Reading the History of Futurology, Policy, and Science
(and technology and innovation and social science and energy and the environment...)
When I started this project on the history of futurology and the British state, my first worry was that there simply wouldn’t be enough historical material to show that futures research had a significant history within the British state.
It turned out that not only was I wrong, but overwhelmingly so. Futures research pops up in many places through the 1960s and 1970s. I’ve found it in central government (including the Cabinet Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Technology, and the Department of Energy), the National Coal Board, the Atomic Energy Authority, the British Rail Board, the British Transport Commission, the Post Office, and the Defence Operational Analysis Establishment, to name just some of the sites that I’ve looked at in the past year.
So the question of, “Is there enough?”, has instead become, “What do I focus on?”, because the material above is simply too much for a one-person book project. I’m pretty convinced that there’s at least a PhD project, and maybe more, just on coal futures research in the National Coal Board.
Deciding what to focus on has meant taking a step back and thinking about what the significant through-line for this project might be. As I talked about in my previous post, I think that through-line is science, technology, and innovation policy in central government. The Government Office for Science’s Foresight Programme has proved a remarkably durable institution of futures advice for science policy, existing for almost thirty years now.
It also seems to me that earlier, prominent points of contact between central government and futures research – such as the creation of the Future World Trends Committee in 1972 – also related to both science in government and the government of science. In the case of the Future World Trends Committee, futures research seems to have provided a means for government scientists to articulate a defence of British science and environmental policy.
In other words, this particular history of futures research in the British state is about the mutual relationship between policy and science, technology, and innovation. Futures research was a science - or “political prediction technology”, as Jenny Andersson would put it - for policy-making, deployed to influence policy for the UK’s science, technology, and innovation base. To paraphrase Harvey Brooks in Scientists and National Policy-Making, futures research seems to have been both a science for policy and a policy for science.
In a future post, I’m going to go into more detail about the various events and moments that I think will figure into this history of futures research and UK science, technology, and innovation policy. But right now, thinking about this through-line for the project has made me realise that I need to reacquaint myself with the historical literature on UK science policy, much of which I haven’t looked at since my Master’s and early PhD days, a decade ago.
Today’s post shows the initial results of that reacquaintance – a reading list, or loose bibliography, of the history of “policy for science” and “science for policy” in the UK, roughly from 1960 to 2000 (with a few texts that extend beyond these dates), and, if I’m honest, focussing mostly on “policy for science” (partly because that’s what’s had the most attention).
Not all of these texts are the authoritative, definitive scholarly account – some of them have been controversial and some are contemporaneous rather than historical. I’m not including all of these texts as endorsements, but I’m rather trying to create a comprehensive list. So, on that note, if you think there’s anything missing from this list, please let me know. I also hope that this list, in turn, can be useful for future researchers, not just myself.
Rather than simply list every text, I’ve clustered them by decade. I know that is far from a perfect ordering system, but it’s how I’m thinking about this right now, and I’m sure that will change in the future. Perhaps clustering by government would have been better. I’ve also ordered the texts within each cluster by publication date, rather than author. I also extend the bibliography in two separate sections at the end to include social science and environmental policy – I’ll explain why in the relevant sections.
Multi-Decade Works
Most of these focus on science, rather than technology. Most are surveys, but a few cover more specific topics, like the Royal Society or UK ocean science, in a way that might help cast light on wider-ranging issues in science policy.
Rose, Hilary, and Steven Rose. Science and Society. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1970.
J. B. Poole and K. Andrews (eds.). The Government of Science in Britain. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972.
Gummett, Philip. Scientists in Whitehall. Manchester Greater Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980.
Gummett, Philip. ‘The Evolution of Science and Technology Policy: A UK Perspective’. Science and Public Policy 18, no. 1 (1991): 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1093/spp/18.1.31.
Wilkie, Tom. British Science and Politics Since 1945. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.
Edgerton, David. Science, Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline’, 1870-1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Edgerton, David. ‘Science in the United Kingdom: A Study in the Nationalization of Science’. In Science in the Twentieth Century, edited by John Krige and Dominique Pestre, 759–76. Amsterdam: Routledge, 1997.
Agar, Jon. ‘Science and Information Technology’. In Britain since 1945, edited by Jonathan Hollowell, 347–64. Making Contemporary Britain Series. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
Von Tunzelmann, Nick. ‘Technology in Post War Britain’. In The Economic History of Britain since 1700, edited by R. Floud and P. Johnson, Volume III: Structural Change and Growth, 1939-2000:299–331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Edgerton, David. ‘Science and the Nation: Towards New Histories of Twentieth-Century Britain’. Historical Research 78, no. 199 (2005): 96–112.
Edgerton, David. Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Gregory, Jane, and Simon Jay Lock. ‘The Evolution of “Public Understanding of Science”: Public Engagement as a Tool of Science Policy in the UK’. Sociology Compass 2, no. 4 (2008): 1252–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00137.x.
Edgerton, David. ‘The “Haldane Principle” and Other Invented Traditions in Science Policy’. History & Policy, 2 July 2009. https://www.historyandpolicy.org/index.php/policy-papers/papers/the-haldane-principle-and-other-invented-traditions-in-science-policy.
Oikonomou, Alexandros-Panagiotis. ‘The Hidden Persuaders: Government Scientists and Defence in Post-War Britain’. PhD thesis, Imperial College London, 2011. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/6998.
Collins, Peter. The Royal Society and the Promotion of Science since 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139248884.
Leggett, Don, and Charlotte Sleigh, eds. Scientific Governance in Britain, 1914-79. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.
Robinson, Samuel A. Ocean Science and the British Cold War State. Cham: Springer, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73096-7.
Flanagan, Kieron, Sabine Clarke, Jon Agar, David Edgerton, and Claire Craig. ‘Lessons from the History of UK Science Policy’. London: British Academy, August 2019. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10105737/1/Lessons-History-UK-science-policy.pdf.
Kelsey, Tom. ‘Picking Losers: Concorde, Nuclear Power, and Their Opponents in Post-War Britain, 1954-1995’. PhD Thesis, King’s College London, 2020.
Ledgerwood, Emmeline Gabrielle Beresford. ‘Privatisation of UK Government Science: The Changing Lives of Scientific Civil Servants 1970-2005’. PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2021.
Ledgerwood, Emmeline. ‘“Armed with the Necessary Background of Knowledge”: Embedding Science Scrutiny Mechanisms in the UK Parliament’. The British Journal for the History of Science 55, no. 2 (2022): 167–85.
Pre-1960
These texts fit the fast-and-loose definition of “things that happened after WWII and before 1960 that might be relevant”, so this list is far from exhaustive. Will Thomas’s Rational Action is one of the “definitely relevant” works, a great book that leaves off where this project picks up, with the appearance of new sciences and tools for policy, such as futures research, in the 1960s.
Gummett, Philip J., and Geoffrey L. Price. ‘An Approach to the Central Planning of British Science: The Formation of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy’. Minerva 15, no. 2 (1977): 119–43.
Keith, S. T. ‘Inventions, Patents and Commercial Development from Governmentally Financed Research in Great Britain: The Origins of the National Research Development Corporation’. Minerva 19, no. 1 (1981): 92–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02192550.
Edgerton, David. ‘The State, War and Technical Innovation in Great Britain, 1930-50: The Contrasts of Military and Civil Industry’. In Deciphering Science and Technology: The Social Relations of Expertise, edited by Ian Varcoe, Maureen McNeil, and Steven Yearley, 29–49. London: Macmillan, 1990.
Hendry, John. Innovating for Failure: Government Policy and the Early British Computer Industry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Agar, Jon. ‘The New Price and Place of University Research: Jodrell Bank, NIRNS and the Context of Post‐war British Academic Science’. Contemporary British History 11, no. 1 (1997): 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619469708581423.
Whyte, Neil, and Philip Gummett. ‘Far Beyond the Bounds of Science: The Making of the United Kingdom’s First Space Policy’. Minerva 35, no. 2 (1997): 139–69.
Agar, Jon, and Brian Balmer. ‘British Scientists and the Cold War: The Defence Research Policy Committee and Information Networks, 1947-1963’. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 28, no. 2 (1998): 209–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/27757795.
Clarke, Sabine. ‘Pure Science with a Practical Aim: The Meanings of Fundamental Research in Britain, circa 1916–1950’. Isis 101, no. 2 (2010): 285–311. https://doi.org/10.1086/653094.
Thomas, William. Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
Clarke, Sabine. ‘Fundamental Research and New Scientific Arrangements for the Development of Britain’s Colonies after 1940’. In Basic and Applied Research: The Language of Science Policy in the Twentieth Century, edited by David Kaldewey and Désirée Schauz, 143–62. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018.
1960s
For the 1960s, histories and anti-histories of Harold Wilson’s “white heat” and the wider “technocratic moment” dominate.
Vig, Norman J. Science and Technology in British Politics. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968.
Vig, Norman J., and S. A. Walkland. ‘Science Policy, Science Administration, and Parliamentary Reform’. Parliamentary Affairs 19, no. 3 (1966): 281–94. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a051361.
Coopey, Richard. ‘Ministry of Technology 1964–70’. Contemporary Record 5, no. 1 (1991): 128–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619469108581162.
Coopey, Richard. ‘The White Heat of Scientific Revolution’. Contemporary Record 5, no. 1 (1991): 115–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619469108581161.
Edgerton, David. ‘The “White Heat” Revisited: The British Government and Technology in the 1960s’. Twentieth Century British History 7, no. 1 (1996): 53–82.
Kirby, M. W. ‘Blackett in the “White Heat” of the Scientific Revolution: Industrial Modernisation under the Labour Governments, 1964-1970’. The Journal of the Operational Research Society 50, no. 10 (1999): 985–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/3009923.
Edgerton, David. ‘CP Snow as Anti-Historian of British Science: Revisiting the Technocractic Moment, 1959-1964’. History of Science 43 (2005): 187–208.
Agar, Jon. ‘What Happened in the Sixties?’ The British Journal for the History of Science 41, no. 4 (2008): 567–600.
Ortolano, Guy. The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Butler, Stuart A. ‘National Prestige and In(ter)dependence: British Space Research Policy 1959-73’. PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2016. https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/54591956/FULL_TEXT.PDF.
1970s
Work on the 1970s mostly looks at the “Rothschild Affair”, when Lord Rothschild, chair of the Cabinet’s Central Policy Review Staff, recommended instituting a “customer-contractor” principle for government science. Alongside that, there’s been a couple articles by Agar and Turnbull that explore some of the history of the Future World Trends Committee.
Williams, Roger. ‘Some Political Aspects of the Rothschild Affair’. Science Studies 3, no. 1 (1973): 31–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277300300103.
Duffy, Michael P. ‘The Rothschild Experience: Health Science Policy and Society in Britain’. Science, Technology, & Human Values 11, no. 1 (1986): 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/027046768601100107.
Agar, Jon. ‘“Future Forecast--Changeable and Probably Getting Worse”: The UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change’. Twentieth Century British History 26, no. 4 (December 2015): 602–28.
Calver, Neil, and Miles Parker. ‘The Logic of Scientific Unity? Medawar, the Royal Society and the Rothschild Controversy 1971–72’. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 70, no. 1 (2016): 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2015.0021.
Parker, Miles. ‘The Rothschild Report (1971) and the Purpose of Government-Funded R&D—a Personal Account’. Palgrave Communications 2, no. 1 (2016): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.53.
Turnbull, Thomas. ‘Simulating the Global Environment: The British Government’s Response to the Limits to Growth’. In Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain, edited by Jon Agar and Jacob Ward, 271–99. London: UCL Press, 2018.
Davies, Stephen M. ‘Rothschild Reversed: Explaining the Exceptionalism of Biomedical Research, 1971–1981’. The British Journal for the History of Science 52, no. 1 (2019): 143–63.
Agar, Jon. ‘What Is Science for? The Lighthill Report on Artificial Intelligence Reinterpreted’. The British Journal for the History of Science 53, no. 3 (2020): 289–310. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000230.
1980s
A great deal of contemporaneous literature, often critical, about science and technology policy under Thatcher, as well as some more recent historical work by Agar, Myelnikov, and Eames. Ben Martin’s insider account of the origins of Foresight also talks about Foresight’s 1980s pre-history.
Ince, Martin. The Politics of British Science. Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1986.
Barber, John, and Geoff White. ‘Current Policy Practice and Problems from a UK Perspective’. In Economic Policy and Technological Performance, edited by Partha Dasgupta and Paul Stoneman, 24–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Christie, Ian. ‘Research and Development Policy: The Great Debate’. Policy Studies 8, no. 4 (1988): 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442878808423501.
Williams, Roger. ‘UK Science and Technology: Policy, Controversy and Advice’. The Political Quarterly 59, no. 2 (1988): 132–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.1988.tb02388.x.
Edgerton, David, and Kirsty Hughes. ‘The Poverty of Science: A Critical Analysis of Scientific and Industrial Policy Under Mrs Thatcher’. Public Administration 67, no. 4 (1989): 419–33.
Wilkie, Tom. ‘The Thatcher Effect in Science’. In The Thatcher Effect, edited by Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldon, 316–29. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Wilks, Stephen, and Michelle Cini. ‘The Redirection of Science and Technology Policy under the Thatcher Governments’. Public Money & Management 11, no. 2 (1991): 49–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540969109387654.
Martin, Ben R. ‘The Origins of the Concept of “Foresight” in Science and Technology: An Insider’s Perspective’. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Strategic Foresight, 77, no. 9 (2010): 1438–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2010.06.009.
Agar, Jon. ‘Thatcher, Scientist’. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 65, no. 3 (2011): 215–32.
Guise, George. ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Influence on British Science’. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 68, no. 3 (2014): 301–9. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2013.0067.
Myelnikov, Dmitriy. ‘Cuts and the Cutting Edge: British Science Funding and the Making of Animal Biotechnology in 1980s Edinburgh’. The British Journal for the History of Science 50, no. 4 (2017): 701–28.
Agar, Jon. Science Policy under Thatcher. London: UCL Press, 2019.
Eames, Anthony. ‘A “Corruption of British Science?”: The Strategic Defense Initiative and British Technology Policy’. Technology and Culture 62, no. 3 (2021): 812–38.
1990s
Unsurprisingly, given the archival lag, most of the work on the 1990s is contemporaneous. The two main topics discussed are the creation of the Foresight programme by futures and innovation scholars, and the implementation of New Public Management in government science by public administration scholars.
Georghiou, Luke. ‘The UK Technology Foresight Programme’. Futures 28, no. 4 (1 May 1996): 359–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-3287(96)00013-4.
Hunt, David, and Ian Taylor. ‘Science, Technology and Government: The United Kingdom’. Technology in Society 19, no. 3 (1 August 1997): 525–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-791X(97)00020-1.
Boden, Rebecca, Philip Gummett, Deborah Cox, and Kate Barker. ‘Men in White Coats … Men in Grey Suits: New Public Management and the Funding of Science and Technology Services to the UK Government’. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 11, no. 3 (1 August 1998): 267–91. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513579810224509.
Rappert, Brian. ‘Rationalising the Future? Foresight in Science and Technology Policy Co-Ordination’. Futures 31, no. 6 (1 August 1999): 527–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-3287(99)00012-9.
Gummett, Philip, Deborah Cox, Rebecca Boden, and Katharine Barker. ‘The Changing Central Government of Science and Technology’. In Transforming British Government, edited by R. A. W. Rhodes, 2: Changing Roles and Relationships:237–55. Transforming Government. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
Hanney, Steve, Mary Henkel, and Dagmar von Walden Laing. ‘Making and Implementing Foresight Policy to Engage the Academic Community: Health and Life Scientists’ Involvement in, and Response to, Development of the UK’s Technology Foresight Programme’. Research Policy 30, no. 8 (2001): 1203–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(00)00145-1.
Boden, Rebecca, Deborah Cox, Maria Nedeva, and Katharine Barker. Scrutinising Science. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403943934.
Boden, Rebecca, Deborah Cox, and Maria Nedeva. ‘The Appliance of Science? New Public Management and Strategic Change’. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 18, no. 2 (2006): 125–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537320600623941.
Baskaran, Angathevar, and Rebecca Boden. ‘Prometheus Bound: Accounting and the Creation of the New Science Paradigm’. International Studies of Management & Organization 37, no. 1 (2007): 9–26. https://doi.org/10.2753/IMO0020-8825370101.
Social Science
I’ve separated out social science to highlight that, in comparison to the natural and physical sciences, the history of social science and policy-making has received far less scholarly attention. I think an important part of this project will be a history of how futures research provided a contact zone for social science and science, technology and innovation policy.
As Lise Butler shows, futures research was primarily of interest in the late 1960s in the UK to social scientists, such as Michael Young. But one of my main hypotheses for this project is that, through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, futures research and related fields, such as innovation studies, offered a way for social scientists to influence policy-making for STEM subjects. This also means that I need to get a better grip on the history of social science funding and policy in this time period.
Bulmer, Martin, ed. Social Science Research and Government: Comparative Essays on Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
King, Desmond. ‘Creating a Funding Regime for Social Research in Britain: The Heyworth Committee on Social Studies and the Founding of the Social Science Research Council’. Minerva 35, no. 1 (1997): 1–26.
Fox, Selina, ed. ‘SSRC/ESRC: The First Forty Years’. Economic and Social Research Council, 2005. https://www.ukri.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ESRC-010322-thefirstfortyyears.pdf.
Butler, Lise. Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Energy and Environmental Policy
Perhaps counterintuitively, I’ve separated out energy and environmental policy because it needs to be better integrated into this history of UK science policy and futures research. Limits to Growth was one of the most controversial pieces of futures research in the 1970s, but, at least in UK government, as Turnbull and Agar have shown, this was not seen as a topic for environmental policy, separate from science and technology policy. Rather, the question of ecological world futures was something that brought together all these policy areas.
My impression is that these areas diverge again in the 1980s and 1990s (for example, early Foresight studies focussed on information technology and health science and technology, whereas energy technology doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention at the time – unlike in the 1970s). But to really figure out how and when futures research, science policy, and environmental policy did and didn’t overlap, knowing the historiography of UK environmental policy is important – hence the literature below, which again, is by no means exhaustive.
Blowers, Andrew. ‘Transition or Transformation? - Environmental Policy Under Thatcher’. Public Administration 65, no. 3 (1987): 277–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1987.tb00662.x.
McCormick, John. British Politics and the Environment. London: Routledge, 1991.
Boehmer‐Christiansen, Sonja A. ‘Britain and the International Panel on Climate Change: The Impacts of Scientific Advice on Global Warming Part II: The Domestic Story of the British Response to Climate Change’. Environmental Politics 4, no. 2 (1995): 175–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644019508414196.
Helm, Dieter. Energy, the State, and the Market: British Energy Policy Since 1979. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Wilson, John Campbell. ‘A History of the UK Renewable Energy Programme, 1974-88: Some Social, Political, and Economic Aspects’. PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/3121/.
Owens, Susan E. Knowledge, Policy, and Expertise: The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1970-2011. Oxford: Oxford University, 2015.
Edit: A Gendered Historiography
One reader has pointed out how gendered this historiography is, which is something I’m embarrassed that I didn’t mention myself. There are excellent histories of (post-war) 20th-century UK science and technology, beyond this post’s narrower focus on political and policy history, written by women. I’m thus updating this post with some further recommended reading by these scholars:
Horrocks, Sally M. "Enthusiasm Constrained? British Industrial R&D and the Transition from War to Peace, 1942–51." Business History 41, no. 3 (1999): 42-63.
Horrocks, Sally M. "The internationalization of science in a commercial context: research and development by overseas multinationals in Britain before the mid-1970s." The British Journal for the History of Science 40, no. 2 (2007): 227-250.
Horrocks, Sally. ‘Industrial Research and the Employment of Scientists in British Industry before the 1970s’. In Business in Britain in the Twentieth Century: Decline and Renaissance?, edited by Richard Coopey and Peter Lyth, 252–70. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2009.
Horrocks, Sally. "World War II, post-war reconstruction and British women chemists." Ambix 58, no. 2 (2011): 150-170.
White, Alice Victoria. ‘From the Science of Selection to Psychologising Civvy Street: The Tavistock Group, 1939-1948’. PhD thesis, University of Kent, 2016.
Horrocks, Sally, and Thomas Lean. "Good Nuclear Neighbours: the British electricity industry and the communication of nuclear power to the public, 1950s–1980s." Journal of Science Communication 16, no. 3 (2017)
Giffard, Hermione. Making Jet Engines in World War II: Britain, Germany, and the United States. University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Haigh, Alice Elena. ‘“To Strive, to Seek, to Find”: The Origins and Establishment of the British Post Office Engineering Research Station at Dollis Hill, 1908-1938’. PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2020.
McGuire, Coreen. Measuring difference, numbering normal: Setting the standards for disability in the interwar period. Manchester University Press, 2020.
Boon, Rachel. ‘“Research Is the Door to Tomorrow”: The Post Office Engineering Research Station, 1933-1958’. PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2021.
Closing Thoughts
That’s where I’m going to leave off. I’m expecting the next post to follow in around three weeks with key landmarks in UK science policy in this period. After that, I’m either going to share a timeline of the futures research events and institutions that I’m expecting this project to focus on or, if I have time, a quick rundown of literature and key events in the history of Whitehall in this time period (for example, the creation of the Department of the Environment in 1970). If you have any feedback on this post, or suggestions for future research directions, let me know, and thanks for reading.