"Proposed cutbacks in government science funding have caused many to expect that the rate of scientific progress will significantly decline. Before the magnitude of the decline can be estimated, a preliminary question must be answered: what is the extent to which private funding of science may...

Surveys, from an American perspective, the existing literature on economic explanations of the behaviour of universities and scholars. The modern literature is put in historical perspective introduced by a brief discussion of the positions of two of the earliest and most distinguished...

Polywater, one of the most famous mistaken scientific research programs of the past half-century, is used as a case study to examine whether polywater researchers later experienced lower citation counts, or less favorable job mobility. The primary result is that simply writing on polywater,...