Collaboration, Reputation and Ethics in American Academic Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mill FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the course of exploring the history of the Gerth-Mills association, Guy Oakes and Author J. Vidich consider themes central to questions of academic ethics, including how the distribution of knowledge and power in collaboration shapes the social production of authorship, academic reputation, and intellectual authority; how the dynamics of collaboration play into the competition over credit for scientific and scholarly work; and how concealment, secrecy, and deception contribute to the building of academic reputation. Thus the historic partnership of Gerth and Mills serves as a point of departure for a sustained discussion of essential issues in the ethics and politics of academic life.
FROM THE CRITICS
Times Literary Supplement
. . . Oakes and Vidich have given us a penetrating insight into American academic life. This is how they sum up their findings: "The path to a successful academic career is traced by the fine line between overweening ambition that inspires doubts about honesty and a diffidence or restraint that disqualifies its possessor from participation in the contest for priority." Sad wisdom it might be, but there you are; its truth is sustained beyond reasonable doubt by 150-odd pages of facts. Attentive readers of these pages could sharpen the message further: by all means act on your ambition, but try to keep it secret from your peers, and on no account let it be known to your superiors.
Academic careers manage to signify something (of value), because they are, or despite being, full of sound and fury. How is this done? It seems as if the academic institutions have been patched together with the aim of preventing its members, particularly its ambitious members, from following their vocation. Science is about discovery, originality, blazing new trials and trespassing on old boundaries. However, the institutions of the scientific world are at their best when making all that exceedingly difficult and at times perilous and costly for those who try. Admission to the academic world is one of the few remaining relics of medieval guilds: apprentices are tested in their unswerving loyalty to the examining masters' view of the trade, and the most conformist among them stand the best chance of becoming masters and judges in their turn. Then comes the peer-review system of learned journals, calculated to prompt the author to steer the middle line between the "anonymous referees". In this ring, caution and inoffensiveness beat daring and creativity hands down. By the time publishers accept the manuscript on the strength of the author's name rather than a certificate of conformity, the energy of rebellion has long dissipated and the courage to rebel had all the time in the world to wilt and fade. This process works reasonably well when it comes to straining off the untalented; but many others may share their lot for not hiding their originality carefully enough. . . .
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