ABSTRACT
The most common higher discourse around science has been a philosophical and moral one. Science and Technology Studies (STS) has measured itself against this, and more generally against what it takes as public and elite misunderstanding of science, including particular sorts of claims for the economic centrality of science. A realistic political economy of all research, in its many guises, will require not only a transformation in STS but also of most existing political economies of science. The category 'research and development' emerged during and after the Second World War as a way of bringing together, the development and design done in the design department, the testing station and the pilot plant, on the one hand and, on the other, research in industrial research laboratories, government and academic research laboratories. The linear model of innovation provides another example of a term of art in STS which needs critical examination.
