0.9 Crisis or expanding agenda? 1968-1974  (Page 2/6)

The era was also marked by an erosion of confidence in the “technological fix” (the idea that a ready technological solution couldbe found for any social problem) and the “technological imperative” (the idea that any innovation that can be pursued must be pursued). Doubts about theefficacy of technological fixes lay at the heart of opposition to the ABM system and the SST, the latter also opposed by several PSAC members. Further, peoplebegan doubting Vannevar Bush’s laissez faire assumption that the best way for government to effect economic and social progress was through support of undirected basic research inuniversities, and further doubts about the social efficacy of basic research arose as part of the resistance to Johnson’s Great Society.

Finally, as more Americans came to regard the Vietnam War as unwinnable and an inordinate drain on the country’s human and financialresources, the idea that national defense could be regarded as a public good lost credence, and science for the public good was seen as something separate from science for national defense. Pressured by faculty and students, manyuniversities gave up their contracts with the military, student radicals slapped the “war criminal” label on scientists doing research for the military, and thenumber of students seeking careers in science and engineering dropped significantly.

The great society

Lyndon Johnson is often regarded as having been opposed to science, in part because of the decline in federal R&D expenditures and PSAC’s influence during his administration. But he professedstrong support for science; it was academia he distrusted, particularly what he regarded as the elitist East Coast university establishment that he felt exertedundue influence over his predecessor. Johnson was also skeptical about the validity of Science—the Endless Frontier ’s premise that social and economic benefits would follow automatically if adequateresearch support for universities was forthcoming.

As Senate majority leader, Johnson had been one of the first congressional advocates for a strong space program. As president, heregarded science as essential to his Great Society, but felt that the American academic community was reluctant to back him. And indeed it was: when Johnsonsigned the Medicare bill into law, for example, he said that he expected to see specific medical benefits flow from government support for research in thebiomedical sciences. The speech caused a furor in the academic community, which considered it an unwarranted intrusion into scientific prerogatives; inacademe’s view, Johnson committed the unforgivable sin of assigning a higher priority to applied than to basic research.

When Johnson turned to PSAC, he found its members to be primarily academic scientists who were ill-equipped to provide useful advice.Herbert Simon, a Carnegie Mellon University economist, was the only social scientist on PSAC during the Johnson Administration. Only two other socialscientists ever served on PSAC: James Coleman, a sociologist from Johns Hopkins University and, later, the University of Chicago, served from 1971 through theabolition of the presidential advisory system in January 1973. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard University economist and later Senator from New York, alsoserved from early 1971 through the demise of PSAC. While it is true that social scientists exerted a more decisive influence during the Johnson administrationthan at any time since the early New Deal, that influence was exerted largely outside of science policy.