Thematic Collection Article
Science, Technology, & Human Values
2022, Vol. 47(4) 636-639
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Science, Technology, DOI: 10.1177/01622439221102989
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& Human Values,
1977-1987
Viability and vitality determine the future of any periodical, whether
mass-market magazine or niche academic journal. Early in the life of the
newsletter that became Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV),
subsidies from US taxpayers and two universities sustained the first
aspect. Economic and political forces, inside and outside the academy,
influenced the second at a time when those same pressures were reshaping
the scholarly publishing industry. I will let others appraise the journal’s
intellectual history and instead offer reflections about its survival, infra-
structure, and watersheds.
In Spring 1977, I was finishing my dissertation, blissfully searching for
images of science and scientists in Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post,
and similar collections at the Boston Public Library. Then, Rae Goodell
called and said that Vivien Shelanski was moving to New York. Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government was looking for a new editor
for the newsletter. As an off-campus graduate student, the prospect of a
part-time job—working on topics that dovetailed with my research interests
and past experience in the magazine industry—seemed a dream. Although
Vivien delayed the move for a year, her expertise in law and ethics proved
invaluable. We collaborated well, even coediting both editions of the proj-
ect’s first book, Law & Science: A Selected Bibliography.1
With grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment
for the Humanities, and Bell Laboratories, and underwriting from Harvard,
issues 1-29 had been produced in-house. Long-term viability in the publish-
ing marketplace, however, required paid subscribers and earned income.
One of my first tasks was to create a circulation and subscription system for
a publication that had heretofore been mailed gratis to anyone who
requested it, anywhere in the world.
Editorial 637
From the outset, content had been eclectic, with the “Bibliography” and
“News” sections most popular among teachers developing new courses. In
1979, establishment of MIT’s Science, Technology, and Society Program
prompted a significant transition. As I worked with Harvard and MIT
general counsels to develop formal agreements for co-ownership by the
two universities and publication by MIT Press, the negotiations made driv-
ing through Boston traffic circles seem easy. The outcome, however, pro-
vided a more professional presentation and expanded circulation—on the
route to vitality and viability.
Connection to MIT Press brought new consulting editors, an expanded
editorial advisory board, more robust peer-review process, and, with Press
encouragement, development of special issues. In 1981, the first special
project explored public communication of science and technology. We
transformed other commissioned content into successful MIT Press books,
Quality in Science (1982) and Creationism, Science, and the Law: The
Arkansas Case (1983), bringing revenue back to the journal. The creation-
ism volume’s array of trial excerpts and expert commentaries from legal
scholars, philosophers, and historians exemplified ST&HV’s distinctive
multivariate, multidisciplinary approach to contemporary topics and
audiences.
Although the journal steadily included more female voices, diversifica-
tion remained a slow process. Women had bylines on over a quarter of the
articles in the forty issues produced during my watch, and that proportion
increased in my last five years, but more could (and should) have been done.
To my regret, the self-perpetuating editorial advisory board contained only
one woman (Dorothy Nelkin) until 1983, when Shirley A. Jackson agreed
to join.
That same year, John Wiley & Sons began publishing ST&HV on behalf
of the two institutions. In exploring topics such as fraud, gender discrimi-
nation, secrecy, human sexuality, environmental justice, regulation, profes-
sional ethics, and nuclear power, the journal’s interior reflected the growth
of scholarship applied to understand the impacts and implications of
science, technology, and medicine.
The publishers’ mandates to keep pages lively and reactive required a lot
of energy and hard work between 1977 and 1987, supplied by the young
people who served as production or managing editors (Susan Howe, Robin
Grossman, Melinda Thomas, Lisa M. Buchholz, and Nancy A. Ferrari) and
editorial assistants (Judith Parker, Beverly Gudanowski, Betts Carlton, Jane
Joel, Patricia Andrade, Loretta Lynch, Sana Siwolop, Sarah Slaughter,
Wayne Koestenbaum, John Henry Gianvito, Jeanne Crandell, David Grant,
638 Science, Technology, & Human Values 47(4)
Hazel Rovno, Shari H. Yokota, David Cheney, John Zilber, Betsy Hanson,
Richard Davies, Daniel Grossman, Mary Manger, Stacey Frank, James
Taylor II, Jacqueline Gregory, and Cynthia Closky). Unflinching support
from advisors like Harvey Brooks and Melvin Kranzberg sustained the
editor through rough spots, but those twenty-nine staff members repre-
sented the publication’s heart and soul. Their crisp summaries of current
literature and conference reports, antennae for “horizon” topics, abundant
good humor, and generous spirits kept the office going when budget cuts or
irritated board members threatened its equilibrium. I did not thank them
enough at the time and cannot thank them enough now. The journal’s
success is their legacy.
In my final year, 1987, I helped negotiate another change, when Wiley
purchased all rights to ST&HV from Harvard and MIT. Although Wiley
invited me to remain as editor, I declined, having decided to turn the helm
over to Susan Cozzens and 4S.
Next Challenges
As someone who has studied as well as run journals, I must raise the
obvious question: What purpose does ST&HV serve, a half-century later,
for all participants in the dance? A “journal” can be accessible or pedantic,
pejorative or political. In its trajectory from subsidized, typed newsletter to
respected, peer-reviewed journal, ST&HV has been all of these. Yet, its
origins lay in genuine concern about the world beyond academe, about
responsible communication and ethical research. In that first special issue,
forty years ago, Anne Branscomb (1981) emphasized that
it is precisely at the level of presenting systematized human knowledge to
non-scientists that the communications system breaks down. Our society has
not determined whether it is the responsibility of the professional scientists to
communicate only to their peers, or also to elected or appointed government
officials, or directly to the public. In an authoritarian society, such questions
are easier to decide than in a democracy, because controlling decisions are
fewer and rarely more sophisticated. Democracies at least theoretically
assume that each citizen can competently make decisions that may be per-
sonal in nature, but collectively affect the body politic.
Throughout the current global pandemic, the result of that breakdown
has banged at our front doors, grieved our families, and rattled our political
systems. ST&HV stands at another turning point in how (or whether) it
Editorial 639
responds to the challenge, either staying inside the system and silos of
academic discourse, or once again looking honestly at the world outside
for both answers and questions.
Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, who edited ST&HV from 1977 to 1987,
also served as Editor of Science Communication, 1990-1998. She is author
of Making Science Our Own (1990), Stealing into Print (1992), Science on
the Air (2008), Reframing Scopes (2008), Science on American Television
(2013), and a forthcoming history of pioneering female science journalists.
Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette
Washington, DC, USA
Note
1. The first paperback edition, Law and Science: A Selected Bibliography (1978),
compiled by Morris L. Cohen, Jan Stepan, and Naomi Ronen, was produced in-
house. Two years later, MIT Press published an updated, hardcover edition, Law
and Science: A Selected Bibliography, compiled by Morris L. Cohen, Naomi
Ronen, and Jan Stepan.
Reference
Branscomb, Anne W. 1981. “Knowing How to Know.” Science, Technology, &
Human Values 6 (36): 6.