Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA's Teams

by Janet Vertesi

“A fascinating inside look at NASA missions” that provides important insight on the organizational aspects of scientific collaboration (American Journal of Sociology).In Shaping Science, Janet Vertesi draws on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams to create a comparative account of two great space missions of the early 2000s. Although these missions featured robotic explorers on the frontiers of the solar system bravely investigating new worlds, their commands were issued from millions of miles away by a very human team. By examining the two teams’ formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices in the day-to-day process of mission planning, Vertesi shows just how deeply entangled a team’s local organizational context is with the knowledge they produce about other worlds.Using extensive, embedded experiences on two NASA spacecraft teams, this is the first book to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment in order to analyze the production of scientific knowledge itself. Engaging and deeply researched, Shaping Science demonstrates the significant influence that the social organization of a scientific team can have on the practices of that team and the results they yield.“No matter how the lakes on Titan shimmer, or what the mineralogy of a particular Martian rock turns out to be, it was the people behind the spacecraft, keyboards and endless tele-conferences that drove what these interplanetary robots discovered. I’m glad to have come to know them even better through this book.” —Nature“A fun, illuminating read . . . scholars of science, technology, work, and organizations will find much to appreciate.” —American Journal of Sociology“Will be of great interest to all historians of science.” —Technology and Culture

Genres: Science, Anthropology

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 6, 2020

Reviews

[Trevor Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shaping Science is a powerful and nuanced exploration of the way that organizational structures on two major NASA missions shape careers, data, and scientific outcomes. Given how much science is now structured through large organizational collaborations, the results of this study will be of broad interest.

[Milan Ćirković · Rating 5 out of 5]

NASA today is, clearly, a very different place than it was at the end of the Cold War. Perhaps the biggest change easily perceived from the outside is that nowadays its statist monopoly is undermined by a bunch of successful private actors in the field of space industry, as well as more international competition from other increasingly successful space agencies of countries such as Japan, China, India, United Arab Emirates. An additional factor is a marked decrease of public interest in space exploration and all things cosmic. The catastrophes of Challenger and Columbia, antitechnological backlash of Chernobyl and Fukushima, the lack of clear-cut focus on science and technology, widespread scientific illiteracy, societal obsession with regressive politics of identity and other forms of cheap populism, advances of pseudoscience such as intelligent design, climate change denialism, anti-GMO and anti-pharmaceutical mass delusions, in general the advent of “post-truth” mentality have all acted to produce a short-sighted, navel-gazing, anthropocentric cultural stasis almost everywhere.

In recent years, there is a perception that NASA has somewhat woken up from its long post-Cold War slumber as far as human spaceflight is concerned. While the ongoing Artemis Program lends some credence to this perception, it is important to understand that “the other“ side of NASA, the one dealing with robotic interplanetary spacecraft, has been working diligently the whole time, a rare Saganian “candle in the dark“, even as the space shuttle program folded and the agency lost its capacity for the heavy lifting necessary for human spaceflight. It is unfortunate that the planetary research activities of NASA are much less widely known, which is just one among many reasons both academic and lay readers ought to pick up the book under review.

Shaping Science, a recent book by Janet Vertesi, professor of sociology at Princeton University, is a highly intelligent and well-structured book. In some respects, it is perhaps too intelligent for its own good. I shall return to this paradoxical aspect later. It is not always an easy read and it does require at least passing understanding of such diverse subjects as planetary science, scientific instrumentation, and post-WW2 history of ideas. It is, however, likely to be quite a rewarding experience for a sufficiently patient reader.

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The rest of the review is at https://link.springer.com/article/10....

[Krys · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't for everyone. It's an academic look at how the processes and social norms of two NASA missions affect the science results and the career trajectories of the people involved.
If you work in behavioral science, this book is a great resource for its organizational psychology. If you work in behavioral science at NASA, it should be required reading.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that could have been written FOR me, on how the structure of teams doing space research shapes the scientific outcomes they prioritize and discover. Absolutely fascinating!