Rebecca Slayton has given us a very informative and original study of the relationship between science and public policy in her book, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012.  The author shows how the theoretical and applied science paradigms of two different disciplinary communities, physicists and computer scientists (which includes software engineers and developers), have influenced their contributions to the development and deployment of various stages of missile defense from the early Cold War to the present.  Dr. Slayton indicates that neither of these professional communities was of one mind

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