DDRI: Late 20th-Century Consumer Advocacy and the Uses of Science: An Historical Study of Public Citizen's Health Research Group

本论文项目由美国国家科学基金会科学、技术与社会计划资助，研究公众健康研究小组（PCHRG）的历史。调查PCHRG——一个由拉尔夫·纳德和西德尼·沃尔夫创立的有影响力的小型消费者权益组织——是探索消费者运动对科学的影响的一种手段，在20世纪后期不断变化的社会、政治和经济气候中，科学知情的政策辩论。该项目仔细审查了该集团在其存在的35年半中所处理的一些问题，选择这些问题是因为它们对该组织内部发展的重要性，更广泛地说，它们反映了消费者倡导作为塑造科学辩论、科学政策和基于科学的社会和经济政策的模式的前景和局限性。该项目采用了三种社会科学研究方法：档案研究、口述历史和关键线人访谈。这项研究将美国历史文献中的两个截然不同的重点领域结合在一起，借鉴了经济和政治历史学家的工作，他们争论了整个20世纪消费者运动在确保政治改革方面的有效性，以及研究工业发展，消费社会，科学和健康的历史学家。科学文献的历史表明，美国的政治经济、科学理论和研究的演变以及疾病的性质和分布的变化是相互联系和相互影响的现象。本项目将探讨20世纪后期的改革者如何利用消费者政治来试图影响这种影响的性质和方向。政府在规范科学研究产生的技术、技术和化学品方面的作用仍然存在争议。该项目的另一个目标是考虑如何调和在快速变革和竞争的全球经济中保持美国地位的挑战与国家健康、福祉和环境可持续性的目标。通过记录消费者权益倡导者领导小组的努力，本项目有助于讨论美国监管的特征和目的，其与科学的复杂关系，以及消费主义作为塑造科学和政策的力量的功效。

This dissertation project, supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF, examines the history of the Public Citizen Health Research Group (PCHRG). Investigating PCHRG--a small, influential consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader and Sidney Wolfe--is a means for exploring the effects of the consumer movement on science and science-informed policy debates within the shifting social, political, and economic climate of the late 20th century. The project examines closely a number of the issues taken up by the Group over the 3½ decades of its existence, selected for their importance to the organization's internal evolution and, more broadly, the ways they reflect the prospects for and limitations on consumer advocacy as a mode of shaping scientific debate, science policy, and science-based social and economic policies in this period. The project employs three methods of social science research: archival research, oral history, and key informant interviews. This research binds together two distinct areas of focus within the literature of American history, drawing on work by economic and political historians who have debated the effectiveness of consumer movements in securing political reforms throughout the 20th century, and historians of science and health who have studied the interfaces of industrial development, consumer society, science, and health. The history of science literature has shown that American political economy, the evolution of scientific theory and research, and the changing nature and distribution of disease are linked and mutually influential phenomena. This project will explore how reformers in the late 20th century used consumer politics in an attempt to affect the nature and direction of that influence. The role of government in regulating the techniques, technologies, and chemicals that issue from scientific research remains contested. A further goal of the project is to consider ways to reconcile the challenges of maintaining America's standing in a rapidly transforming and competitive global economy with ends of national health, well-being and environmental sustainability. By chronicling the efforts of a leading group of consumer advocates, this project contributes to debates about the character and purpose of American regulation, its complex relation to science, and the efficacy of consumerism as a force in shaping science and policy.