Lessons from Mirrors

When David asked me to speak at the end of this symposium he gave me an
intimidating charge. "Talk about science in general`-he said--"the support of science,
the outlook for science ... whatever you want." But he made it plain that I was not
expected to talk about current research in my laboratory. It's a lot easier to talk about
experiments than the profound matters he suggested and so I nursed a subliminal
headache for some months. Then, a distinguished colleague of ours made it worse. "Our
friends and colleagues," he said, "will never sit for that kind of stuff. Besides, if you have
no slides, they'll be uncomfortable. The only way you'll make them listen is to be
funny.'' Funny. Unhappily, I'm not very good at that. And coming after yesterday's talk
by Sidney Brenner, the best stand-up comic in biology, it didn't seem smart to try.
Well, I finally did get a few slides, as you'll see, and I decided to talk about mirrors.
Some people are indeed laughing about mirrors this year; others of course are crying. But
the tragedy of the Hubble Space Telescope does add an extra dimension to a mirror as a
metaphor.

commencement speakers decided that the upheavals that destroyed the metaphorical iron

aspect of the American scene. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, Are we still the fairest of them
all?" was a question on many minds. Some of these outpourings were sterile discussions
of who did or did not win the Cold War. But the majority were provocative commentaries.
The American political scene was, for example, held up to the mirror. Our historical
political thought and ideals were said to have emboldened and sustained democratic

Metaphoric mirrors were very popular this spring. Many op-ed authors and

I

curtain and the very real Berlin Wall, provide an illuminating mirror for just about every

by Maxine F. Singer

President, Carnegie Institution of Washington

(given at the scientific session, "Prelude to the Future," honoring the installation of
David Baltimore as President, Rockefeller University, New York, September 14, 1990)

2

dissension in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The peaceful revolutionaries of
eastern Europe quoted Thomas Jefferson, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers. Yet the
mirror image revealed that young Americans graduating from our leading colleges and
universities can't quote Jefferson, have only the dimmest notion of what's in the Bill of
Rights, and more likely than not have never heard of the Federalist papers.

inspires Eastern European plans. But the mirror shows our dwindling capital resources,
the lowest personal savings rate in the developed world, a fall in earnings of various blue
chip American companies, and a stock market that began to slip well before the latest
Middle East crisis. And, as we daily encounter increasing numbers of homeless people on
our urban streets, the mirror's image reveals the deep significance of a failing economy.
A third scene held to the mirror was what is variably called the American "ethos" or
"culture." Put most attractively-there is (or was) a uniquely American talent for
wedding pragmatism with broadly-held humane values. This combination forged
realistic policies consonant with grand philosophical notions. Thus, human rights became
an important element in our foreign policy and informed the Helsinki Final Act which, in
turn, gave sustenance to the Eastern European dissidents, now leaders. But does this
common core of human values still exist in our country? In academic circles we have an
ongoing, sometimes uncivil, debate between those who claim that our core values derive
exclusively from the western philosophical tradition and those who claim the equal
legitimacy of an ethnic panoply of ideas. Down on the street we are hard put to find our
common core in the drug gangs terrorizing our cities. And we have to wonder what the
term "human rights" means to people who speak of "animal rights."

closer inspection, has been examined in the mirror. Astonishingly, to anyone who lives in
this city or visits frequently, I even read that the city government of Moscow is sending a
delegation of its bureaucrats to study urban management in New York City.

The economic scene was also examined in the mirror. Our free market economy

The list goes on. Our infrastructure, admired from afar, but seedy and unsound under

The mirror seemed to have taken in the whole American landscape. Almost.

It is a curious fact that the pundits of our society rarely consider science as a main
stream force in 20th Century history. Yet, without science, oxidation of the Iron Curtain
would have lacked an important catalyst. For onething, science provided a constant route
across the curtain for contemporary western ideas. The technical achievements of post
World War II science and engineering-travel and communications for instance,
provided a conduit, however unreliable or thwarted. Scientific journals and meetings,
however restricted or censored, directly carried new ideas, and indirectly revealed a
prosperous, vibrant, iconoclastic society with opportunities for the young and a standard
of living that permits the leisure of free inquiry and experimentation. Furthermore, Soviet
and western physicists have, for decades, met regularly to discuss arms control: both
formally under the official auspices of Academies of Science and informally in the
Pugwash framework. And, to complete a list that is hardly exhaustive, I mention the very
direct and energetic activities of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in the area of
human rights, including its bold and principled actions in support of Andrei Sakharov.

3

It was not an accident, though the point is overlooked by many of our sages, that it
was Andrei Sakharov, a physicist, who sparked Soviet and Eastern European changes
with his insistence on freedom, justice, and human rights.

These few observations, and others that you can think of as easily as I, suggest that
scientists should take a share of the credit for the spread of freedom. But then, we too
should hold up the mirror, and examine how American science matches the image our
Eastern European colleagues have. No one seems to have done this. And, because
making such an examination seemed to fit what I understood of David's charge, I'd like
to give it a try this afternoon.
Four reflections yield particularly pertinent lessons right now. First, what I call the
Top Down/Bottom Up question (and others call the Big ScienceLittle Science
Controversy); second, the private support of fundamental research; third, the
development of scientific talent; and fourth, the question of leadership.

Lesson I: Top DownlBottom Up.

A few years ago, when I was still chief of the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the
National Cancer Institute, I was visited by a small group of familiar Soviet molecular
biologists accompanied by a few unfamiliar officials of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences-I assumed doubling as KGB agents. The group was touring U.S. labs, asking
probing questions about the organization and habits of productive research groups. They
wanted, in particular, to know what criteria we used in making appointments and what
procedures we used in determining the department's research program. My answers were,
I am certain, the same as those they heard in other highly productive American labs. With
respect to the first question I said that in hiring new scientists, demonstrated excellence
and originality were the primary criteria, not interest in a particular field specified by me
or my superiors. With respect to the second question, I said that no one except the
scientists themselves determined their research programs. Although some of the scientists
and some of the projects would prove pedestrian or would fail, we believed that trust in
individual talent was likely to be most productive of excellent research. That approach
has of course been proven many times-including today in the talks you heard earlier.
My Soviet colleagues were, I think, happy with the conversation. They had seen
enough of U.S. science over the years to realize the enormous pay-off we've had from
our habit of giving independence to people when they are young and sustaining this
independence throughout their careers. They surely wanted the accompanying
bureaucrats to learn that science works best from the bottom up. The top down,
hierarchical organization of research customary in the USSR and Eastern Europe often
yields stale, unimaginative work. It surely diminishes ambition, dampens the spirit, and
wastes resources and talent. The worldly-wise scientists in Eastern Europe will be
striving to reorganize their research according to this American image.
And what does the mirror show us? Unhappily, as the eastern style begins to change,
from top-down to bottom-up, we show a tendency toward the reverse. Increasing shares

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of our research resources go for bureaucratically designated programs. Science and
engineering "Centers" designed to foster specified aspects of interdisciplinary research
(whatever that term may mean) or to advance some particular line of investigation fall in
this class. Similarly, a growing proportion of research funds go for projects that seem
interesting and feasible to people sitting in an office in Washington, or in the
headquarters of some private foundation. All of these are what I call top/down science.
The issues I include under the top/down, bottodup distinction are often posed in
terms of the "big scienceflittle science" controversy. But the big/little distinction really
befuddles the matters. Even individual, investigator- initiated research in small groups,
the epitome of what most people term "little" science, is not so little. In biology, such
research depends on pretty big commercial enterprises which provide instruments, fine
chemicals and enzymes. In the physical sciences, individual investigators are increasingly
dependent on massive, centralized computer capacity.
The real issue is how research is organized. The classical examples of "big science"
tend toward the top/down mode. Consequently, the bureaucracy that always accompanies
large centralized ventures siphons money from research itself. Yet, it is not clear that
those bureaucracies are cost-effective, because major decisions are made at further and
further remove from those who really understand the scientific and technical
opportunities. I reacted with dismay at H.S.F. Cooper's description of how the Soviet
space bureaucracy fouled their two spacecraft missions to a moon of Mars called Phobos,
as described in a recent New Yorker article. Cooper even contrasted Soviet and American
styles in this regard, decrying the Soviet's enforced separation of bureaucrats, engineers,
and scientists. It was only two weeks or so after this that we learned of the Hubble mirror
tragedy. As the story has unfolded it looks as if the American experience was not so
different from the Soviet Phobos tale.

ratio, R, of the number of individuals doing the work to the number of individuals
deciding what is to be done. Even if all those in the denominator are very smart,
individual initiative, especially that of the very young is lost, if R is big. And, as Lew
Branscomb has said, the extent of peer review is generally inversely proportional to the
size of a scientific project, that is, inversely prop0,rtional to the size of R.
It's not easy to decide when R is too high. The intrinsic interest of the science and the
talent of those in the denominator has to be balanced against several criteria-the dollars
lost for other, independent scientists, whose projects have small R values; how much
significant science might be accomplished by the crowd in the numerator if they had the
chance to do their own thing. More than that, some of those in the numerator will be lost
to science entirely if they see themselves as drones-their names buried amidst 100 other
authors, on even the most exciting of papers. We don't, of course, have many good
methods for making these determinations. But we do have historical experience which
says that maximizing opportunities for individuals produces an abundance of exciting
new knowledge and useful technology.

Another distinction between "top/down" and "bottom/up" science has to do with the

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The evidence of a tilt from bottodup to top/down in U.S. science is not only in the
megaprojects and centers that get covered in the press. There are now, in our universities,
a good number of very large research groups. A professor with an outstanding record of
scientific achievement, who can command, from one or another source on the order of a
half million dollars a year, may preside over dozens of graduate students, postdocs,
technicians, secretaries, grant writers and editorial assistants. Often, magnificent science
is accomplished. But what, after all, is the difference between this and the old European
style, where a senior professor, enjoying a variety of perks, governed research? In time,
some of these American labs too will stagnate. And the aging young people will have
expended their best years in pursuit of someone else's ideas, interests and glory.

A top/down habit creeps up on us, sometimes for apparently good reasons. And there
are situations, such as industrial settings, where it is appropriate. But it is not what made
American fundamental research the envy and the model for the rest of the world.

Lesson II. The Private Support of Fundamental Research

The bottodup organization of research is an American phenomenon-one that

developed in the middle of the 20th Century as the core of modem science moved to our
country and flourished. Relocation of science was not of our doing-it was driven by the
demise of freedom in Europe, and by the necessities of war. It was fostered by a
generation of gifted, displaced Europeans who found here, in abundance, and in spite of
an indigenous cultural anti-intellectualism, the essential foundations for science-safety,
freedom, money, a spirit of entrepreneurship, and a willingness to make a social contract
whereby the population at large benefits in material ways by supporting scientists in the
free pursuit of their own interests.
Some fundamental research had been carried out in our Universities since the middle
of the 19th Century. The American professors who did this work were largely trained in
Europe. Their meager support derived from philanthropy and in the late 19th Century,
from burgeoning American industry. A major boost to research occurred at the beginning
of the 20th Century. The founding of this then Rockefeller Institute, and of my own
Carnegie Institution of Washington depended on the vision and philanthropy of two
major American industrialists. In both cases, institutions for research, not teaching, were
established independent of universities. Yet, in the words of Allan Bromley, speaking at
the 75th Anniversary of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology in
November 1989:

"One effect of this arrangement was to give
basic research a respectability that it had
not previously known in our highly pragmatic
society. "

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These two institutions, together with the private foundations, corporations, and

individuals were virtually the entire support available for basic research and training in
the years before World War 11, and for almost a decade thereafter.

Parenthetically, there are some interesting tales told about the establishment of the
Rockefeller Institute and the Carnegie Institution in the History ofthe Rockefeller
Institute, written by George W. Comer, and published in 1964. The book also has some
fine photographs-formal ones and lab pictures. Here, for example, is Simon Flexner, the
first president of the Rockefeller, all dressed up in coat and tie. The illustrations in the
next history-say at the end of this century-will show a different kind of world, and a
different presidential image.
Establishment of the two institutions apparently involved some healthy competition.
The earliest suggestions for a Rockefeller medical research institute were made in 1897
(Frederick T. Gates). The idea was studied and tested, and by 1901 grants-in-aid were
being provided from the resources made available by the Rockefeller family, but the
Institute was still only an idea. According to Comer, it took the incorporation of the
Carnegie Institution in January 1902 to finally stimulate the appointment of Simon
Flexner as first director of the Rockefeller, the acquisition of temporary space (50th and
Lexington), and the site search that led to the purchase of the land under our feet today.
This was keeping up with the Joneses (or I should say the Carnegies) on a grand scale.
However, we need to temper Comer's interpretation of the history with the fact that he
had been for many years, Director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of
Embryology.
Whatever, it is a great personal pleasure for me to recognize that I can, with David,
maintain what are long-standing ties between the two institutions, albeit with a style quite
different from that of our predecessors.

the beginning of the century recognized the importance of fundamental knowledge for
the health of the nation. Individual health, social health, economic health. And they
understood the principle of banking. They built for institutional strength - banking
facilities and perpetual endowments and they encouraged basic research, thereby banking
knowledge for the unknown needs and challenges of the future. They supported
fellowships and training - banking human resources for our nation's welfare.
Besides institutions like the one we're celebrating today, large American fortunes also
established foundations, which, rather than doing research themselves, gave grants to
individuals and institutions for research, training and facilities. In the past, support went
largely to those who came forward with original and interesting ideas, and some record
attesting to their ability to perform. The amounts for research were comparatively small,
but they had enormous effects-both alone, and ultimately as a stimulus to public
expenditures. The lesson of this farsighted dedication of private fortunes to the public
good has not been lost on the rest of the world.

call from the 3rd Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. Could he come and visit me? Right

Comer confirms that the wealthy individuals who provided the money for research at

Shortly after President Gorbachev's visit to the U.S. last spring, I received a telephone

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away? It's a new world, so no committee of bureaucrats or KGB agents accompanied
him. He simply walked the two short blocks of 16th Street from the embassy to the
Carnegie Institution. He explained that President Gorbachev asked the embassy to look
into various especially interesting aspects of American society. Private organizations
supporting research, both operating research institutions and foundations, were among
the most admired of American institutions. Mr. Gorbachev understood their capacity for
independent, innovative effort-and the philosophical notion that acquired, private
capital could profitably be devoted to scholarship. How did such institutions work? What
was the relation between the donor and the decision making? Who determined how to
spend the money? Who was responsible for the money? There were already millionaires
in the U.S.S.R. and Mr. Gorbachev might want to lead them into constructive pursuits.
I was quite astonished. Who would have guessed that these extraordinary institutions,
so unique to American society, were appreciated or even recognized in the U.S.S.R.? But
I was also somewhat chagrined. In recent months I had begun to wonder whether we can
still count on the major foundations for the support of the most innovative and risky
fundamental research and scientific training. I'd begun to wonder whether their present
stewards remember their historical roles. And others share this disquiet.
Increasingly, major U.S. foundations are focused on the here and now. They have
good intentions. The boards and presidents of those foundations are deeply aware of
profound problems in our country and the world. And they have properly resolved to use
the foundations resources to try to address them. But they are forgetting the importance
of investing some part of their assets in the future. They are forgetting how the value of
small sums can be magnified many times over when the knowledge gained from
fundamental research is later applied to societal problems. In a news story about the
spring 1990 meeting of the Council on Foundations-an umbrella organization of 1,000
grant making institutes representing tens of billions of dollars of assets there was no
mention of support of fundamental research. And the policies of many important
foundations-policies explained in their materials, described in the press and reaffmed
in private visits are increasingly turning away from support of basic research and
training. Yet this is the way they can have the biggest impact on the world's problems.
Let me give one example. We are as a nation concerned about the deterioration of the
natural environment that has followed upon great population increases and industrial
world living standards. We have spent a lot of time and money studying this issue. Time
and again, policy studies conclude with words like those found in a recent NAS/NRC
study on Forestry Research: "concerns about the global role and fate of forests has never
been greater," but "...the existing level of knowledge about forests is inadequate to
develop sound forest-management policies." Yet we go on supporting activities designed
to ameliorate forest conditions and other environmental problems by recycling the same
admittedly inadequate base of knowledge. Recycling has its place in our approach to
environmental problems but whoever thought it would become an intellectual program as
well. Not only are our activities suspect, but we use resources-public and private

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monies, and talented, knowledgeable individuals that might instead be spent acquiring
basic understanding.

In the past, in the face of inadequate public funding for such fundamental work, the
private foundations, with their capacity for quick response and their visionary leadership
would have tended the seed corn. Now, they too are using up the seed corn, recycling
existing and inadequate information in support of endless conferences, of intellectual
rehashing and of costly, unproven projects.

Private support has been a mainstay for research because it has always been flexible,
risk-taking, and relatively free from political influences. If these private institutions turn
their backs on fundamental research, no matter how compelling our societal needs, it will
be like our economic policy-all

spending, no saving for a different future.

Lesson III. Development of Scientific Talent.

U.S. universities are universally admired. The young people in many nations aspire to

attend our universities as undergraduates or graduate students, and if they, or their
families, or their countries can find the resources, they do.

To the extent possible, the most promising young foreign scientists and engineers
have also been sent here for postdoctoral training ever since World War 11 ended. In
western Europe and Japan the present scientific leadership positions are held by people
who spent postdoctoral years here.
Neither our Japanese nor our western European colleagues, nor Eastern European
scientists are oblivious to what made American education and training so attractive-fine
universities, provocative and dedicated teaching, well-equipped laboratories, and fair
credit for achievements. Now, aided by governmental understanding of the importance of
trained scientific manpower for economic well-being, similar training opportunities are a
reality in other countries. Research, and research training now command substantial
financial resources in Europe, and will gain even more in 1992 with economic unity.
Anyone who has visited labs in Europe recently has seen the change. Anyone who has
been to an international meeting in the last year or two has sensed the subtle shift of
identity. And, as young Eastern European students begin to look westward for training,
our West European colleagues will aggressively recruit them with attractive opportunities.
This shift will be problematic for us. One reason is that the diminishing quality of
teaching in American universities makes them less attractive to foreigners. Another is that
we'll be hard put to replace the flow of young foreigners with Americans because we
have failed to nurture our own young people. These two factors are of course connected
by tensions in our major research universities.
It is commonly understood that a modem university's purpose is the teaching and the
advancement of knowledge. In earlier times, universities were first and foremost a place
for teaching. Research was seen as a separate endeavor. The Rockefeller Institute for
instance, was established, at least in part, because medical research was not carried out in

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universities. Later in the 20th Century, the universities began to recognize that the doing
of research is an essential part of the diffusion of knowledge. The balance between
teaching and research was shifted by the broad recognition that teaching (in Jaroslav
Pelikan's words); "is infinitely more rich and profound when it is in the hands of
professors who were and still are engaged in the advancement of knowledge; that is, in
research." Finally, today, the balance between teaching and research in universities has
shifted substantially in the direction of research.
There are a lot of complicated reasons for this. Most scientists find research more
challenging and satisfying than teaching. By and large, money both public and private,
comes for research. Reputation and prestige come from research. The situation is further
exacerbated by the growing tendency to look to universities for solutions to immediate
societal problems. In the late 60s there was a justifiable call for universities to become
more "relevant" to society. But the movement to relevancy has gotten out of control.

being a professor-one who professes special knowledge-is no longer a necessary
consequence of a faculty appointment. Universities acquiesce in excusing successful
research faculty not only from significant amounts of teaching, but from institutional
responsibilities - curriculum committees, promotion committees and the like. And they
often mortgage themselves and their students to potential faculty members' seemingly
unlimited demands for space, support, salary, and benefits.

core. This wouldn't matter a lot if we had other institutions to take the place of
universities. But we don't. Who will defend the freedom of the academy? Who will
show directions for the future? Who will teach and inspire the young?
In June, Nature magazine reported that the number of U.S. students receiving
undergraduate degrees in natural science declined about 10% in the two years 1987 and
1988. Although the total number of degrees granted rose to a record high in the same
period, 20,000 fewer degrees were awarded in the natural sciences.
Now, we all know that dismal pre-college science education is a major factor in this
state of affairs. But surely scientists share a substantial portion of the blame because we
have left the effort to others. Many of us believe that modern biology is the most exciting
endeavor of our times. Yet according to a very recent NAS/NRC report, most students
leave their high school biology courses with the conviction that further exposure to
science is something to be avoided.
We also know that about half of those undergraduates who come to college intending
to major in science switch to other fields before they finish. Why? There are, and will be,
abundant and well-paying jobs for scientists and engineers. The arrogant explanation I
hear from faculty is that the students are poorly prepared and can't cope even with the
introductory courses. Savvy and responsible students however see those courses as
addressed to the professor's interests, not theirs: the professors are inattentive to the
students needs and, one hears, often inexperienced and poorly prepared.

Altogether, these pressures have brought us to the point where teaching responsibility,

Something is out of balance. And the result is a serious weakening of the universities'

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Wise university leadership-presidents, provosts, and boards of trustees know that the
proper balance between teaching and research has been lost. They have begun to work
toward righting the balance. Don Kennedy at Stanford this spring challenged his faculty.
At least one faculty response is reported to be that he is "trying to make Stanford some
kind of hybrid between a real research university and a liberal arts college." I, at least,
always thought that that is exactly what Stanford is. And the thousands of Stanford
undergraduates, their parents, and undergraduate alumni believe that also. At Yale, steps
are being taken to strengthen the faculties' obligations to students-for supervision, for
encouragement, for teaching.
If faculties resist these changes, they will not get much sympathy from those who pay
tuition bills, or from state legislatures that foot university bills, or from alumni and other
philanthropists upon whom the universities increasingly depend to make ends meet.
These constituencies believe that education remains a vital purpose of a university.
More than a renewal of teaching will be required if we are going to ensure the
viability of our great universities. We need too to renew our attachments to the places
where we work to identify our interests with those of the institutions. We are not, or
should not see ourselves as temporary tenants with no obligation to their general welfare.
Yet, many of us spend more time in airplanes flying to meetings of dubious significance
in Washington than we do at university curriculum or promotion committees. I can't do
better than quote Bart Giamatti here:

"When administrators believe themselves only
managers of the public policy of the place and
faculty members believe themselves alone in
guarding the flame of intellectual values, when
presidents and deans on the one hand and members
of the faculty on the other may even question
whether they share the same goals, the same
mission, the same hopes, then they split apart.
They speak of US and THEM ... That atmosphere has been
growing for about 15 years on America's
campuses. It is subtle and dangerous. No
institution for teaching and learning can survive it"

Few things contribute more to this subtle and dangerous atmosphere than the failure of
common understanding about indirect cost recoveries. The often acrimonious arguments
about this are, at one level, the consequence of faculty's determined, blissful ignorance of
the realities of university revenues. At another level they reflect the science faculty's
narrow view of the university's purpose.

universities are critical to our nation's way of life because it is only they who foster,
espouse, and protect society's capacity for change. If, for short-term advantage, we

This purpose, to advance knowledge and to teach it, is timeless and unique. American

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divorce scientific research from the central purposes of our universities, science will
suffer from a diminished flow of young scientists, and a loss of the support it needs to
con tinue.

Lesson N. Leadership.

The final and the biggest lesson we have to learn from the mirror is the value of bold,
imaginative, informed, leadership. In Eastern Europe, the aspirations of many were
gathered and made powerfully coherent by a few spirited individuals. Yet in our country
leadership seems a forgotten, devalued quality. In science as well as other spheres, it is
debased by mean-spirited debate, and by an overly zealous press.
American biomedical science once had exemplary leadership in the person of James
Shannon. Shannon built the NIH and the whole of our nation's biomedical research
enterprise through enormous dedication and informed conviction. He succeeded better
than anyone else in convincing the nation and the congress of the significance of
fundamental research to the national welfare. What a sad contrast there is between
Shannon's days and the present, The most distressing aspect of the many failed attempts
to find a new NIH director was their demeaning messages about the importance we give,
as a nation, to leadership. These messages come from the Administration in Washington.
But they reflect our national scene. We are afraid to risk bold, empowered leadership. So
we limit authority, we underscore our skepticism by low pay for public officials, we hold
would-be leaders hostage by the threat of public scandal over irrelevant matters or

disingenuous charges. We see the leadership of OUT institutions as our adversaries.

In the current funding crisis in biomedical research, we have watched as many who
should be leaders have instead stood alone, wringing their hands about their own
individual plights and calling only for more and more money. I would like to be quite
plain about this. Our behavior as a community has been unseemly and counterproductive.
As Dave Baltimore recently wrote: "We must be clear that when we request increased
funding we do so because it serves the national interest, not just our personal interests."
The NIH budget has risen at a substantially greater rate than most federally funded
endeavors for the better part of a decade--from about 2.8 billion to almost 7 billion from
1980 to 1990. During the same period the NSF budget virtually doubled. Our pleas fall
on ears that hear many other demands for money - and a crushing national debt, We need
to get our act together. We need leadership that will analyze the NIH and NSF budgets
and tell us, and the congress, why more money supports fewer individual research grants.
Where is it all going? Can it be redirected? To what extent are Requests for Proposals,
Centers, congressionally mandated programs, megaprograms, and increasingly
bureaucratic, unproductive paper work and administrative personnel continually
depleting the share for investigator initiated work?
Where will the leadership come from? We might have hoped that the NAS could
represent scientists' interests. But it sees itself as compromised by its quasi-official status.
We need to challenge the Academy, our societies, our universities to be innovative, to

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represent us vigorously and well-and as boldly as they acted on behalf of Andrei
sakharov.

Few of us are willing to take the time, to make the sustained effort needed to bring our
case successfully before the American public. We go eagerly to Washington when
requested, and spend a day talking feverently, but mainly to one another. But who spends
substantial time with his or her own congressman? Who has pressed for strong leadership
for the NIH? Who has done the hard work of analyzing federal budgets? We are too eager
to get back to those pursuits which enlarge our personal selves-our own research, the
self-aggrandizing major lectures, yet another meeting at some wonderful place where we
hear the same papers we heard two weeks ago, the company which pays us well for
consulting or which we have started. Communication is vital to science, but not all talk is
effective communication. We have forgotten that it takes concerted, group work and
strong leadership to make and sustain the point of our relevance to our society.

Conclusion

Fundamental research is the scientific equivalent of money in the bank. If we're not
careful, American science, which is still emulated world-wide, will find itself in the same
boat as the American economy and our high technology-pale compared to science being
done by those who lemed from us. Many may consider science marginal to our nation's
success, but we know better and there is an opportunity now to display our importance.
We are one of the last remaining repositories of that great marriage of pragmatism and
humane values that made our country great.
American science has always been driven by an inherent optimism about what is
possible-an optimism that succeeding waves of immigrants have acquired from our
history and traditions as well as our wealth. Here the cynicism of older cultures,
particularly of those who experienced suppression was cast off. It is being cast off now in
Eastern Europe and the far east; it is already virtually gone in Western Europe. Yet we see
cynicism growing around us. We see it growing in young people's loss of interest in
science, in scientists' diminishing concern for teaching and for the institutions on which
they depend, in the willingness to agree to top-down decisions about research in
exchange for short-term promises of funds. Such cynicism makes an ugly reflection in
the mirror.
You at the Rockefeller University are lucky. The Trustees have wisely appointed an
optimist as your new president. Cynicism is foreign to Dave Baltimore's nature. And he
is bold-scientifically and politically. You will not always agree with him. (I don't
always agree with him). But his motives are grand motives. With your support he can
raise this institution to even greater levels of significance and excellence than it has
enjoyed in the past. And in this, he will lead the way for all the universities in our country
and the world.