"It is no secret that twentieth-century Britain was governed through a culture of secrecy, and secrecy was particularly endemic in military research and defence policy surrounding biological and chemical warfare. More generally, it is hard to exaggerate the role of secrecy in all past biological and chemical warfare programmes and several recent historical surveys of biological and chemical warfare research have emphasised that all state-sponsored programmes, together with sub-state organised activities, were cloaked in utmost secrecy. Of these research programmes, Britain carried out one of the most significant in scale and scope in the twentieth century. Yet, partly because of the secrecy surrounding the programme, there is still little academic literature on its historical development. Equally, and despite secrecy being a pervasive feature of past and contemporary societies, social scientists and historians have paid relatively little scholarly attention to the nature, mechanics and effect of secrecy, particularly with regard to secrecy in relation to the production and governance of science and technology....Drawing on classical sociological writing on secrecy...Balmer draws on recently declassified documents to investigate significant episodes in the history of biological and chemical warfare. At the same time, it draws on more contemporary perspectives in science and technology studies that understand knowledge and social order as co-produced within heterogeneous networks of 'things and people' in order to develop a theoretical set of arguments about how the relationship between secrecy and science might be understood." -- From the back cover.

Originally published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing.

1. Secret science -- 2. Secrecy at work : scientists' defence of biological warfare research -- 3. Making secrets : accidents, experiments and the production of knowledge -- 4. Keeping, disclosing and breaching secrets :classificationn and security -- 5. Secrecy, doubt and uncertainty : power/ignorance? -- 6. Secrecy, transparency and public relations : opening up portion down in the 'Year of the barricades' -- 7. Secret spaces of science : a secret formula, a rogue patent and public knowledge about nerve gas -- 8. Opaque science.