0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 3/16)

All of this momentum notwithstanding, there was little consensus about how to achieve even broadly shared goals. Even beforePearl Harbor, there had been discernible conservative reaction against the economic and social innovations of the New Deal. Within a few months of Truman’staking office, a congressional coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats was mounting an effective challenge to his attempts to further Roosevelt’sdomestic agenda. The November 1946 mid-term elections returned Republican majorities to both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1930, and theparty seemed poised to recapture the presidency in 1948, for the first time in sixteen years.

The evolution of science policy between the end of World War II and the invasion of South Korea in June 1950 was conditioned bythe volatile domestic and international political environment of those years. There was no consensus about how science could best serve the national interest,or even what national interest outside of national defense science was supposed to serve.

Few at the time denied that science could have significant potential impact on a wide range of enduring national problems. Yettraditional political interests identified with the principal areas of potential impact (agriculture, health, and national defense, for example) were reluctantto relinquish control to the putative guardians of a broad science policy. Moreover, the would-be guardians themselves could not agree on terms under whichscience could accept federal support. Political passions triggered by the novel proposition that government could legitimately support non-government researchobscured the larger issue of how government could establish a broad policy to link that research with essential national objectives.

Appropriate links between science and specific areas of national concern, then, were considered piecemeal in debates over thecharters and prerogatives of individual agencies, including the Department of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission, and National Institutes of Health. Much ofwhat passed for a broader debate about national science policy was concerned with the scope and authority of a proposed new agency, originally called theNational Research Foundation and later the National Science Foundation, which was envisioned as the single federal entity empowered to channel federal fundsto non-government research, particularly in universities. This vision was never realized; in the five years between its proposal and creation, other agenciesbegan supporting university research.

“science—the endless frontier”

Genesis

The outlines of a broad debate about post-war science policy began emerging in 1943, when West Virginia Democratic SenatorHarley M. Kilgore introduced the Science Mobilization Act, Daniel J. Kevles, “The National Science Foundation and the Debate over Postwar Research Policy, 1942-45,” Isis 68 (1977), 5-26. which included several provisions for organizing and focusing postwar science and technologyresources. Included in the Act was creation of an Office of Scientific and Technological Mobilization, an independent federal agency coordinating allfederal science and technology agencies and providing assistance for basic and applied research in government laboratories, small businesses, and universities.The office was to be overseen by a board and advisory committee, each comprised of representatives from science and technology, industry, small business, labor,agriculture, and consumer interests.