0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 7/16)

Harris’ motion to place a ceiling on the foundation’s annual appropriations is notable as one of the few proposedamendments incorporated into the final Act of Congress. Other amendments proposed and defeated during the five-year debate included provisions that wouldhave compelled the National Science Foundation to direct a specific portion of its research funds to finding cures for specific diseases or to reserve up to 25percent of those funds for geographical distribution rather than for disbursement on the basis of scientific merit.

By the time the legislation was being considered by the eighty-first Congress, elected in November 1948, anti-communist hysteria was mounting, resulting in proposed amendments to require loyalty oaths and even prior investigation by the FBI for all prospectiverecipients of federal research funds. Both of these amendments were defeated.

A sticking point in the debate over the Bush and Kilgore plans for the NSF was the degree of direct presidential control ofthe foundation. Twice before May 1950, creation of the agency floundered on this issue. In June 1946, the Senate passed a bill that would have vestedadministrative authority in a presidentially appointed administrator advised by an external board. That bill expired in July when the more conservative House ofRepresentatives declined to take up the measure. In July 1947, the Republican- controlled eightieth Congress enacted legislation that would have vestedultimate administrative authority and fiscal responsibility in a part-time, presidentially appointed National Science Board, but the act was pocket vetoedby Truman on the grounds that no president could delegate his constitutional responsibility for the expenditure of public funds to a part-time board thatwould have a direct interest in the dispersion of those funds. The act that was finally signed into law defined the foundation as consisting of a twenty-four–member National Science Board and a Director. The president retained the right to appoint the director, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. Butthe board retained policy guidance over the foundation, including the authority to approve the disbursement of all research funds. Additionally, the act gavethe board various broad oversight responsibilities, including a mandate to periodically evaluate science and engineering in the United States.

Divisions within the scientific community

The protracted debate over the NSF brought to the fore deep ideological and political divisions within the scientificcommunity. The use of the term “scientific community” here and elsewhere in the text is something of an oversimplification.Certainly, few social scientists were consulted during the course of the debates over the National Science Foundation. More significantly, Bush was seemingly insensitive to the fact that the biological sciences were composed of many moreareas of expertise than the biomedical sciences. Thus, it is by no means clear how many scientists outside of Bush’s hard-core proponents in the mathematical,physical, and engineering scientists were even passively interested in the debates of the late 1940s. In November 1945, the group of scientists who had been closely associated with Bush’s wartime activities formed aCommittee Supporting the Bush Report under the chairmanship of Isaiah Bowman, President of Johns Hopkins University, who had also chaired the Bush committeeon Science and the Public Welfare. England, op. cit ., 36-42. Politically conservative in its orientation, this group steadfastly opposed presidentialappointment of the NSF director. One month later, Harold Urey and Harlow Shapley, both liberals, established the more broadly based Committee for aNational Science Foundation, many of whose members were openly sympathetic to the Kilgore proposition that science ought to be directed to explicit nationalgoals. In 1946, following the failure of the House to take up the Senate- approved NSF bill, the two groups proceeded to attack each other bitterly andoften publicly. Following Truman’s veto of the NSF Act of 1947, a third group, the Intersociety Committee for a National Science Foundation, succeeded incalming the divisive political passions and negotiating with the Bureau of the Budget and Congress the compromise that paved the way for the bill’spassage.