Synthetic Approach of Sociology of Science to Brain Drain - Relying on Iran

One of the applications of sociology of science, as a specific branch of sociology of knowledge, is to advert the interplay between society and science, especially sociological problems of science institution. This article tries to review some statistics concerning brain drain in Iran and the world, to present the typology of these migrations, and to analyze the brain drain issue by using documentary research and re-analysis of statistics methods, and applying the synthetic approach of sociology of science. In general, some of the most important theoretical findings of this article are as follow: 1) In spite of increasing in the contribution of science production and scientific progresses of the country, the statistics of Iranian brain drain is still high. 2) In light of the interplay of society and science institution, 10 types of Iranian brain drain can be discovered and found. 3) According to the sight contained in sociology of science, it is necessary to advert the examples of the effect of scientific communities’ norms on elites, the effect of socio-economical structures and norms on the scientific work, the role of researchers’ networks, and the role of social and cognitive structures. The synthetic approach attends simultaneously to two elements of agency and structure in its analysis.