The Precarious Life of Science in the White House

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...

Cross‐Cultural Perspectives on AdolescenceEstelle FuchsEstelle FuchsHunter College, C.U.N.Y., 695 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10021.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:July 2017https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.1.1975.3.1.91PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesColeman J. (1973), Youth Culture in Youth: Transition to Adulthood, Report of the Panel on Youth of the President's Science Advisory Committee, Office of Science and Technology, Executive Office of the President. Google ScholarDe Vos G. A. (1973), Socialization for Achievement, Essays on the Cultural Psychology of the Japanese, University of California Press, Berkeley. Google ScholarEckenfels E. J. (1973), Several Selves and Many Homes: Black Youth's Adaptation to Geographical and Cultural Mobility, paper presented to the International Research Conference on Adolescence, IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Google ScholarFuchs E., and Havighurst R. J. (1972), To Live On This Earth: American Indian Education, Doubleday and Co., New York. Google ScholarHall S. G. (1904), Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Education, Appleton, New York. 1904. Google ScholarKalu W. (1973), Impact of Urbanization on Life Patterns of the Ga Adolescent, paper presented at the International Research Conference on Adolescence, IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Google ScholarMalcolm L. (1970), Growth and development in New Guinea: A Study of the Bundi People of the Medang District, Monograph Series No. 1, Institute of Human Biology Medang. Google ScholarMead M. (1928), Coming of Age in Samoa, William Morrow, New York. Google ScholarRoche A. F. (1973), Growth After Puberty, paper presented to the International Research Conference on Adolescence, IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Google ScholarTanner J. M. (1962), Growth at Adolescence, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. Google ScholarTanner J. M. (1970), Physical Growth, in Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology, Vol. 1, Wiley, New York. Google Scholar Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 3Issue 1Mar 1975 Information© 1975 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.PDF download

In 1957, science advisers were brought into the White House as the President's Science Advisory Committee. Its demise has deprived the US government of invaluable counsel. In the first of a new series of essays on government science advice, Richard Garwin, a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee in the Eisenhower administration, mourns its demise at the hands of President Nixon. Set up in 1957 in response to Soviet exploits in space, PSAC succeeded in bringing science advice into the White House in a way that Garwin feels structures since have failed to do.

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 ...

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.

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.

Early in 1969, and as a consequence of extended discussions within and among the Committee on Science and Public Policy of the National Academy of Sciences, the Division of Physical Sciences of the National Resarch Council, the Office of Science and Technology, the President's Science Advisory Committee and several of the major federal agencies that support physics, a decision was reached to initiate a survey of the US physics enterprise. The completed report of the Survey Committee will soon be available. (See box on this Pagefor table of contents.)

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.

One morning early in December 1962 I received a call from David Beckler, executive assistant to Jerome Wiesner, who asked if I might be interested in joining Wiesner’s staff in the Office of Science and Technology (OST), part of the Executive Office of the President. The next week I traveled to Washington for discussions with Wiesner, Beckler, Edward Wenk, and David Z. Robinson. Wenk was staff specialist for oceanography as well as executive secretary of the Federal Council for Science and Technology, and Robinson was staff specialist for the physical sciences. They and about 14 other specialists were assistants to Wiesner, the president’s science advisor. The position proposed for me was as staff specialist in the atmospheric sciences, a new position created in response to the emphasis being placed on the atmospheric sciences and the growth of atmospheric research budgets of the various agencies. Responsibilities would include becoming informed on research and development programs of the agencies, attending meetings of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) and serving as staff secretary for the PSAC Panel on the Atmospheric Sciences (chaired by John Tukey and known as the “Tukey Panel”). I also would serve as OST observer for the Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Sciences (ICAS), the committee of the Federal Council charged with coordinating atmospheric research supported by the various agencies. Perhaps most important, I would act as liaison or consultant to the Bureau of the Budget on atmospheric issues. I also would attend meetings of the Interagency Committee for Oceanography (ICO) and assist Ed Wenk in advising on ocean research programs and budgets and preparing ICO reports.

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.

This report constitutes a review and evaluation of the Community Leaders Network (CLN), an informally structured national stakeholder group sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) Program`s Office of Science and Technology (OST) to obtain citizen input into the technology research and development programs of the OST. Since the CLN`s inception in 1993, its participants, currently numbering about 35 members mostly from jurisdictions hosting DOE waste management and environmental remediation sites, and its clients (i.e., OST) have invested substantial resources to develop the capability to enhance technology development and deployment activities through proactive stakeholder involvement. The specific objectives of the CLN are to: provide feedback and input to OST on technology development activities; provide information on OST ideas and approaches to key stakeholder groups, and provide input to OST on stakeholder concerns and involvement.

The presidential science advisory apparatus was dismantled June 30, 1973 as part of President Nixon's Reorganization Plan. The functions of the Office of Science and Technology, the President's Science Advisory Committee and the Science Advisor were transferred to the National Science Foundation. The Bulletin invited Edward E. David, Jr., who was Science Advisor from September 1970 to January 1973, to review what has happened and its effect on the scientific community. Dr. David is now executive vice president for research, development and planning of Could Inc., manufacturer of electrical and automotive products, Chicago. This is the ninth in a series of Bulletin interviews.

The Senate last week unanimously approved the nomination of Jerome B. Wiesner as director of the newly established Office of Science and Technology. Wiesner's nomination occasioned his first formal appearance before a Congressional committee since he joined the administration as K,ennedy's special assistant for science and technology. He retains that post while serving as director of the new office and will also continue as chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), an 18-member group of nongovernmental consultants drawn from science, industry, and education. He will also continue as chairman of the Federal Council on Science and Technology, which is the intra-governmental counterpart of the PSAC. In relations between science and government Wiesner probably occupies the most influential position in the country. Following are excerpts from his testimony before the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee. (A limited number of complete transcripts may be obtained without charge from the committee at Room 4230, New Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.).