Creating a Broader Political Center for Science and Policy

Abstract

there was a comparatively great distance between science and government in the United States until the middle of the twentieth century. While government had supported some research in agriculture, geodetic surveying, geological and geographical exploration, meteorology, standards and testing, and military research (mostly during World War I), there was no consensus that federal funding should be directed to what we today call basic research. And there was little enthusiasm on the part of political leaders or the public for federal support of research conducted in universities. The importance of education had been recognized in laws such as the Land Grant College Act, but the large sums of federal funds that began to flow into university research following World War II did not exist previously. Moroever, science was not generally seen as useful in crafting policy beyond quite specific applications such as agriculture. Basic research depended largely on industrial funding that was largely conducted by industry in its own laboratories or by philanthropic support for university research from wealthy patrons, often through the foundations they established. The relationship in the United States between science, government, and the public changed irrevocably in World War II. The massive research programs of the military services and the Office of Scientific Research and Development created a broad array of technologies and a large base of federally supported fundamental science quite a bit