Oreskes Fieldwork Women

Objectivity or Heroism?
On the Invisibility of Women in Science

Author(s): Naomi Oreskes
Source: Osiris, Vol. 11, Science in the Field (1996), pp. 87-113
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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Objectivity or Heroism? On the
Invisibility of Women in Science
Naomi Oreskes*
OBJECTIVITY AND WOMEN IN SCIENCE
Of course, it is occasionally necessary to make experiments

which one knows are dangerous, for example, in determining
how a disease is transmitted. A number of people have died this
way, and it is to my mind the ideal way of dying. -J. B. S. Haldane
A CENTRAL THEME of Margaret Rossiter's pioneering work on women scien-

tists in America is that the false mythology of science as an almost exclusively
male preserve has been made possible by the near invisibility of women scientists.
Women have been present in American science throughout the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries, but their contributions have been placed in the background rather
than the foreground of scientific innovation and discovery. The invisibility of wom-
en's contributions is enmeshed with the question of why some kinds of scientific
work are more valued and honored than others. Thus, some scholars have attempted
to understand and evaluate women's contributions in the context of the epistemic
values of science. Feminist scholars in particular have focused attention on the ideal
of objectivity, and some have argued that scientific objectivity, with its emphasis on
the detachment of the observer from the natural world, is a gender-linked ideal,
reified by the image of the male scientist scrutinizing and even oppressing fe-
male nature.' Consequently, feminist critics of science such as Donna Haraway
*The Gallatin School, New York University, 714 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
I am indebted to Richard Creath, Claudia Henrion, Bruce Hevly, Richard Kremer, Jane Maien-
schein, and Jennifer Tucker for helping to stimulate the ideas expressed in this paper, and for critical
comments on the manuscript; to Margaret Rossiter and Deborah Day for advice on tracking down
difficult archival materials; and to my research assistants, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz and Jennifer
Wehner. Financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for Univer-
sity Teachers, and the National Science Foundation, Young Investigator Award, is gratefully acknowl-
edged.
For archival records, the following abbreviations are used: USNA RG23: U.S. National Archives,
Record Group 23, Records of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey; USNA RG24: U.S. National
Archives, Record Group 24, Entry 18W4, Logbook of the U.S. Submarine S-21; NOAA CPWB:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Collected Papers of William Bowie; CIW GL:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Records of the Geophysical Lab; CIW DF: Carnegie Institution
of Washington, Director's Files; ELPF: Eleanor Lamson Personnel File, United States Office of Per-
sonnel Management, EMF Access Unit, St. Louis, Missouri.
' Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 19
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Fran-
C) 1996 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/96/8401-0001$01.00
OSIRIS, 2nd series, 1996, 11: 87-113 87
88 NAOMI ORESKES
and Sandra Harding have advocated abandonment of the ideal of objectivity in fa-
vor of epistemologies that recognize the situated and fragmentary character of all
knowledge.2
The feminist critique of objectivity rests heavily on the psychoanalytical perspec-
tive of Nancy Chodorow, who has argued that female and male children articulate
their adolescent identity through fundamentally divergent responses to the maternal
bond: To forge their identity as men, male children must detach themselves from
their primary love-object, whereas female children forge their identities as women
in continuing identification with their mothers. To the extent that children are raised
primarily or exclusively by women, male identity is forged in separation, female
identity in attachment. To the degree that primary gender identification resonates
throughout other aspects of cognitive and emotional life, men may be more likely
to view the world from the perspective of detachment, women from the perspective
of connection. If Chodorow's exegesis is correct, then the articulation of nature
through the lens of a fully detached observer is a gender-laden concept, at odds with
the understanding of the world that females develop through their primary af-
fective experience.'
Thus one explanation for women's invisibility in science might be that women
tend to do science in a less objective, i.e., less detached or more contextualized,
manner than their male counterparts, and therefore have their work misinterpreted,
undervalued, or harshly judged. This is the interpretation placed by Evelyn Fox Kel-
cisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980); E. F. Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Ha-
ven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985); Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the
World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989).
2 D. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Par-
tial Perspective," Feminist Studies, 1988, 14:575-599; Sandra Harding, The Science Question in
Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986); idem, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
Thinking from Women's Lives (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991). Various readings of Harding
place her defending or rejecting standpoint epistemologies (see Alison Wylie, "The Philosophy of
Ambivalence: Sandra Harding on The Science Question in Feminism," Canadian Journal of Philoso-
phy 13:59-73 and reply by Sandra Harding, ibid., pp. 75-85). By any account Harding's notion of
"strong objectivity" is clearly not the same as a classical account of objectivity that presupposes an
interchangeable knower; it more closely resembles Mannheim's perspectivalism (see Karl Mann-
heim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and
Edward Shils [New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1936]). A very useful bibliography of recent
feminist critiques of science is A. Wylie, K. Okruhlik, S. Morton, and L. Thielen-Wilson, "Philosoph-
ical Feminism: A Bibliographic Guide to Critiques of Science," Resources for Feminist Research,
1990, 19(2):2-36.
3 Nancy Chodorow, "Family Structure and Feminine Personality," in Women, Culture and Society,
eds. M. Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 43-66; idem,
The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1978); idem, "Feminism and Dif-
ference: Gender, Relation and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective," Socialist Review, 1979,
p. 46. Also see E. F Keller, "Feminism and Science," Signs, 1982, 7:589-602; E. F. Keller, Reflec-
tions on Gender and Science (cit. n. 1); Jane Flax, "Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Uncon-
scious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy
of Science," in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Meth-
odology, and Philosophy of Science, eds. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel,
1983), pp. 245-281. For critiques of Chodorow as applied to science, see Elizabeth Fee, "Critiques
of Modern Science: The Relationship of Feminism to Other Radical Epistemologies," in Feminist
Approaches to Science, ed. Ruth Bleir (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986), pp. 42-56, on p. 49;
and Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), pp.
170-17 1.
OBJECTIVITY OR HEROISM? 89
ler on the life of Nobel-Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock. In Keller's

view, McClintock's colleagues mostly failed to understand her empathetic perspec-
tive-her "feeling for the organism"-resulting in highly delayed recognition of
her work. Some recent commentators have gone to considerable lengths to try to
demonstrate that there is a female style of doing science, characterized by greater
empathy, greater concern for context, or greater attention to the interconnectedness
of natural phenomena-and thus potentially at odds with norms of scientific objec-
tivity.4 Insofar as scientific objectivity demands the effacement of the observer and
insists on the irrelevance of context, it might not be surprising that women are rare
and marginalized in science.
But if we look at the history of American women scientists in the twentieth cen-
tury, an apparent paradox emerges: The types of work that women have done in
many branches of American science fit conventional notions of objectivity. Broad
historical generalizations are risky but, if anything, it appears that women in Ameri-
can science have been characteristically employed not in jobs that required a high
degree of emotional involvement or contextual judgment, but precisely the opposite.
In the physical sciences in the first half of the twentieth century, women were rou-
tinely engaged in a wide variety of highly quantitative analytical and numerical
work-a type of work that has often been portrayed as emblematic of scientific
objectivity. The classification of stellar spectra for the Draper star catalog, the high-
precision calculations performed by women such as Maria Mitchell for the U.S.
Nautical Almanac, the work of female computers at the U.S. Naval Observatory, the
analysis of bathythermograph records at Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution and
Scripps Institution of Oceanography-all were highly objectified tasks, and some of
this work led to important observational, theoretical, or methodological advances.5 If
objectivity is the central requisite of science, why have these women not received
greater recognition?
In focusing on objectivity, feminists are in concert with commentators past and
present, of both pro- and antiscience persuasions, who have characterized objectivity
as the central ideal of the sciences.6 But is objectivity the central value of science?
I E. E Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (New York:
W. H. Freeman and Company, 1983); for an alternative reading of McClintock, see Sharon Bertsch
McGrayne, Nobel Prize Women in Science (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993). Sue V. Rosser,
Female-Friendly Science (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), esp. pp. 34-54; Marcia Barinaga, "Is
There a Female Style of Doing Science?" Science, 1993, 260:383-432, pp. 384-391; Susan Chira,
"An Ohio College Says Women Learn Differently, So It Teaches That Way," New York Times, 13 May
1992, p. B7.
5Rossiter, Women Scientists (cit. n. 1); Vera Rubin, "Women's Work: For Women in Science, a
Shake Is Still Elusive," Science 86, July/August 1986:58-65; Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Out
Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789-1989 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rut
Univ. Press, 1987); J. Lankford and R. L. Slavings, "Gender and Science: The Experience of Wom
in American Astronomy, 1859-1940," Physics Today, 1990, 43:58-65; J. Lankford, "Women
Women's Work at Mt. Wilson Observatory Before World War II," in The Earth, the Heavens
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, ed. Gregory Good, American Geophysical Union Histor
Geophysics 1994, 5:125-127; and 0. Gingerich, "Commentary on the Mt. Wilson papers," ibid
129-131; and unpublished materials at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. Als
Stephen Brush, "Women in Science and Engineering," American Scientist, 1991, 79:404-419.
6 Classics include James Conant, On Understanding Science: An HistoricalApproach (New Have
Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1947); and Robert K. Merton, "The Normative Structure of Science
The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: Univ. Chicago P
1942), pp. 267-278. Recent papers on objectivity include T. M. Porter, "Quantification and
90 NAOMI ORESKES
Or, more to the point, is it the most significant value in understanding the situation of
women in science? The thesis of this paper is that many women have done objective
scientific work, but have had their work obscured or devalued by the ideology of
scientific heroism-an ideology that has been particularly manifest in the history of
the field sciences. An example is Eleanor Lamson (1875-1932).
ELEANOR LAMSON AND THE REDUCTION OF MARINE GRAVITY DATA
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gravity measurements
had been undertaken to determine the shape of the Earth. In the early twentieth
century, American geophysicists realized that gravity measurements could also re-
veal information about the Earth's internal density distribution and thereby about the
forces responsible for the Earth's structure. William Bowie at the U.S. Coast and
Geodetic Survey began to use gravity measurements to develop a detailed model of
the Earth. The theoretical interpretation of their data was hampered, however, by an
absence of data from the ocean basins. Attempts to measure gravity at sea had invari-
ably failed due to disruption from wind and waves.7 With three-quarters of the
Earth's surface unexamined, theories deduced from gravity data remained funda-
mentally speculative.
In the early 1920s, a Dutch geodecist, Felix Vening Meinesz, developed a novel
pendulum gravimeter with which he produced the first successful measurements of
gravity at sea. Using his device aboard submarines, Vening-Meinesz could minimize
the effect of surface accelerations to obtain highly reproducible results. His work
caught the attention of William Bowie, who, in cooperation with the Carnegie Insti-
tution of Washington and the U.S. Navy, invited Vening Meinesz to come to the
United States to measure gravity aboard a U.S. Navy submarine. The results were
the first North American measurements of gravity at sea, and would ultimately play
an important role in overturning existing geological theory.8
On October 2, 1928, the U.S.S. S-21 submarine steamed out of the U.S. Naval
Yard in Hampton Roads, Virginia, with considerable fanfare and ceremony. Navy
Secretary Curtis Wilbur was there for the send-off; his presence was recorded in the
Accounting Ideal in Science," Social Studies of Science, 1992, 22:633-652; T. M. Porter, "Objectiv-
ity as Standardization: The Rhetoric of Impersonality in Measurement, Statistics, and Cost-benefit
Analysis," Annals of Scholarship, 1992, 9:19-61; Lorraine Daston, "Objectivity and the Escape from
Perspective," Soc. Stud. Sci. 1992, 22:597-618; Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "The Image of
Objectivity," Representations, 1992, 40:81-128; and Peter Dear, "From Truth to Disinterestedness in
the Seventeenth Century," Soc. Stud. Sci. 1992, 22:619-631. On almost any account, quantitative
knowledge is the quintessential example of objective knowledge: apersonal, aperspectival, atemp-
oral, incorruptible.
7 John F. Hayford, The Figure of the Earth and Isostasy from Measurements in the United States
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909); John F Hayford and W. Bowie, "The
Effect of Topography and Isostatic Compensation upon the Intensity of Gravity," in Geodesy, U.S.
Coast and Geodetic Survey Special Publication 10, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1912). Rachel Laudan, "Oceanography and Geophysical Theory in the First Half of the Twen-
tieth Century: The Dutch School," in Oceanography, The Past, eds. M. Sears and D. Merriman (New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1980), pp. 656-666; N. Oreskes, "Weighing the Earth from a Submarine:
The Gravity-Measuring Cruise of the U.S.S. S-21'" in The Earth, the Heavens (cit. n. 5), pp. 53-68.
8 F. A. Vening Meinesz and F. E. Wright, "The Gravity Measuring Cruise of the U.S. Submarine
S-21, with an Appendix on Computational Procedure by Miss Eleanor Lamson," Publications of the
U.S. Naval Observatory, Second Series (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1930),
Vol. XIII, Appendix 1. Also see N. Oreskes, "The Rejection of Continental Drift," Historical Studies
in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1988, 18:311-348.
ship's log, and formal portraits were taken before the ship sailed.9 Representing the
Carnegie Institution was Frederick Wright, a petrologist at the Carnegie's Geophysi-
cal Laboratory. Upon completion of the cruise, the results were written up by Vening
Meinesz and Wright as a publication of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Bowie, Vening
Meinesz, and Wright were guests of honor at an official state dinner in Washington,
and the cruise and the dinner were written up by Bowie for Scientific American
magazine. Bowie was later authorized by a joint resolution of Congress to accept an
award of the Order of Orange Nassau from the Queen of the Netherlands, and a
medal was established in his honor by the American Geophysical Union."' Vening
Meinesz went on to win numerous scientific awards; Wright became secretary of
the National Research Council. Not invited to the official state dinners, or featured
in the official portrait, or mentioned in Scientific American, was the woman in charge
of the data reductions: Eleanor Annie Lamson, associate astronomer at the U.S.
Naval Observatory.
A Scientist or a Technician?
Lamson was the person responsible for developing and implementing the procedures
necessary to convert the photographic records of the pendulum into measurements
of the acceleration of gravity. In the language of Bruno Latour, she was the person
responsible for converting instrumental inscriptions into scientific information; La-
tour and others have emphasized how nontrivial this conversion can be. Neverthe-
less, scientists normally make a strong distinction between themselves and their
technicians, typically on the grounds of originality. If Lamson were a technician,
following a procedure established by someone else, then her ellipsis from official
recognition would have been routine-then as now."I As one of the many women of
various skill levels who worked at large observatories, Lamson belongs to a histori-
cally ambiguous category: Was she a scientist or a technician? We may consider her
status on two levels, sociological and epistemic. Was she trained and recognized as
a professional scientist, and did she make an intellectually original contribution to
the S-21 expedition?
Lamson's overall scientific stature was codified by her inclusion in the 1927 edi-
tion of American Men of Science. Her citation recognized her "fundamental [work
on] star catalogues and the orbits of comets and asteroids." This establishes her as a
person deemed to be making substantive contributions to American science and as
a professional woman who achieved an unusually high level of success. Born on
April 19, 1875, in Washington, D.C., Lamson received her B.S. in mathematics and
physics from George Washington University in 1897, and two years later her M.S.
in astronomy. She thus embarked on her scientific career with similar qualifications
to most of her male colleagues, but as a woman she labored under considerably
9 USNA: RG 24 LS21, pp. 605-613.

I William Bowie, "Weighing the Earth from a Submarine," Scientific American, March 19
218-221; NOAA: CPWB.
"Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar, Laboratory Life (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr
Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987); Andrew
Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,
1984); Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1992).
S. Shapin, "The Invisible Technician," American Scientist, 1989, 77:554-563. The ellipsis of techni-
cians is related to issues of class and professionalization-and thus, indirectly back to gender.
92 NAOMI ORESKES
different professional conditions. Upon completion of her degree, she was appointed
a "piece-work" computer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, a job that was held exclu-
sively by women.'2 In 1903, she became a full-time computer and four years later
she was promoted to the position of assistant scientist, which she held for the next
sixteen years. During this time, she rose through the ranks to become head of the
Computing Section of the Observatory, but whereas all other division heads were
principal astronomers (or, in some cases, military officers), and men, her title re-
mained fixed at the assistant-astronomer level.
In the summer of 1923, following the passage of the Civil Service Re-
classification Act, Lamson was required to complete a questionnaire documenting
her job responsibilities. Many women's job titles were downgraded in the reclassifi-
cation effort, to justify their low pay, but for Lamson the Re-classification Act pro-
vided an opportunity to receive the promotion she had long been denied.'3 Lamson's
supervisors recommended an increase in her classification level on the basis of her
scientific training and the independence and nonroutine nature of her work. They
cited her "[c]ollege training with degree from an institution of recognized standing
[w]ith major work in mathematics, mechanics, astronomy," and her work, which
involved "performing ... with considerable latitude for individual judgment respon-
sible scientific work requiring extended training and considerable previous experi-
ence." 14 In other words, she did science. Her specific responsibilities included "re-
duction of [observational] data, proof reading, computing orbits of asteroids and
comets, instructing new computers, [and taking] part in discussion and preparation
for publication of the observations." A particular issue in the reclassification effort
was whether the employee worked under supervision or independently: Lamson, it
was recorded, "works to a large extent upon her own responsibility." This was an
understatement: Since 1911 she had been responsible for the entire computing sec-
tion of the Observatory, supervising the work of eight assistant scientists and com-
puters, six women and two men.'5
Promotion did not follow automatically. Initially, it was denied. A series of letters
followed, including one from Lamson to the chairman of the Personnel Classifica-
tion Board and one from her brother William, a former army officer, to Assistant
Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt. In November 1923, Lamson's promotion was
finally approved; the following summer, her annual salary was nearly doubled-
from $1,600 to $3,000. Yet her title remained fixed at the assistant scientist level. In
1925, Lamson was appointed a National Research Council Delegate to the Interna-
tional Astronomical Union and was finally given the title of associate scientist. At
the time of her death on July 27, 1932, she was earning $3,500 per annum, a salary
comparable to that received by senior male scientists at the observatory.'6 In short,
Eleanor Lamson was a scientist. She was trained as a scientist, she was recognized
12 "Eleanor A(nnie) Lamson," in American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory, ed. James
Cattell and Jacques Cattell (4th ed., 1927), p. 561. Of Bowie, Vening Meinesz, and Wright, only
Wright had a Ph.D., from Heidelberg. New hirees were given the designation of "piece-work" com-
puters, but they were in fact salaried employees. The title presumably reflects the low status and
large quantity of the work.
31 Rossiter, Women Scientists (cit. n. I), p. 222.
14 ELPF, F. Littell to Naval Superintendent, 13 August 1923.
15 ELPF, Classification Sheet no. 66, 13 August 1923. On Lamson's supervisory responsibilities,
ELPF, Lamson to Bailey, 23 August 1923.
16 ELPF, Appeal from Classification Allocation, 13 February 1929, and Retirement Record Ca
as a scientist and, after considerable effort

nities for advancement were circumscribed
leagues recognized her as a fellow profession
bution to the measurement of gravity at se
Lamson's contribution to the S-21 expedition was to take the relatively well-
understood problem of terrestrial gravity reduction and develop it for the less well-
understood marine realm-a perfect case of Kuhnian normal science. The Coast
Survey's techniques for the reduction of gravity data in the terrestrial realm were
well established (albeit not uniformly accepted). They involved laborious calcula-
tions and, in some cases, arguable assumptions about the structure of the Earth's
crust. When gravity measurement was extended in to the marine realm, the existing
procedures had to be adapted to the task, and the embodied assumptions modified
and justified for the specifics of the marine realm. Corrections were needed for the
acceleration and depth of the submarine, height and density of the water column,
and effect of temperature on water density, as well as standard corrections for the
velocity of the Earth's rotation, the sidereal time relative to the base station in Wash-
ington, D.C., and the density of the Earth at that position. This required an under-
standing of the physics of the phenomena responsible for gravity and how they
would be differentially affected by the specifics of the marine environment.
The results of Lamson's work were seven or eight pages of calculations for each
of the expedition's fifty gravity stations. However, the calculations and their expla-
nation were not included in the body of the report of the expedition. They were
published as an appendix. Just as women's work was organizationally and epistemi-
cally segregated at the U.S. Naval Observatory, Lamson's work was segregated in
the observatory's report of the S-21 expedition. Lamson's name appeared in small
print on the front cover as the author of the "Appendix on Computational Procedure"
(Figure 1). This appendix was the first published documentation of the calculational
procedures required to reduce marine gravity data, and later publications on marine
gravity work refer back to this work. 17 But since Lamson was the author of the appen-
dix only and not of the report itself, citations invoke only the names of Vening Meinesz
and Wright. A scientist or historian perusing the literature of this period would never
know that a woman scientist had been involved in early gravity work at all.
The question might be posed, would a man have received more recognition for
the same work? Or, put historically, did men doing the same kind of work receive a
greater amount of credit? But this misses the point: A man would not have done the
same work. In the first place, no two scientific research projects are ever precisely
the same, so one can always look for, and find, distinctions that can be used to justify
differential recognition. If a person is neglected historically, it is never possible to
prove that the matter would have been different had she been a man, or had he been
white, rich, or more powerful. In the second place, men in the 1920s did not do this
17 In the preface to the S-21 report, Naval Observatory Superintendent C. S. Freeman credits Lam-
son with "check[ing] all computations in the report and prepar[ing] the appendix indicating the com-
puting methods employed." (Vening Meinesz and Wright, "The Gravity Measuring Cruise," cit. n.
8). This illustrates how official representations of her work minimized her contributions relative to
what was documented in internal (unpublished) records. F A. Vening Meinesz, Gravity Expeditions
at Sea, 1923-1930, Vol. I (Delft: Netherlands Geodetic Commission, 1932); and F A. Vening
Meinesz, J. H. F Umbgrove, and Ph.H. Kuenen, Gravity Expeditions at Sea, 1923-1932, Vol. II
(Delft: Netherlands Geodetic Commission, 1934).
94 NAOMI ORESKES
. .............. .. ... .. ... .. ........ .... .... . .. .... ............... ... .. .... ........... . .. ..
THE
GRAVITY MEASURING CRUISE
OF TIE U. S. SUBMARINE S-21
F. A.VEEG SNUZ
Naho A_ lstS
F. K WRWHT
0uS L . ca.ir Isuituuka
d w me D. C.
WITH AN APPENDIX ON COMPUTATIONAL

PROCEDURE
M SANO A. LAMSON
U. a _aud eWsa_. 1\Cs .
Figure 1. Frontispiece from "The Gravity Measuring Cruise of the U.S. Submarine S-21,"
Publications of the U.S. Naval Observatory, Second Series, vol. XLH, Appendix I.
kind of work. Sex segregation in the scientific workforce ensured that womenfs work
was different than men's. Eleanor Lamson interpreted the gravity data (mathemati-
cally), Frederick Wright interpreted her interpretation (verbally), and the work of
the former became an appendix to the latter. The point here is not that Lamson would
or should have received greater recognition for her work had she been a man, but
rather that her ellipsis from recognition has nothing to do with objectivity.
In 1929, Lamson was given the task of writing the discussion of the cruise for
the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey's Annual Report on Operations. Her summary
includes an account of the theoretical logic behind the cruise comparable in detail
and congruent in substance with the unpublished reports submitted by Fred Wright
to the Carnegie Institution.'8 This suggests that Lamson participated in scientific
discussions surrounding the cruise, as indicated in her job description; at minimum,
it demonstrates that she understood the theoretical problems represented by the ex-
pedition as fully as Wright and was trusted by Bowie to write them up. In the follow-
up to the S-21 cruise, the S-48 expedition of 1932, Lamsonfs death is noted as the
cause of a delay in the completion of the data reductions and publication of the
I8 EleanorA. Lamson, 'Gravity Expedition of the United States Navy in 19282' in Geodetic Opera-
tions in the United States, ed. William Bowie, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Special Publication
166, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1930), pp. 29-31. F E. Wright, "Gravity
Measuring Cruise of the Submarine U.S.S. S-21$" unpublished report to the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, CIW GL-Director's File #2, 1905-1935, 1929.
scientific results; the supervision and correction of the data reductions was not taken
on by one of her assistants, but was transferred to the Naval Hydrographic Office.'9
Eleanor Lamson is not a forgotten genius-she is not a lost heroine of science.
Nor was she a technician. She was a scientist who played a part in the first U.S.
submarine gravity measurements. She was acknowledged by her coworkers as a
member of the scientific team that produced important new scientific data, at the
forefront of geophysical science.20 But whereas the names of the men with whom
she worked are well known to many scientists and historians of science, the name
of Eleanor Lamson disappeared.
Public Glory, Private Work
Eleanor Lamson was acknowledged within the framework of technical discourse,

but she disappeared in the public arena, where the work of the S-21 expedition was
presented as a heroic voyage of conquest. In private discourse, the principal argu-
ment made in favor of measuring gravity at sea was efficiency. On a practical level,
the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey was a government agency that needed to show
results. On a theoretical level, more data were critical to establishing the legitimacy
of geological theories derived from geodetic data. Submarine work promised to be
far more efficient than terrestrial work for two principal reasons. First, the ocean is a
subhorizontal surface with little topography, and the underlying mass is of relatively
constant density. Therefore, fewer simplifying assumptions are required to interpret
gravity data at sea. Second, establishing stations at sea is merely a matter of sailing
from one place to another. One is not restricted to existing roads or pathways, and
the problems of leveling, finding an unimpeded line-of-sight, and moving men and
equipment through forests filled with ticks, leeches, and snakes are removed. With
the use of submarines to avoid surface disturbances, high-quality data could be col-
lected rapidly.
When William Bowie wrote to John Merriam, director of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington, to secure the latter's financial support for the S-21 expedition, his
brief letter emphasized the promise of efficient data-gathering. Bowie recounted
the number of measurements that Vening Meinesz had completed in his first Dutch
expedition: "In 29 days he made 55 determinations of gravity. This is a wonderful
record." In his Scientific American article, Bowie declared the cruise a success be-
fore any of the data were actually analyzed, because of the quantity of data garnered;
other accounts similarly stress quantitative productivity.2 In all the extant letters
surrounding the S-21 expedition, risk is not mentioned. Not one letter expresses
concern for the safety of the scientists at sea or the risk of potential fatalities. The
only hardship mentioned is boredom at sea, and the possible discomfort of life in
'9 R. M. Field, T. T. Brown, E. B. Collins, and H. H. Hess, The Navy-Princeton Gravity Expedition
to the West Indies in 1933. (U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1933).
201 Others might also be considered part of the "team" at some level-her assistants, the sailors
who sailed the submarine, etc. The point here is that Lamson was acknowledged as a scientist. How
and why others are excluded from recognition is beyond the scope of this paper, but is touched on
by Hevly and by Tucker, this volume. Also see Shapin, "The Invisible Technician" (cit. n. 11).
21 CIWDF: Bowie to John Merriam, 30 August 1929. USNA RG23: Series 33, Annual Office Re-
ports Box 776: 1932; C. S. Freeman, "The Gravity Measuring Cruise of the S-2 1," Transactions of
the American Geophysical Union, 1930, 10:95-98.
96 NAOMI ORESKES
cramped submarine quarters (a particular issue for the 6 foot 6 inch Vening
Meinesz).
In contrast, the public account of gravity measurement portrayed a very diff
image. In the article written for Scientific American, issues of efficiency were
aside in favor of the metaphor of conquest. Aided by pictures of submarines and
military officers, Bowie painted a portrait of the S-21 expedition as a military mis-
sion to conquer the Earth's secrets and penetrate the depths of nature (in this case
literally). He declared, "The S-21 . .. left the dock on the afternoon of October 2nd
... and headed toward the sea on a voyage to conquer the Earth's secrets." If the
expedition were a voyage of conquest, then by implication the returning scientists
were conquering heroes, qualified by their special talents and willingness to endure
hardship in pursuit of their goal. Accordingly, Bowie emphasized that Vening
Meinesz was uniquely qualified to undertake this expedition, as "the only man in
the world to design an apparatus for determining gravity at sea." Like Atlas, Vening
Meinesz had encircled the Earth in his pursuit of gravity, in one case remaining at
sea for two hundred days. Besides the general hardship of prolonged periods at sea,
Bowie pointed out that in the Caribbean, where the S-21 sailed, the seas are "un-
stable," earthquakes are common, and the waters are tremendously deep, falsely
implying that the scientists aboard were in serious danger of being drowned or
killed. But these scientists were also stoics, and although they experienced "much
buffeting by rough seas," they never complained, and on their arrival home, "all
on board were happy, although tired" having participated in a "splendid, epoch-
making expedition."2
Military metaphors and accounts of physical endurance were common throughout
Coast and Geodetic Survey writings, reinforced by the Survey's naval connections.
Stoicism was part of the ideology of the Survey, where men commonly endured
harsh physical conditions while doing technical work. When Bowie's mentor John
Hayford died in 1925, his efforts were recounted accordingly in a National Academy
of Sciences Memoir: "[Hayford's] work called for endurance of the most rugged of
pioneers, the undaunted courage of the explorer, while the operations involved repre-
sent one of the highest types of work demanded from the scientist . .. [His] descrip-
tions of this work [were] replete with tales of heroism and endurance of the men
engaged upon it and would constitute an epic if but known to the world, but accepted
by them as part of the day's work."23
Bowie's popular article on the S-21 expedition likewise emphasized the sacrifice
rather than the reward of the marine work and the unique mix of strength, intelli-
gence, and perserverance of the individuals involved. But was Vening Meinesz really
the "only man in the world" who could measure gravity at sea? Was the work unusu-
ally difficult or hard to reproduce? In their own account written for the Naval Obser-
vatory, Vening Meinesz and Wright suggested precisely the opposite. While Bowie
was heralding Vening Meinesz's unique talents, the latter was concentrating on mak-
ing gravity work as routinized as possible to ensure the reproducibility of the results.
Vening Meinesz wrote:
22 Bowie, "Weighing the Earth" (cit. n. 10), p. 220.

2- W. H. Burger, "John Fillmore Hayford" National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoi
1936, 16:154-292, on pp. 172-174.
[T]he operation of the gravity apparatus is m

server makes each measurement almost mech
temperature, the barometric pressure, and so
tial step is omitted. The single difficult task is the determination of the rates of the
chronometers by comparison with the radio time signals. This operation, which is quite
independent of the gravity measurements, requires a high degree of skill on the part of
the observer. [But] it is possible that a method can be devised [in the future] for making
this comparison mechanically with the aid of a radio set-up, thus eliminating the per-
sonal factor in the method.24
Properly designed, gravity measurement at sea was not difficult. It was mundane,
and this was necessary to ensure reproducibility of the results. One strove for routin-
ization. The elimination of the personal was a requisite of scientific objectivity and
contrasted squarely with the portrait of heroism painted by Bowie. The latter de-
manded uniqueness, the former demanded standardization. Adventure implies un-
certainty, but uncertainty is anathema to objectivity. Bowie's heroic image was
constructed from a situation where uncertainty was in fact studiously minimized and
the individual made to be as irrelevant as possible.
But if the work performed at sea was mundane-and all the available evidence
suggests that it was-then this removes the frequently invoked distinction between
men and womens scientific work: namely, that women's work was mundane (and
therefore of little interest scientifically or historically). The distinction here appears
to be one of image rather than of substance, of context rather than content. The
marine work could be reconstructed as heroic given the potential (albeit unrealized)
for danger in the context of the work. Mundane work undertaken in treacherous
conditions can be heroic. But was gravity work dangerous? Did the scientists aboard
the S-21 worry about safety? Helen and Finley Wright, the children of Fred Wright,
who traveled extensively as a geologist, recall that neither their father nor their
mother worried particularly about this venture; the principal hardship recounted by
their father was headache induced by diesel fumes. Vening Meinesz, they recall,
liked American submarines better than Dutch ones, because he "could stand erect
in more than one place ... and they put an extension of his bunk so he would be
more comfortable." The genre of adventure may have been useful to Bowie as a
narrative strategy and helped to capture his audience's imagination, but it does not
square with the reality of the work of the S-21 expedition. In their final report, Ven-
ing Meinesz and Wright did alert their fellow scientists to one important discomfort
at sea: "An adequate supply of underwear should also be taken to provide for fre-
quent changes in the tropical humid zone."25
The Disappearance of Eleanor Lamson
The voyage of conquest has been a frequent metaphor in popularizations of science,

and its gender-linked qualities are manifest. In his account of the S-21 expedition
for Scientific American, the bulk of Bowie's text focuses on the scientific issues at
24 Vening Meinesz and Wright, "The Gravity Measuring Cruise" (cit. n. 8), p. 5.
25 Helen Wright Greuter, personal communication, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1993; Finley Wright,
written communication, September 28, 1992; Vening Meinesz and Wright, "The Gravity Measuring
Cruise" (cit. n. 8), p. 5.
W . .. .. .. ........ . . .. ... ............. . ... .. . . A..... .. ... .. . . ....
_w ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~w_~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ....
... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .. ... ......
.~~~~~'.' .j'. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ S ,*4
.~~~~~mm
Figure 2. The triumvirate of American geophysical science: men, machines, and military
A. Vening Meinesz (center right) and Wright (far right) at a state dinner in Washington,
D. C. At the far left is Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur; next to him is C. S. Freeman,
superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory B. Detail of Vening Meinesz s pendulum
gravimeter C. Navy Secretary Curtis Wilbur shakes hands with Vening Meinesz on the deck
of the U.S.S. S-21 before launching the expedition. (Reprinted with permission of
Science News, "the weekly newsmagazine of science," copyright 1929, by Science
Service, Inc.)
stake, but the illustrations-except for one map of the world-are entirely of the
men, machines, and military officers supporting them (Figure 2). Bowie's pictures
of men aboard ships implicitly invoked the accomplishments of the great polar ex-
plorers of the previous decades, and the map of the world further emphasized the
expeditionary aspects of the work (Figure 3),26 By invoking the aspects of adven-
ture-bravery, physical strength, danger-the scientists of the S-21 expedition
could qualify for status as explorers, and therefore as public heroes. This was not a
trivial accomplishment. In the late 1920s, Bowie's agency was under intense budget-
ary pressure and, acutely aware of the need for public support, Bowie wrote numer-
ous popular articles and radio addresses, commonly emphasizing the expeditionary
aspects of Coast Survey work.7 The rhetoric and imagery of heroic adventure could
` Cf. Lisa Bloom, Gender on Ice: Ideological Voyages of Polar Expeditions (Santa Cruz: Univ.
California, Santa Cruz, 1990); S. J. Hardy, 'The Earth and Space Sciences at Carnegie: A Pictorial
Sampler from the First Six Decades,' AGU History of Geophysics, Vol. V (cit. n. 5), pp. 237-252.
27 USNA RG23; NOAA CPWB; on the general problems of budgets at the Coast Survey. see T. G.
Manning, U.S. Coast Survey vs. Naval I-vdrographic Office: A 19th Century Rivalry in Science and
Politics (Tuscaloosa: Urniv. Alabama Press, 1988), p. 77.
100 NAOMI ORESKES
.............~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..... ..._.----
.f .. .....
cnus..Tespadh, includin. Venig M (ar an F
__~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~. . . . . . . . . . . . .
.... .......
- ~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ---------l
Wrigt (fr lft).B. he

.N - - AZ amnuft Me "W omm w XNOW
cnus. A. 7eshi and her..... crew, incldin -----g Me frrgt n rdrc

nwmgaieofdSiene, cprigh............... At ..9M9, by Science Sevie In.) _
newma a in. of Science," c 1 b S Si Inc- .) .
serve to engender public enthusiasm in a manner that the esoteric technical

of geodesy would not. Deliberately or not, this imagery left invisible the w
scientist on shore.
By the standards of mechanical or aperspectival objectivity, all of the scientists
involved in the S-21 expedition participated in objective scientific work: Felix Ven-
ing Meinesz and Frederick Wright photographed the period of a pendulum; Eleanor
Lamson converted the photographic records into numbers. But only the men went
to sea. Only the men's work could be cast as a heroic voyage to "conquer the earth's
secrets." Therefore only the men appeared in the public eye. Indeed, Wright was
sent on the expedition not to make an original scientific contribution, but to learn
the techniques of gravity measurement so that the Carnegie Institution could con-
tinue this work after Vening Meinesz had gone home. Yet Wright is featured in the
photographs; Wright was invited to the official dinners. In the public domain, the
fact of participating in the field expedition was more important than the specific
scientific work performed. But could Lams

she been so inclined? Had she been strong enough? Brave enough? Tough enough?
No, women were not permitted aboard Navy submarines in the 1920s, nor are they
today. The work of Eleanor Lamson was no less objective and possibly less mundane
than the work of Felix Vening Meinesz and Frederick Wright. Eleanor Lamson satis-
fied the norms of scientific objectivity, but her work was rendered invisible by the
rhetoric of heroism in the public sphere. By the standard of objectivity, Eleanor
Lamson was a scientist, but by the standard of heroic conquest, she was not.
Peter Dear has argued that, in the emerging scientific traditions of the British
Royal Society, the authority of the scientific witness was linked to the articulation
of the circumstances under which the witnessing took place. One important detail
was the experience and expertise of the observer. However, as the ideal of aperspec-
tival objectivity grew in the late nineteenth century, public representations of the
unique skills of the scientist accordingly shrank.28 Then how could a scientist assert
the authority of his witness? One way was to document the extremes to which he
was willing to go to obtain scientific facts. As Bruce Hevly argues elsewhere in this
volume, details of harsh observational circumstances could serve to establish the
status of the observer as an exceptional man-even (or especially) if the observa-
tions could have in principle been made by someone else. The more extreme the
conditions, the greater the man. Thus, to paraphrase Carolyn Jones in her discussion
of the ideology of heroic individualism in modern art, the symbolism of heroism
served to authenticate scientific discovery by demonstrating the unique qualities of
the scientist.29
In the case of modem art in the early twentieth century, Jones has argued that the
ideology of the heroic individual provided an informing backdrop for various forms
of modernism by emphasizing the isolated artist alienated from life, culture, and
family. Yet in reality, few of the modernists worked alone, and many male artists
shared their studios with women, typically spouses or lovers who were also col-
leagues. Nevertheless, in photographs of these artists at work, the women either are
not seen or are placed in the background as witnesses to, but not participants in, the
creative act. In a telling footnote, Jones describes a museum that has been estab-
lished in the studio that Jackson Pollack shared with the painter Lee Krasner, also
his wife. Pollack worked there for some twenty years, Krasner for thirty, but in the
posthumous recreation of the studio Krasner's existence is "documented by a small
display of materials in an outer room." Krasner's real presence in the life of Jackson
Pollack has been removed in the public reconstruction of that life.30 Likewise the
reconstruction of the S-21 expedition as a heroic voyage omitted Eleanor Lamson
28 Peter Dear, "Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society," Isis, 1985, 76:145-161; also
see Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experi-
mental Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985). Daston, "Escape from perspective" (cit
n. 6); and Daston and Galison, "Image of Objectivity" (cit. n. 6).
29 A parallel exists with the polar explorers of the early twentieth century: Scott was lionized in
the Victorian imagination for the hardship he endured, and ultimately died of, while Amundsen, the
better explorer, failed to capture the public imagination. Carolyn Jones, "Andy Warhol's 'Factory':
The Production Site, Its Context, and Its Impact on the Work of Art," Science in Context, 1990
4:101-131.
30 Quote, ibid., p. 121 (emphasis added); Ironically, Krasner herself sought invisibilit
the confines of feminine and wifely identity, first reducing her name from Lenore to Lee,
and ultimately not signing her pictures at all (Anne M. Wagner, "Lee Krasner as L. K.,"
tions, 1989, 25:42-57).
102 NAOMI ORESKES
and contributed to her invisibility by denying her contributions in the public arena
even while they were acknowledged in the private technical sphere. The imagery
and rhetoric of expeditionary heroism in the field sciences has camouflaged women's
contributions, by reinforcing an image associated with physicality, when in fact
physicality often had nothing to do with the actual scientific work, and by relegating
their contributions to the realm of the mundane, in spite of the reality that field work
was commonly characterized more by boredom than excitement.
OBJECTIVITY AND HEROISM: COMPETING VISIONS OF SCIENCE
The modem scientific enterprise has been historically characterized by two compet-
ing and to some extent contradictory images. Most prevalent is the image of a hyper-
rational, dispassionate observer: a serious man in a white lab coat. He may be skinny,
he probably wears glasses-he is an antihero of a sort-and his appearance suggests
a slightly suspect masculinity: His life's work is mental, not physical. But a secon
conceptualization is also pervasive, if less readily conjured: the scientist as a heroic
individual, dedicated to the quest for knowledge against the bulwarks of ignorance
and the powers of darkness and superstition. He, too, believes in the powers of rea-
son, but his commitment to it is deeply passionate, and his actions may require great
physicality. The image of a heroic competitor has played at least as important a role
in science as that of the dispassionate observer. Yet the values that these two images
represent and promulgate are not the same, nor are their implications for women.
The first image is linked to the ideal of objectivity. The dispassionate dissector of
nature is untainted by strong emotion. His white lab coat is a cipher for a bloodless
rationality that permits the pursuit of nature with cold and abstract objectivity: The
personal characteristics of the individual are subsumed behind his colorless cloak-
ing; the person within the coat is interchangeable; the work performed, fully re-
producible. His possibly suspect masculinity proves the irrelevance of emotional
connections and physical attributes: His brain is his only essential organ. If we focus
on this image, objectivity appears to be the central value of science and, at least in
theory, anyone should be able to don the white coat. It is primarily a matter of will-
ingness. The interchangeable observer could in principle be a woman.
The image of the scientist engaged in a heroic quest is less obviously connected
to any particular scientific virtue, but more obviously related to images of successful
masculinity in European culture. The heroic image conjures a vision of a man of
great physical strength who, like the protagonists of Greek tragedy, is willing to
sacrifice the emotional attachments of normal life and risk bodily harm for the sake
of his quest. Above all, he is heroic in his dedication-in his willingness to sacrifice
health, safety, or financial reward to achieve his goal. Although he is detached from
the quotidian concerns of ordinary mortals, this man is anything but dispassionate.
As Evelyn Fox Keller and Sharon Traweek have emphasized, the quest itself is
value-driven, deeply emotional, and contains a strong component of eroticism: The
struggle to "unveil the secrets" and "penetrate the depths" of nature implies an activ-
ity suffused with male sexuality."3 The scientific hero is not interchangeable, and
3' Keller, Reflections (cit. n. 1); Sharon Traweek, Beatntitnes and Lifetimes: The World of High
Energy Physicists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), esp. pp. 102-105 and 158-159.
Also see Harding, Whose Science? (cit. n. 2).
not female. Thus, contrary to common belief, it may be the passion rather than the
dispassion of science that is most threatened by femininity.
How do these two images fit together? Perhaps they don't. Heroism involves the
glorification of the individual, objectivity demands his effacement. Thus the image
of objectivity and the image of heroism play complementary roles and are useful in
different contexts. Among scientific colleagues who share the value of objectivity-
but are nevertheless primed to challenge each other's results-a scientist may em-
phasize his dispassion to buttress his truth claims. Objectivity is an epistemological
ideal, to which scientific colleagues can reasonably be assumed to subscribe. But it
is also an isolating ideal, one that is not generally shared by the world at large. Thus
it can be an alienating ideal, which separates the scientist from others from whom
he may want or need support. Therefore, among a more diverse community the sci-
entist may emphasize his heroic virtues to appeal to larger community values. Theo-
dore Porter has suggested that the rhetoric and trappings of objectivity may be used
to buttress a scientific community against a hostile external community.32 This may
be true if the status of the discipline as a science is disputed. But if the status of the
discipline is secure, or if the outside community is perceived as potentially allied,
then the heroic image can be invoked, and perhaps with greater effect. In the case
of the S-21 expedition, the dichotomy between public and private discourse clearly
demonstrates that heroic ideology was considered useful or appropriate in the public
realm. Heroic attributes and self-sacrifice make the scientist worthy of praise, admi-
ration, and support, and thus connect him as an individual to human ideals shared
by a larger community. Heroism is an emotive ideal, which potentially connects
science to all forms of intense human endeavor.
Heroism may also function as an internalized ideal, one that makes the scientific
effort feel exciting, important, and valuable to the scientist himself.33 Heroic ideol-
ogy can transmogrify the mind-numbing tedium of daily scientific work into some-
thing glamorous and transcendental, and thus have a profoundly motivating power.
What implications does this have for women in science? Unless an alternative ideol-
ogy is found, the female scientist is denied a connection to the community at large
and denied a potentially important internal motivation as well.
Men, Women, and Objectivity
For centuries, men have argued that women are not at the forefront of science be-
cause they lack the necessary objectivity. A classic example of this attitude has been
cited by Margaret Rossiter, from a New York Times editorialist considering Marie
Curie's widely publicized visit to the United States in 1921. The anonymous editori-
alist wrote that there would always be more men than women in science because
more men have "the power-a necessary qualification for any real achievement in
science-of viewing facts abstractly rather than relationally." Perhaps ironically,
many feminists are now arguing more or less the same point, and responding by
advocating relational, wholist, or contextual thinking.34 But this is the intellectual
32 Porter, "Objectivity as Standardization" (cit. n. 6).

-3 Traweek (Beamtimes [cit. n. 3 1], p. 81) discusses the ideology of heroism in the self-image
of physicists.
-3 Rossiter, Women Scientists (cit. n. 1), p. 127. On feminist perspectives, see, for example, Ruth
Bleir, Science and Gender (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon, 1984); Ruth Bleir, ed., Feminist Approaches
to Science (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986); Hilary Rose, "Hand, Brain and Heart: A Feminist
104 NAOMI ORESKES
equivalent of high-low poker: it accepts the game as fixed, even as it inverts the
rules. But is the game fixed?
In her study of physicists engaged in high-energy particle research in the United
States and Japan, Sharon Traweek found that American physicists believed that
women did not succeed in physics because they were not individualistic enough,
while Japanese physicists believed that women did not succeed because they did
not know how to be part of a team. 35 The cultural expectations of masculinity and
femininity, and their relation to perceived or imagined scientific virtues, are different
in these two national groups even though they self-identify as part of the same scien-
tific research community. What is cast as essential by one group is opposite to what
is cast as essential by the other-and in both cases women are deemed deficient.
Yet these groups are doing essentially the same science. The ideology of science
bears a stronger relation to the belief structure of the scientific community than to
the nature of the scientific work itself. Ideology and rhetoric both reflect and create
the differential status of different kinds of scientific work, but neither the ideology,
nor the rhetoric, nor the valuations are intrinsic to the work itself. At any given
time and place, different elements of scientific ideology may function to exclude or
camouflage the contributions of women scientists. The channeling of women scien-
tists into calculational work at large observatories suggests that in the early twentieth
century the ideals of heroism were more central to the ideology and self-image of
American geophysical science than were the ideals of objectivity.
Heroic rhetoric has been sharply manifested in the field-based sciences, with their
historic connections to and overtones of expeditions and voyages of discovery. But
heroic ideology exists in the laboratory-based sciences as well and invariably in-
vokes the implication of risked bodily harm. Every physicist has heard the apoc-
ryphal story of the graduate student who braved an explosion and fire at the
now-defunct Cambridge Electron Accelerator to salvage his data, only to be blown
out the door, "data in hand," as the pressurized tanks exploded again.36 Every chemist
has heard colleagues parade cavalier attitudes toward dangerous chemicals; every
medical student has heard professors disdain protective equipment or boast about
how many patients they see on how few hours sleep. Even mathematics, the most
cerebral of the sciences, is infused with the ideology of physical danger and self-
sacrifice: In the early twentieth century, one prominent mathematician explicitly
compared the pursuit of mathematical truth with the pursuit of alpine heights:
"Many times a scientific truth is placed as it were on a lofty peak, and to reach it we
have at our disposal at first only hard paths along perilous slopes whence it is easy
to fall into the abysses where dwells error; only after we have reached the peak by
these paths is it possible to lay out safe roads which lead there without peril."37
The choice of the alpine metaphor suggests that, appearances to the contrary, the
Epistemology for the Natural Sciences," Signs, 1983, 9:73-90; Hilary Rose, "Beyond Masculinist
Realities: A Feminist Epistemology for the Sciences," in Feminist Approaches to Science, ed. Ruth
Bleir (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986), pp. 57-76; H. Longino and R. Doell, "Body, Bias, and
Behavior," Signs, 1983, 9:206-227; H. Longino, "Can There Be a Feminist Science?" Hypatia, 1987,
2:51-64; and H. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (cit. n. 3).
15 Traweek, Beamtimes (cit. n. 3 1).
36 Ibid., pp. 84-85.
17 Corrado Serge in "On Some Tendencies in Geometric Investigations," Bulletin of the Ameri
Math Society, 1904 (June) 10:453, cited in Rosemary Schmalz, "Out of the Mouths of Mathem
cians" (Mathematical Association of America, 1993), p. 48.
mathematician is maneuvering through dangerous territory, and therefore worthy of

heroic stature. But although the risks taken by mathematicians are largely metaphor-
ical and those taken by geologists and chemists mostly exaggerated, one group of
scientists have taken self-sacrifice literally: those who have engaged in auto-
experimentation. In the most extreme manifestation of heroic ideology, a number of
individuals have made their bodies into their exploratory territory.
THE BODY AS EXPLORATORY TERRITORY:

AUTO-EXPERIMENTATION AS HEROIC TRADITION
The history of biology and medicine is filled with stories, both documented and
apocryphal, of physician-investigators who risked their lives through auto-
experimentation and became immortalized. There is the case of the Dutch surgeon
who performed the world's first known cholecystectomy, sans anesthetic, on himself:
His gallstones are enshrined in the museum of the Department of Pathology in
Leiden.38 The enlarged heart of John Hunter, who infected himself with venereal
disease to study its progress, was preserved in a jar for centuries. Daniel Carrion,
credited with solving the problem of Peruvian Oroya fever, is memorialized in stat-
ues at the medical school in Lima that bears his name, and the name of Walter Reed,
inaccurately credited with infecting himself with yellow fever, lives on every time a
president of the United States visits the doctor.39
One of the best-documented cases of auto-experimentation involves Dr. Max von
Pettenkofer (1818-1901), the German public health pioneer who debated with Rob-
ert Koch over the cause of cholera. In the wake of the epidemic that devastated
Munich in 1854, Pettenkofer carefully studied the distribution of cholera mortality
and discovered that low-lying and marshy areas were by far the hardest hit. He con-
cluded that the disease was caused by poisons produced by the interaction of air
with decaying substances in the subsurface. Pettenkofer became an early advocate
of sanitary water facilities and pioneered Munich's first public water supply. How-
ever, in 1884, against Pettenkofer's theory, Robert Koch identified the Vibrio chol-
erae bacillus in the blood of individuals dead from the disease.40
Pettenkofer refused to believe that an organism alone could cause cholera. If it
did, why did some individuals in a household contract the disease and others not?
Why did the poor suffer disproportionately? Why did cholera strike certain poor
districts and not others? In an attempt to demonstrate that the disease was caused
by the interaction of Koch's pathogen with soil and groundwater chemistry and not
by the microbe alone, Pettenkofer ingested a laboratory culture of cholera bacillis,
estimated to contain over one billion active pathogens. He performed the experiment
in front of his students, invoking the metaphor of military service and self-sacrifice:
"Even if I be mistaken and this experiment that I am making imperils my life, I shall
look death quietly in the face, for what I am doing is no frivolous or cowardly act
38 I am grateful to Thomas Roos, Dartmouth College, for this.

39 Jon Franklin and John Sutherland, M.D., Guinea Pig Doctors (New York: William Morrow an
Co., 1984); Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Med
cine (New York: Random House, 1987).
40 Alfred S. Evans, "Pettenkofer Revisited: The Life and Contributions of Max von Pettenkofer
Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1973, 46:161-176; Karl Wieninger, Max von Pettenkofer (Mu
nich: Hugendubel, 1987). Norman Howard-Jones, "Robert Koch and the Cholera vibrio: A Cente-
nary," British Medical Journal, 1984, 288:379-383.
106 NAOMI ORESKES
of suicide, but I shall die in the service of science as a soldier perishes on the field
of honor.... Man, who wants to occupy a higher position than the beasts, must be
ready to sacrifice even life and health on behalf of higher and more ideal goods!"4'
The results of Pettenkofer's heroic self-sacrifice were unheroically inconclusive:
He did not contract the disease, although he did experience abdominal pain and
diarrhea, and large quantities of bacillus were found in his stool. Subsequently, Pet-
tenkofer's assistant and several of his students ingested live cultures with similar
results. In principle, their actions should have posed a dilemma for the germ theo-
rists; in practice they had little impact. Pettenkofer's survival was dismissed as luck,
or perhaps the result of some sort of resistance engendered by long-term contact
with the disease. The problem of why some exposed individuals sickened and died,
while others did not, remained unresolved. Nevertheless, the story lives on, and
Pettenkofer is now best known for his auto-experiment, rather than for his lasting
contributions to public health.
Was Pettenkofer a scientific hero or an old fool who knowingly endangered him-
self and his associates? In a recent portrayal of this historical incident by a leading
medical writer, Pettenkofer and his colleagues are criticized "not because [the exper-
iments] were done on themselves, but because parts of their theory . .. were wrong
and because they did not accumulate enough data on a sufficient number of volun-
teers."42 In this view, Pettenkofer's error was not in the self-aggrandizing act of auto-
experimentation, or in the ethical ambiguity of encouraging students to endanger
their lives, but in the methodologically inconclusive nature of the experiments.
The auto-experiments of Daniel Carrion were conclusive-fatally so. Carrion
injected himself with the blood of a boy suffering from a common skin ailment,
verruga peruana, to study the progress of the disease. Three weeks later, Carrion
developed a fatal case of Oroya fever, inadvertently discovering that the two afflic-
tions were in fact the same disease and proving that one bacteria could cause two
(apparently) different diseases. Although a murder charge was considered against
the colleague who assisted him, Carrion did not intend to kill himself; verruga peru-
ana was an ugly, painful disease, but rarely fatal. Yet popular accounts apocryphally
credit him with conscious willingness to sacrifice himself in the name of science
and country: "I'm not frightened by the skin deformities, and if the disease develops
so seriously that it affects a vital organ, I'm ready to pay with my life."43
Pettenkofer could be accused of stupidity and Carrion of naivete, but often the
auto-experimenter is portrayed as smarter than those surrounding him, possessed of
an emboldening insight lacking in his colleagues. Biologists recount with pleasure
the story of Lem Cleaveland, the Harvard researcher who imported prohibited para-
sites for his research by infecting himself, or the case of Werner Forssman, who
broke into locked cabinets to steal the equipment needed to catheterize his own
heart, and later won the Nobel Prize for it. Another example is Beppino Giovanelli,
who discovered that thymidine, a component of DNA, could shrink cancer tumors
in mice, and tested it on himself to force the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
4' Wieninger, Max Von Pettenkofer (cit. n. 40), pp. 176-178. A Viennese colleague of mine recalls
being told about Pettenkofer and other heroes of science in school and, concluding that you had to
be willing to ingest pus or walk through sewers to be a scientist, she pursued her studies in foreign
languages instead.
42 Altman, Who Goes First." (cit. n. 39).
13 Franklin and Sutherland, Guinea Pig Doctors (cit. n. 39), p. 124.
into immediate human experimental trials. Thymidine proved to be ineffective in

humans; nevertheless, Giovanelli is portrayed as a hero for his defiance of bureau-
cratic regulation. As two recent writers have put it, "The modem scientist, frustrated
by the elaborate rules of the multi-layered science and health bureaucracy, often
experiments on himself simply to avoid having to waste time dickering with his
human experimentation committee."44 In the extreme, commentators view the auto-
experimenter as a kind of scientific superman, whose unique insight permits him to
break rules imposed by and for ordinary mortals. The act of self-sacrifice demon-
strates an ultimate dedication to the search for knowledge. But whereas the field
scientist risks possible harm from the external world, the auto-experimenter goes
further and internalizes the danger in his very body.
The British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane considered death in a well constructed
auto-experiment "the ideal way of dying." Haldane's father, the physiologist John
Scott Haldane, engaged in a lifetime of auto-experimentation on diverse subjects
related to the limits of human endurance and occupational health. Among other
things, the elder Haldane inhaled carbon monoxide in the aftermath of coal mine
explosions and subsequently demonstrated the value of canaries in detecting bad
mine air.45 It was said that he could "stand dry air to about three hundred degrees
Fahrenheit, but if he moved about too much his hair began to singe." The younger
Haldane-who on occasion participated in his father's work-invoked military her-
oism to describe his father's attitude toward his science: "[My father was] like a
good soldier who will risk his life and endure wounds in order to gain victory. [H]e
did not seek pain in his work, but [was] sufficiently interested in the work to ignore
pain or fear."46
But is self-experimentation rational? Does it prove anything scientifically? Histo-
rians, philosophers, and sociologists have amply demonstrated that a single instance
of refutation never overturns a strongly held theory, and a single instance of confir-
mation never establishes a new one. Instances of self-experimentation have certainly
led to significant insight or stimulated more extensive research efforts, but the epis-
temological value of most auto-experiments-typically performed once or twice by
a single individual-is certainly questionable.47 Some self-experiments have led to
44 Ibid., p. 19.
45 Quote, Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), p. 213. Haldane's interest in human endurance and
occupational safety was linked to his socialist political beliefs. See J. B. S. Haldane, Science and
Everyday Life (New York: MacMillan, 1940).
46 Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), pp. 223, 215.
47 A rare example of someone who has engaged in repeated auto-experiments is John Stapp, the
surgeon credited with demonstrating the value of seat belts. As a U.S. Air Force officer responsible
for improving the design of safety harnesses, he engaged in repeated crash tests with himself as
"dummy." His own accounts of his work are notably dispassionate, and his arguments for using
himself in crash tests quite mundane: "You can design harnesses and restraints that are far better
after you ride with one of your mistakes" (Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), p. 31). Stapp took
extensive precautions to minimize risk, used humans only after experiments had been made with
dummies or animals, never ran an experiment on a Monday or Friday, and only married after he
terminated this line of research (ibid., pp. 29-32). Unlike Carri6n, who purportedly welcomed death,
Stapp is quoted as "devoutly wish[ing] that I would outlive any experiment by at least six months so
[as not to] cast aspersions on the research" (ibid., p. 32). Not surprisingly, Stapp is not an American
national hero. Few persons outside of the military or Detroit have heard of him.
The most famous scientist to injure himself while undertaking scientific investigations is Isaac
Newton, who damaged his eyes during observations of the sun. After looking directly at the sun as
part of his experiments with color and vision, Newton suffered afterimages that lasted for days and
that could be made to return on the thought of it for months after. Newton's conclusion, recounted to
108 NAOMI ORESKES
considerable harm, such as the case of "attenuated" poliomyelitis vaccine, which

was administered to thousands of American children in the 1930s after having been
tested by its developer, John Kolmer, on himself, his assistant, and his two sons. The
live vaccine resulted in numerous polio cases and at least five deaths.48 So why self-
experiment? The motivation clearly transcends the potential epistemic gain. The
motivation is also in part emotive. The self-experiment demonstrates the willingness
of the experimenter to risk personal harm in the name of science, and thus to qualify
for heroic status. By making his body into his physical territory-and risking
death-the self-experimenter casts himself as a heroic explorer into uncharted do-
mains.
As Jennifer Tucker points out elsewhere in this volume, the meteorologist James
Glaisher became both a scientific and public hero just when he risked his life, and
almost died, in his aerial ascents. The auto-experimenter gains stature precisely be-
cause of the potential for bodily harm. The inherent contradiction, as Tucker notes
in her discussion of Glaisher, is that the element of danger that makes for heroics
also potentially undermines the scientific credibility of the work. To legitimate the
adventure, the danger must remain (or be perceived to be) at least in part uncon-
trolled. Yet this lack of control potentially undermines the reproducibility, and thus
the perceived objectivity and value, of the work performed. The ideals of objectivity
and the ideals of heroism do not entirely mesh. The value of self-sacrifice is ideolog-
ical, not epistemological.
The ideological import of self-experimentation is most clearly demonstrated by
the case of Walter Reed, the army physician whose research team in Cuba in 1900
proved, by exposing human volunteers, that yellow fever was transmitted by mosqui-
toes. Having devastated French workers in the first effort to build a Panama Canal,
yellow fever was impeding American imperial aspirations as well as threatening
military public health. Reed's accomplishment was popularized in novels and films,
and Reed was immortalized as a medical hero.49 A significant part of this immortali-
zation was the subsequently disproved myth that Reed had exposed himself to yel-
low fever. In some fictionalized accounts, Reed even died of the disease. (He died
in 1902 from appendicitis.) But why should it matter whether Reed actually exposed
himself to yellow fever? He led the team that solved a major public health problem,
a tremendous scientific and administrative accomplishment. Evidently, heroic status
required more: Reed had to have been prepared to expose himself to the same dan-
gers as his men, and to have been willing-like Pettenkofer, Carrion, and Haldane,
like foot soldiers on the battlefield-to sacrifice his own life in the line of duty. Self-
sacrifice is essential to the ideology of heroic individualism in science, an ideology
that portrays science as a "war against ignorance that spends most of its time bogged
down in confusion and procedure . .. and then surges dramatically ahead as a result
John Locke, was that his activities had been foolish and undermined his ability to do further objective
scientific work on the topic (H. W Turnball, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton [Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1961], pp. 153-154).
48 Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), p. 127.
49 The most famous popular account is the 1938 MGM film, Yellow Jack. Reed is portrayed as an
extremely calm and steadfast scientist, determined to find the cause of the fever in spite of opposition
from his superior officers, who accuse him of interfering with and undermining their authority, and
his men, who repeatedly tell him it is a hopeless cause.
of individual human vision, faith, and courage. No one illustrates this truth more
dramatically than the scientist who wagers his life on the correctness of his the-
ory."50 The body as "field site" is the ultimate heroic tale, in which the scientist
potentially risks everything by engaging a battle against nature on his own internal
territory. As Hamlet played out his struggle within his own psyche, so the auto-
experimenter engages his battle within his own body. The persistent theme of mili-
tary sacrifice reveals both the heroic aspiration and the incongruence of a vision of
women on the battlefield.
CAN'T WOMEN BE HEROES?
Although the word objectivity implies masculinity to many observers, i

guistically gender-linked. The word hero is. As Douglas Hofstadter has emphasized,
a hero and a heroine are simply not the same thing. Our language does not contain
the word heroinic; we have no heroinic struggles.5' Predictably, virtually all the
published (and apocryphal) accounts of self-experimentation are about men. In his
detailed book on auto-experimentation, Lawrence K. Altman provides only two ex-
amples of auto-experimentation by women, and in both cases casts their contribu-
tions as acts of labor or love, rather than heroic bravery. One is Dr. Elsie Widdowson,
who pioneered accurate measurement of nutrient contents of foods. Along with her
research partner Dr. Robert McCance-a student of J. B. S. Haldane-Widdowson
engaged in a lifetime of auto-experiments to determine human nutrient requirements
and the effects of nutrient imbalances, in some cases at considerable risk. Perhaps
her most socially important contribution was the determination of minimum nutrient
requirements as guidelines for wartime ration allowances imposed by the British
government during World War II, work that was considered top secret. But in Alt-
man's account, Widdowson is cast not as a war hero, but as a steady investigator
whose work was "more laborious than heroic, more grueling than dramatic." Alt-
man's second example is Mary Goldberger, who volunteered to be injected with the
blood of a woman dying from pellegra to confirm her husband's belief that the dis-
ease was a nutritional deficiency, and not infectious. According to Altman's account,
Goldberger declared, "This was an act of faith; it took no courage." In this represen-
tation, hers was not the act of a hero(ine) willing to risk personal harm in the name
of science, but of a loyal wife unquestionably believing the veracity of her hus-
band's work.52
Altman attributes the lack of stories about women mostly to statistics, because
until recently few women have been medical researchers. Nevertheless, he adds that
50 Franklin and Sutherland, Guinea Pig Doctors (cit. n. 39), p. 18.

5I Douglas Hofstadter, "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Conscious-
ness," in Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic
Books, 1986), Ch. 7, p. 153.; Douglas R. Hofstadter, "Sexist Language: Just the Tip of a Cognitive
Iceberg," Iris: A Journal About Women, 1986, 16:24-28. Webster's confirms Hofstader's insight: A
hero is a "mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or
ability; an illustrious warrior; a man admired and emulated for his achievements and qualities." A
heroine is derivative, not descended from the gods, but merely "having the qualities of a hero."
52 Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), quotes, pp. 239, 244. Mary Goldberger's acts were cast as
heroic when she found herself penniless after her husband's death, and her story was told to Congress
to earn her a widow's pension. ("Wife of Pellegra Conquerer Risked Danger to Prove Husband's
Theory Sound," The New York Times, 21 May 1929, p. 33).
110 NAOMI ORESKES
"female medical researchers could, however, be taking an undue risk if they experi-
mented on themselves during pregnancy or at a time when they might become preg-
nant. It could be foolish for a woman of reproductive age to jeopardize her own
health and the well-being of an unborn child by doing an experiment on herself."53
But if self-sacrifice is the ultimate way of serving humanity, then women-who
would be foolish or irresponsible to endanger their unborn children-are denied the
opportunity to engage in the most important scientific work. Women are relegated
to the inconsequential.
The virtual impossibility of creating a sustainable female image of scientific hero-
ism is demonstrated by the case of Marie Curie. Virtually the only generally known
female scientist, Curie overcame poverty and discrimination to pursue a life of sci-
ence and win two Nobel prizes.54 Curie engaged in a highly physical struggle to
isolate radium and did in fact sacrifice her life to science, succumbing to cancer
induced by radiation exposure. Yet as Helena Pycior has recently emphasized, in
the persona of Curie the narrative conventions of heroism came out all wrong: Her
biographers generally cast her as a drudge rather than an Achilles, her physical exer-
tions closer to those of a charwoman than a superman.55 Stephen Brush has noted
that popular science books "make [her scientific work] sound like the worst form of
drudgery: slaving over hot vats for four years," like a kind of tedious cookery. Even
professional historians of science have perpetuated the notion of Curie's style as
"dogged [and] plodding." But was her work really more tedious than that of many
other scientists? Was it more tedious than the work done by Vening Meinesz and
Fred Wright aboard the S-21 ? Imagine for a moment if Vening Meinesz had been a
woman, and see how easy it becomes to recast his work as, day after day, in a
cramped and fetid submarine, looking out over dull gray seas, she carefully and
laboriously measures the period of a pendulum and duly records the results....56
HEROISM, OBJECTIVITY, AND THE CENTRAL CLICHE OF SCIENCE
Heroic ideology informs one of the most time-worn cliches of science-that science
is a long, lonely struggle, and crucial discoveries are almost always made at night.
The recent publication of the United States National Academy of Sciences, On
i- Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), p. 311.

51 M. B. Ogilvie, Women in Science: Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1986); Eve Curie, Madame Curie (New York: Da Capo Press, 1937); Helena M. Pycior,
"Marie Curie's Anti-Natural Path: Time Only for Science and Family," in Uneasy Careers (cit. n. 5);
and Helena M. Pycior, "Reaping the Benefits of Collaboration While Avoiding its Pitfalls: Marie
Curie's Rise to Scientific Prominence," Social Studies of Science, 1993, 23:301-323.
55 Pycior, 'Reaping the Benefits" (cit. n. 54). The notable exception to this is her daughter, Eve,
upon whose book the Hollywood film, Madame Curie, was based.
56 Stephen Brush, "Women in Physical Science: From Drudges to Discoverers," Physics Teacher,
1985, 23:11-19, on p. 13, quoted in Pycior, "Reaping the Benefits" (cit. n. 54), p. 302. Badash, cited
in Pycior, "Reaping the Benefits" (cit. n. 54). Women geographers might seem the best candidates
for scientific heroism, given that many of them did encounter physical danger in the course of their
explorations. However, the history of scientific geography suggests that for women to be accepted in
the professional community, they had to suspend all ordinary expectations of feminine behavior and
appearance. If they did, then they might be treated by their (male) colleagues as "honorary men," but
this process of course undermined them as female heroes, while their general exclusion from scien-
tific societies such as the Royal Geographic undermined their position as scientific heroes. Indeed,
in at least one documented instance, a woman geographer referred to herself as a man. See Mona
Domosh, "Toward a Feminist Historiography of Geography," Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, 1991, N.S., 16:95-104, 484-490.
Being a Scientist, begins not with a discussion of objectivity, but with the following
story of discovery:
Tracy Sonneborn, 32-year-old biologist at Johns Hopkins University, was working late
into the night.... Looking through the eyepiece [of his microscope], he witnessed for
the first time what he would later call a "spectacular" reaction: the paramecia had clus-
tered into large clumps and were conjugating. In a state of delirious excitement, Sonne-
born raced through the halls of the deserted building looking for someone with whom
he could share his joy. Finally he dragged a puzzled custodian back to the laboratory to
peer through the microscope and witness this marvelous phenomenon.57
Of all possible stories of scientific discovery, why did the National Academy
choose this one? Why is it relevant that there was no one around to see Sonneborm's
discovery except the janitor? The cliche of midnight discovery is a cliche of heroic
dedication: a testimony to the scientist's self-sacrificial willingness to continue to
work long after lesser individuals have gone home. The story is a motivational tale,
designed to encourage the right people to join the quest. Margaret Rossiter has
pointed out that the entire genre of advice books to young scientists is based upon
the advice that "the one true path to advancement in science is through long uninter-
rupted hours of concentrated work." Midnight is the hour of uninterrupted work. But
if the scientist in the story were a woman, with children alone at home, would we
still admire her dedication? Would the story work?58 By emphasizing attributes asso-
ciated with masculinity, heroic ideology renders the female scientist invisible. By
emphasizing activities that might be considered irresponsible if undertaken by a
woman, heroic ideology relegates women's work to the realm of the inconsequential.
The marginalization of women in science is a predictable consequence of heroic
rhetoric, irrespective of whether the individuals invoking that rhetoric are con-
sciously sexist or not.
The story of Tracy Sonneborn encapsulates a second implicit message-that sci-
ence is done in solitude. In fact, modern science is anything but a solitary enterprise,
yet the image of science as an individual pursuit persists with tremendous potency.
The implication is that, no matter how large the laboratory, breakthroughs are made
by individuals, because the scientist whose dedication drives him to persist where
others have given up necessarily ends up alone. Implicitly, he has foresworn his
familial and other personal attachments. Like the eponymous hero of Sinclair Lew-
is's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of the 1920s, Arrowsmith, who abandons his wife
and child to pursue science in the woods of Vermont with a sole male colleague, the
true scientist must sacrifice the emotional attachments of ordinary life in the pursuit
57 F. Ayala, et al., On Being a Scientist (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences Press,
1989), p. 1. A virtually identical opening line is found in the Reader's Digest account of Barry Mar-
shall, the Australian physican who recently demonstrated the role of infection in ulcers, in part by
ingesting a concentrated dose of bacteria: "As the hands of the wall clock edged towards midnight,
Barry Marshall rubbed his eyes and placed a slide under the microscope . . ." (Suzanne Chazin, "The
Doctor Who Wouldn't Accept No," Reader's Digest, 1993 [October], 143:199-224, on p. 199). It is
stunning how this particular narrative structure transcends the class distance represented by the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences and the Reader's Digest.
58 Rossiter, Women Scientists (cit. n. 1), p. xi. One former scientist, now an industry executive,
writing on why science is good preparation for the corporate world, explicitly substitutes the care of
his instrument for the care of children: "I can well remember sitting up until 3 A.M. babysitting
our precious high-flux beam reactor through an experiment. The hours didn't matter...." (Michael
Schulhof, "Why Business Needs Scientists," Scientific American, 1992 [November], p. 138).
112 NAOMI ORESKES
of knowledge. But if Martin Arrowsmith were a woman, would she-could she

have abandoned her child?59
The rhetoric of solitude is linked to the image of objectivity: The scientist's intel-
lectual detachment is mirrored in his physical isolation. But perhaps too readily
accepting this imagery, feminist critics have interpreted objectivity as an attribute of
the individual-hence one that might be more or less present according to gender
identity. But should objectivity be interpreted as an individual attribute? Most histo-
rians and sociologists of science have thought not. Both classic commentators such
as Merton, Conant, and Polanyi, and recent feminist defenders of objectivity such
as Helen Longino, have rejected the notion of individual objectivity and considered
aperspectival knowledge to be a social achievement, attributable to the public na-
ture of scientific discourse. In the aftermath of the Manhattan Project-perhaps the
ultimate example of communal science-James Conant argued that scientific objec-
tivity arises not so much from the habits or qualities of individuals as from the
communal structure of laboratories and scientific societies, which so effectively en-
force impartiality as to render it "automatic." Equating objectivity with impartiality,
Conant argued along essentially Baconian lines that anyone who agreed to partici-
pate in the scientific community would necessarily produce objective scientific
results:
Would it be too much to say that in the natural sciences today the given social environ-
ment has made it very easy for even an emotionally unstable person to be exact and
impartial in his laboratory? The tradition he inherits, his instruments, the high degree
of specialization, the crowd of witnesses that surrounds him, so to speak (if he publishes
his results)-these all exert pressures that make impartiality on matters of his science
almost automatic.60'
Conant believed that the moment a scientist stepped outside of this protective
structure, he would be just as susceptible to prejudice and error as anyone else. In
contrast, Robert Merton felt that the dynamics of the scientific community were so
effectively internalized by the scientist as to fashion "his conscience . . . his super-
ego," so that the habits of objective inquiry transferred to other aspects of life. More
recently, Martin Rudwick has argued that through the agonistic interaction of scien-
tific competitors, the possible representations of nature are constrained, and a reli-
able picture may emerge. Aperspectival knowledge, then, is achieved through the
dynamics of the scientific community-through scientific debate, peer review, pub-
lication, and, as Sharon Traweek has called it, the general "collective surveillance"
59 Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925); Charles Rosen-
berg, "Martin Arrowsmith: The Scientist as Hero," in No Other Gods: On Science and American
Social Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1961); and Susan Lederer, "Arrowsmith"
(film review), Isis, 1993, 84:771-772. Charles Rosenberg, in his classic essay, scarcely mentions
Arrowsmith's familial relations. Indeed, in both the novel and in Rosenberg's essay, Arrowsmith's
sacrifice is couched primarily in terms of fame and wealth; he is willing to sacrifice the gifts of
society; the abandonment of his son is an unintended (and not particularly significant) consequence.
Joyce Arrowsmith is implicitly left to deal with the child-raising but, by making her independently
wealthy, Lewis can cast Martin's sacrifice as noble (willing to forego wealth) rather than irresponsible
(leaving his wife and child to starve). Strikingly, in the film version, there is no second marriage or
child; apparently Hollywood judged that abandoning one's child would not be considered heroic by
most moviegoers.
60 James Conant, On Understanding Science: An Historical Approach (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Univ. Press, 1947), pp. 7-8.
of the scientific community.6' On all these accounts, the scientist should be inter-
changeable. The community dynamics-not the attributes of the individual-are
what count. But the case of Eleanor Lamson demonstrates that women can do highly
objectified work-work that satisfies the collective standards of their own scientific
community-yet have it rendered invisible by the rhetoric of heroism in the public
sphere.
Quantification is often considered emblematic of scientific objectivity, but in the
early twentieth century, calculation was considered women's work. If objectivity is
a defining ideal of a scientific community, then these women's work should have
been fully recognized. But if heroism is a defining ideal, then calculational work is
quickly reduced to the routine. The channeling of women into calculational work
suggests that heroism, rather than objectivity, was a central defining virtue for many
American scientists in the early twentieth century. To dismiss women's work at the
observatories as "routine" is implicitly to accept this prioritization.
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have argued that the ideal of objectivity was
promulgated not merely as an epistemic ideal, but a moral ideal. Referring to scien-
tists in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they write, "there [was] a certain
nobility in the abandonment of the personal, a sacrifice of the self for the collective
. . . comprehension." Aperspectival objectivity attested to the moral character of the
scientist involved through his self-denial and willingness to forgo both personal per-
spective and personal credit.62 Objectivity was a form of self-sacrifice-no less than
exposing oneself to a deadly disease-and defined primarily in negative terms: the
sacrifice of personal hopes, the relinquishing of personal preferences, the abandon-
ment of expectation. The struggle with inward temptation-to see the world as one
wanted it to be, rather than as it was-required "heroic self-discipline."63 Perhaps
the problem of objectivity in science should be reinterpreted as a subset of a larger
and more embracing problem of scientific heroism.
6' Robert K. Merton, "The Normative Structure of Science," The Sociology of Science: Theoretical
and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1942), pp. 267-278, on p. 269. Martin
J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1985). Traweek,
Beamtimes (cit. n. 31), p. 125; also see Longino, Social Knowledge (cit. n. 3).
62 Daston and Galison, "Image of Objectivity" (cit. n. 6). Amy Hollywood (Dartmouth College,
Feminist Inquiry Seminar, 1994) has pointed out that self-effacement is commonly read as afeminine
virtue-thus the connection between objectivity and masculinity is further blurred.
63 Daston and Galison, "Image of Objectivity" (cit. n. 6).

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Objectivity or Heroism?

On the Invisibility of Women in Science

OBJECTIVITY AND WOMEN IN SCIENCE

Of course, it is occasionally necessary to make experiments

A CENTRAL THEME of Margaret Rossiter's pioneering work on women scien-

C) 1996 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/96/8401-0001$01.00

OSIRIS, 2nd series, 1996, 11: 87-113 87

ler on the life of Nobel-Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock. In Keller's

ELEANOR LAMSON AND THE REDUCTION OF MARINE GRAVITY DATA

9 USNA: RG 24 LS21, pp. 605-613.

as a scientist and, after considerable effort

WITH AN APPENDIX ON COMPUTATIONAL

Public Glory, Private Work

Eleanor Lamson was acknowledged within the framework of technical discourse,

22 Bowie, "Weighing the Earth" (cit. n. 10), p. 220.

[T]he operation of the gravity apparatus is m

The Disappearance of Eleanor Lamson

The voyage of conquest has been a frequent metaphor in popularizations of science,

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cnus..Tespadh, includin. Venig M (ar an F

Wrigt (fr lft).B. he

cnus. A. 7eshi and her..... crew, incldin -----g Me frrgt n rdrc

newma a in. of Science," c 1 b S Si Inc- .) .

serve to engender public enthusiasm in a manner that the esoteric technical

scientific work performed. But could Lams

OBJECTIVITY AND HEROISM: COMPETING VISIONS OF SCIENCE

Men, Women, and Objectivity

32 Porter, "Objectivity as Standardization" (cit. n. 6).

mathematician is maneuvering through dangerous territory, and therefore worthy of

THE BODY AS EXPLORATORY TERRITORY:

38 I am grateful to Thomas Roos, Dartmouth College, for this.

into immediate human experimental trials. Thymidine proved to be ineffective in

considerable harm, such as the case of "attenuated" poliomyelitis vaccine, which

CAN'T WOMEN BE HEROES?

Although the word objectivity implies masculinity to many observers, i

50 Franklin and Sutherland, Guinea Pig Doctors (cit. n. 39), p. 18.

HEROISM, OBJECTIVITY, AND THE CENTRAL CLICHE OF SCIENCE

i- Altman, Who Goes First? (cit. n. 39), p. 311.

of knowledge. But if Martin Arrowsmith were a woman, would she-could she

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