0.4 Science for the public good: natural science perspectives on  (Page 7/8)

The failure (or disinterest) of government to turn more frequently to the NAS for strictly scientific (as opposed to policy) assistance was a perennial complaint among its more ambitious members. Thus creation of the NRC was primarily an attempt to revitalize the NAS system, with establishment of Karl Compton's 1933-35 Science Advisory Board within the NRC a further attempt. Indeed, the first report of the Compton board suggested, “Arguments can be presented for the value of such a Board to implement and increase the effectiveness of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. For example, there is undoubted aid in the prestige and authority of appointment by the President of the United States in dealing with the new officers of any Administration.” Report of the Science Advisory Board: July 31, 1933 to September 1, 1934 , op. cit. , 13. In other words, the Compton board saw a special relationship between science and the president as being in the public interest.

When the Compton board was established, it seemed reasonable that university research could substantially aid the New Deal's recovery plan and that modification of the NRC system would be a reasonable way for government to assist in the recovery of the university research system itself.

To the extent that the Compton board’s rejected proposals qualified as a blueprint for a national science policy, they differed in several respects from those that were proposed four years later by the National Resources Committee. First, of course, they restricted their definition of "science" to the natural sciences and engineering. Second, they assigned a high priority to the health of science itself as well as ways science could aid the Roosevelt administration’s recovery efforts. Third, its proposals for government support to universities were seen as a pragmatic, short-term experiment rather than a fundamental change in the relationship between science and government. Finally, that support was to be filtered and monitored by the non-governmental NRC.

By the 1930s, the natural sciences had had almost a century and a half of experience in dealing with government. During that time, science outside of government had grown accustomed to being government’s equal partner, particularly since most often it was government that required assistance from science, and not vice-versa. By World War I, American science had established a substantial internal governance system based on traditions extending back to the founding of the Royal Society of London in 1660 and buttressed by adaptation of the German research university model during the late nineteenth century. A central tenet of that system was that intrinsic scientific merit, as judged by scientific peers, was the basis for an individual’s standing. Autonomy, or the guarantee of non-interference from the non-scientific world, was regarded as a necessary precondition for optimizing the pursuit of scientific merit.

Changing white house priorities

As the second and third volumes of Research: A National Resource neared completion, the White House became preoccupied with the war in Europe. In June 1940, five days after the fall of France, President Roosevelt accepted Vannevar Bush's proposal for a special relationship between government and those scientific disciplines that could help with the rapid advancement and deployment of new military technologies.