Science Enters Politics

...ment agencies from which even the most politically scrupulous have generally felt they could accept money without moral taint, had been underfunded in good times...

...This would mean securing additional private support of basic science, an ominous thought at many universities dependent on Washington for 50-70 per cent of their science budgets, whose humanities and social sciences departments have expanded primarily because science could pay for itself...

...In the Soviet Union many members of the ruling class are products of technological institutes, or have scientific backgrounds...

...But in areas involving technology, the scientists have a real advantage, and their scientific understanding unquestionably influences their political thought...

...for 1970 their budgets have been devastat-ingly reduced...

...At a session on hunger Harvard's Dr...

...In discussions of nuclear weapons the strategic issues generally received more attention, possibly because the men involved included some former Presidential science advisers...

...force would still be capable of delivering an unacceptable counterattack...

...Even the Department of Defense (dod) , last year the granter of about $270 million for basic research, will probably be forced to tighten its purse strings by the Mansfield Amendment, stipulating that Defense money can be spent only for research of clear military purpose...

...And even in informal conversation they seemed more concerned about political matters than the usual "pure" science and academic "slave trading...

...No clear solution to the problem seems possible, especially considering the great confusion antiwar and anti-Pentagon feelings bring into any discussion of Defense funds...

...In the other scholarly associations the Vietnam war, although it affects few members directly, has been the major political issue...

...Their critique has two main points...

...The country was in the midst of what Kingman Brewster has called a "science binge": Space and defense programs funded all kinds of basic (essentially nonmilitary) research, and a renewed emphasis on scientific education allowed great expansion in science faculties and facilities...

...relationship with congressional committees...

...After the session, Kahn was surrounded by largely hostile questioners who grilled him, rapid-fire, for over an hour...

...Whatever the reason, the critique of American nuclear strategy, particularly of the mirv and abm systems, offered by some of our most eminent scientists will probably have a decisive influence in the '70s...

...After the meeting I was told by an independent consultant who specializes in the field that 15 per cent of all armaments of the Warsaw Pact front line forces is in the form of poison gas, and that the USSR has an active biological warfare research unit...

...And she was referring not so much to the small number of New Left activists, who were in full voice, as to the rank and file membership of the Association...

...But when the political side of the question came under examination, the critics proved less well prepared...

...Heck, we even know where their testing ground is," he said, and added that "discussion of the issue without mentioning such considerations is-theological...

...This has never been true of our elected officials in the United States, or even of many of our bureaucrats...

...John Knowles of the Massachusetts General Hospital and ill-starred appointee to the post of hew Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs, and Dr...

...Others, like the nsf and Nm, are simply unable to get adequate allocations from the Congress...

...Wiesner had demanded an immediate halt to abm and mirv programs...

...It was not, however, the science community's financial problems that made the Boston convention newsworthy, but the occasional disruptions of the proceedings by New Left activists...

...The questioner proved unable to answer, and when he was asked further for constructive suggestions, proposed closing the schools and letting "everyone out of prisons and mental hospitals...

...This has aroused far more indignation than any other event, foreign or domestic, and given rise to talk about "pressure" that seems only the start of serious political involvement...

...At meetings on chemical and biological warfare and nuclear disarmament, members of the audience generally paid far more attention to the painstaking monographs prepared by the Washington lobbies than to the heated and rambling denunciations from the New Left...

...Jean Mayer, who received nationwide tv coverage as chairman of a meeting at the convention and as chairman of the White House Conference on Hunger, are being mentioned as possible candidates to oppose Senator Edward Kennedy (both are, admittedly, dark horses...

...Although knowledge of Soviet cbw armament might not affect the final United States decision on the use of such weapons, it was interesting that strategic considerations seemed to play no part at all in the scientists' analyses...

...Not the least of these is the cutback in Federal funds for scientific research and development in the areas of health, pollution, etc...

...Special Leftist attention was given to Dr...

...Interestingly, they are the first to admit that in purely political matters their scientific training does not really affect their thinking...

...Actually, this is not surprising...

...In the area of technological weaponry, the strengths and weaknesses of the scientists' approaches to political questions were particularly clear...

...What is the state of Soviet and Warsaw Pact preparedness in this field...

...Kahn responded with some brief reflections on how he, born in a lower-class Jewish neighborhood in New York City at a time when ultra-Left views were the intellectual fashion, had managed "to go wrong...

...Prospects for this are not good in Washington-a simple cut in Defense spending for basic research seems more likely...

...First, that even if the USSR should achieve extensive deployment of an abm system at least as effective as present antiaircraft defenses, and even if it were to develop a so-called "first-strike capacity" (which really means the ability to destroy 90 per cent of our missiles and 50 per cent of our submarines in a surprise attack), the present U.S...

...Most scientists would like to see dod's present grants channeled through other, less controversial, agencies...

...The hand of government reached into the research laboratory only around budget time, and then usually only to provide more money...

...We tend to come down where we would have come down anyway," says Leo Sar-tori, a leading MIT political figure...

...Jean Mayer put down a Black Panther sympathizer, who was going on about guns, by pointing out amid applause that "no hungry child has ever been fed with a gun...

...I asked them at one session...

...Ultimately, as scientists become more active politically, it is likely that their present absence in the Congress will be remedied...

...Thus in discussions of chemical and biological warfare Matthew Meselson, a geneticist from Harvard, and at an earlier meeting, Alexander Rich, an MIT biophysicist, presented thorough technical critiques of the weapons...

...where this ploy has been rejected, as in the American Historical Association, it remains the subject of serious debate...

...Kahn, primarily for his weight...

...The Congressmen seemed to like to make fun of the titles of our research projects, and read them into the Congressional Record," said one seemingly puzzled Stanford scientist at the convention...

...Their attempts to embarrass certain leading scientists at meetings, particularly those that were televised, were even less successful and often backfired...

...Defense had previously been able to fund basic research in the hard sciences, biology, and the social sciences primarily because of its close (too close...

...But when dod asked for the money, they gave it to them...

...The same cannot be said of other agencies...

...But the scientists are today ultimately involved in a number of other matters as well that seem to herald a new era of greater political activity on their part...

...Neither Connecticut Governor John Dempsey nor Congressman Emilio Daddario, the only representatives of electoral politics who participated in the convention, are scientifically competent -though they are strongly concerned...

...Wiesner suggests 40 successfully delivered warheads would constitute such a counterattack...

...Apparently, just as it is peculiarly the lot of the scientist to design such weapons, so it is his lot to lead in their criticism...

...Some of the trends discernible at the Boston convention may, in the coming decade, act to alter this situation...

...Now the situation is so serious that not just new research, but current projects of proven merit are being halted...

...For example, the established active science lobbies, such as the Federation of American Scientists and the Council for a Liveable World, were much in evidence at the convention, along with various ad hoc groups...

...The first day of the convention an insurgent confronted MIT's provost, Jerome Wiesner, at a televised disarmament discussion and accused him of mouthing the government line...

...Professor Meselson immediately disagreed, as did other panelists, who wryly pointed out that they, of course, had no access to secret documents...

...By the end of that time, such was the force of his answers, the questioners had begun to ask intelligent questions, often about matters of fact, and appeared to believe his replies...

...Herman Kahn, who spoke at a session on policy sciences...

...Despite the extensive press coverage accorded it, though, the New Left challenge was largely ineffective, probably because scientists are beginning to evolve their own forms of political action, and to discover the channels already open to them...

...From the late '50s to the middle '60s, the scientists had every reason to avoid such controversy...

...National Reports SCIENCE ENTERS POLITICS BY ARTHUR N. WALDRON Boston "I've never seen the scientists so political," mused a veteran staff member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as its meeting here three weeks ago drew to a close...

...After all, as they are fond of reminding people, abm just barely squeaked through the Senate, and there is no reason why the next program should not be just barely defeated...

...Albert Hayward, who supervises research on this subject for the Defense Department, replied, "I believe the Warsaw Pact forces are better prepared both in research and in armament in cbw than nato...

...Some, like the State Department, which many have suggested should fund social science efforts, have no wish to expand their research budgets...

...The scientists' intensified concern with the political implications of their actions was reflected in the unusually large number of conferences on the problems of arms control, nutrition, environment, and technology...

...Where most of its members have allowed themselves to be walked over, as in the Modern Language Association, Vietnam has been used as a lever for the rise of New Left power...

...The cutbacks in the Federal science budget, which began in earnest in 1968, rapidly changed all that...

...All right," said Wiesner, "you tell me-what is the government line...

...Many of the same students who organized the spring protests at MIT were on hand and, in fact, were given access and put on the program by the Association...

...Before the meeting began, a "guerrilla theater group" from Columbia presented (with the chairman's acquiescence) a skit in which three students with pillows stuffed under their shirts read selections from On Thermonuclear War and attacked and ridiculed Dr...

...Or, as MIT professor Bernard Feld suggested, "Perhaps it's because only physicists have to contemplate continuously the destructive power of these weapons that we take such an interest in disarmament...

...The National Science Foundation (nsf) and the National Institutes of Health (nih), governArthur N. Waldron, a previous contributor to these pages, is in his junior year at Harvard College...

...After a considerable interest in "what the students had to say" among most of the scientists (though notably not so much among faculty from campuses that have already been disrupted), attendance at the sessions sponsored by these students dropped considerably...

...Second, since the testing and development (though not necessarily the deployment) of systems like mirv require easily monitorable activities, such as full-range firings, an agreement limiting their continued development would be enforceable...