un-
perspective
WHAT DID VANNEVAR BUSH REALLY DO?
cover security issues that are social and economic as well as geopolitical. The other reason has to do with the new era of fiscal accountability in the U.S. government. The effect has been a reduction in the growth of research spending by the government at a time when flagons of new ideas are spilling over. Universities, grown big, need money. And industry, having all but eliminated basic research, needs ideas. Thus, the thinking is that the presumed "paradigm" that Bush set—government support of disinterested basic research to bolster security—is over and new justifications and structures are needed. Recent efforts to ferret out new paradigmatic variants have come, for example, in the form of three major meetings over three years organized by Columbia University. The meetings showed real zeal for the quest and led last year to plans by Columbia and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, to jointly establish a science policy think tank in Washington, D.C. They are still working on it. Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.), vice chairman of the House Science Committee, explored the kind of science policy that should take the place of the Bush paradigm. His report was issued to considerable disappointment in September, because he failed to define any new paradigm. A 1997 book by geophysicist Daniel Sarewitz, "Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress" (Temple University Press), advocated "sustainability" as the next paradigm. His suggestion has yet to take hold. Even a decade earlier, a 1985 book by Pennsylvania State University materials scientist Rustum Roy and journalist Deborah Shapley, "Lost at the Frontier: U.S. Science and Technology Policy Adrift" (Institute for Scientific Information), already had attempted to set forth applied research as a guide to a policy agenda for science. That book, a reprimand to the basic research community, was the first major contemporary attempt to come to terms with the Bush legacy. And a paper in the February 1998 issue of Physics Today by physicist William A. Blanpied of the National Science Foundation finally attempted to put Bush in historical context. His paper said that Bush proposed less than he is being given credit for and that the true beginnings of the current paradigm lay in a follow-up report to Bush's produced in 1947 by
His 1945 report, 'Science, the Endless Frontier/ is overly creditedfor setting up current government research support models WilLepkowski C&EN Washington
O
universities and corporate laboratories, OSRD funded and managed research, development, and applications. But most of all, Bush showed that it was possible to gather thousands of researchers, give them facilities, and preserve their independence while they labored in secrecy and tight regulation in the gigantic effort to win the war. To do that, Bush had to insist on having direct access to President Roosevelt himself. Bush's story is splendidly laid out in the 1997 biography "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century," by G. Pascal Zachary (Free Press). The reason for Bush's current popularity in the hunt for paradigms is twofold. The first is the end of the Cold War with the breakup of the Soviet empire and the reduced need to focus research on traditional national security issues. The threats now are more nebulous and
ver the past five years, the name Vannevar Bush more than any other has hovered over the center stage in debates calling for a new science policy "paradigm." He and his 1945 report, "Science, the Endless Frontier," are presumed to have set in motion the current paradigms of government support for research. Traditional structures and practices, today's policy rhetoric bewails, have broken down, and new ones—if they exist at all—are being hunted. As director of the Office of Scientific Research & Development (OSRD) during World War II, Bush essentially functioned as science adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt. Bush died in 1974 somewhat disappointed and marginalized as an adviser to government. But for legacy and charisma, the flinty and forceful Bush had no peers. It was OSRD, beginning with its predecessor body, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), that established the current research support patterns. NDRC was entirely Bush's invention, established in 1940 soon after Bush, an electrical engineer, had come to Washington from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take charge of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. After winning Roosevelt's support to establish NDRC, Bush, against considerable resistance, set about demonstrating to the military that science had reached enough maturity to exert a powerful impact on warfare. OSRD itself was created in 1941, and NDRC became its governing arm. Bush was its Merlin. OSRD is identified with such titanically critical wartime innovations as the atomic bomb, the proximity fuse, antisubmarine warfare, radar, penicillin, sulfa drugs, and myriad other medical developments. In Bush
JANUARY 18, 1999 C&EN 43
BEFORE
l·^; %t^K~*i
%Hi/:
SURFACTANTS
EO-PO Block Copolymer Alkylpheno! Ether Sulfate Alkylaryl Alkoxylate Linear Primary Alcohol Ethoxylate Alkyl Naphthalene Sulfonate Nonylphenol Ethoxylate Alkoxylated Surfactant Octytphenol Ethoxylate Lauryi Ether Sulfate Branched-Ctiain Ethoxylate Silicone-Bated Oefoamer Modified Aliphatic Poryether Sodium Petroleum Sulfonate
N u m b e r of surfactants
required
AFTER TERGITOL»15-S T R I T O N * DF TRITON* XN-45S
^D>^
SUJBJBIU S«OJB
u\ eseaioui
SNioaviAi ssoao
Our formulation expertise is reflected in your gross margins. Our surfactant chemists can increase your profit margins. While others offer surfactant products, we focus on your application to help optimize your formulations and reduce manufacturing costs. Understanding your performance requirements and the end-user's, Union Carbide becomes an extension of your R&D. Indeed, when our surfactant chemists sit down with customers, it's often hard to tell who's who. This collaboration produces cost-saving solutions such as using higher performance surfactants that do more with less, reducing the number of raw materials in your product line, or even splitting the surfactants when their work is done. And after we help optimize ÎERGITO **ialty Surfacta ÎRITON your formulations, Union Carbide becomes your dependable, worldwide source of "lc>alty Surface' the highest quality surfactants. Call us at 800-568-4000, and we'll work with you to provide a package of TRITON® orTERGITOL® surfactants that reflects well on your margins.
T E R G I T O L and T R I T O N are registered trademarks of U n i o n Carbide. © Copyright
1998 Union
UNION CARBIDE
Solutions in α drum."
Carbide
UNION CARBIDE CORPORATION
39 Old Ridgebury Road, Danbury, CT 06817 U.S.A. CIRCLE 5 0 ON READER SERVICE CARD
http://www.unioncarbide.com
J€ p e r s p e c t i v e economist John Steelman, a close adviser to President Harry S. Truman. It turns out that someone else, a West Virginia politician, actually set the structural paradigm we know today. That New Dealer, Sen. Harley M. Kilgore, conceived of a "National Science Foundation" three years before Bush. The story is told by historian Robert F. Maddox in the fall 1979 issue of the journal West Virginia History. Bush's true paradigms, spectacular by themselves, were pretty much limited to two—convincing the military that research, a lot of it, was important; and putting scientists in the service of the government in a big way. But his scheme for a science policy for a time of peace through a National Research Foundation (NRF) went by the board. Politics, time, and a less than easy relationship with President Truman (Bush was a conservative Republican) put an end to his dream. What Bush was trying to accomplish in his report was a successor in peacetime to his OSRD—that is, a civilian organization with all the independence of OSRD but with sweeping influence over all areas of science. Bush believed such an agency would be needed to invigorate American science, which had become depleted. Scientists had to leave their normal work to push for victory. Young people in the OSRD program all did research, but it was nowhere near basic. Bush didn't ideologically believe in a strong central government, but for an effective role of science in government he saw no other way. Science had special insights into policy unmatched by any other discipline. It needed independence. "How to manage this contradiction," Zachary writes, "would bedevil Bush for the rest of his life." In his NRF plan, Bush was attempting to erect an institution that was independent of any significant oversight by the executive branch or by Congress. They were to approve funding for it, then let the researchers do their things. The director would be appointed by an outside board. Social sciences were excluded. A military branch and a medical branch were included. It was an all-encompassing superagency. Kilgore, who was a friend of Truman's, wanted no organization as unaccountable as Bush's NRF. Nor, of course, did Truman. Kilgore's bill also contained a strong social science element as a guide to priorities for science as well as restrictions on industrial ownership of patents emanating from such research. (Kilgore believed industry tended to suppress innovations that
aided the public good.) Both ideas were anathema to Bush. Bush's attempt to politically outflank Kilgore by persuading another senator to introduce a competing bill made Kilgore an enemy of Bush. Bush's stock fell with Truman as well. Truman's budget director, Harold D. Smith, according to Zachary's book, sarcastically labeled Bush's "Endless Frontier" report "Science—the Endless Expenditure." So as Blanpied relates, Truman scuttled Bush's recommendations and commis-
sioned instead a project headed by Steelman. Meanwhile, each of the servicesNavy, Army, and Air Force—established its own research organization. The Navy's Office of Naval Research supported considerable unfettered basic research. Additionally, the Atomic Energy Commission was formed with its national laboratories and research support program. Finally, the birth of the National Institutes of Health signaled an end to any extensive involvement by NRF in biomedical research. All those developments meant that any
Save pennies.
à 111
S
Save your job. Ê J.T.Baker reagents save you from worry. Consistent quality reduces your risk of a failed experiment or repeat analysis which costs you time, money, mayhe even your joh. Compare this with saving a few pennies off the purchase price, t h e n call us at l^OO-JTBAKER. W i t h J.T.Baker, success is a matter of choice.
J
. _ _ Β 3 Κ Θ Γ B | .
® '*&*fcï3.àtàm -.
CIRCLE 24 ON READER SERVICE CARD
JANUARY 18, 1999 C&EN 45
...Go farther and faster with ChemDesign
WORKING TOGETHER
At today's level of competition, you need a partner, who shares your vision and values... one that can help you reach your goals faster. ChemDesign can take you farther with solutions to your custom manufacturing needs. With ChemDesign as your partner, our resources become yours: extensive R&D capabilities, innovative technology, flexible logistics and manufacturing capacities from lab to commer cial quantities... plus an entrepreneurial spirit.
Λ?]
As our partner, you can place your trust in ChemDesign's quality and our high environmental and regulatory standards. Working with ChemDesign enhances your competitive advantage...today and in the future. To learn more about ChemDesign, please contactGeorge V. Austin II George V. Austin II Senior Vice President, Marketing Senior Vice President, Marketing ChemDesign Corporation ChemDesign Corporation 310 Authority Drive 310 Authority Drive Fitchburg, MA MA 01420 01420 Fitchburg, Tel: 978-345-9999 Tel: 978-345-9999 Fax: 978-342-9620 Fax: 978-342-9620 E-mail:George.Austin
[email protected] [email protected] E-mail:George See us at Informex Show, Booth #1023
ChemDesign ICDC Corporation M'm A Bayer φ Company CIRCLE 5 3 ON READER SERVICE CARD
-•* in
IS
perspective
overall successor to an OSRD in the form of NRF that would cover all areas of sci ence, even those serving the military, was dead. The new and current paradigm of multiple sources of funds for research was born. Steelman's report was a mirror of Kilgore's vision of a National Science Foundation, which finally came into being in 1950. By then, Bush's name maintained its princely ring but he had little influence left in the Truman Administration. What hastened his decline was his opposition to ballistic missiles as future weapons, to sat ellites as tools of military reconnaissance, and to the digital approach to computer technology. Still the whole point of Bush's quest was to maintain a momentum of interest in science during the transition out of a wartime economy. In that he succeeded. He feared a drying up of knowledge and talent. There is no longer any likelihood of a serious drying up today, and yet many interest groups talk and act as if there is, pointing to the poor perfor mance of America's high-school students in science and mathematics. Another Bush disappointment was his failure to bring about civilian control of de fense R&D. "It is essential," Bush said, "that the civilian scientists continue in peacetime some portions of those contri butions to national security which they have made so effectively during the war. This can best be done through a civiliancontrolled organization with close liaison with the Army and Navy, but with funds direct from Congress, and the clear power to initiate military research which will sup plement and strengthen that carried on di rectly under the control of the Army and Navy." But Bush did say in his report's section on aid to industrial research and technolo gy that he was concerned with the plight of smaller businesses, which lacked the re sources to apply basic research to their own production problems. "It has been suggested," he said, "that the benefits might be better utilized if 'research clinics' for such enterprises were to be estab lished. Businessmen would thus be able to make more use of research than they now do. This proposal is certainly worthy of further study." Indeed there were further studies on those issues by subsequent Ad ministrations, and the ideas are solidly en trenched as policy today. Nevertheless, it was Kilgore who at least as much as Bush established the current paradigm, and Kilgore more than Bush probably paved the way to any so cially directed new one.
"Harley M. Kilgore," Maddox wrote, "stands as the legislative father of the Na tional Science Foundation. The activities of his committee, beginning in 1942, fo cused attention not only on the weakness es of scientific mobilization, but on the need for developing some kind of national science policy. His liberal proposal for governmental intervention into science for the good of the 'people' sparked an im portant and educational debate which pro vided the background for the evolution of postwar science policy."
Don E. Kash, a professor of science and public policy at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., says he is surprised by all the fuss over Bush and paradigms. "I've been studying science policy since the 1960s," he says, "and it's only since universities be gan worrying about their budgets that his report has taken the form of holy writ." One final note: Last year the European Union in an attempt to define its own science policy paradigm issued a book to help guide the process. The book's title: "Society—the Endless Frontier."^
Tell a little.
_ ——""Ί
--v ι I
V . . U^,:, Acid.
w IK
"IT
Tell a lot.
With J.T.Baker reagents, important infor mation is right on the label, where it can't get lost or misfiled. Safety data. Hazard ratings. Actual lot analysis. Compare this with other reagent labels, then call us at 1-800-JTBAKER. With J.T.Baker, success is a matter of choice.
JJ.Baker ®
CIRCLE 25 ON READER SERVICE CARD
JANUARY 18, 1999 C&EN
47
