In his discussions, he’s seeking (among other things) improvement in the data collection and analysis done with respect to science and technology policy and science and technology activity.

While all of the programs mentioned in this discussion conduct some kind of work in this area, it seems relatively specialized, or even piecemeal. While specialization is a fact of academic life, the absence of definition or coherence of STPR at a more general level makes it pretty inadequate in informing policy in the way or at the level Marburger describes.

A secondary impact of this is that educating or training a next generation of scholars and practitioners in STPR as much of a hodgepodge as the literature we have to work with. Employment in the field, whether academic or not, doesn’t privilege general STPR education, so the labor market provides no incentive to change this.

I think more general level scholarship is out there (Brooks, Mokyr and Hounshell come to mind), but as your grad students noted, it has not been put together into some common work, and their is no professional or academic organization interested in correcting this. Isis did some good survey work several years ago, but that is sadly an exception.

However, none of this really addresses converting STPR research into the new models and information Marburger talks about. But we should probably build some capacity before trying to transfer knowledge.

A final thought – while I don’t know a lot of SPRU in Sussex, it might be worth investigating as an entity that can produce the kind of information Marburger would like, if it were in the U.S.

Who, if anyone, would you say is doing something comparable to CSPO and your center with respect to technology policy, or even some combination of the two?

Unless technology is assumed in all the mentions of science policy, which might make my question moot.