0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 8/16)

Support for university research

Roles of new and invigorated agencies

By the time the National Science Foundation was created in May 1950, three federal agencies—the Office of Naval Research(ONR), the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—were already providing substantial support for university research. The$15 million appropriations ceiling attached to the NSF Act by Congressman Harris has been interpreted as an effort to save the legislation from defeat byassuring congressmen who remained unconvinced about the need for yet another agency to support basic research that the new foundation would not inordinatelyburden the federal budget. Author’s interview with Elmer Staats, January 1986.

Shortly after its creation in 1946, the AEC Creation of the AEC, which vested control of nuclear energy in a five-member civilian commission, represented a defeat forBush and Conant at the hands of younger scientists who had advocated continued military control. began supporting university basic research in nuclear science even though it had been envisioned primarily as assuming controlof military nuclear resources. Similarly, the ONR began supporting basic research in universities with no obvious short-term military applications.Several important precedents for project selection established by the ONR were carried over as operating procedures of the NSF after 1950, in large measurebecause the first NSF director, Alan Waterman, had previously been chief scientist at ONR.

The case of the NIH was—and remains—unique. At the end or World War II, it was still a relatively small agency, most ofwhose research focused on problems with obvious applications. Along with most of the Public Health Service, it was viewed with suspicion if not hostility by manynon-government medical scientists, including W.W. Palmer of Columbia University, Chairman of the Bush’s Medical Advisory Committee. Nathan Reingold, “Vannevar Bush’s New Deal for Research: or, The Triumph of theOld Order,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 17 (1987), 299-344.

In 1948, the National Institute of Health was renamed the National Institute s of Health, and reorganized in subdivisions corresponding to major human disorders. By thattime it was reconciling many of its differences with the non-governmental medical establishment and had initiated a substantial extramural program tosupport research in university medical schools through an innovative contracts system. National Academy of Sciences, Federal Support of Basic Research in Institutions of Higher Learning (Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1964). Much of that research, conducted to obtain knowledge of fundamental biological and physiological processes that might conceivably haveeventual medical applications, qualified as basic research according to criteria set forth by Science—the Endless Frontier .

In 1950, during final House debate on the National Science Foundation Act, an amendment was introduced that would havepreempted the NSF from any assaults on the NIH’s turf. Although defeated, the debate over it highlights the favor with which the NIH’s basic research programswere regarded. The NIH rarely distinguished, at least publicly, between its legislated mandate to improve the health of the American public and itsaspirations to be the principal supporter of basic medical research. Just as significant, it required no national defense rationale to justify itssupport.