In the introduction to what became an infamous set of essays published in Social Text in 1996, Andrew Ross pointed to the connection conservative critics were drawing between what had been called the “culture wars” and what was then being called the “science wars.” While Ross noted with some disdain that the critics were filling op-ed pages with warnings about the demise of science at the hands of “pinkos, feminists and multiculturalists of all stripes,”1 his introductory remarks nevertheless made it clear that the cultural studies of science were informed by a demand for diversity, a demand that the various perspectives of the oppressed, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized be recognized in the production of scientific knowledge. His remarks also made it clear that the demand for diversity was being articulated, in the cultural studies of science, both through a deconstruction of the seemingly inherent connection of rationality, truth, and value-free methodologies presumed in the Western discourse of science and through a rethinking of capital investment in technoscientific development.
