Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact: The National Science Foundation’s Broader Impacts Criterion and the Question of Peer Review

Abstract

Over the last 300 years science has been quite successful at revealing the nature of physical reality. In so doing it has provided an epistemological basis for scientific discovery and technological innovation. But science has been decidedly less successful at guiding political debate. How do we conceive of the science‐society relation in the 21st century? How does scientific research hook onto the world in a multi‐faceted, pluralistic, and global age? This essay seeks to reframe our thinking about the broader impacts of science by awakening an appreciation of the inescapably political and (and as a consequence, philosophical) dimension of all knowledge, scientific or otherwise.

Keywords:

• National Science Foundation
• Broader Impacts
• Peer Review

Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Britt Holbrook for his valuable input. This was supported in part by NSF Grant #0830387, A Comparative Assessment of Models for Integrating Societal Impacts Concerns into the Peer Review of Grant Proposals.

Notes

[1] Numerous exceptions to this statement can be found, from Toulmin (1961) to Kitcher (2001). But to a first approximation the statement holds.

[2] See researcher Victor Li, available from http://cee.engin.umich.edu/node/267;INTERNET. This and other similar accounts are available from www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf0903/nsf0903.pdf;INTERNET.

[3] A summary of that meeting, whose products include the present issue, is available from http://www.ndsciencehumanitiespolicy.org/workshop/;INTERNET.