0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 5/16)

Enduring contributions

The Bush report laid down the boundaries for most subsequent debates about the relations between science and government. Assuch, it remains one of the cornerstones of U.S. science policy. It made four enduring contributions to the conceptualization of science policy in the UnitedStates: it asserted that, except for national defense, the proper concern of science policy ought to be the support, as opposed to the utilization, ofscience; it advanced the proposition that basic research should be the principal focus of federal support for science, again with the exception of nationaldefense; it argued that mechanisms for the support of research must be consistent with the norms of the practitioners of that research; and itsuggested that universities, as the principal sites for the conduct of basic research and the exclusive sites for advanced education, literally definedwhatever national research system could be said to exist in the United States.

Although the arguments underlying those propositions have more often been honored in the breach than in the observation,the propositions themselves have achieved the status of an unassailable ideal against which actual and proposed policies can be measured.

Science—the Endless Frontier assigned to its proposed National Research Foundation the responsibility to “coordinate where possible research programs onmatters of utmost importance to the national welfare.” However, it made no recommendations about how government ought to identify relevant goals, assignscientific priorities that might contribute toward their achievement, or support or otherwise facilitate the conduct of research intended to benefit the nationalwelfare. The report was reasonably specific about coordinating defense-related research, but it did not consider how, or even whether, strategies could bedevised to link research with non-defense objectives.

Thus the report defined the central problem for science policy as assuring that the available pool of new knowledge wouldremain adequate to the needs of those in the best position to use it effectively, as well as to train new generations of scientists and engineers toidentify and make use of it. Government had a legitimate role in aiding the quest for new scientific results, but attempts either to direct research towardspecific ends or to facilitate the utilization of existing research for non- defense purposes would be counterproductive.

By 1944, the U.S. science establishment realized that the private sources of support sustaining university research prior to 1940would be inadequate in the postwar era, particularly since destruction of the great pre-war scientific centers of Europe would require the United States togenerate much of the world’s new scientific knowledge. Bush and his colleagues seized the opportunity to advance the proposition that the best way forgovernment to assure that science would benefit the public interest would be to leave scientists free to pursue their own interests. Central to that vision was the idea that universities definedscience’s center of gravity in the United States; the politically conservative Bush and most of his establishment colleagues were philosophically opposed togovernment support or control of non-defense-related science in industry, as that would constitute unacceptable government intervention in themarketplace.