0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 16/16)

Despite its decisive intervention in killing the 1947 legislation, the BoB remained committed to establishing a NationalScience Foundation. Over the next three years, Carey and Elmer Staats, among others, played important roles in negotiating successive compromises thatultimately paved the way for the National Science Foundation Act of 1950. During those years, close and enduring relations were established between the BoB andthe broadly based scientific communities, particularly through the Intersociety Committee for a National Science Foundation.

By 1950, largely through the efforts of Staats and Carey, BoB had become the principal advocate for science within government,as well as guardian of such scientific prerogatives as autonomy and open communication, and such constitutional imperatives as presidential andcongressional responsibility and accountability. The BoB assumed that role largely by default. In 1947, the Steelman report had recommended, “The Bureaushould…continue to take initiative in the allocation of research functions among Executive agencies. The organization of the Bureau should be strengthened for amore effective performance of this function and to provide the Bureau with a means of taking an overall view of the research and developmentprograms.” Steelman, op. cit. , 63.

However, the report also noted, “The Bureau of the Budget is not and should not be charged with the task of developing a broadscientific research program for the nation.” That task, presumably, would fall within the purview of a National Science Foundation. But two years later therestill was no National Science Foundation, and the BoB was reluctantly filling the resulting void.

BoB did not assume an activist role on behalf of science and government solely to achieve a workable arrangement through whichgovernment could support research in universities. From the outset, it sought to incorporate into the NSF responsibility for other functions envisioned by Science—the Endless Frontier , particularly coordination of “research programs on matters of utmost importance to thenational welfare,” and formulation of “a national policy for the Government toward science.”

As President Truman recognized explicitly when he created the Steelman board, it was becoming clear as early as 1946 thatgovernment would be involved with science through a multiplicity of agencies, including such new ones as the ONR and AEC, expanded programs in old-lineagencies such as the Department of Agriculture and National Bureau of Standards, the rapidly expanding National Institutes of Health, and a National ScienceFoundation.

By that time, the BoB had also become sufficiently converted to the principal arguments of Science—the Endless Frontier to concede that relations between science and government could prosper only if itsought advice and guidance from non-governmental scientific leadership on how to effectdiscipline within the de facto federal R&D budget Then as now there exists no explicit R&D budget in the sense that the president’s annual budget request to the Congress includes such a budget. Rather, the requested federal R&D budget consists of the aggregate of the requests of all federal organizations withresponsibilities for R&D expenditures. and coherence within the federal research establishment. In the opinion of Carey and his colleagues, thetwenty-four–member National Science Board would be the obvious entity to help in the promised formulation of a “national policy of the Government toward science”as envisioned by Science—the Endless Frontier .

The BoB may have assumed that, having taken a strong initiative to create a foundation that would support scientific researchin a manner that would preserve a large measure of scientific autonomy, the National Science Foundation (particularly the National Science Board) would inturn provide direct, continuous assistance in helping coordinate the proliferating federal science and technology enterprise. But it was destined fordisappointment, in part because the outbreak of the Korean War six weeks after presidential approval of the National Science Foundation Act radically changedthe science policy environment in the United States. Even after 1953, when a truce had been established in Korea, Alan T. Waterman, the first NSF Director,declined to have the National Science Board exercise its congressionally mandated authority to oversee and evaluate R&D programs in agencies other than the NSF. In 1956, Waterman was nominated and confirmed for a second six-year term as NSF Director. As the expiration ofthat second term approached, he was granted a two-year extension, which required the Congress to exempt him from the statutory retirement age of 68 for federalemployees. A skillful Washington bureaucrat, Waterman feared that the still-small agency he headed would be crushed by the larger, moreestablished federal R&D organizations. On March 17, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower issued an executive order, drafted by Carey, directing the NationalScience Board to carry out its congressionally mandated oversight and evaluation responsibilities. The text of this executive order appears in England, op. cit. , 353- 55. Waterman and the board managed to ignore this as well.