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VOLUME
18
NUMBER
5
MAY,
1985
EDITOR JOSEPH F. B U N N E T T ASSOCIATE EDITORS Joel E. Keizer John E. McMurry EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robert Abeles Richard Bernstein R. Stephen Berry Michel Boudart Maurice M. Bursey Charles R. Cantor Marshall Fixman Jenny P. Glusker Kendall N. Houk Keith U. Ingold Maurice M. Kreevoy Theodore Kuwana Josef Michl George W. Parshall Kenneth N. Raymond Jacob F. Schaefer Richard C. Schoonmaker Anthony M. Trozzolo BOOKS AND JOURNALS DIVISION D. H. Michael Bowen, Director
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A Siege Mentality toward Research At some recent scientific/engineering meetings, attendance has been restricted to United States citizens, according to news reports. This practice was adopted by the sponsoring societies as a consequence of constraints imposed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD); DOD did not directly request the restrictions on session participation,' but imposed other constraints on disclosure that caused the societies to adopt the restricted attendance rules as administratively the most practical way to comply. The meetings concerned dealt mostly with aspects of applied science considered by DOD to be militarily significant. Much of the research reported was, I understand, supported financially by DOD. It was however not "classified", that is, subject to secrecy stipulations in research contract documents. Clearly DOD imposed after-the-contract restrictions on public disclosure of research results in the interests of national security. I do not doubt its sincerity in this matter but I think it misunderstands the nature of the military threat that faces the United States. We are in a "cold war", one that has existed for about 40 years and may well continue indefinitely. Indeed, if the only alternative were a hot war, indefinite prolongation of the cold war would be preferable. Although the term, cold war, is relatively new, the phenomenon is not. Hostility and tension have often existed between major powers. Witness the 400 years of antagonism between the Roman and Persian empires, commencing about 240 A.D., and centuries of strife between England and France, almost from William the Conqueror to Napoleon, and the hostile standoff between the Hungarians and the Turks, lasting hundreds of years until they became allies in World War I. These eons of tension were punctuated by actual wars, but between wars a cold war situation prevailed. At times during actual warfare some fortress was besieged. Those were times of crisis during which both sides had to guard carefully their resources and tactical plans. Very important were food supplies, which were carefully protected from theft and damage. In contrast, during the long intervals of cold war, a nation's interest was not so much to secure its food supplies in vaults as to have a fluorishing and productive agricultural industry. However useful a vault may be to protect a precious supply of grain, it is a poor choice as a place to grow abundant crops. The recent restrictions on scientific communication by DOD disclose a siege mentality. If the United States were in dire straits in a conventional hot war, suppressing news of applied science developments would make sense, for scientific and engineering discoveries were almost as important as food to military establishments of the 1940s. But in a cold war situation, clamping limits on scientific communication is as ill advised as growing potatoes in a dungeon. What is important to a nation's scientific establishment in the long run is its vitality, and that requires free communication among scientists. Furthermore, those with a siege mentality should recognize that, in the 1980s, today's latest engineering developments soon become tomorrow's obsolete technology. Our hopes that DOD officials will perceive that their policies restricting scientific communication are counterproductive. In the meanwhile members of scientific societies that have chosen to limit participation in meetings to U.S. citizens should express their disapproval to society officers and if necessary resign their memberships. Joseph F. Bunnett
