Knowledge, Politics, and Commerce: Science Under the Pressure of Practice

Abstract

The most questionable aspect of commercialized research is its biased research agenda, while its epistemic characteristics mostly agree with epistemic research. This claims runs counter to a widespread sentiment that economically driven or “instrumental” research suffers from a decline in credibility and depth. Epistemic and application-driven research can be distinguished by their institutional research goals, which provide different stop-rules for projects and modes of topic selection. Application-oriented research is not beset with a general tendency toward superficiality, nor does it generally lack creativity and innovativeness. Only under specific circumstances is the quality of knowledge degraded by its production in the context of application. Yet the external determination of the research agenda which characterizes application-oriented research may produce biases that need to be compensated for moral reasons by science in the public interest.