Creating the Needed Interface
Seite 2: Basic Research in the Post War Period
Toward the end of WWII, there were several proposals about how to utilize the important forces of domestic scientific research and development to serve postwar society. One of the most influential was the report presented at the request of President Roosevelt by Vannevar Bush "Science: The Endless Frontier". This report was the result of reports Bush gathered from several committees, each composed of prominent scientists.
Bush's report describes the need for scientific research in postwar America. Before the war, European countries had provided the basic research, Bush explains, upon which many of the wartime inventions and new scientific applications had been built. Also much of the basic research that had been done before the war had been used to provide the basis for the new wartime technologies and scientific discoveries that made it possible to win the war. The end of the war brought the need to replenish the pipeline of basic research. Bush's report argues why the U.S. government would need to provide funds for a substantial increase in basic research in science and technology after the war was over (Bush, pg 5):
New products and processes are not born full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research.
Bush believes that the U.S. government has the authority to support such research under its constitutional duty to provide for the general welfare and the security of its citizens (Ibid. pg 8):
Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or the cure of diseases...and assure means of defense against aggression.
Bush advocates that support for basic research go to the universities as that is the environment he felt where it was most likely that the independent nature of basic research could be supported. For in order to be fruitful, Bush's report explains, "scientific research must be free -- free from the influence of pressure groups, free from the necessity of producing immediate practical results, free from dictation by any central board." (Bush2, pg. 78)
The report warns that this task can not be left to researchers working within government even though scientists working with agencies of government might not be as concerned with immediate practical ends as those working for industry. Nevertheless, he asks "are they as free to explore any natural phenomena, without regard to possible economic applications as are the educational and private research institutions?" (Bush, pg 9) His answer was that they weren't. Bush explains that scientists working with government are under pressure to produce applications aimed toward the purposes of the government agency employing them, and thus they do not have the needed support to pursue basic research.
Discussing why it was not possible to rely on industry to do basic research, Bush writes: "Industry, is generally inhibited by preconceived goals, by its own clearly defined standards, and by the constant pressure of commercial necessity." (Bush2, pg 17)
He advises against funding for university research if the research was under contract with industry, and especially "if the resulting discoveries were to become the exclusive property of the industrial donor." (Ibid.)
Bush's conclusions were as follows:
- 1. Support for basic research was fundamental and this support needed to be from government.
- 2. This required supporting researchers as opposed to funding individual projects.
- 3. An environment of support for free enquiry was needed for basic research to flourish.
- 4. Since the university environment was likely to be the place where free enquiry could thrive, university researchers had to be supported.
- 5. There was a need to support the development of researchers. This required supporting students to study science regardless of their background and financial resources.
- 6. Scholarships and fellowships were necessary for those who showed promise in science and technology.
- 7. This required funding a large number of students so they could support each other's development and out of that leadership could develop.
- 8. Inside of government those scientists doing research would be under pressure to provide applications for government and thus could not be relied upon to do the kind of research that produces the new concepts and new methodologies that resulted from basic research. That is why a government structure was needed to support researchers in Universities.
- 9. Scientific research should be centralized in one civilian agency including the basic research needed by the Department of Defense, but that weapons research should be done by the Services, not by this agency.
- 10. Industry is under pressure to be product oriented and thus cannot be expected to support basic research.
The Battle to Implement Bush's Report
Bush's report proposed that a scientific foundation, the National Research Foundation, be set up. Roosevelt died, however, and Bush's report ran into political opposition in Congress. It wasn't funded and several years later a competing report led to the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fill some of the needs Bush had outlined, but not the requirement to support basic research. Also the funds for the NSF were quickly reduced by Congress, demonstrating the difficulty the NSF would have getting funds from Congress to provide the needed program in scientific research or in scholarships to train future scientific leadership.
Shortly after Roosevelt died, however, a research agency was created within the Navy, called the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Though originally formed with a different purpose in mind, this agency took up the task of funding basic research in science and technology in a number of U.S. universities. Describing how this agency gave its grants out, Sapolsky writes (pg 7):
For a few years, in the late 1940s, ONR functioned as the federal government's only general science agency.
Sapolsky documents the ONR's support for the independence of scientists and scientific inquiry. Among the innovations of the ONR was the appointment of scientists as program managers who would choose the projects and the scientists they funded [Sapolsky, pg 7.]:
ONR's unique contribution to the management of research, rarely appreciated within the Navy, was its ability to attract program specialists who did what no management system has been able to do -- bridge the large gap that exists between the worlds of the Navy and of academic science.
However, several vocal spokespeople for the scientific community continued to challenge what they believed to be an inadequacy of support for basic research in science and technology in the U.S. There were investigations into the reasons that the Services were reluctant to support modern technological and scientific research. An MIT Professor, Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner played an important role in the Lincoln Project Study funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, on this issue. J.C.R. Licklider, who would later be the first head of a new basic research office for computer science, was part of this study.
The study criticized the Air Force for its policy of relying on strategic bombing as a defensive strategy. The Lincoln Project Study recommended that there was a need for an effective system of air defense based on support for research and technological breakthroughs (Price, pg 142). However, the Air Force rejected this recommendation. Despite his concern that he would be penalized by the Air Force for public criticism of their policy, Berkner continued to challenge their decision. Presenting his views in a speech at the University of Minnesota, he criticized the plan for strategic bombing and argued instead for an effective system of air defense based on technological breakthroughs.
In various committee hearings before the U.S. Congress, like the Riehlman Committee hearings (June 1954), the Symington Air Power Hearings in June 1956 and in a report by the Rand Corporation, there were analyses of the nature and reasons for the technical and scientific weakness of U.S. research and development.
An article written by James Killian of MIT was quoted at a Riehlman Committee hearing as a warning of the (Barber, pg. I- 24):
tendency for the military to keep R and D at arm's length and to ignore it in defense planning, largely because they failed to understand it.
Killian proposed the need for a serious basic research program supported by the U.S. government:
I'm talking about research that in general is directed toward new concepts, new principles, rather than producing a piece of hardware. It is the yet unanticipated unconceived discoveries which may determine our military strength tomorrow....
Those interested in the problem of scientific research for military developments were also wary of the possible loss of scientific independence by the science community. They were wary of the "hazards in the 'closed politics' of scientific advice not subject to political checks and balances," and were reluctant to become embroiled in a situation where they were responsible for upholding a "party line". [Barber, pg I-22, See also C.P. Snow's talk at MIT in 1961, described in Greenberger, pg 3-13]