We kicked off finals this week with presentations on individual research books, and our discussion touched on a topic that I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on for a while– military involvement in modern science, particularly in America. The book I chose for my third essay, Astrofuturism by De Witt Douglas Kilgore, discussed the role of the space race and military and government propaganda in establishing the field of astrofuturism and the rapid advancement of early rocketry. I haven’t studied the modern period in much depth before this semester, so I was aware of the space race and its military and imperialist function but hadn’t put much thought into how deeply these concepts then also embedded themselves into popular culture and the resulting science fiction genre of the next several decades.
Cecelia’s presentation in class dealt with Navy involvement in oceanic research, particularly the military’s role in pressuring marine researchers to focus on specific questions and the drop in marine research funding after the end of the Cold War. A concern she raised was the fact that the Navy did not prioritize global warming research, leading to the effects of oceanic warming being understudied until recently. Earlier in the semester we also discussed military involvement in conservation as an excuse to send troops to places they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access, in addition to conservation as a way to partition off land that the government or military wants to keep people away from. These examples in physical sciences show how the military might fund specific projects or divert funding away from non-useful projects.
Military funding of scientific pursuits is obviously a difficult ethical question, since a massive amount of modern science done in America is sponsored by the military or done directly for military contractors. (Many of my job prospects before deciding to attend grad school were in behavioral research for companies that worked as contractors or consultants for the military, for example.) Military funding also leaches into the public academic system, making it even more integrated into the life of many researchers.
Military interference or involvement in science will be one of the topics involved in the science fiction piece I’m writing as part of my final project later this month, and I’ll likely be doing more research on the subject over the next few weeks.
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