Lausanne, Switzerland—“March 4 is a movement, not a day” proclaims one button. “Stop ABM” urges the other. There is something eloquent and immediate about button slogans, whether they are serious or humorous. Often, they are flashes of compressed anger, ironic insight or bald intention. And thereby hangs a tale.
Early this month, President Nixon ordered a $10-million increase in the spending ceiling imposed on the National Science Foundation by the previous administration—which had cut NSF’s budget some $40-million below its expectancy. The new President frankly called the Democratic economy, presumably part of a general belt-tightening Congress demanded for passage of LBJ’s income tax surtax, “a serious error.”
Why? Because the cut disrupted critically the NSF’s grant structure to institutions engaged in basic research, mostly at universities. In rescinding the cutback even by a quarter, President Nixon underscored the importance of continuing basic research. Such research is the subject of a planned day “stoppage” in major research centers organized for March 4. Initially by 45 professors at M.I.T. The button slogans above indicate the “movement’s” immediate target and on-going ambition.
“Reforms”
Interruption of fundamental research, even for just a symbolic day, is a very significant event. In France, for example, more extended interruption has already become an issue. The turmoil that convulsed the country last Spring has been felt in the research field. L’Express columnist Koger Priouret, in his Feb. 10 article, remarked the disturbing effects wrought on “la recherche fondamentale” by educational “reforms” that followed France’s furious “evenements.”
“Basic research has by and large been interrupted in France for ten months. As well as the training of young researchers,” he wrote glumly. “And nobody can tell for how long.” Acknowledging that this news in not likely to light a fire under the average Frenchman, he nevertheless declares, “Basic research is nothing less than the future of a country in today’s world. More precisely, the equal opportunity of our country among others.” What alarms Priouret are changes in the university research structure, in scientists’ decreased ability to perform private, secluded experimentation, and a lack of public awareness of the importance of basic research. As an example of just how quickly the public can become aware, he cites the crushing blow to American prestige suffered when the Russians put up their first Sputnik.
Jugular
His point should be well taken. If a dislocation in basic research does not strike at the heart of a nation, it at least grazes the jugular. But this does not render it an inviolable field. A major issue of the March 4 stoppage, says a document from its M.I.T. sponsors, is “the misuse of scientific and technological knowledge” by government—obviously a crucial question today. While the issue’s wider ramifications are to be aired in symposia at partaking universities, the question’s more immediate focus is to be on the contemplated Sentinel anti-ballistic-missile system, proposed to protect us from a Chinese nuclear attack.
“Misuse” of knowledge is indeed a pregnant issue. In a purer world than we have been able to achieve, scientists discover; technologists misuse. Or was this always a comfortable myth? Aerospace consultant and technological forecaster Robert W. Prehoda has written, “There is no difference between a liquid-fueled rocket that launches a peaceful satellite and one that starts a deadly hydrogen-bomb-tipped ICBM on its flight towards destruction.” This old neutrality-of-scientific-discovery argument appears to be going out of style. It is precisely an aspect of the March 4 protest.
“Abhorrence”
As in the separation of church and state, a conspicuous distance between the research laboratory and the technological drawing board may be one guarantee against “misuse.” Another method of keeping the technicians and the generals from getting too chummy is an observant public sector, with clearly defined review controls. Prehoda writes, “Much of the inefficiency and confusion in our space program can be traced to our abhorrence of war, because it led to a separation of research activities. When the Russians astounded the world with their first Sputnik, we had four completely separate rocket and missile development programs: Army, Navy, Air Force, and civilian.”
He continues, “When the [U.S.] decision was made to launch a satellite in 1955, the government set up a civilian agency which did not even make use of existing rockets. They started to design from scratch despite the fact that the Army was already testing a suitable launch system. The ill-fated Vanguard civilian program substitution cost us the greatest propaganda defeat in the cold war.”
**(Prehoda’s books “Designing the Future: The Role of Technological Forecasting.” Chilton. Philadelphia. 1967.)
Intriguing
That defeat was years ago; others have followed and the current trend is towards more civilian say-so in military and related technological matters—an intriguing example being Senator Edward Kennedy’s call for a “private” group to study and advise the Senate on the proposed Sentinel program. That he chose a leading disarmament authority to head the study, Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner (whose academic home is the launching pad of the March 4 movement, M.I.T.) must seem in some circles like asking Stokely Carmichael to do an impartial study on racism in America. (It may also have been a strategic threat to induce the Pentagon to conduct the kind of Sentinel review the majority whip desires).
One tenet behind the March 4 stoppage cannot fail to touch the public conscience. This in the sponsors’ contention that ABM defense spending on a “thin” system (which the protesters feel sure will grow like Topsey into a “thick” system) will divert funds from pressing social domestic problems. Perhaps more than the conviction that a Sentinel system will intensify the arms race, this appeal will home in on crisis-weary Americans. One looks for some rewarding dialogue to emerge from the symposia scheduled at the participating institutions.
Credit?
But questioning defense spending is a far cry from assaulting defense research. Among the stated goals of the M.I.T. protesters is, according to a New York Times story, “the discontinuance of academic credit for work done in defense-oriented laboratories.” This ambition should send a shudder through the body politic like the touch of an icey stethoscope. It sounds like an adult, professional extension of the Dow Chemical protest syndrome (Dow supplies napalm: Down with Dow) or an echo of the Institute for Defense Analysis controversy at Princeton (Defense Analysis = Killing Power)–the sort of blindered, sweeping indictment SDS or The Third World Liberation Front deal in, fraught with tendentious symbolism and operational hypocrisy.
Deeper implications are wound up in the academic credit issue. Who is to say such a precedent might not militate into “open season” on any research project even remotely connected to our national defense? And, certainly, the skilled scientists and engineers who press such a demand must realize the probable dysfunctions in university research the satisfaction of their goal would incur. Graduate student labor, relatively “cheap” and so essential to the time-consuming legwork of scientific research, would doubtless be affected—with a consequent drop in training skills and research levels in vital fields.
Recruits
Corporate and industrial America often recruit their best minds from tips or referrals of scientists consulting for them who spot bright young men and women at work in their labs. A stigma on defense-oriented research would tend to steer potential scientists and technicians from the very place their talent is noticed. And if an attack on defense research by discontinuing student credit succeeds, will consultancies come under the gun next? Obviously, these are some of the considerations that divide the scientific community on the March 4 movement.
The thrust of the academic credit issue in that there is something noxious (for impressionable youngsters only?) about defense research. This in seven leagues distant from questioning “misuse.” Raised at a time when much of America appears bitterly divided and disgusted (on both ends of the political spectrum) by the nature of our Vietnam involvement, “national defense” can be made to sound like cackling scientists are in there mixing up tube of Anthrax, Strangeloves all.
Peaceful
Few serious technological studies slight the fantastic “serendipitous” discoveries or “synergistic” innovations that have evolved from tooled-up defense research—and are turned into peaceful benefits for society. Both Prehoda and the Kahn-Wiener dynamic duo attach the highest importance to the long-range benefits accruing from accelerated defense research. This is often a matter of advancements in “process” as well as “Product.” Kahn and Wiener point out that development of the Polaris missile system required the coordination of 11,000 contractors “which required another innovation, the development of the PERT programming system (which depended in turn on the development of better computers).” Prehoda suggests a definite relationship between continuing R&D levels and economic health. One reason the Depression lasted so long, he remarks, was that “we had exploited most of the technological possibilities of the applied scientific R&D which had been accelerated by the First World War.”
Strangeloves all? Obviously not. A rudimentary grasp of science and technology should suggest that a sweeping assault on “defense-oriented work” springs from a political rather than a scientific impulse. It may well contain elements of an ethical or humanitarian challenge to the notion that, whatever our immediate, domestic problems, long-range fundamental research must go on because it has been key to our technological superiority. Serious scrutiny of our priorities is to be welcomed. But if faith in basic research is truly flagging in America, there are industrialized—or industrializing nations who will be pleased to hear of it.
And if “national defense,” like the neutrality of scientific discovery, has gone out of style in America, there are powers that will jump for joy.
The March 4 research stoppage is in the American tradition. It is democracy in action. It should be closely observed. War is hell, but ignorance is not bliss for long on today’s planet.
Received in New York March 10, 1969.
Mr. Oberbeck is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner, on leave from Newsweek, Inc. This article may be published, with credit to S. K. Oberbeck and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
