Article
ID: CBB982908408

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

unapi
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations Censorship Government sponsored science Technology and war; technology and the military Science and war; science and the military Disclosure of information Secrecy Communication of scientific ideas Scholarly publishing World War II 20th century United States American Physical Society

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
Ball, Philip
Galison, Peter
Guazzoni, Guido
Harvey, A. D.
Hilgartner, Stephen
Hooijmaijers, Hans
Journals
British Journal for the History of Science
Air Power History
American Institute of Physics Conference Proceedings
Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Publishers
Oxford University Press
Reaktion Books
Routledge
University of Chicago Press
Washington State University Press
Osprey Publishing
Concepts
Science and war; science and the military
World War II
Technology and war; technology and the military
Government sponsored science
Secrecy
Science and politics
People
Bush, Vannevar
Darwin, Charles Robert
Debye, Peter Joseph William
Einstein, Albert
Freud, Sigmund
Heisenberg, Werner
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
17th century
16th century
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
Japan
Great Britain
Institutions
Human Genome Project
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, Berlin
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
Kriegsmarine (Germany)
Luftwaffe (Germany)
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