THREE PAPERS ON STRATIFICATION AND CULTURE IN SCIENCE

Abstract

This dissertation investigates a selection of unanswered questions from the sociology of science’s heroic age and issues of contemporary interest to scholars of science. Chapter 1 investigates the hard-soft distinction. We first reevaluate and extend the Mertonian theory of ‘hardness’ as scientific consensus with new theoretical advances from ethnographic and quantitative studies of science and methodological advances in data processing. We then present 14 metrics that collectively summarize field-level publication, citation, communication, and collaboration norms, and we use these metrics to compare 9 fields of study to one another. We find that the hard-soft spectrum exists and mirrors popular and academic understandings of the hard-soft distinction. We suggest that theories of inter-field differences may enrich future work in science studies. Chapter 2 presents a methodological toolkit for investigating bias and inequality in the sciences using sociology as a test case. We create a metric for tracking bias in publication that we term the citation-adjusted publication premium, and we use it to show that the works of alumnae of prestigious sociology PhD programs are over-published but under-cited in sociology’s three top journals. We additionally find that sociology’s two house journals, the American Journal of Sociology and Social Forces, are biased in favor of PhD alumnae of the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill respectively. Both types of bias diminish over time except for the bias in favor of University of Chicago PhD alumnae in the American Journal of Sociology. Chapter 3 applies the methodological and theoretical techniques from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to investigate bias against Chinese American scientists in sociology, economics, chemistry, and physics. We find that male Chinese American scientists suffer from a citation penalty and must attain more citations than their non-Chinese male peers to attain equivalent positions where female Chinese American scientists instead enjoy a citation bonus relative to their non-Chinese female peers. Taken together, the three chapters of this dissertation form a research agenda for analyzing the intersection of field-level and national cultures across the sciences and for uncovering evidence of inequality and favoritism in any of science’s main institutions.