Science & Public Policy
Hagstrom, Warren O.
... what was it that, in 1963, led Philip Handler and Frederick Seitz ... not toshudder and recoil from the horror, but happily to envisage that, by the end ofthe century, the nation might devote to...
...If there were a scientific establishment, then Science magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, would be its major propaganda organ...
...and biological ecologists have been able to conduct very few large-scale field studies—all in a period when high energy physicists could confidently request more than $8.2 billion for the construction of new particle accelerators between 1962 and 1982...
...BOOKS cultural product, not different in kind from art or music, and like art and music in expressing some of the basic values of the society...
...But we need a radical vision for science policy...
...Through complex motivations, the military—particularly the Navy, with its long scientific and technical tradition— became the subsidizer of American basic research...
...in science as elsewhere the annual battle for appropriations makes it difficult to plan...
...The latter had a very difficult time getting support in Congress, despite the hopes that many members of scientific elites had for it...
...Within and among institutions there is competition for resources with no clear responsibility at any place...
...11 Then there is the sad story of the atempt to drill a hole to the Mohorovicic discontinuity...
...Physicists should recall that St...
...thus, the society ought to devote a more or less fixed portion of its income to general basic research...
...Finally there is the story about competition among physicists and their institutions 9 Ibid., P. 122...
...He rather gently criticizes the National Science Foundation for its failure to concern itself seriously with this policy-making function, although the originators of the Foundation envisaged this as one of its major activities...
...K^ WHAT REALLY GOES ON in the politics of pure science...
...For example, many years after it has become technically feasible, we still lack an adequate large astronomical telescope in the Southern hemisphere...
...The American scientific community had escaped a return to its prewar poverty, but it was rudderless in its affluence .9 If we have a scientific establishment, in "the old and proper sense of that word: a set of institutions supported by tax funds, but largely on faith, and without direct responsibility to political control,"10 it is probably because science has been linked to an even more powerful set of institutions, also largely unaccountable to the public for its vast expenditures: the military establishment...
...But the advice of our Committee on Research and Publications isthat, if questions arise, they usually can be settled with a few brief references to hybrid corn, penicillin, atomic energy, and serendipity .. . Q. What future do you see for the Center [for the Absorption of Federal Funds...
...At worst, we can expect continued military dominance in funding research, continued waste in research grants to profit-making organizations, and a continued erosion of the organizational integrity of universities...
...not toshudder and recoil from the horror, but happily to envisage that, by the end ofthe century, the nation might devote to research and development as much as half of its gross national product...
...15 Whatever reforms are envisaged, it is necessary for us to have a clearer conception of the criteria to be used in planning scientific activities...
...We have adopted the motto, "As LongAs You're Up Get Me a Grant...
...For in the years following the war relatively great prosperity came to the American scientific community...
...Such a radical vision must be democratic, not seeing science only as the province of an intellectual elite...
...2 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Problems of Science Policy (Paris, 1968), p. 35...
...A. Quite obviously it can only grow bigger...
...16 A good review of discussions of this topic is in Harvey Brooks, "Can Science be Planned...
...7 The procedures for deciding the allocation of resources to research often lead to irrational decisions...
...Greenberg approaches scorn in his description of scientific "evangelists," and such scorn is justified for those scientists, unsympathetic with the aspirations of laymen, who wish to inculcate others with their own all too narrow passions...
...They spend much time on matters such as the F-111 airplane but little time on policies of limited war vs...
...Possibly we are also moving toward a consensus on the merits of supporting basic research as a cultural product...
...4 About $10 million was spent on a nuclear propelled rocket 3 "Questions and Answers with Grant Swinger," Science, March 11, 1966, p. 1201...
...cit., p. 243...
...Seealso C. H. Waddington, "A British Perspective onAmerican Science Policy," Science, April 5, 1968, pp...
...As a result, the institutional structures involved in science policy-making can only be described as chaotic...
...And it can be justified as a kind of consumer good, or a 14 Richard J. Barber, op...
...There is the rather pleasant story of how the chemists were able to show that they received too little from the government, largely because no specific agency or congressional committees were responsible for research in chemistry, and to do a little to alleviate this lack of support by way of rational persuasion...
...policy decisions ought not to be left by default to the Bureau of the Budget...
...8 Ibid., p. 23...
...Congressmen pay close attention to postmaster appointments, little to postal policy...
...Could such lay allocations be any less rational and more adventitious or political than those under which science now prospers?—Harold Orlansl In some ways one can compare the huge machines in Geneva and Brookhaven withSt...
...If this were so, then Greenberg, as the news editor of Science, would be one of the establishment's chief propagandists...
...Immense sums of money have been wasted on aborted basic research projects—more than $50 million on a big-dish radio telescope that was never built, more than $30 million on a Mohole that was never dug, and more on many smaller 1 "Developments in Federal Policy Toward University Research," Science, February 10, 1967, p. 665...
...Dr...
...The weakness of Congress leads it to guard jealously the power of annual appropriations...
...There are other proposals for liberal reforms.' 4 It is necessary, and should be possible, to develop far better ways of giving governmental decisionmakers information about the results of their past decisions...
...6 Richard J. Barber, The Politics of Research (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1966), p. 167...
...A good and very readable introduction to the topic is Daniel S. Greenberg's The Politics of Pure Science...
...The issue is not the ability to get money...
...This section of the book ends with 7 Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science, op...
...1e Basic research can be justified as a kind of overhead on various kinds of practical activities...
...is much more flexible than elsewhere, and the articulation of basic science and applied research and development is superior...
...Even when money is not totally wasted, projects of great value remain unfunded while projects of less importance are well subsidized...
...I think we can only grow...
...Peter's, Rome...
...he clearly shows their great reluctance to do this, and he describes the great importance placed on the "equality" of all fields of investigation in the ideologies of scientists...
...The U.S...
...The book closes with some rather modest suggestions for improvement in science policy-making...
...Therefore, there is no scientific establishment...
...Greenberg describes the development of federal involvement in pure science since 1940...
...Greenberg then presents us with three case histories of policy-making...
...Each was built as a flamboyant gesture—for purposes which one can fairly describe asspiritual rather than material...
...Grant Swinger, Chairman of the Board for the Center for the Absorption of Federal Funds, as interviewed by Daniel S. Greenberg' ALTHOUGH AMERICAN BASIC SCIENCE has been spectacularly successful, and its rate of discovery shows no sign of slackening, it would not be hard to conclude that American science policy is in crisis...
...Greenberg could have written a longer book by including other case histories from his articles in Science, for example histories of the big dish radio telescope, of the National Academy of Sciences, and of the relations between the National Institutes of Health and the U.S...
...and it must be concerned with the discovery of empirical order throughout nature and human nature, not only with discoveries in laboratories almost totally withdrawn from common experience or in narrowly defined "scientific" technologies...
...Lord Bowen2 Q. Dr...
...Congressional committees compete for jurisdiction, and similar competition occurs among agencies within the executive branch of the federal government...
...Congress...
...cit., presents a welldocumented argument for many reforms, rangingfrom changes in governmental structures, to waysof encouraging small business to do governmentresearch and development, to changes in procedures that give patent rights to firms for researchand development done under government contract...
...BOOKS before the decision was made to abandon it, 6 more than $1 billion is likely to be spent on a supersonic space transport that may not really be needed,6 and more than $600 million will be spent in the next fiscal year on an antimissile de fense system that will probably do more harm than good to the nation's security...
...I would like sometime to impanel a group ofscientists' wives . . . have them briefed together with their spouses, and see just what scientific allocations would emerge...
...Those who contrast American science policy with the science policies of European governments are likely to take a conservative approach, stressing what is best about American procedures...
...In recent years students of science affairs have made some progress in clarifying the influences of science on productivity...
...Swinger, this may be a delicate matter, but how can these activities bejustified to the public authorities...
...Basic research can also be justified as a kind of general social overhead, contributing to the total productivity of the society but not necessarily uniquely to any particular aspect of productivity...
...He begins his book with a brief overview of the scientific community and its stance with relation to the larger society, a strange blend of "chauvinism, xenophobia, and evangelism," as he puts it...
...A crisis situation is one in which decisions made now will be especially fateful for the future, one in which bad decisions will bring lasting damage to an institution...
...They express great concern about the contents of Voice of America programs but, as with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, abdicate critical foreign-policy decisions to the executive...
...All too often Congress is concerned not with policy but with administration...
...4 Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York: New American Library, 1967), p. 229...
...The failure rests in part upon the weakness of the legislative branch relative to the executive, in part upon the corruption of the Congress...
...Perhaps Greenberg's major point is that scientists ought to concern themselves with overall scientific priorities...
...But universities and other organizations compete strenuously in the political arena for funds, and much of science is now pork-barrel science...
...These "justifications," if they are to mean anything, require either reliable empirical knowledge of how basic research influences the productivity of society in general and specific sectors of society, and/or a clarification of the values of society with respect to scientific knowledge as a cultural expression...
...The organization of science in the U.S...
...The importance of private foundations has declined.' Universities have lost much of their ability to control their own destinies, partly as the result of federal research support...
...Greenberg is perhaps the best reporter of science policy matters we have...
...research to be done...
...the unhappy fate of MURA, the Midwest Universities Research Association, had the consequence of explicitly involving partisan and regional politics in decisions about the construction of scientific facilities...
...Similarly, it should be possible to devise ways of giving federal support to university research without unbalancing the activities of the universities or weakening their capacities for selfdirection...
...in Or ganization for Economic Cooperation and Devel opment, Problems of Science Policy, op...
...10 Don K. Price, The Scientific Estate (Cambridge: Harvard Univerity Press, 1965), p. 12...
...science with the relatively "hierarchic" character of science elsewhere.ls American scientists, working in a decentralized university system with multiple sources of funds, are given incentives to innovate both scientifically and organizationally...
...5 Freeman J. Dyson, "Death of a Project," Science, July 9, 1965 p. 141...
...There is a scientific community with its elites and its lower classes, with a functional division of labor, and with organizations that both structure the community and define its relationship to the nation at large.8 While Greenberg doesn't do much to distinguish an "elite" from an "Establishment," one could support his conclusion with a kind of reductio ad absurdam involving himself...
...Greenberg also exhorts scientists to raise their ethical standards, suggesting that there is "a good deal of scientifically nonproductive chiseling that flourishes under the color of scientific freedom" and that there is waste of money, "not because there is a scientific purpose to which it is to be applied, but because money, usually federal money, is available...
...Each represents the greatest technical triumph of its age...
...all but one of our large nonprofit social survey research organizations face recurrent financial crises...
...In the proper sense of "crisis," they are correct...
...BOOKS a description of the formation of government agencies for science in the years following World War II, agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Science Foundation...
...Even larger sums have been wasted on applied research and development projects...
...for vastly expensive particle accelerators...
...He does, however, carefully distinguish between this fraud and waste and "what is referred to as 'grantsmanship,' i.e., the ability to draw money out of the public authorities...
...This is probably not true for science policy now...
...A largely esoteric science has profoundly changed society, but these changes might be small compared to those that could be effected if men in general possessed scientific skills and values...
...We need scientists of general knowledge and broad sympathies to give us visions of what can be done...
...11 The Westheimer report, summarizing the chemists' work, is a model for efforts of its kind: Committee for the Survey of Chemistry, Chemistry: Opportunities and Needs (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1965...
...The Defense Department estimates that between 1943 and 1966, $4.8 billion was spent on various missile systems that were abandoned while in progress or upon completion...
...rather, it is the use to which the money is put "1z GREENBERG DOES NOT PERCEIVE a "crisis" in American science policy, nor do most of the growing number of scholars who concern themselves with science policy affairs...
...There is no systematic procedure for setting priorities, and there are no systematic procedures by which those who make decisions are informed about their consequences...
...He gives a fascinating treatment of the development of the contract system by Vannevar Bush and others in the Office of Scientific Research and Development —a system which has proven very flexible and has so far helped preserve the autonomy of our science and some degree of independence for our universities...
...The further development of such a consensus requires more than empirical knowledge...
...cit., pp...
...such progress makes it possible to evaluate the rates of return on investments in research compared to rates of return on other investments...
...massive retaliation...
...Grantsmanship, to my mind, is ethically neutral...
...BOOKS federal appropriations and continued irrational misallocation of funds, but no radical reduction in federal funds is likely, for science has proved that it can pay...
...All of this may lead to a crisis of public confidence in science...
...Let me give just a few figures, since this review is concerned primarily with the politics of pure science...
...While Greenberg is concerned mostly with the elite of this scientific community, he quickly attempts to disabuse us of the notion that there is a monolithic scientific establishment: • . . there is in fact no clear-cut Scientific Establishment in the United States...
...projects...
...This history has an ironic denouement: a great incongruity accompanied the ideological defeat [of the National Science Foundation...
...this story reveals how things can go wrong in the complex relations among informal groups of scientists, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and congressional committees...
...97-112...
...Peter's was builtat the end of the age of faith, that it cost so much that it nearly bankrupted the Church, and that it provoked the wrath of Luther and inspired the rise of theReformed Churches...
...15 Proposals of this sort have been advanced formany years, for example by Clark Kerr in The Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964...
...Part of the reason for the apparent crisis in science policy is the scientists' strenuous defense of their autonomy, yet the crisis may have the paradoxical result of depriving scientists of that autonomy...
...cit., p. 289...
...A. Oh, I think that an examination of the historical record shows that we are well over that hump...
...These are clearly serious problems, and there is a variety of ways to approach them...
...The failure to formulate policy has not been for want of trying on the part of a series of able legislators, from Carl Elliot to Henry Reuss and Fred Harris...
...They suggest that the executive branch of the federal government ought to have an explicit, continuous, flexible science policy...
...thus, each agency or set of agencies devoted to a practical mission, whether it be improving health, improving communications, or remedying pollution, ought to devote some portion of its resources to basic research related to its mission...
...46-48...
...And the military assumed this role largely on its own initiative, for the leadership and unity of purpose that had bound American sciences throughout the war no longer existed...
...Congress ought to set policy, but in science as in many other areas it fails to do so...
...Basic research can be justified, and is justified, as a way of enhancing national prestige...
...And they have shown more concern for where research facilities will be built than with the kind of 13 Joseph Ben-David, Fundamental Research and the Universities: Some Comments on International Differences (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1968...
...Thus, J. BenDavid contrasts the "entrepreneurial" character of U.S...
...Other writers, among them Greenberg, have advanced what might be called `liberal" remedies...
...But Greenberg is one of the most outspoken critics of the establishment: he has publicized unpleasant errors in policy-making, he has been unafraid to publicly accuse important agencies of wrong-doing, as in his reports of the National Science Foundation's actions in the case of John Smale, the Berkeley mathematician, and he has written devastating satires on the pretensions of some scientists in his interviews with Grant Swinger...
...At worst, we can expect somewhat lower 12 Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science, op...
Vol. 15 • July 1968 • No. 4
