Article ID: CBB982908408

Science, Interrupted: Censorship and the Problem of Credit Allocation in the American Advisory Committee on Scientific Publications, 1940–46 (2022)

unapi

During the Second World War, journal editors working under the American Advisory Committee on Scientific Publications (ACSP) struggled to reconcile new demands of secrecy with their commitment to open exchange of knowledge. ACSP referees’ dilemmas were most acute where the consequences of disclosure were least obvious. Their greatest disagreements emerged not out of nuclear weapons research, but rather from problems of lesser perceived military significance, which were nevertheless the subject of contracted work with the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Although civilian scientists could publish on these topics without consequences to national security, the ACSP frequently restricted civilian publications for the simple reason that military-contracted scientists were performing similar research. This paper examines three cases in which the priority claims of federally contracted researchers influenced decisions on censorship. In these cases, referees imposed censorship to ensure equal access to publication channels, when federal contracts had divided the American scientific community into civilian and military-adjacent subgroups. Uniform censorship preserved the image of a uniform scientific community.

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Authors & Contributors
Wellerstein, Alex
Peter de Jong
Mark Postlethwaite
Miri, Johnny
Janusz Swiatlon
Ichikawa, Hiroshi
Concepts
Science and war; science and the military
World War II
Technology and war; technology and the military
Secrecy
Government sponsored science
Science and politics
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
21st century
17th century
16th century
Places
United States
Japan
Germany
Ohio (U.S.)
Great Britain
Institutions
Luftwaffe (Germany)
Kriegsmarine (Germany)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, Berlin
Human Genome Project
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