文档介绍：Statistics, Science and Public Policy:
Shifts in Culture
. Oldford and . Thompson
Working Paper 99-06
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
University of Waterloo
ABSTRACT
In 1999, approximately 40 leading scientists, statisticians, public science administrators,
and journalists were invited to Herstmonceaux Castle in Hailsham, England for the fourth
conference on Statistics, Science, and Public Policy. The theme of this conference was
“The Two Cultures?” in recognition of the fortieth anniversary of . Snow’s famous
Rede Lecture where the growing gulf between the traditional culture of the arts and the
humanities and the newer culture of science was first identified.
The papers presented in this technical report are the written versions of two talks. The first
is that presented by . Oldford in a session devoted to “The University Culture”. The
second, by . Thompson, was presented in a session entitled “Science and the Public
Purse”.
These papers, prepared in concert for the conference, took issue with the identification of
distinct cultures and instead chose to concentrate on drawing attention to the ways in which
intellectual culture has shifts and the effects these shifts have on the role of the members
of the university and on the public support given to research.
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Cultural shifts:
Humanities to science putation
. Oldford
Summary
It is argued here that the essential phenomenon of import which . Snow described in
1959 as that of two distinct municating cultures – one of ‘literary intellectuals’ one
of ‘scientific intellectuals’– is better described as a shift in emphasis within the university
culture from a humanities dominated one to a science dominated one.
Society in general and university students in particular actively participated in this
shift. The natural reaction of the student body is to pursue perceived opportunity. The
university culture reacted in a lurch from one dominating group to