Diana Crane - Testing the 'Invisible College' Hypothesis

The term 'invisible colleges' was developed in sociology by Diana Crane based on Derek J. de Solla Price's work on citation networks. She sees it as referring to an elite group of highly productive and mutually interacting scientists in a Research Area (RA) who are at the centre of the formal network of communication among all scientists working in that particular Research Area (RA). 

Diana Crane, in the paper 'Social Structure in a Group of Scientists: Testing the 'Invisible College' Hypothesis,' says that a group of scientists working on a particular RA form a social group that has not been paid much attention primarily because: they are geographically scattered, most scientists do not have more than one or two papers published in a particular RA, the boundaries of RAs themselves is hazy at times, and the participation in these groups is highly voluntary thus making it difficult to study the existence of 'invisible colleges' among members of the scientific community. Crane is, in this paper, trying to see if: 

• there exists any sort of social organisation among scientists working in the same Research Area by studying the social ties among scientists who have published in an RA with other scientists who haven't published in the same RA and, 
• scientists who have published in the RA can be differentiated by the degree of social participation within the RA. 

She studies a group of rural sociologists involved in 'agricultural innovations' - senior and junior - by using questionnaires and response sheets for information about their references. She tries to establish her understanding of 'invisible colleges' by studying the citation patterns similar to the study made by Price. 

Scientists are part of different networks of communicating with their peers and superiors including informal communication networks and formal networks such as collaboration with other authors, or thesis directors before, during or after one's research. Intellectual linkages often reflect the influences of one scientist on another. Using the information about references and citations received from the rural sociologists, she sets out to map their influences with the help of a matrix developed by James Coleman with the choices received by the author on one axis and the choices made by the author on the other. Continuous multiplication of this matrix will eventually yield all the indirect relationships between scientists in the RA. 

To analyse the direct and indirect relationships between members of different subgroups, Crane divides the group on the basis of productivity and commitment to the RA. With this division, she comes up with five subgroups, 3 based on productivity: 

• 8 High Producers - those who had published more than 10 papers in the RA.
• 11 Medium Producers - those who had published between 4 and 10 papers in the RA.
• 33 Aspirants - those who had published less than 4 papers in the RA.

and 2 based on their commitment to the RA - those who had not continued their research in the RA (it was found that all those had published more than 10 papers continued research in the RA.):

• 9 Defectors - they had between 4 and 10 papers published in the RA.
• 86 Transients - they had less than 4 papers published in the RA.

Studying both the choices made by scientists favouring other scientists who had published in their RA and with 'Outsiders', Crane found that the scientists chose both on an almost equal level (49:51 for 'insiders':'outsiders'). However, she found that the 'Outsiders' were less likely to be chosen more than twice (not more than 84% were chosen more than twice) and since only one 'outsider' had their name cited more than ten times, it was not possible for a group of outsiders to influence them as much as their own did. 

Characteristics of Members of Subgroups:

1. Selection of Group Members versus Outsiders: The 5 subgroups divided based on productivity and commitment were expected to exhibit varying degrees of linkages both with insiders and outsiders. While members of the highly productive group were closely linked with each other and with outsiders, members of another group which was relatively unproductive were not as closely linked with either group.   
2. Direct and Indirect ties by Subgroups: Choices made by the High Producers and Medium Producers led to them having greater ties with their own members than did the Aspirants. In addition, a high proportion of choices made by members of other subgroups led to the High Producers being placed at the middle of their communication network. The High Producers are also linked through published collaboration to a large number of members in the RA and also influenced many others in their roles as thesis directors. 

Changes in Networks of Social Ties

Over the last few decades, the number of High Producers has increased significantly and so has their proportion in the scientific community. High Producers associate themselves with other High Producers and most of their students become High Producers too. The High Producers place themselves at the centre of the communication network through their high productivity and commitment to developing and making the RA known in the scientific community. 

The type of social organisation one sees in among a group of scientists working in a particular RA can be likened to a social circle. The social circle is not well instituted compared to the bureaucracy or social institutions such as family. Members come together on the basis if their interests rather than their ascribed statuses. Indirect interaction and interaction mediated by common associates is an important part of the social circle and it is not necessary to know a person to be influenced by them. At most, a member of the social circle would know a few other members but never all. The presence of scientists whose high productivity is sufficient for them to attract the attention of those who enter the field, produce a social circle which then plays an important role in the growth of the RA.

The diffusion problem area deals with the diffusion of a sizable number of papers in a RA. A majority of these articles could be published either in a few 'core' journals with the rest scattered among numerous others, or be published in numerous different journals with no relation to each other. Neither scenario would be conducive to the growth of knowledge in that RA for, if there were only a few core researchers producing articles and papers regularly citing each other's work, that would only allow for a restricted view point with each being influenced by the other; it would lead to stagnation of ideas in the field; if scientists and researchers preferred to be isolated and avoided each other's contact, that too would be harmful for the growth of science for many ideas would never come to fruition. 

One of the things that needs to be further studied is the points of intersection between different areas especially if scientists are going to continue moving from one area to another to study related problems. The communication network then has to be traced and the influences form each area have to be analysed further to get a wholesome understanding of the communication among scientists. 

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Diana Crane is a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Diana Crane is a specialist in the sociology of culture, arts, media, and globalization. She has also taught at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Poitiers (France), Erasmus University (The Netherlands) and Columbia University in Paris. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), and a visitor at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center (Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy). She has held Fulbright Awards in France and the Netherlands. She was chair of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association in 1991-1992. She has been a member of the Advisory Board of Poetics since 1992.

TEDTalk: Michael Nielsen

Why it is important to open up Science: you can watch the talk here

Science, Religion and Ethics

This is the list of readings that Prof. Prema had suggested for the modules on Science and Ethics (and Religion).
Module 3 and 4: Science, Ethics and Religion:

1. Somerville, Margaret, ‘Searching for Ethics in a Secular Society’, Ethics of Science and Technology: Eplorations of the Frontiers of Science and Ethics (ed), UNESCO, Paris 2006, pp. 17-39
2. Bok, Siessela, ‘Secrecy and Openness in science: Ethical Considerations’, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 7, No. 38, (Winter, 1982), pp. 32-41
3. Cairns, John Jr., ‘Sustainability Ethics Matter’ Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics’, April 7, 2004, pp 3-6.
4. Rivers, Theodore John, ‘Technology and Religion: A Metaphysical Challenge’, Technology in Society, 28 (2006), pp 517-531
5. Prainsack, Brabara, ‘Negotiating Life: The Regulation of Human Cloning and Embryonic Stem Cell Research in Israel’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 36 no.2, April 2006, pp.173-205
6. Sessions, George, ‘The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review’, Environmental Review, Vol.11 No.2, Summer, 1987, pp.105-125

I presented Margaret Somerville's paper in class. The discussion that we had this week illustrated the need to adopt a different approach to this module.But considering the fact that we haven't had any posts so far for the Science and Religion module-the paper still might be worth mentioning here.

As the title 'Searching for Ethics in a Secular Society' suggests, the author tries to list some of the reasons why we have to search for 'ethics' in a 'secular' society. She says that it can be seen as a 21st century revolution in conscience and consciousness. It can be explained by the nature of our postmodern, industrialized Western democracies. These societies are pluralistic, secular in the public sphere, and multicultural. These features also mean that they lack a 'shared story'-the collection of fundamental values, beliefs, attitudes, principles,myths and commitments that we need to buy into in order to function as a society. This story, or societal-cultural paradigm is the glue that holds us together.

Our shared story has focused on the two major life events of each human life-birth and death.In the past, religion played a vital role in helping man understand these two events. We also bonded together through a shared religion-both in the present and with the past and future generations Modern scholars such as Tom Harper and Joseph Campbell favour the derivation of the word religion from ligare ("bind, connect"), probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect", which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.

The possibilities that new scientific developments have opened up in relation to birth and death is a major focus of contemporary ethical discussions. Through the use of a combination of genetic and new reproductive technologies, the very basis of human life and its mode of transmission can be altered. Modern medical 'miracles' held out hope, if not of immortality as most religions do, at least of delayed mortality. Extraordinary new advances in medical science have shocked us into recognizing that we do not have consensus about the values that we need in order to address the immense ethical issues these new technologies raise.

Go here for article

We cannot assume that there is consensus on the values we will uphold, since we no longer automatically have access to a received set of values through a shared religion. We must therefore find and agree on these values and the author feels that an important context in which we seek to do this is in relation to how we should and should not use the new science.


Considering the discussion we had in class, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the following point that she makes in the paper: Due to this loss of consensus on values, there is an adoption of a situational ethics approach. By doing so, we seem to have lost the ability to agree that anything is inherently wrong-wrong no matter how much good could come from doing it. But in a society that has no absolute moral rules or no external source of authority for those moral rules that it does have, can we implement a view that human cloning is inherently wrong? Can we believe in a moral absolute, even if we are not religious and even if we do not believe in a supernatural being as the ultimate authority?

She proposes that we can do this by accepting two values as absolutes-

1. Always act to ensure profound respect for all life, in particular human life.
2. Protect and promote the human spirit-the metaphysical reality that we need to fully live fully human lives.

Let's examine current law regarding human cloning.

On December 14, 2001, the UN General Assembly began elaborating an international convention against the reproductive cloning of humans. A broad coalition of States, including Spain, Italy, the Philippines, the US, Costa Rice and the Holy See sought to extend the debate to ban all forms of human cloning, noting that, in their view, therapeutic human cloning violates human dignity. Costa Rica proposed the adoption of an international convention to ban all forms of Human Cloning. Unable to reach a consensus on a binding convention, in March 2005 a non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning for the ban of all forms of Human Cloning contrary to human dignity, was finally adopted.

I would like to end this (rather long) post with an incident mentioned in the paper. Margaret Somerville attended a conference in Squaw Valley, California and had given a presentation outlining the case against human cloning. She argued for recognizing the moral status of the human embryo. She was followed by molecular and evolutionary biologist Professor Lee Silver of Princeton University. He stood before the audience, melodramatically took out a tissue and blew his nose into it. Without saying anything, he held it up to the audience, who were watching him attentively. He then said, 'This tissue has cells on it from inside of my nose. I would like Margo to understand that I believe these cells have the same moral status as human embryos.'

These two different views on the moral status of human embryos and human embryo research translate into antagonistic attitudes about the ethics of human cloning. So far no definitive answer has been provided because it is difficult to arrive at a consensus. In our postmodern, industrialized society, advancements in science and technology have questioned the very tenets of organized religion and a sense of the sacred. We are now at an impasse because we no longer have a 'shared story'. However the question remains as always-'Is it right?'

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(1) I do apologize for the unwieldiness of this post and also for providing numerous hyperlinks. But I feel that it adds to the content of this post and provides numerous additional sources of information.

(2) Such is the VASTNESS of this module that there are several other issues which can be taken for discussion. Maybe we can take them up if we get a good exchange going in the comments section.

(3) And most importantly, I do apologize for the inordinate delay in updating the blog.