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Radioactivity and Matter
Published in Ivan G. Draganić, Zorica D. Draganić, Jean-Pierre Adloff, Radiation and Radioactivity on Earth and Beyond, 2020
Ivan G. Draganić, Zorica D. Draganić, Jean-Pierre Adloff
The word “atom” became familiar to the layman when the first “atomic” bomb exploded in 1945. This event also marked the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind: the atomic age. For the philosophers and scientists, however, the hypothesis of an atomic structure of matter had already been progressively accepted long ago.
Two tribes or more? The historical emergence of discourse coalitions of responsible research and innovation (rri) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2022
Sally Randles, Elise Tancoigne, Pierre-Benoît Joly
Briefly bringing the case of weapons research into the twentieth century, the atomic age dawned in 1942 with the establishment of the Manhattan Project tasked with weaponising nuclear energy. In the post-war era, American scientists were celebrated for their contributions to social and technological progress even as the Manhattan Project was state-directed and managed by military personnel in the guise of Army Colonel Leslie R Groves, under the National Defence Research Committee. The Committee changed its name to the Office of Scientific Research and Development as the project officially morphed into a military initiative with scientists serving a supportive role. Much later into the 1960s, an organised anti-war opposition, led by younger scientists from inside and outside the government questioned the morality of using napalm and other non-nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war (Bridger 2015). Scientists then formed protest organisations, such as Science for the People and the Union of Concerned Scientists (Moore 2013), with the result that the relationship between government and science began to fray (Bridger 2015). According to Agar (2008), the sea-change which resulted in a weakening of the intimate relationship between the American scientists and the US government can be located in the ‘long 1960s’ against the backdrop of the Cold War period stretching from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. Over this 20-year-period, anti-war civil society movements joined forces with organised groups of young scientists opposing their own scientific establishment. Eventually, this new alliance of young scientists and civil society weakened the entrenched science/state relationship (Agar 2008), such that the role of scientists as counsellors to future presidents, as a consequence, diminished (Bridger 2015). These notes illustrate how a long(er) historical arch, supported by qualitative accounts tracing the breakdown and re-alignment of the most rigid of incumbent discourse coalitions, puts our rri and RRI analysis into the perspective of longer time horizons.