How the mighty have fallen

The presidential science advisory apparatus, inaugurated by President Eisenhower nearly 20 years ago, has been ousted from the White House under President Nixon's Reorganization Plan. Its functions have been transferred to the National Science Foundation. How effective can the Foundation be in carrying them out? The question is a critical one for the American scientific community, for it bears directly on the future of federal support of scientific research and education and of the effectiveness of science and technology as a national resource.In this article, Franklin A. Long, a former member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and a consultant to federal agencies, examines the Implications of the reorganization plan as it affects the relationship between the scientific community and the President. He assesses the capability of NSF of carrying out the functions of the defunct Office of Science and Technology, the President's Science Advisory Committee and the Science Advisor and his deputy. Pro...

As executive officer of the President's Science Advisory Committee and assis tant to all six Presidential Science Advisers, I was involved, for some twenty years, with and technology policy development in the White House and Ex ecutive Office of the President. From this prospective, it is clear that the and technology advisory function must be carried out in close interaction with the Presidential decision-making process. Such interaction has resulted in many impor tant benefits that could not otherwise have been realized. Yet, in the course of successive administrations and changing national concerns, experience has also shown that these benefits are dependent on the environment in which the and technology function is exercised. To assess the implications of recent changes in the White House and technology functions and their future evolution, one must view them in a historical perspective as part of the changing overall environ ment of policy and program formulation at the Presidential level. Early in 1973, President Nixon sent a Reorganization Plan to the Congress to abolish the Office of Science and Technology in the Executive Office of the Presi dent. About the same time, he terminated the White House post of Science Adviser and accepted the pro forma resignations of the members of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). The civilian functions of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) were transferred to the Director of the National Science Foun dation (NSF), and the security functions to the National Security Council (NSC). Thus, in one fell swoop, the President eliminated the entire White House and technology mechanism that had been painstakingly erected in the years following the Soviet Sputnik in 1957. Unfortunately, the President's action did not reflect a careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses, past ac complishments and future potential of the and technology mechanism in the White House. Rather, it appeared to be the result of a hasty decision taken on the basis of general considerations. Although the action stimulated little reaction at the time, a tide of questions has arisen in recent months as to the rationale underlying it. There have been hearings by the House Science and Astronautics Committee, and various bills introduced in Congress which would establish special organizations in the White House to deal with and technology?a Science and Technology Resources Council, for ex ample, a Solar Energy Research Council, and a Biom?dical Research Panel in the Office of the President.1 The energy crisis has fueled these second thoughts as to the wisdom of the science on tap but not on top attitude of the Administration. The creation of an 115

On 30 March 1984, Hofstra University sponsored a panel discussion on the Science Advisory Committee Revisited, during a university conference on the Eisenhower Presidency. Participants in the panel discussion were: Robert F. Bacher, Andrew J. Goodpaster, Emanuel R. Piore, Isidor I. Rabi, and William T. Golden, chairman. James R. Killian, Jr., and Hans A. Bethe were to have participated but were unable to do so at the last minute; both men have graciously written new commentaries especially for this issue. The messages contained in the following edited transcript are clear and timely. First, President Eisenhower recognized that he benefited greatly from the participation of his science adviser. Second, it was salutary that the Science Adviser to the President report directly to him, as did also a President's Science Advisory Committee of independent, non-political, patriotic scientists. Third, the positive aspects of these arrangements argue for the re-establishment of a similar advisory structure in the White House today.

Reviewed by: Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945–1963 Jacob Darwin Hamblin (bio) Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945–1963. By Benjamin P. Greene . Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+358. $65. Dwight Eisenhower never succeeded in negotiating a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing with the Soviet Union. Benjamin P. Greene offers an intriguing argument to explain why the president failed. His book is carefully crafted, it is methodologically sound, and it makes a genuine contribution to scholarship on the politics of science and technology in the cold war. Greene's conclusions, however, are bound to be controversial because of what they say not only about science advice but about Eisenhower's control over his own administration. Greene takes aim at scholars who doubt Eisenhower's sincerity in trying to achieve a comprehensive test ban. He judges that Eisenhower believed by 1954 that a test ban was the necessary and desirable first step in disarmament. But the president lacked the confidence to overrule his closest advisors, and his style of leadership—based on consensus— prevented him from pursuing his true aims. Eisenhower deceived and misled Americans and the world, claiming that tests were necessary while secretly wishing he could ban them. He wanted a test ban as much as his opponent in the 1956 election, Adlai Stevenson, but he felt unable to admit it publicly. Greene paints a portrait of a frustrated president trapped by his own leadership style, his mistrust of the Soviets, a lack of pressure from his allies and advisors, and most important of all his "understandable confusion with the complex technical issues" (p. 3). As improbable as the scenario sounds, Greene has done an admirable job of making the case. The villain of his story is Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss, with supporting roles played by politically conservative scientists Edward Teller and Willard Libby. These men monopolized scientific advice during the first five years of Eisenhower's presidency, and virtually all their advice emphasized the need for more testing. Only after the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, and the subsequent creation of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), did Eisenhower begin to receive a broader range of scientific advice. The PSAC's support for a test ban, the exit of Strauss from the AEC, and the willingness of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to support a test ban gave the president enough confidence to pursue the ban openly. Still, the objections of Strauss and Teller prevailed because of uncertainties about differentiating earthquakes from nuclear tests. Ultimately, the president ran out of time on the job. Some scholars may be uncomfortable about letting Eisenhower off the hook as a frustrated and befuddled victim of scientific manipulation. [End Page 892] Greene's conclusions may derive from his focus on the scientific controversy about detecting nuclear tests, rather than the controversy about nuclear fallout. These were two distinct issues, but they are intertwined here as the "test-ban debate." One was an obstacle on the path to disarmament. The other was a warning from biologists who feared cancer and predicted mutations in future generations. If Eisenhower sincerely wanted to work toward disarmament, then his frustration with scientists on the issue of test detection makes sense. But there is little evidence that he agonized behind the scenes and agreed with his opponents—during, say, the election of 1956—about the dangers from fallout. Eisenhower knew of geneticists' claims but played them down in order to continue testing. If he later was frustrated by the politicization of science, a cynic might conclude that he was simply hoist by his own petard. Greene's book, which is nearly identical to his 2004 Stanford University dissertation, is a provocative indictment of those who control scientific advice, but it is also a disturbing apologia for Dwight Eisenhower. The president appears as a moral man wishing to do the right thing, but with his hands tied by narrow-minded ideologues. Greene insists that Strauss misled the president and was the dominant influence on him until Eisenhower finally was freed by PSAC scientists. Was he really such a creature of Lewis...

In 1957, elite panic following the launch of Russia's Sputnik changed the way scientists (especially physicists) operated politically. A cabinet-level presidential science adviser position was created. Assisting him was the President's Science Advisory Committee (psac). For the next sixteen years there existed a small panel with direct access to the president and broad advisory mandates. Presidents received relatively disinterested advice about weapons systems and space and arms races. In 1973, however, after the psac opposed an antiballistic missile (abm) program, it and the science adviser position were abolished by Richard M. Nixon. Only partly reconstituted since, science advisory agencies have been ad hoc and decentralized under the conservative presidents Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and—especially—George W. Bush. As one result, the nation has spent $150 billion in twenty-five years on missile defense systems still not successfully tested under realistic battlefield conditions. Presidents have also dithered about addressing global warming. Following earlier analysts including Bruce L. R. Smith and Gregg Herken, Zuoyue Wang surveys the psac to answer these questions: What shaped relationships between scientists and the state? And, what is the proper role of science in a democratic society? Eight case studies clarify these topics: the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; military missile development; the 1963 nuclear test ban; the Stanford linear accelerator; project Apollo; the psac's response to Rachel Carson's pioneering Silent Spring (1962); the Vietnam War; the abm program; and the supersonic transport aircraft. Wang sees opportunity (in Sputnik), agreement (regarding nuclear arms control), and liberal-to-moderate consensus (regarding containing Communism) as answers to his first question on the relationship between science and the state. Toward answering his second question, he argues that psac's key role was to advise what technology would not do. Such “scientific and technological dissent” is “vital” (p. 317). Otherwise, high technology enthusiasm and gadget worship will land the country in large, avoidable troubles.

today's world of rapid advancements in science and technology, we need to scrutinize more than ever the historical forces that shape our perceptions of what these new possibilities can and cannot do for social progress. In Sputnik's Shadow provides a lens to do just that, by tracing the rise and fall of the President's Science Advisory Committee from its ascendance under Eisenhower in the wake of the Soviet launching of Sputnik to its demise during the Nixon years. Members of this committee shared a strong sense of technological skepticism; they were just as inclined to advise the president about what technology couldn't do - for national security, space exploration, arms control, and environmental protection - as about what it could do.Zuoyue Wang examines key turning points during the twentieth century, including the beginning of the Cold War, the debates over nuclear weapons, the Sputnik crisis in 1957, the struggle over the Vietnam War, and the eventual end of the Cold War, showing how the involvement of scientists in executive policymaking evolved over time. Bringing new insights to the intellectual, social, and cultural histories of the era, this book not only depicts the drama of Cold War American science, it gives perspective to how we think about technological advancements today.

In Sputnik's Shadow . The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America. By Zuoyue Wang . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2008. 477 pp. $49.95. ISBN 9780813543314. Through his examination of the functioning and effectiveness of the U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee, Wang explores the evolution of scientists' roles in executive policy-making during the 1950s and 1960s.

The two most significant conduits through which scientific advice is channeled to government are the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)and the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). The neutrality of these two bodies has on occasion been called into question by their critics, but seldom from within. In a philosophic but candid interview published in a recent issue of Mosaic, house organ of the National Science Foundation, Edward E. David, the President's science adviser and chairman of PSAC, suggests that the Academy and PSAC may behindered by their government links from offering scientific advice in an unbiased and credible way.

PUBLIC interest in imbalance between food production and needs in the developing nations has fluctuated widely over the past several years as transitory, near-crisis food situations have developed and then subsided. Today, we consider the report of the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on the World Food Supply at a time when most recent crop reports from the critical areas are favorable.' Undoubtedly, some will find the topic less compelling now than at earlier times. The original charge to the panel came at a time when the atmosphere of crisis was very real. Failure of the monsoon in India had created a dangerous food situation. Madame Gandhi was on an urgent mission to Washington to speed resumption of U.S. food shipments, which had been interrupted following the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict. In this sense, the charge to the panel was as much a product of the weather over the Indian subcontinent as it was a recognition of any unfavorable change in longterm trends of factors affecting food balances. The panel was directed to consider (1) development of practical synthetic dietary supplements, (2) improvement of the nutritional value of food crops, and (3) the application of technology to increase food production. In other words, the panel was simply to consider ways of producing more and better conventional and nonconventional food.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsG. B. KistiakowskyGeorge B. Kistiakowsky is professor of chemistry, emeritus, at Harvard University. He was Special Assistant for Science and Technology under President Eisenhower from July 1959 to January 1961, and a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1957 to 1964.David LinebaughDavid Linebaugh was with the Department of State from 1944 to 1975, serving on the policy planning staff and on detail to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as deputy director from 1969 to 1975.Walter C. PattersonWalter C. Patterson is energy consultant to the Friends of the Earth, London, and the author of Nuclear Power (1976).William SweetWilliam Sweet, historian, is currently working on arms control and disarmament issues in Washington, D. C.

PHYSICS: SURVEY AND OUTLOOK, a report that assesses physics research and teaching in the United States and spells out requirements for future growth of the science, has been released by the National Academy of Sciences. The report is based on studies made during 1964 and 1965 by the Physics Survey Committee, an 18‐member group working under the auspices of NAS's Committee on Science and Public Policy. The Physics Survey Committee was headed by George E. Pake, provost of Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee.

“Just what is the job and how is it best done?” Specific contributions which scientists could make to foreign affairs policies are discussed by F. A. Long in the article that follows. Given the magnitude of the problems, and the increasing effectiveness of scientists' efforts that is possible, “it should be an interesting second twenty years.” F. A. Long is vice-president for research and advanced studies, and professor of chemistry, Cornell University. He is also a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee. In 1952–53 Professor Long served as Assistant Director, Science and Technology, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. His article is based on a talk given to the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., April 1966.

Every field needs a history to distinguish it from other areas of endeavor, and every field needs to recognize and formally acknowledge those individuals who have contributed significant ideas to the establishment of that field. It is important to understand how basic ideas shape what we do today and affect our thinking about the future. Much of what was embedded in the design of early systems is now accepted as a matter of practice or convenience. History can be of value if we view fundamental ideas in the context of new technological advances and use the best of those ideas to design new systems to take advantage of new opportunities. The Beginnings The first large-scale computers ever made were designed and built on the campuses of American universities. The first operational computer, MARK 1, was put into use at Harvard in 1944, and utilized electromechanical components to perform elementary arithmetic. Later, in 1946, the University of Pennsylvania developed the first electronic computer, ENIAC. So if we use ENIAC as the founding of the modern computer, as many do, computers are but 44 years old. Establishing the precise beginning of computers used for educational purposes is difficult since many early applications were merely demonstrations to show the potential for computers in education. In 1958 IBM demonstrated the teaching of binary arithmetic by computer. About this time, System Development Corp. developed a project called CLASS for computer-based teaching. And in 1959, the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) computer-assisted instruction project was begun at the University of Illinois. So, if we use PLATO as the start of computers used for instructional purposes, educational computing is but 31 years old. While some federal programs in the late 1950s and early 1960s supported projects on computers in education, most were directed toward the more general goals of scientific research. In order to assess the value of academic computing, several national commissions were established. In 1966, a panel chaired by J. Barkley Rosser prepared a National Academy of Sciences report, Digital Computer Needs in Universities and Colleges. It made a strong case for university access to computers for research, but said little about education. In 1967 a new committee was established, the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), to study computers in higher education. PSAC, chaired by John R. Pierce of Bell Laboratories, concluded that an undergraduate college education without adequate computing was as deficient as an undergraduate education would be without an adequate library. PSAC also acknowledged the value of computers for pre-college education. In response to these reports, President Lyndon Johnson directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) to work with the U.S. Office of Education to establish an experimental program for developing the potential of computers in education. In July 1967, as a result of this presidential directive, the National Science Foundation established the Office of Computing Activities to provide federal leadership in the use of computers for research and education. Later the directive was added as a statutory requirement to the NSF charter. So the federal role for computers in education began 23 years ago. Integrating Into Curriculum By 1950, there were only 12 computers in the United States. At that time, commercial investors were uninterested in computers; those who knew felt that the total market for such machines would not exceed a dozen. Selling the potential of computers to the financial and business communities was difficult, but persuading educators that computers had a role in the educational process was equally challenging. While computers were used sparingly in research and occasionally in the classroom, the idea that computing was a vital and necessary part of education was still a novel one. …

At press time, the state and status of science and technology in this country were not at all clear. The past several weeks have seen extensive reorganizing in the White House, including planned abolition of the Office of Science and Technology, the office of the science adviser to the President (established under President Eisenhower), and the President's Science Advisory Committee. Many of the former responsibilities of these departing science representatives are to be transferred to the National Science Foundation and its director, H. Guyford Stever. As C&EN's Washington News Bureau head, Fred Zerkel, puts it, Guy Stever seems slated to become a czar of sorts over much of the federal science effort (see page 2). The question is: Of what sort and over what effort? This is no criticism of Dr. Stever or NSF. Rather it reflects the still larger question: Whither U.S. science and technology? Firm conclusions would be premature at this point, with ...

7. "A Vested Interest in This Field" The President's Science Advisory Committee and the Test Ban