[2] He received his doctorate from the Department of Sociology in 1969, for a thesis entitled, The Social Structure of Science directed by Robert K. Merton.
After meeting with initial resistance, it is today widely used as a measure of scholarly impact and there is a very substantial literature on it.
[4] He subsequently worked on the peer review system in science especially the claim that it was an “old-boys” network of self-reinforcing elites.
It compares the careers and scientific productivity of matched samples of men and women in various fields of science.
His interest in science has extended to work on the relationship between science and the media, dealing with the presentation by journalists of problematic scientific findings as “facts.” In recent years, he has worked on issues in higher education, particularly the great American research universities, and on questions of scientific and technological literacy, intellectual property in the new digital media, and current problems facing research universities generally.
He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1975–76; in the same year, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
He has been honored twice by the Government of Italy, as Ufficiale in 1994 and as Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2003 for his work in creating the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America.