In mid-century US academia, the stock market was a low-prestige research topic.

Evidence

Wall Street’s low prestige spilled over into academic priorities. At the Harvard Business School, the course on investments was unpopular with students and was allocated an undesirable lunchtime slot, earning it the unflattering sobriquet “Darkness at Noon” (Bernstein 1992, p. 110). “[A]cademic suspicion about the stock market as an object of scholarly research” was sufficiently entrenched that in 1959 the statistician Harry Roberts of the University of Chicago could describe it as “traditional” (1959, p. 3). — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 201

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘Darkness at Noon’ nickname for the lunchtime investments course is a light, tweetable detail about academic snobbery.
• XREF: connects to: Wall Street lacked prestige in elite business schools during the early 1950s — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 200; American business schools were academically weak until the late 1950s — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 321; The 1960s stock market recovery revived academic and public interest in finance — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 330 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• American business schools were academically weak until the late 1950s #corroborates (0.82) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 321
• Finance progressed where it studied markets rather than firms’ internal workings #qualifies (0.75) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 327
• The 1960s stock market recovery revived academic and public interest in finance #complicates (0.72) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 330