855, for examples from mathematics.

3a Hackett, E.J., "Science as a Vocation in the 1990's: The Changing Organizational Culture of Academic Science", Journal of Higher Education, LXI, 3 (1990), pp. 257-262.


in France had "risked" a sojourn abroad in order to learn a different technique or gain a different perspective that was not countenanced in research back home. Mid-career in the American system, a stint abroad may permit not only a break from grant-writing but a chance to work on something "marginal".

In France, on the other hand, where "in" and "out" topics are established more by administrative decreee, a young scientist wants above all to join a strong laboratory, led by a director with influence within the administrative structure. A job for life in an isolated laboratory without prospects of advancement is unattractive. This possible outcome of French laboratory life was underlined by the observations of visiting American scientists. Study abroad for young French scientists may be the chance to distinguish themselves, and to form international connections, sufficiently to avoid later on landing in a backwater.

The French scientist in mid-career working in the United States is a rarer breed and not easy to pin down. A spell in an American university for an established French professor or scientist is likely either to be a specific research collaboration, often begun when the French scientist was in America as a graduate or postdoctoral student, or part of an oscillating pattern visible among the elite of French scientists, some of whom divide their time between French and American university chairs. For the former, the experience abroad may mitigate the lack of inter-laboratory and inter- group contact felt by many scientists in France--and sharply remarked on by American visitors---or a lack of interest in France in their speciality. The opportunity to join the "academic jet-set" may indeed be the result of a "wave" since respected French scientists enjoy widespread influence in areas such as mathematics, disease research, nuclear physics, social sciences and of course the humanities.

The Relativity of Scientific Mobility

Whether working on marginal topics or not, a scientist can benefit from the differences between working environments partly because the weaknesses of a system may be less constraining for someone from outside it. An example can be found in the remarks scientists make on multidisciplinarity. Like freedom, breadth of approach is often greater on the other side. That this perception is subjective does not mean it is false; the subjectivity of the research experience and of the scientist's background is vital to an understanding of the benefits of mobility. Just as a young French scientist is invigorated by the liberty permitted in his or her American experience while an American may feel freer in France, mobile scientists from each system remark on the value of the multidisciplinary approach they find on the other side.

Can both be right? What the French scientist in the United States is often noticing is the relative structural suppleness which permits a re- arrangement of boundaries around a complicated or borderline problem as,


for example, is found in the cognitive sciences. Meanwhile, the American in France is enjoying the breadth of learning that is brought to a problem, or the creative reflection that permits a scientist to theorise or to muse in one subfield from the perspective of others or even from adjacent domains. The American might in turn criticise the walls that too quickly spring up at home around a new discipline or multidiscipline--the multiplication of micro-departmentsmas well as the lack of cultural breadth and theoretical creativity in the American scientific mind; the French scientist might find fault with the administrative stiffness and inability to respond to new horizons which characterise the French system. Both are probably right.

In all cases, what serves a scientist best is anything that strengthens his or her "authority ''32 or credibility. Mobility both at the beginning and in the middle of a career normally serves this purpose. It is as if local or structural constraints are mitigated by the engagement of the individual scientist in the international college of his or her speciality. In a sense this represents the opposition of collegiality to competition. Particularly under the Ameri- can system of financing, competition is constant and high. Mobility is a way of favouring, if only temporarily or partially, collaboration and collegiality, at the same time perhaps acquiring a competitive edge for the return home. (For French scientists it is more a case of collegiality mitigating isolation.) In testimony before Congress, an American scientist described how he won awards for research that had been repeatedly rejected by the financing process. He placed importance on international exchange as an antidote to the system's antipathy to innovative research. 33

Research as Short-term Investment

Another major pressure on research, and one that is becoming increasingly institutionalised--more quickly in the United States than in France--is the level of social expectations for research. These have always existed, in the past taking the form of looking to science for fighting disease, feeding the population, lengthening life or making it easier. 34 More recently this pressure has taken the form of looking to science to provide employment. 35 The dubious economics of this hope are beyond our scope

32 Mukerji, C., A Fragile Power, op. cit., pp. 62ff. 33 Muller, R.A., "Innovation and Scientific Funding", Science, CCIX (22 August,1980), pp.

880-883. 34 The director of the National Science Foundation stated in 1992: "Everyone says we are

number one in science. . . But people are wondering why that hasn't improved their standard of living, why the only thing that works in this country doesn't seem to pay off." Reported in Dufour, J. P., "D6sarrois am6rieains", Le Monde, 28 October, 1992.

Portnoff, A.Y., "Progr~s technique: relanee ou cli6mage?", Futuribles, CLXXXII (December 1993), pp. 45-52, is an example of those who, while warning against "automating the past", remain convinced that technical progress is the main answer to social ills. For another view, see Nowotny, H., "A New Branch of Science Inc.", in Brooks, H. and Cooper, C. (eds), Science for Public Policy (1987), on the effect on science of the "growing list of things wanted from science", including help in keeping down "social unrest".


here but what is important is the extent to which the expected returns on expenditure on science affect the climate of institutional research. The effect is doubled when discussing the "economic constraints on science": budgets are restricted and at the same time greater, more direct and quicker returns on a budget are expected. The latter is de facto a financial demand on science and is surely the more serious effect.

While similar to the continuing debate over pure and applied research, the debate over increased economic demands on science pits free against targeted research. The debate over free versus applied research is at bottom a debate about the most efficient path towards a certain scientific end. More recent economic demands on science, on the other hand, raise the question of the nature of the ends as well as of who decides those ends-- policy-makers or scientists?

Most scientists experience this external pressure as a constraint on their research and some use mobility, once again, as a way to circumvent their country's science policy. While pressure to produce "returns" undoubtedly inflects scientific direction, a career in research is still a highly individual phenomenon. Some decisions are taken to align with the prevailing wind. A tiny but interesting fraction decide to become independent scientists. 36 Some structures shelter a different approach, for example the Basel Institute for Immunology, which has no principal investigators, no policy, no hierarchy, and full research freedom. Interestingly, some scientists, after success there, leave to take over a group as a conventional principal investigatory

International mobility can also be a response; a striking case was the reaction en masse of British scientists to the policy of the Thatcher administration--the earliest one in the West----of focusing on industrial returns to research in general. The 1980s saw a marked increase in the migration of British scientists abroad, especially to North America. While this was more true of engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians than other scientists, nevertheless 73 per cent of group leaders queried by a study by the Royal Society felt this "brain drain" was having an adverse effect on university and public research. They rated 40 per cent of the leavers as "outstanding". Limitations of career and opportunities, pay or facilities, together accounted for two thirds of the reasons why British university scientists went abroad. 38

This example was cited in an article in Le Monde about a recent French government consultation on research pol icy . 39 All eminent French scientist and policy adviser thinks there is a specific and programmable role for

36 Lovelock, J., "The Independent Practice of Science", New Scientist, LXXXVIII (6 September, 1979), pp. 714-717.

37 Kahn, P., "An Institute Without Bosses", Science, CCLVI (24 April, 1992), p. 464. 38 SEPSU (The Royal Society, Fellowship of Engineering), The Migration of Scientists and

Engineers to and from the UK (London: The Royal Society, 1987). 39 "Le contre-exemple britannique", Le Monde, 20 June, 1994.

The Implications of Scienttfic Mobility 225

fundamental research in technology policy and application, and that "we can formulate hypotheses about the possible or probable evolution of the sciences, assess the most promising paths of development, and identi~ possible mutations". 4~ Another analyst talks about achieving "an exact and open-ended definition of the missions of research organisations". 41 Sim- ilarly, in the United States discussions on science policy tend to focus on research and development, industrial-academic links, targeted research and the like. 4z Beyond the logical inconsistency of foreseeable "mutations" or of exact definitions that are also "open-ended", the question that remains open is whether policy-makers will respond to the claims of many scientists that a decline in the quality of science will result from over-targeting of research and from over-emphasising applicability and short time-lags; or whether instead this kind of research policy will become standard in developed countries, thus reducing the effectiveness of mobility as an individual response. An American biologist who had worked in France at the CNRS for 20 years had doubts about staying if the pressure from the administration to link more closely with pharmaceutical firms--to the point of creating research contracts with them--continued to increase.

The Scientist Between Competition and Dependence

While co-operation, collaboration, collegiality and exchange all have their role in defining scientific activity, research is also an intensely individual and competitive endeavour. Keeping in mind the framework we have described, career decisions in science are personal and self-centred by definition. Tension between what might be termed competition and dependence can be seen at all levels, from the local to the international. Scientists depend on each other in working together as well as for exchanges, insights, etc. At the same time they are competing for relatively rare funds, prizes and posts. The chief capital of a scientific career is renown which is most obviously achieved by distinguishing oneself from one's peers, even while presenting oneself as a member of a community (the scientific one).

The ambiguities and interplay of competition and dependence characterise the complex process of peer review. Peer review is significant in considering mobility because its high use is what distinguishes one of these two research systems from the other, and its importance--in both systems-influences decisions to do research abroad. There are several points to be made. First, while some American scientists in France say that the French system needs more peer review to cure its administrative

4o Papon, P., "Is a Prospective of Science Feasible?", Futures (August 1988), pp. 402-409. 41 Piganiol, P., "Laying the Foundations of French Science Policy", op. cit. 42 Teich, A.H., "U.S. Science Policy in the 1990's: New Institutional Arrangements,

Procedures and Legitimations", in Cozzens, S.E., Healey, P., Rip, A. and Ziman, J. (eds), The Research System in Transition (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), pp. 67-85.


irrationalities, such a prescription may not constitute a "wonder drug". American experience shows that peer review can easily lead to unjustified concentration of resources rather than to their even, meritorious distribution. 43 Nominally intended to control excessive individualism, the process can have the perverse effect of encouraging competitiveness beyond what serves science.

Second, scientific mobility is the process by which an international college of peers is built, and, more significantly, it is the measure by which members of a college come to see that it is less comprehensive or universal than they thought. Peer circles widen and change through scientific mobility. For Americans this might mean not only a broadening experience internationally but also a way to dampen the "wave" effect or provide a "court of appeals" opposing the peer-review structure. For French scientists an international college can provide a partial counterbalance to the scientific administration where the latter is seen as an impediment.

Third, especially for Europeans, international acceptance is vital, and if acceptance is primarily through publishing, and access to publications is determined by a peer process, it becomes very important to look at which journals count, where they are published, in what language, and from what pool the jurors are drawn. In the hard sciences where much literature is in English, French scientists, in subfields where the "centre" is not France, feel the pressures of competition and collegiality; they must compete to overcome bias but the mark of success is international collegiality. Mobility is one means to surmount this ambiguity.

Fourth, if the scientific community is ultimately international and collegial, as it certainly once was, then mobility as the means to such a community and as the best constructor of a broader review by peers may conflict with the urge to harness science for national concerns. 44 Here dependence and competition in the scientific community is engulfed in a larger skein of the same tension, namely economic dependence and competition among countries. Peer review, unameliorated by a sufficient degree of international mobility, is dearly, in the American example, a device of the state. While providing science with a claim to authority--at the same time acting as a constraint on most individual scientistsmit also provides the state with a means of steering or utilising the authority thus conferred to science: 5

The early stages of a career are often seen as the period of most intense competition for a scientist, and this is perhaps what we saw when

43 See Ziman, J., "What Are the Options?", op. cit., p. 36, on the non-porous vertical funding system. Knorr-Cetina, K.D., in The Manufacture of Knowledge, op. cir., pp. 70-81, develops the entrepreneurial model of scientific activity which shows the peer system's role in the concentration of scientific "surplus value".

44 Wittrock, B., "Useful Science and Scientific Openness: Baconian Vision or Faustian Bargain?", in Gibbons, M. and Wittrock, B. (eds), Science as a Commodity, pp. 156-169.

45 This is major theme of Mukerji, C., in A Fragile Power, op. cit.


comparing the goals or benefits of a research visit to France for younger and mid-career American scientists. Establishing contacts and future collaborations and the stimulation of new ideas counted significantly higher among the older group, while the younger group was more interested in new techniques or advancing a certain project. Nevertheless, almost all the younger scientists interviewed were enthusiastic about the experience of collaboration, often as something unknown and unexpected, and expressed a strong interest in maintaining international contacts once back home.

The French reaction was somewhat different in that their sojourn in the United States was more likely to have been a vital part of their education or training, as opposed to an interesting experience for the more experienced young American scientists in France. Therefore, the young French scientists tended to fit fully into the intense, competitive environment even if often maintaining a critical judgement of their experience. In any case, for the young French scientist trained in the United States at the level of thesis or postdoctorate, contacts for the future were naturally formed, and the advantage as far as future access to international colleges, journals, etc., was clear in advance. In other words, the uncompromising American scramble for money that surprises young French trainee scientists, and makes them seem naive, can be compared to the hard scramble necessary for a French scientist to move out of the local setting and into an international (often anglophone) one; this scramble may take the American--naive in this regard--by surprise.

In sum, mobility between different institutional settings often has the effect for individual scientists of reducing institutional constraints, at least for a time. It thus provides temporary access to an ideal of science that is increasingly rare but can be simulated by international mobility. Science becomes collegial again, and more self-directed. Mobility can be particularly effective in this regard for scientists who have not accumulated the reputation and credentials that can serve as a shelter from the professional, policy, and financial pressures on scientific research everywhere.

CE~fRES AND PERIPHERIES

Scientists may travel in opposite directions for the same reasons, as a result of relative and, in the best sense of the term, subjective judgements, which are not thereby any less true or insightful. When we consider mobility from the useful framework of centre and periphery, it is necessary to modify the framework using this same relativism. A scientific centre is simply where scientists are attracted to. Thus the centre is the perceived centre. And this perception can depend on a number of factors such as field, subfield, language, stage of career, research goals and marginality of the individual scientist. Even in the postwar years when science in the United States grew at exponential rates relative to other countries, there remained reasons for training or working in Europe. Since then, as European science has closed


the gap in a number of fields, 46 the notion of centre has become increasingly malleable. Nonetheless, since in science a centre is a perceived centre, American science is still central, given the predominant number of young French scientists who go to the United States for training compared to the reverse movement. Centres maintain high standards, concentrate resources, and are capable of delivering scientific training, access to equipment and useful credentials to scientists and scientific communities on the periphery.

The Centre of What?

Concluding his essay "Center and Periphery", first published more than 30 years ago, Edward Shils mused on the possible dangers of a growing "consensus", a form of concentricity one supposes, that would engulf liberty and privacy. 47 Ironically, it has recently been particularism, in some of its more contentious forms, that is feared as the enemy of freedom, while consensus is actively sought. Similarly, when we look at scientific mobility, we see not one mecca and many pilgrims, but a fragmented, variegated and eccentric state of affairs. The centres of science are not concentric, and vectors go in many directions.

There is an additional factor, and one that science shares with society. If overwhelming consensus has not been the social threat once perceived, nonetheless a culture manqu~ has grown up around increasingly concentrated and uniform economic development, which functions more and more as a global, ersatz and stifling form of consensus. Science as well as society, or societies, feels the threat. The size, complexity and sluggishness of the central socio-economic structures increase their demands upon science for cures for their ills. The return on money spent on research is expected to take increasingly tangible forms. As a result, a central feature of culture and intellectual life, science, feels the pull of a policy-centre, the concern of which is to maintain large, central, commercial structures. That science attempts some resistance to this pre-emption is a mark of the importance of freedom to research--perhaps too of the still strong role of the individual in research, despite the rise of big science, big groups, complicated financing policy and the like.

This is not to underestimate the pull that science, especially at its centre, feels from science policy. As science becomes more expensive it becomes closely entwined with other aspects of policy at the centre. The boundaries between scientific and social centres become blurred. Recent trends in American research policy illustrate clearly this meshing of interests, as If

46 Brooks, H., "Lessons of History: Successive Challenges to Science Policy", in Cozzens, S.E. et al., The Research System, op cit., pp. 17-20.

47 Shils, Edward, "Center and Periphery", in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Professor Michael Polanyi (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), pp. 117-130.

48 The White House science policy paper, A Vision of Change, refers to "strategic research" to enhance American competitiveness; see editorial, ~'Hearing for Basic Science", Nature, CCCLXVII (3 February, 1994), p. 396.


financial interest and the maintenance of economic stability are the only version of central dominance, then centralisation means looking at all

activity from the point of view of results, and results within a shorter and shorter time. The financial pressures thus created reinforce conservative, risk-free research programmes, and the freedom to do a particular piece research is reduced to the freedom, i.e., the financial means, to do research. Centralisation in this newer form acts heavily on the individual and unprogrammable activity that scientific research is. On this reading, the notion of a scientific centre takes on a double edge: the centre is at once empowering and constraining, dynamic and stolid. Not surprisingly, scientific mobility is influenced by these ambiguities at the centre; the quest for scientific elbow-room can lead in many and opposite directions.

When we look at what makes scientific mobility and exchange valuable, we find a basis for Shils' concern for an endangered plurality. If the centralising of scientific activity continues--i.e., the spread of conservative, ends-directed science overseen by economic-minded policy-makersnthen the threat is one of homogenisation. A tenet of what might be called the ideology of science holds that science is one, is universal. Studies of scientists at work clearly show otherwise; many aspects of scientific culture---choice of problem, methodology, theoretical approach, etc.--are in part locally determined. Most of the richness in the experience of the mobile scientist comes from that fact. Young American physicists, for example, were pleased and surprised to find familiar problems tackled in unfamiliar ways by their French coll~eagues. French scientists were surprised at the nuts-and-bolts, competent reaction of American scientists when, for example, equipment did not work. But the point, as the anthropologists of science find, is that differences of this sort are also found in different laboratories in the same country. Ideas, habits, traditions and innovations that are unrecorded in the literature take hold in personal contacts in the laboratory. To the extent that the main activity of science is exchange, universality would constitute entropy.

This point was made in an early work by R.E. Park, who stressed the importance of the local setting into which intellectual migration occurs as well as the specific cultural background of the migrating intellectual. 49 When scientific mobility becomes emigration, or when the movement of scientists and others is provoked for other reasons; a good deal of creative energy, according to Park, may be released by the encounter between cultures. Even the visiting scientists in our study, i.e., those abroad for three years or less, almost all referred to the value of simply working with others who work and think differently for stimulating their own research. Visiting Americans cited the quality of the research staff as by far the biggest single advantage to their laboratory work in France. When permanent Americans

49 Park, R.E., "Human Migration and the Marginal Man", American Journal of Sociology, XXXIII, 6 (1928), pp. 881-893.


in France spoke of the factors in their decision to stay, it was often a case of stimulating environment (staying) versus career advancement and higher pay (returning home). Enthusiastic young French postdoctoral students benefited especially from the constant discussion in and between laboratories in American universities.

John Ziman has emphasised the cultural aspect of science and the role of world-views in forming scientific views: ~ Paradoxically, a world-view is almost always a local or culturally conditioned view: 1 Scientists talk of the need, and the ability, to put the work of a laboratory into the "big picture", i.e., into an intellectual setting that describes the relation between specific research ideas and broader issues in science, of science, of science policy, science and society, and so on. (Though the "big picture" can also be threatening--some scientists openly detest "metaphysics" as getting in the way of science.) A recent editorial defending science from prevalent anti- science, called for "a description of what it says about the w o r l d . . , for its own belief in what it is about". 52

Interestingly, there is little call in science policy for this kind of "big picture". The editorial just cited finishes with a statement that the purpose of science is "the enhancement of the general enlightenment". But the central voice of policy is more likely to speak of material progress, welfare, application and technique when speaking about the purpose of research. Even the goal of international collaboration in research sounds different in the mouths of policy-makers. European science is to unify efforts and thus advance more quickly and on the same path. Science advisers in Wash- ington or Europe worry about keeping up with scientific progress elsewhere ("collaboration") or staying ahead of it (competition), but rarely about enriching the general pool with different perspectives. There is concern, for example, that the countries of the European Union will lose some of their scientific quality if homogenisation is carried too far.s3

A generally conservative nature has sometimes been attributed to the scientific endeavour, thatis, an innate tendency to disfavour marginality, divergence or non-incremental change. In addition, labour shortages at the centre can have a concentrating effect as scientific manpower is drawn inwards. 54 The weight of big central science adds to this view, and young scientists in the United States complain of the need to learn to play the

50 Ziman, J., Puzzles, Problems and Enigmas, op. cit., pp. 259ff. 5~ A technique used in a science policy survey by the CNRS---the largest employer of

publicly funded scientist.s---was much criticised because it was a Japanese model. Although the questions were largely scientific, their cultural content clearly concerned scientists. See "Une enqurte de prospective technologique suscite une polrmique parmi les chercheurs frangais", Le Monde, 11 March, 1994.

52 Maddox, J., "Defending Science Against Anti-science", Nature, CCCLXVIII (17 March, 1994), p. 185.

53 Gispert, R., "La cooprration seientifique internationale", La pens~e, CCLXIV (1988), pp. 31--41.

54 Andler, M., "American Mathematics", op. cir.


system even as they are still struggling to learn the craft. 55 At the same time, some young French scientists are stimulated by the dynamism of science at the centre and try to replicate part of what they experienced there, thus helping to spread a certain version of science.

Nevertheless a closer look at the centre-periphery dynamics of scientific mobility shows that they still constitute a complex and varied phenomenon. Mobility can be seen being used by scientists to promote their careers in highly contrasted ways: to strengthen central, conservative credentials, or to provide an outlet for marginal ideas and centrifugal force. Moreover, even mobility between two strong scientific centres like the United States and France can enable an individual scientist to reduce the conservative aspects of working in his home country merely by the fact of difference, in this case different versions of central organisation. Mobility remains a way of furthering a research career, whether that career is a "conservative" one or a "marginal" one. At the same time, in Europe where international mobility is much more common than in the United States, it is becoming both a tool and a goal of science policy, especially at the level of the European Union. In the United States, this is not yet true, except in the passive sense of welcoming foreign scientific manpower.

The Complexity of Perceived Centres and Peripheries

One reason why mobility retailas such possibilities and interest is that, despite the perception of American scientific centrality--as, for example, by fledgling French scientists--it is not clear that there exists one objective centre. Most often, for instance, there is a convergence between perceived centres and "where the money is". But what then of the oil-rich universities in Texas that "buy" distinguished scientists from the two Cambridges? Their action affirms the perceived centrality of the latter universities at the same time that it sets up peripheral sites as rival centres. An example closer to our own studies lies in the mutual attraction between French social scientists and major American universities. These esteemed French intellec- tuals go to the United States as the centre of high pay and a certain campus life. But they go there from one of the longstanding centres of European culture which form the basis of their export value. Where is the periphery?

Even in the case of French scientists training in the United States, there are several nuances. Our study of French doctoral and postdoctoral students in the United States found that while they came from very good universities, they tended not to be from the elite grandes ~coles. In addition, women were over-represented. It was clear that many saw choosing a training period in the United States as a way to advance their career, to get an edge. One characteristic of a centre is that it sets the standards for training, but it is slightly less of a centre if it attracts from elsewhere those

55 Hackett, E.J., "Science as a Vocation in the 1990's", op. c/t., p. 259.


who are one layer down and are still seeking to distinguish themselves. In fact, it became clear from their comments that promising young French scientists come to the United States especially to benefit from a particular training technique, the conjunction of research and teaching, that is practised there more intensely than in Europe. While impressed by the invigorating environment, the French visitors were in many cases less impressed by the level of preparation, particularly in mathematics, of their American counterparts.

The over-simplified picture of young peripheral scientists seeking training at the centre is further shaded by the comments of visiting American scientists on French scientific training. Most of those with contacts in university laboratories were impressed by the level of student preparation. A majority cited the quality of staff as a strong point of their experience. When asked about their host institution, those affiliated to the best French institutions considered them the equal of the ten best American institutions. Therefore, French scientists do not need to train in any other centre, but some need or want to train in the perceived American centre.

The notion of scientific centre ought to be further revised according to discipline or speciality. Fields such as mathematics or anthropology in France need not look abroad for a strong centre for their discipline, while earth science or chemistry might well do so. Meanwhile a number of both American and French scientists cross the Atlantic for reasons pertaining to their speciality: a technique or body of research which puts the centre of their subject or subfield elsewhere. The contention between French and American scientists over the discovery of the HIV virus could be viewed in part as a recentring of a field in which the pioneers were French. Likewise, alternative approaches or theories can cluster in a certain environment so that, for example, in economics France in a manner of speaking constitutes a centre of peripheral approaches. Some of the American scientists permanently in France were there for exactly that reason, in subfields of linguistics, physics, epistemology and other disciplines.

Subcentres and Mobility

The arrangement of countries of different scientific weight is not concentric. Scientific mobility between a developing country and a Euro- pean one is not the same as between a European country and the centre of centres, the United States. African scientists go to France to learn in a clearly superior scientific milieu; they apprentice themselves in a general way that is not true of French postdoctoral students in the United States. The Algerian scientist finds in France central science; the French scientist in the United States finds certain specific strengths such as equipment, communication and dynamism that complement French science. Similarly, scientific voyages towards specific strong points are almost all one way in the former instance, while French and American voyagers towards some specific centre or micro-centre go in both directions, although not at all in


equilibrium. (The weak flow of American scientists to strong scientific points in France is not, however, due to a lack of such points.)

A dynamic picture of scientific flow between centre and periphery is further complicated by including a case like India. This economically partially developed country nevertheless possesses scientific institutions of the first order, but its future scientific leaders still routinely seek their scientific pedigree in the West. India is actively concerned about the brain drain, and at the same time is a regional centre of attraction, with a long tradition of excellence in learning. UNESCO statistics put India among the leading 20 hosts of international university students (ahead of Sweden, for example), most of them from Southeast Asia or East Africa: 6

Furthermore, mobility between subcentres produces the same benefits as would be expected of a sojourn in the United States. We have mentioned that a centre can become a drag or weight on its system. The liveliness of the international scientific community depends to some extent on the ability of subcentres to attract each other and not just be drawn towards one centre. As European science has in most fields "caught up", the relative importance or attraction of an American sojourn has declined and Euro- pean mobility is increasingly intra-European. American scientific strengths now weigh somewhat less against considerations of distance and expense.

Finally, our findings indicate the existence of many movements to and from many centres which are still played out against a background of centre and periphery of traditional, national dimensions. Conventional studies of mobility substantiate this background since they use national statistics. An interesting direction for further research might be to examine the relation- ship of distance to difference or scientific variety. Very likely distance would prove to be a greater factor in Europe than in the United States. Vector studies of mobility would identify subregions of preferred mobility, including those which cross frontiers. Such mapping would probably bring to light two kinds of mobility, both worthy of encouragement: mobility within a region or centre or pole that strengthens links and commonality; and mobility between areas that promotes exposure to difference, pollination and so forth. In Europe, such a policy of encouragement would have a precedent and basis in the growing movement in favour of regional identity. Policy-makers might fear nightmares of fractionalism and conflict, but in science at least, local variety is a source of wealth, not inefficiency.

Scientific quality will always underlie decisions about mobility, even when a cross-cultural experience in a general sense is one of the criteria, as it was for many of the French and American scientists in our study. Discussion of their experience did not stray far from its scientific content. This is where the perception of centrality or quality plays an important role. And this is

56 Johnson, J.M., Human Resources for Science and Technology: The Asian Region (Wash- ington, DC: NSF, 1993) cites figures showing that of the 4,937 doctoral degrees awarded in the natural sciences in selected Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea, 3,500 were obtained at Indian universities.


one of the major contributions that scientific mobility makes: through the surprises that many experience, and by the news they carry back to their home laboratories, perceptions are modified. Peripheries are not always backwaters. In this way mobile scientists are explorers filling in the map of the increasingly complex world of research, subfield by subfield, micro- centre by micro-centre, peripheral surprise by peripheral surprise.

Although we did not cover developing countries, some of our conclusions might help in the broader discussion of scientific mobility which includes the peripheral science of the Third World. First, before using European scientific "catch-up" as a model, it should be remembered that in Europe this phenomenon has been a retrieval of a particular aspect of the cultural and intellectual status Europe enjoyed for centuries. Calls for massive transplants of technology to developing areas 57 ignore the lack of a particular cultural soil necessary for a complex Western technology to take root: 8 In addition, the historical roots of Western advance lie in science that resulted from curiosity as much as from investment. Second, centres and peripheries of all sorts have different roles to play. Not every country needs to aim at becoming an independent scientific centre, whereas most do need to develop their cultural, intellectual and scientific potential. Research and development programmes for developing areas might employ different means to different ends. Here the obtrusiveness of the central model can cloud ideas concerning what kind of science would be useful to peripheral areas. Third, if mobility and centrality are looked at from a borderless perspective, the periphery ceases to seem only a problem to be solved by inclusion in a monolithic central model of competition. Instead, through the experience of mobile scientists, we see a range of locally based, greater and lesser contributions, of all sorts, to a mosaic of sciences and methods.

The Centre of Publishing and the Language of the Centre

One of the clearest signs--and effects---of the dominance of the centre is the location of the journals in which publication is considered essential for a scientific career. In many fields, such journals are published in the United States and are controlled by policies and trends prevalent in a certain sphere at a particular time. The selection process may represent a college but not necessarily the widest, most international or most "invisible" one. Publication is the most important productive act of the scientist. Even if one is not drawn to the extremity of some of their other conclusions, the constructivists have certainly helped to show that the point of most research

57 See Navaz Sharif, M., "Problems, Issues and Strategies for S&T Policy Analysis", Science and Public Policy, XV, 4 (1988), pp. 195-216, for an example.

58 As a measure of how tittle understanding in this area has been gained, see Dedijer, S,, "Why Did Daedalus Leave?", Science, CXXXIII (30 June, 1961), pp. 2047-2052. The author calls for an "ecology of research" or the study of local social environment as a basis for scientific work (p. 2052).


acts is ultimately literary. 59 In addition, the best work is produced for export, i.e., for publication in internationally recognised centres.

Although successful publication is not a specific reason given by scientists for their mobility, the link between mobility and access to better centres is fairly direct. Only through contacts and collaboration--more than through conferences and seminars--can recognition be gained for work internationally or, more to the point, among their Anglo-American peers. Mobility can reduce the barriers of both distance and language between scientists and the best outlets for their most important production. If scientific mobility were a more sizeable and evenly distributed phenomenon, the effect of increased recognition of scientific quality wherever it is found would probably change the pattern of dominance among journals and probably result in less distorted access. But, as our studies have shown, mobility is not a balanced phenomenon and American scientists are deeply underrepresented. Thus the centre's dominance of "market" access is maintained by the centre's ignorance of the quality of international science. Only mobility from the centre is likely to change that, but scientists working there obviously have no motive to travel for reasons of publishing or access.

The accumulation of centripetal force thus caused, or at least aggravated, by access to the literature is sometimes masked by bibliometric studies of international collaboration and by the apparent internationalisation of sciencc that such studies show. Studies commonly use the Science Citation ~.,:ex base-list of journals, but often fail to emphasise both in which journals and languages the majority of collaborative efforts appear, and the underrepresentation of Americans, i.e., scientists at the centre, in all foreign co~a.borations. Aggregate citation data 6~ embody this effect because scientists at the centre read their own journals and can only cite what they read. When French scientific articles are published in American journals they are cited, over five years, 40 per cent more frequently than the average for French articles if place of publication is disregarded; moreover, they are cited 80 per cent more frequently than French articles published outside the United States. Overall, non-American articles published in American journals are cited twice as often as those published in non-American journals. (It might be interesting to look at the nationality of the citer as well as the cited; do American scientists cite foreign authors?)

One prediction therefore of the effect of the centre's strength would be an effort by French scientists to gain access to American journals through co-publication with American scientists. In fact, in our sample year of 1988, co-publication with Americans accounted for one quarter of all French co- publication with foreign scientists, and for nearly 40 per cent of the latter as

59 e.g., Knorr-Cetina, K.D., The Manufacture of Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 94-96. 6o Our calculations come from bibliometric data which have been extracted from the

database of the Observatoire des sciences et des techniques, Pads. This base is a treatment of the SCI, which itself is the only tool for this kind of calculation. The fact that it is American further emphasises the centre's influence.

236 Timothy Carbon and Dominique Martin-Rovet

published in American journals. Finally, it is 3.4 times more likely for an article with French and American authors to be published in an American journal than is the case for a French article, and 3.2 times more likely than for a French collaboration not involving an American scientist.

The dominating effect of the centre's reputation can be glimpsed in the fact that American scientific articles published outside the United States are cited twice as frequently as the average for all articles published outside the United States. In American journals the citation rate for American articles is only slightly higher than that of non-American articles. So an American article loses very little impact by being published outside the United States and its relative impact increases greatly--the relative indicator that is created when the five-year citation rate is divided by the average world rate moves from 1.01 to 1.60. The pull of American journals is seen in the fact that American international co-publication is equal to only 12 per cent of the foreign co-publication--involving more than one author, none American--that appears in American journals. Even in the case of a country as scientifically developed as France, the pull of American journals is such that one out of every three French-foreign co-publications--not involving an American collaborator--is published in an American journal.

But if the United States is the capital of science, it would appear to be out of touch with its provinces, by looking at laboratories' national origins, we see that according to American journals American science accounted for 73 per cent of the total output of the "G7" countries, whereas that figure is only 21 per cent according to non-American journals. (Com- parisons between 1983 and 1988 show progress in the publication of foreign results in American.journals, with the "G6" portion rising from 18 per cent to 22 per cent of total publication, but no tendency for American publication abroad to increase.) At the same time, co-publication figures reveal a partially isolated centre: only 3.4 per cent of American publication in American journals involves international collaboration. As a comparative example, French international participation represents 10 per cent of total French production. Even when American scientists publish abroad, international collaboration accounts for only 8 per cent of their output. An isolated centre collaborates little internationally: American co-publication with foreigners represents 7.7 per cent of total co-publication by Ameri- cans, as opposed to, for example, the 26 per cent of French collaboration that is international. Even if we discount all collaboration between French and American authors as being motivated by French attraction to the centre, French scientists are 2.3 times more likely to pick a foreign, and non-American, collaborator than are American scientists.

A great deal of variation occurs by discipline, an analysis beyond the scope of the present article. Nevertheless, using the indicator above, when the relative impact over five years for French articles published in American journals is compared to that of French publications outside the United States, by the nine SCI field categories, we find four fields with a

The Implications of ScienUfic Mobility 237

relative impact which increases significantly with articles published outside the United States----chemistry, from 0.90 to 1.40; physics, from 0.95 to 1.29; earth and space science, from 1.00 to 1.20; biomedical research, from 0.88 to 1.04--and two with a relative impact which increases with articles published in American journals--biology, from 0.90 to 1.40 and clinical medicine, from 0.88 to 1.14. Bearing in mind the large, absolute difference in citation rates between articles published inside and outside the United States, this wide variation by field of the relative impact of French science can be seen as a measure of the relative, and partial, success of some French scientific disciplines at overcoming the loss of influence that inevitably accompanies publishing outside the United States.

Another concern when examining possible bias towards the centre in publication is the rate of rejection by country of origin by the major journals. Existing studies have tended to ignore the acceptance process and start with what has been published. Stephen Cole has looked closely at one instance of peer review, the financing decisions of the United States National Science Foundation, and although the subject is neither international nor concerned directly with publication, his conclusion--that chance is the biggest actor--suggests that merit may not be the only factor in the acceptance procedure employed by major journals. 61 In a recent interview, the director of the Institut national pour la sant6 et de la recherche medicale (INSERM), a former professor at a leading institution of public health in the United States, alluded to "shorter and longer paths" in the evaluation procedures of major journals. 62 Similarly, established non- English speaking scientists, fully participant in their international colleges, report articles rejected on minor points of English style.

As it increases awareness of and contact with a wider world of scientists, mobility may increase the efficiencywand fairness?----of the international process of publishing high-quality work. Undeniably, a centre has a language which normally functions as a lingua franca. But the abstract, and many would say defective, version of English used world-wide by scientists is a professional jargon. The jargon functions as a vehicle even between, for example, two scientists working at the periphery who have no common language. Some analysts attribute to English, or its derivative, a proclivity for the expression of experimental science. In any case, the use of this "dialect" as a vehicle ought perhaps to be distinguished from--so as not exaggerate--anglophonic centrality. (Lingua franca is not a reliable guide to the whereabouts of the centre. Latin classification names hardly point to Rome as the centre of plant research!) Neither is it impractical to encourage journals in other languages, or multilingual journals. 63 The fact

61 Reprinted in Cole, S., Making Science; Between Nature and Society (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 82-101.

62 Interview with Philippe Lazar, reported in Nouchy, F., "Un entretien avec Philippe Lazar: "La loi Toubon est tm combat d'arri~re garde", Le Monde, 21 June, 1994.

63 Ibid. Lazar gives an example: M~decine-Sciences, a widely read journal, published in France.


that publication constitutes not merely the communication of the "results" of production--the conventional assumption present in most bibliometric studies--but is in large part the production itself, renders the question of language even more important.

A skewed literature overemphasises science at the centre and under- emphasises science at the subcentre or periphery, thus adding to the effect of concentration, especially since the centre is to a significant extent a matter of perception. Furthermore, since the act of using language can never be a simple recording but is to varying extents always a part of the process of discovery, the encouragement of polyphony in science could add to scientific capacity.

Appearance and Reality

As scientists struggle with an "identity problem" between hired professional and independent seeker, and especially as the hired professional is hired for economic, usually national, interests, international exchange can reshuffle the question by muting the national, economic, interest-oriented aspect of science and thereby favouring the more traditional role of seeker. For the strict constructivist who believes scientific knowledge is purely fabricated, there is perhaps little difference. It is merely a matter of different production methods or regimes. But for those who maintain that underneath the artefacts of the career-minded scientist there is also at times discovery, the second wind that exchange, displacement, migration and the recognition of the quality of science abroad can bring to the process is important. Observed mobility patterns among scientists in part underline this contribution because, in their complexity and individuality, they circumvent a simplistic analysis of "strong centre, we.ak periphery" and the obvious connections between the two.

Nonetheless, there are mechanisms that sustain a central preponderance out of proportion to scientific quality and out of step with the development of international science. Whether the mobility of scientists, both as a (partial) means of independence and of wider access to high quality science for all--including scientists returning home to the centre---can thrive against economically determined policies on the one hand, and the bias towards the centre on the other, remains to be seen. Conventional policy- makers dream of managed, multinational simplicity, including homogenisation between centres, while the attraction of the centre skews mobility towards simpler one-way patterns. One interesting outcome would be an increased separation between apparent and real centres, such as already sometimes happens, but is masked not just by the appearance of central strength but also by the force of the convention of using English as t h e lingua franca.


SCIENTIFIC MOBILITY, SCIENTIFIC CONTENT AND SCIENCE POLICY

The literature of science policy as well as the literature of the study of science (sociology, etc.) depict a science that is under pressure in two principal ways. First, the pressure inherent in the structure of the profession to make strong, and individual, careers in research. Confusing science with scientific careers results in the strong constructivist view, which is that science is what scientists do and especially what they do for career reasons: the competitive production of published literature that embodies new "facts". Regardless of the truth of this position, pressure of this nature, focused on career as distinct from discovery, is real; it comes from scientists and is in turn felt by them. Second, there is the pressure of an economic structure the current agenda of which--growth--requires a constant stream of technical innovation and discovery. 64

Research, Resea.rch Policy and Nation States

One result of this double pressure is a marked divergence between the policy-maker's view of science and the scientist's view of science. For the former, science is innovation; scientists are important individuals because they are vital to national growth and lend authority to government as required; the centre is wherever innovations come from; and the opposition is identified as all those who question technological advance. Finally, for a policy-maker, scientific mobility is useful in providing manpower and for co-operative research and development.

For the scientist, on the other hand, science is defined in terms of exploration, reducing ignorance, adding to the storehouse of knowledge; scientists enjoy high status because they are in the vanguard against superstition and they are the "knowers"; the centre is wherever they can do their research, or where the funds and structures of scientific entrepreneur- ship are the strongest, or where the "best people" or "big equipment" are located, or where the money follows; and the opposition is identified as the anti-modern mind, or "anti-science" which calls into question the authority of science. 65 And, for the scientist, scientific mobility is, among other things, a career device, as we have tried to show.

Our findings on scientific mobility depict it as a way around some of the constraints faced by scientists. Seen against the backdrop of the differing attitude of the policy-makers, mobility is often a means of recapturing some of the scientist's interpretation of matters. This version is mildly anach- ronistic and international mobility is in part--wittingly or unwittingly--a

64 Defending the "uselessness" of mathematics, G.H. Hardy wryly observed that "a science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life". A Mathematician's Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), p. 120.

65 The spiritedness of this attack often surprises. Maddox, J., "Defending Science Against Anti-science", op. cir., p. 185.


vote for a certain tradition. Here again is a point of contrast: policy-makers talk of mobility as forward looking, a progressive international act; but, for many mobile scientists, mobility is a way of reducing one or both the pressures acting on research, by securing or advancing their careers and/or by finding refuge in an international environment from the urgency of application.

Clearly, what is at issue is not intellectual passion versus societal needs, but rather to what extent a profession is free to set its own agenda. The rhetoric of intellectual passion and discoverymwhich, in our view, are real and extant phenomena--is often used to give meaning to careerism and, at the same time, to defend against society's cruder attempts to intervene in science. Career concerns even serve intellectual curiosity to the extent that the drive for recognition is part of what gives credibility to the passion of curiosity. Credibility is a social phenomenon and is at the heart of the tensions between science and society regarding authority and independence. For some observers, the ideal of independence is already lost and we are witnessing "the end of scientific culture". 66 Still, science's battle for a significant role and for influence over the definition of that role is a live one. 67 Some scientists defend their independence with a conservative argument for science as a staunch ally of progress, summoning if not inventing the spectre of a rampant "anti-science". Others, often the more mobile scientists, more aware of peripheral sciences, argue for the independence of the scientist in closer accord with the traditionalmbut not conservativemideal of the seeker after knowledge, the explorer.

There remains the question of how dependable a shelter international mobility will remain in the face of increasing national concerns with technology-driven economic performance. Science, n o w professionalised, cannot ignore the demands on its services emanating from the economic background. 68 "The psychological overinvestment by government and indus, try in what they perceive as the wellspring of America's e x i s t e n c e . . , has created the conditions for a destabilising of university science. ''69 A study of science in the media finds "the interaction between science and the political and economic system" to be a major theme in the coverage of science. 7~ That background, despite all the discussion of global links, is for the

66 Ruscio, K.P, "Policy Cultures: The Case of Science Policy in the United States", Science, Technology and Human Values, XIX, 2 (1994), pp. 205-222.

67 Nowotny, H., "A New Branch of Science, Inc.", op. cir., p. 72, arguing for less separation of science and public policy, as a bulwark against the economic colonisation of science, asks "who is the company and who controls it. 9''

68 Yearley, S., "Understanding Science", op. cit., describes an ironic situation in which science is called upon as an authority, e.g., in courtrooms, but then sees its authority increasingly challenged; philosophers and sociologists of science will need to help to identify "authoritative science".

69 Zinberg, D., "University-Based Scientific Research in the United States", in Gibbons, M. and Wittrock, B. (eds), Science as a Commodity, op. cit., pp. 107-129.

70 Felt, U., "Fabricating Scientific Success Stories", Public Understanding of Science, II, 4 (1993), pp. 382.


foreseeable future divided into nation states. 71 Makers of science policy worry, for example, about whether American research will be "a source of comparative advantage . . . [or] a free ride for competitors". 72 While it is popular to talk of the globalisation of science--usually meaning efforts to encourage technological development--some have found that "There is and there will be no global science po l i cy . . , it is more useful to look at the economic and foreign policy motives for collaborative research". 73 Much of the talk of globalisation is based on the role of multinational corporations in research and development--but several recent European studies on the lessening influence of multinational corporations, and the growing role of "multi-cultural companies", have drawn on local and regional cultural strengths. TM Moreover, science budgets and policy directives are decided by domestic governments under pressure to produce local results. Perceived needs from research as well as research capacity vary widely by country and by discipline. 75

If globalisation means that international colleges exist and that some scientific information and standards reach beyond borders, science is global. But any stronger form of the term encounters the fact that international colleges are incomplete, that science is to some extent culturally influenced and expressed: "A scientist thus has a nationality before he has a career. ''76 Access to global information channels is uneven and unevenly utilised, to say the least, and those channels--rarely neutral--tend to create norms in both the form and content of science. 77 Moreover, science in the service of economic policy will not be a globalising or globalised force. The mere fact that unemployment levels are calculated and compared by country speaks louder that any amount of transfer payments by multinational corporations for research and development, which is often merely a commercial device.

71 Even those who perceive the waning of national economies cannot overlook the increasing attention being given to the "social fallout" of globalising economic trends, nor the fact that negative social consequences are clearly national phenomena. See, e.g., Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalisms Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

72 Branscomb, L.M., "America's Emerging Technology Policy", Minerva, X X X (Autumn 1992), pp. 317-336.

7~ Block, H.-J, in Cozzens, S.E., Healey, P. and Ziman, J. (eds), The Research System in Transition, op. cit., Vol. LVII, p. 176,

74 See "Enracinement et efficacit6", review of Berger, B. (ed.), Esprit d'entreprise; Scardigli, V. (ed.), L'Europe et la diversitY; and Trompenaars, F., L'entreprise multiculturelle, in Le Monde, 3 May, 1994.

75 Skolnikoff, E.B., "New International Trends Affecting Science and Technology", Science and Public Policy, XX, 2 (1993), pp. 115-125.

76 Storer, N.W., "The Internationality of Science and the Nationality of Scientists", International Social Science Journa~ XXII, 1 (1970).

77 The claim that since nature knows no borders the field sciences have been the first to organise themselves internationally is made in Crawford, E., Shirm, T. and Sorlin, S., (eds), Denationalizing Science: The Context of lnternational Scientific Practice, Vol. XVI (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 36. However, nature is only "known,' by humans and even scientists are local and individual, and intellectual culture has crossed national boundaries since long before "socio-economic conditions favour[ed]" their development in the natural (or field) sciences.

242 Timothy Carlson and Dominique Martin-Rover

In fact, these corporations have been found to be most often "uninational" in essence, the transnational aspect being a structure that facilitates commercial and fiscal ends. TM

The Pressures of Targeting

It is no secret that governments are looking anxiously to scientific research to provide advances that can be translated relatively quickly into productive and job-generating ideas. Journals are devoted to the study and communication of this endeavour. Examples are Science and Technology Policy and the International Journal of Technology Management, published in the United Kingdom; Research Technology Management and Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, published in the United States; Science, Technologic, lndustrie Revue, published in France; and Research Policy, an international journal published in the Netherlands. The emphasis shifts away from discovery or knowledge, away even from the benefits to citizens' lives of technological development, and is placed simply on the impact that research can have on economic growth. 79 This pressure is felt in both types of research structure: project financing as well as administered research.

At the same time, these goals are almost exclusively phrased in national terms, as one would expect of economic goals. Even the emergence of regional economic zones does not blunt this national language: countries still expect and are expected to bring to these zones a set of specialisa- tions--where they have technological comparative advantages--and countries join zones to keep a national advantage in global competition. The distinction has been brought out thus:

The [European] framework will likely allow . . . a greater flexibility in research structures for meeting capitalist objectives than numerous national programs have been able to achieve... European [research] integration is not therefore simply a different form of organization in which researchers and engineers will be able to pursue their same research, it is first and foremost a transformation.., of the goals assigned to research, s~

According to this point of view, science policy is being steered on to international levels to meet economic goals conceived on national (and corporate) levels--goals that national research organisations cannot meet, or are slow to meet. In any case, it is unlikely that emphasising particular national, economic goals as goals of scientific research will contribute to maintaining the local or particular character of science which is so important to the fertility of exchange and collaboration.

For one thing, financing attached to demands for economic account- ability and returns seeks low-risk, high-yield projects. For another, financing

78 Granstrand, O., Hakanson, L. and SjOlander, S., "Internationalization of R&D: A Survey of Some Recent Research", Research Policy, XXII (1993), pp. 413-430.

79 Brown, G.E.J., "The Mother of Necessity: Technology Policy and Social Equity", Science and Public Policy, XX, 6 (1993), p. 411.

80 Gispert, P., "La co-op6ration scientifique internationale", op. cit., p. 39.

The Implications of ScienUfic Mobility 243

patterns influenced by the requirements of research and development tend to cluster around a few "promising" ideas. Policy-makers are confident that they know which unlocked secrets of nature--superconductivity for instance--will next transform our lives. The difficulty of predicting which projects will turn out to be low risk, high yield does not change the fact that more than ever research funds will be administered along conservative, consolidated lines determined by "wave" theory. Budgets that are targeted even as they are tightened form a disincentive to originality, and also tend to favour big projects. Big projects are often the result not of a scientific choice but an administrative one. 81 With obvious exceptions like particle accelerators, many big projects could also be tackled by smaller organisations. Big installations attract international collaborators, but it is not clear that the same is true of big, targeted projects.

Safe Money and International Scientific Mobility

To the difficulties, therefore, of "tight" money and "soft" money, the economic targeting of research adds the problem of "safe" money. The concentrating tendency of the latter has two effects that concern this study. First, research within an administration becomes too much alike, homoge- nised. Foreign scientists in Francemwhere the trend to safe money, or targeted research, is less advanced than in the United States or Great Britain--appreciate the "bubbling activity" they find here. s2 Safe money works against this aspect of a research environment, and therefore against one of the reasons for mobility. Second, safe money renders a good deal of research within its bailiwick "peripheral". With the peripherisation of "unsafe" science, the research institutions of countries at the centre become themselves more highly concentrated and centralised, as if reflecting the concentrated economy that is their setting. The development of scientific peripheries within scientific centres, of the sort that soft and safe monies provoke, mirrors the change recently signalled by anthropologists from seeing some societies as central and others as peripheral, to seeing a centre and a--less geographical--periphery that touch parts of all societies.

The effect on international mobility will be to render it at once a good antidote, and one to which recourse is less and less frequent. Why less frequent? For one thing, mobility is typically less frequent in applied research than basic research, s3 Applied research has less status. In the United States it is seen as a source of income permitting "real" research on the side. 84 It has little international status. In France, financial support from

sl Etzkowitz, H., "Individual Investigators and Their Research Groups", Minerva, XXX (Spring 1992), pp. 28--50.

82 Interviews of visiting scientists, reported in Menantean, G., "Une noria internationale", Le Monde, 5 June, 1991.

s3 Herzog, A.J., "Career Patterns of Scientists in Peripheral Communities", Research Policy, XII (1983), pp. 341-349.

In Mukerji, C., A Fragile Power, op. cir., pp. 135ff. and Ch. 5.


industry has traditionally been considered demeaning and compromising. This echoes the---endangered--idea that research is at bottom about discovery and knowledge, not about technology; therefore the tradition of learned exchange is not centred on application.

Second, in a constrained atmosphere less time and resources are available for distractions, as sojourns abroad may appear to be. In this way scientific mobility is like research itself; its benefits cannot always be foreseen, and concrete cost-benefit analysis in the context of safe money is likely to give low priority to most mobility projects. The majority of young American scientists in France benefited in unforeseen ways from their experience, regardless of how well their expectations had been met. Even visitors in mid-career expressed surprise at positive aspects of the conditions they found and of the experience of mobility. The benefits of surprise are difficult to assess, but it may be a phenomenon of the centre when brought into contact with a wider science. Young French scientists going to the United States understood that, despite the well-publicised aspects of science at the centre, they do not know what to expect, and include that as a reason for their sojourn.

Third, targeted science brings to the fore a range of proprietary concerns over the rights of application. These are not absent from basic research but there nervousness is far lower. 85 Targeting the application even of basic research dates from Vannevar Bush's manifesto, 86 but what has changed and attracted comment recently is the increased effort to shorten the path from laboratory-bench to shop-floor as well as to multiply the trips down that path. (An example of the increasingly quick and strong links between discovery and application are the somewhat startling patent claims staked on certain gene sequences.) The concern is not that the environment of science is becoming competitive---obviously it has always been that--but that individual competition for prizes, credit and reputation is now accompanied by a concern for secrecy, property and first place which increasingly turns research programmes into Manhattan projects rather than quests for the Nobel prize. 87

Fourth, the entrepreneurial pressures that scientists---even doctoral candidates--now feel under "soft money" conditions have begun to transform the training period from one of expansion of skills and outlook to a narrowly focused apprenticeship in "thin-slicing" safe topics for financing and survival. The editor of Nature has outlined the effects of these pressures on publication, the final scientific production: subjects cut-up

ss Zinberg, D., "University-Based Scientific Research", op. cit. 36 Science the Endless Frontier (New York: Amo Press, 1980). 87 Jurdani, B.,"La science est-elle un bien public?", in Borrillo, D. (ed.), Science et

democratic (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1993), p. 44. On whether science is a public good, the author cites "increasing exclusionary practices" as an obstacle to universal access, and links this rise of the profit motive in science to the economic stakes that scientific knowledge controls.


small to generate more articles; less care taken with each article; fewer connections made with the relevant literature; unchecked errors; inten- tional errors or fraud; obsession with discovery, thus disallowing criticism; and excessive secrecy, especially concerning potentially profitable ideas. "Today, researchers are caught between the desire to be rich and the desire to publish." This tension between quality of research and quantity of financing or receipts is felt all the way down to the training level, ss If the centre of scientific training increasingly offers a training in career survival in central research, will it continue to attract leading young scientists and will its.own youthful products be fit for or interested in working abroad? Will the collaborations which are spawned most often early in a career continue to take place?

Finally, scientific mobility is tied to the exchange of ideas. Its benefits are often described by scientific travellers in terms of the larger picture, even when the point of a collaboration was precise or technical. For example, much of the surprise registered by American scientists in France involved the discovery of different or more substantial theoretical approaches to, or a wider intellectual context for, their scientific problems. The products of that wider culture, young French scientists, often found that the pragma- tism of American science--the pride, for example, in being able to take apart and put together the equipment they work with---constituted a view of things, a culture. Science as culture is often paid lip-service, while in policy and practice it is science as industrial pillar that counts. 89 It is in this latter version that science is most prone to become homogenous, and the value of the cultural "surprise" of mobility is greatly reduced. 9~

As economic policy overshadows national research efforts, and as the financial environment becomes more perceptible, the idea as well as the practice of science changes. (A quick measure of this change can be taken by comparing the strong, active verbs used traditionally to talk of discovery, the expansion of knowledge, etc., with the passive discourse currently used to describe technology. Technology, the essence of targeted science, is a runaway process that can at best be "guided" or "influenced". 91) While this discussion is at present truer of the centre of centres than of the rest of the

ss John Maddox, interviewed in Le Nouvel Observateur, 12. May, 1994. s9 Noble, D., "The Logic of Life: The Public Perception of Science and its Threat to the

Values of Society", Science and Public Policy, XX, 3 (1993), p. 188, exemplifies this common duality by defining the importance of science in industrial terms and then defending science as an important element of culture. See also Herman, R., The European Scientific Community (Harlow: Longman, 1986).

9o PetreUa, R., "Internationalization, Multinationalization and Globalization: Toward a New Division of Labor in Science?", Knowledge and Policy, V, 3 (1992), p. 24. Even in a discussion of research and development, the author warns that homogenisation weakens research potential.

91 Smit, W.A., "Intervening in Military Technological Development", Science and Public Policy, XX, 6 (1993), pp. 402--403, urges that military research and development be directed, and that phrases like "there is no way to stop progress in that field" be criticised as a "socially constructed separation between technology and politics".


developed world, the economic demands on science, with similar implications, are rising throughout that world. If, as some studies indicate, the change is towards a certain notion of efficiency and away from the breadth and depth of ideas, if doing "real" science--safe or not--is becoming more difficult, as many American and French scientists assert, then the relative utility of international scientific exchange--as measured against shifting goals and restricting environments--may diminish.

Scientific Research: Global and Local

Since American mobility is at best a fledgling effort, these effects can only aggravate the disequilibrium of exchange between France and the United States. American policy-makers issue statements about the desir- ability of international collaboration but do little to encourage American scientists to go abroad. Their French counterparts are eager to attract American scientists but do not always understand that the way to encourage them, and to promote a wider acquaintance with French science, is to improve the quality of laboratories and bolster the tradition of research freedom. Such measures are not always compatible with the goals and tactics of targeted science. For if France is less far along in targeting research, it is making up ground fast. Leading French and European "scientific gurus", talking of "the improvement of industrial competitiveness in Europe", tick off for each major field not the areas of scientific interest nor the intellectual frontiers but the areas of probable applicability. 92 The reaction of French scientists to the proposed new direction for French science policy expresses clearly their fear of over-targeted science. 93

Competitive, big-group, targeted science is, as we have observed, conservative in deciding its financing and methodology, and tends therefore to base its decisions on "waves". There is no time or reason to wonder what is being left out, what has been forgotten or ignored. But that is exactly what mobility often yields to scientists: exploration of the unknown via exploration of the unknown to them. The benefits--to discovery and not just to a career---of encouraging scientists from the centre to travel either to other centres or towards the periphery accrue in the Socratic form of becoming aware of what one doesn't know.

Central science easily develops a blind spot regarding other approaches and versions of the larger picture, as well as towards the identity and activity of good scientists in foreign settings. Obviously, travellers to the centre, especially early in their careers, benefit from the concentrated atmosphere typical of strong centres. But centres can also benefit from the role of peripheral areas as incubators for valid projects and qualified scientists, that would not for some reason stand a chance under their own narrower, pressurised, safe-money conditions. Comparing our two studies,

92 Gros, F. and Tocchini-Valentini, P., "In Search of European Excellence", op. cit. 93 "Vaincre le scepticisme", Le Monde, 20 April, 1994.


we found that the few young American scientists in France usually had a specific, often marginal or eccentric, idea that had driven them "upstream". In contrast, the much larger flow of young French scientists to the United States had more standard or conventional motives. Even when French scientists moved to a subfield unavailable in France, the subfield was unavailable because not yet developed rather than because it was scorned or "out", e.g., ergonomics, operations research, or others.

It is particularly the distinction between centre and periphery, gradated and subdivided, that enables scientific diversity to thrive, and that works against too much homogenisation. "Contact with an alien way of seeing things discloses new possibilities inherent in [one's] own knowledge. . . It is not just a matter of quantitatively adding new knowledge to what [one] already possesses. It is a matter of new insights being engendered. . . - .94 The value, for example, to science in the European Union of increased exchange will lie less in the concentration of research programmes heralded by government officials but rather in the chance to discover--it is to be hoped without levelling--a variety of outlook and method.

This point is clarified by examining the confusion over the term "international". Does it refer to the exposure of persons of one culture to persons and/or elements of another, or does it refer to a "supra-space" where cultural distinctions are rendered or taken to be transparent? 95 If the makers of economic policy--for commercial or other reasons--habitually use "international" in the second sense, then the value of scientific mobility is not so much internationalisation as cross-pollination. Here we return to our earlier distinction between true consensus and the uniform culture manqu~ of international commerce. The globalisers in science policy are perhaps mistaking this efficient, culture-effacing space inhabited by international research and development, for the kind of internationalisation of science that mobility and personal contact engender. The reason to underline this point here is that the safe-money environment is spreading uniformity; local variation is for the targeters of research and other planners at best noise and at worst unsafe.

An important, almost paradoxical, distinction becomes apparent. Neither our findings nor the literature gives the least impression that when scientists are abroad they are American or French or some other nationality. They travel simply as scientists. Similarly, when at home American or French scientists are not conscious of furthering American or French science. (This might be different, however, for a Third World scientist whose goal is to contribute to research in his own country.) For all the useful insights and critiques we gained of one system or another, when a scientist talked about

94 Hoch, P.K., "Migration and the Generation of New Scientific Ideas", Minerva, X X V (Autumn 1987), p. 237.

95 See Crawford, E. et al., Denationalizing Science, op. cit., p. 36, for a strong version of this latter interpretation whereby "international s p a c e . . , is the inert space [which] does not exist until someone uses it for knowledge-producing activities".


his or her own work it was plain physics, not French physics or American physics. At the same time, it was often the physics at his or her laboratory or university that was discussed. Both local and universal, science is not by nature national, even despite the influence of state financing or administration. The extreme localness of research is the basis for Latour's observation of the importance to laboratories of networks; it is as a nodal point in a network that a laboratory's localness avoids becoming its isolation. 96 Confirmation of the importance of local effects on research comes from the remark repeatedly heard in interviews of French and American scientists, especially concerning the less fluid French system, that it is much better to be stuck in a good laboratory in a bad institution than in a bad laboratory in a good institution.

Science and Economics from the Perspective of Mobility

Countries compete economically, and science is being drawn into this competition. Economic interests play increasingly in a global arena, but when science ventures abroad it is most likely for the purpose of connecting local efforts. The economic enterprise as conventionally pursued is univocal and clear-cut. International mobility, on the other hand, offers scientists breathing space between contrary tendencies and career pressures. These include the demands of an economic or social group versus the demands of a career; curiosity versus the requirements of career or financing policies; professional status versus independence; central constraints versus central privileges; peripheral latitude versus peripheral lack of dynamism; strong points that engender blind spots; competition versus collaboration, and so forth. Clearly all these concerns spring from a shared desire to pursue science and/or a career in science, and have little in common with the concerns of economic policy. Therefore the increasing frequency with which planners and policy-makers call on the profession of science gives reason to wonder about (or doubt) the future shape and extent of scientific mobility.

The developed countries' attempts to transplant to peripheral cultures their style of acquiring scientific knowledge for technological ends are illustrative. Often the depth and particularity of the local soil has been underestimated. Similarly, the staunch, centrist, conservative but not necessarily traditional, multinational version of research and research policy may spread less successfully than the technocratic vision demands. Gross imitation, as in the case of developing countries, runs counter to the local intellectual culture that exists, or might develop, and which, as scientific exchanges have flourished, has traditionally constituted an essential nutrient of science. Science and technology "take-off' is unlikely to work much better than the largely discredited economic "take-off" of 30 years ago.

96 Latour, B. and Woolgar, S., La vie de laboratoire, op. cir., pp. 29-30.


Nevertheless one large question remains, one that European science policy often asks itself. Why is scientific mobility between Europe and the United States so unbalanced? The reason often given is the abundant wealth of the United States. This is unsatisfactory at a time of budgetary restraints and financing difficulties in American science. The phenomenon partly arises from the perception that the United States is the centre of science--but it may turn out that lack rather than abundance is behind part of the inflow. First there is a significant lack of manpower in the United States in certain fields, including engineering and mathematics. Very likely it is cheaper and easier to import rather than to develop the necessary skills, especially as American students lose interest in science and mathematics, and American education is struggling in fundamental ways. The experience of the Forum USA programme, a mobile job fair instituted in 1991 by the French foreign ministry to attract young French scientists and engineers back to France, shows that they are for the most part eager to return, but employment awaits them in the United States and they have lost touch with the job market in France. 97

In addition, "soft-money research" suits an employer of immigrant labour, with its insecurity, short-term Contracts, limits on career advance and often low pay. A recent programme in Colombia to attract back "drained" brains has had considerable success, in particular because "in the United States, the life of an immigrant scientist is a nightmare", according to interviewed scientists. 98 More generally, the centre's style of science with its pressures and long hours encourages a high rate of "burn-out" in the United States, as mid-career American scientists visiting France complained, which leads to a shortage of scientists. And research by large groups requires a greater percentage of technical posts of lesser prestige but still requiring high skills, and these may be more easily filled by scientists trained abroad. 99 A regime which rewards single-minded pursuit of a career over intellectual interest is an obvious employer of such scientists. 1~176 Lastly, the label of "imperialism" is justified to the extent that a certain idea of science at the centre has taken hold abroad and the means of communication are dominated by the language of the centre, and to the extent that there is an--apparently----easy fit between the centre's version of science and dominant economic policies. An interesting parallel with the historical experience of mature empires can be glimpsed in the phenomenon of a centre that attracts foreign talent for training for technical posts that no longer attract its own citizens.

97 See also Martin-Rovet, Dominique, "Young French Scientists in the United States", Reports and Documents, Minerva, XXXIII (Spring 1985), pp. 97-98.

98 In Semana (Bogota), reprinted in Le. Courtier International, CXCI (30 June, 1994), p. 24. 99 Zinberg, D., "PRC Science Students and Scholars Abroad", Science, CCXXXIX (25

March, 1988), pp. 1475-1476, describes the tension that can arise between countries supplying and countries demanding scientific labour.

100 Mukerji, C., A Fragile Power, op. cit., pp. 103ft.


Studying mobile scientists one discovers a variety of scientific methods, and outlooks. The big picture is a collage. An ordering by rank of these myriad sciences is of little interest; it is their varying strengths and weaknesses that render contact between them fruitful. In this way, mobility, as it helps build consensus through many subjective contacts, may be a stronger or more reliable force for objectivity in science than strict adherence to "the" scientific method provides. Objectivity is at once science's starting-point and its grail; it is another version of the dream of universality. A good reason for wanting to see international scientific mobility increase, even if remaining sceptical about "strong-form objectivity", may be its effect of slowly building common enlightenment out of the manifold nature of the scientific enterprise.

Whether increased mobility would have such an effect depends of course on its quality. The mobility engendered by big international research and development projects, or by the need for "hired guns" and immigrant labour, may not be comparable in effect to scientific mobility undertaken for more classical motives. A glimpse of this problem and of the need to investigate it further can be had from the difficulties encountered by an industrially sponsored collaboration among Japanese, Germans and Ameri- cans working on specific, targeted research and development: the development of a "superchip". In the corporate environment of the United States, despite efforts to acclimatise the foreign scientists, cultural differences quickly became a source of discord, inefficiency and misunderstanding. Apparently, research and development does not travel, or mix, nearly as well as research. 1~1 That a culturally composite and broad-based science might be of more value than the economic globalisation which so wants science as its partner is not our subject here. But that the two are not at all the same thing is an important conclusion of our work.

101 Article in The Wall Street Journal, as reported in Le Courtier International, CLXXXV (19 May, 1994).

The implications of scientific mobility between France and the United States

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