The Economics of Science: A Critical Realist Overview

PREFACE ANDACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

How should we respond to the increasing privatisation of scientific knowledge production and the academy more generally? What are the implications of this process, in fact? And why is this process occurring in the first place? How does it relate to other major changes and challenges in which scientific knowledge and technological innovation play a crucial role, such as responding to climate change or associated challenges of food security? It is in grappling with these questions over the past few years that I have come to formulate the arguments set out in this book. In the process, I have often felt the painful contradiction between the seeming urgency of these questions and the slowness and inefficiency of the research ...