Determinants of scientific progress: The case of research on the risky shift.

Reviewed the literature on the risky shift phenomenon during 1961-1971 and conducted interviews with the major investigators in this area. The intellectual and social factors that facilitated and inhibited progress in this line of investigation are considered. T. S. Kuhn's concept of "paradigm" is employed to account for specific characteristics of the research and its current state of crisis. Results of the present analysis are related to the general problem of evaluating an entire field of research as opposed to the more limited work of a single investigator. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)