Big Science: Bloated, Whiny and Self-Important

[Doug Hunt <dhunt@gencen.org>]

Book Review from Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0901issue/0901reviews1.html

Big Science: Bloated, Whiny and Self-Important

Review by KEAY DAVIDSON

   IS THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY THE QUINTESSENTIAL SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUP?

Dan Greenberg's profoundly important new book depicts American "Big Science" as a classic self-perpetuating bureaucracy--bloated, whiny and self-important. This bureaucracy defends big (and sometimes indefensible) budgets by weaving scare stories about national scientific "illiteracy," questionable "shortages" of scientific personnel, and imaginary threats from foreign competitors. Greenberg quotes an official of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget: "With the possible exception of veterans, farmers, and college students, there is no group that squeals more loudly over a reduction of federal subsidies than scientists. They are the quintessential special interest group, and in effect, they make the oil industry look like a piker."

Startling words? Isn't American science struggling to survive on meager funds, the result of post--cold war budget cuts inspired, in part, by the American people's alleged indifference, even hostility, toward science?

Poppycock, Greenberg replies in a book that is better documented than most National Academy of Sciences reports yet reads as briskly as a Dashiell Hammett detective story. (I devoured it until 4 A.M.) The federal science budget has gone up, not down, he argues--and presents the statistics to prove it. The American people are not anti-science; in fact, they are very pro-science, almost uncritically so. "By virtually every relevant measure, the United States leads the world in the financing, quality, and volume of research; it has held this lead since the end of World War II, and appears bound to maintain, and increase, its supremacy far into the new century."

So what, Greenberg asks, are scientists griping about? And why do their prime beneficiaries, federal scientific agencies, increasingly act like Madison Avenue hype factories?

"There is too much hype," he quotes Maxine Singer, one of the few female members of the National Academy of Sciences, as saying. "Every gene that is discovered will lead to a cure for cancer. Maybe, but not for a long time. Even the Superconducting Super Collider was said to have important implications for improving human health."

For anyone naive about the politics of science, Science, Money, and Politics is the perfect curative. The military names subs and aircraft carriers after friendly legislators; likewise, federal science bureaucrats affix the names of helpful politicians to their buildings. The National Institutes of Health's "named buildings recognize the good works of senators Warren Magnuson, Lister Hill, Lowell Weicker, Lawton Chiles, and Mark Hatfield, and representatives John Fogarty, William Natcher, Silvio Conte, and Claude D. Pepper."

Politics makes strange bedfellows. In the 1980s, as the cold war waned, the U.S. Energy Department, which runs the nuclear weapons complex, feared a major slash in its budget. So it began looking for a new enterprise and found it: the Human Genome Project. Naturally, this upset the NIH, whose officials reasoned that they were more suited to map the genome. But the weapons labs are master lobbyists for their own interests.

President Gerald Ford's science adviser Guy Stever told Greenberg, "I guarantee you, if somebody really had complete control of the quality of our system, and could cut out everything at the low level, we could survive beautifully on less money." In any case, Greenberg says, there is no consistent evidence of a strong correlation between American scientific-technological leadership and the fortunes spent seeking it: "Great Britain has accomplished a great deal scientifically on relatively modest science budgets; the Soviet Union had relatively little to show for its enormous spending on research."

For four decades, Greenberg has been the conscience of American science writers. He was the first news editor of Science magazine. In 1967 he established himself as the Jessica Mitford of science when he wrote The Politics of Pure Science, an acerbic analysis of science-government relations after World War II. He spent 26 years running the acclaimed gadfly newsletter Science & Government Report.

We need more Greenbergs. Too many science writers cover science as uncritically as fashion reporters cover fashion. (I am as guilty of this as many of my peers.) Science, Money, and Politics rightly blasts "doting science journalists who faithfully echo the paranoid fears and alarms of the scientific leadership and its publicists." He scolds medical reporters for their "bait-and-switch" coverage of alleged breakthroughs in the war against cancer and other diseases. Typically, an exciting discovery leads the evening news or is ballyhooed on the front page. Follow-up research often undermines the claim, but do you see that in the paper? Not likely.

As Greenberg reminds us, science is a big, expensive and all-too-human enterprise, as prone to shams and hucksterism as any human endeavor. Shams and hucksterism are "news," too; they deserve to be covered alongside NASA's latest circus stunts. This admirable book should be required reading for science policy makers, science journalists and any American who gives a damn whenever science--one of the nation's crown jewels--falls into irresponsible hands.

 Keay Davidson is a science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of Carl Sagan: A Life (John Wiley, 1999).

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________________________________________
From:
Rev. Douglas B. Hunt, M.S. Ph.D.
Religious Center on Biotechnology
100 Maryland AV, NE - Rm. 317
Washington, DC 20002
email: dhunt@gencen.org