From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: It's Down to the Last Blank Check
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 05:59:36 GMT

On my drive across the country (I'm really in Riverside, CA now) I
stopped in at Los Alamos.  It seems like there is a concerted push
underway to get people working on commercial stuff, especially materials
science.  One of the people there, who had earlier been doing highly
mathematical stuff with a well-known string theorist, has just gotten
himself a permanent position by raising half a million bucks in grants,
partially from industry, to do materials science.  Another, who
described himself as a solid-state theorist, spoke of avoiding the
"black hole of materials science".  So it seems that the end of the Cold
War and the the budget deficit are having a real effect on life at the
national labs.

Anyway, here are some excerpts from a letter to the editor, with title
as above, to the LA Times.  It's mainly of interest because it's by Rep.
George E. Brown Jr., chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space
and Technology.

---

....

The promise of science - a miracle cure - serves politicians, who always
are looking for a tonic to sell to the public, and serves scientists,
who understandably seek to preserve their elevated position in our culture.
but it may not serve society as advertised.  Indeed, the promise of
sceince may be at the root of our problems, becuase it is easier -
politically, economically, socially, scientifically - to support more
research than it is to change how we behave.  

....

In 45 years since World War II, the federal government has given the
science community carte blanche, secure in the faith the the products of
research would resolve the challenges that face us.  Advocates for
research - myself included - always have fallen back on the argument
that we must support as much science as possible because we can't predict
where the breakthroughs will come from or what the benefits will be.

The underlying assumption is that the imagination and initiative of our
scientists and engineers, unfettered by political constraints, will lead
inevitably to progress for society. But in reality, there is no such
thing as unfettered research.  Research choices made by even the most
independent of scientists are contextual. For example, most basic
researchers work withing our academic system, which is organized around
traditional disciplines and pressure to publish, and is structured so as
to encourage speicalization and discourage both radical approaches and
interdisciplinary initiatives.

The disciplinary organization of the sciences and the relative
distribution of resources are much more a reflection of political
history than of unconstrained pursuit of knowledge.  For example, the
strong federal commitment to supporting individual investigator research
in physics - and to multibillion-dollar projects such as the
Superconducting Super Collider and the "Star Wars" missile defense
system - derives directly from the dominance of nuclear physicists,
which in turn derives from the success of the Manhattan Project, which
was, in turn made possible and necessary by the rise of Hitler, which
stems rather more indirectly from the Treaty of Versailles.  Research
trajectories are highly dependent on the momentum of history, and
changing these trajectories can be difficult; often, change is
accomplished through political means - rather than through the play of
unfettered scientific inquiry.

....

Society needs to negotiate a new contract with the scientific community.
This contract must be rooted in the pursuit of explicit, long-term
social goals, such as zero population growth, reduced generation of
waste, reduced consumption of non-renewable resources, less armed
conflict, less dependence on material goods as a gauge of wealth or
success and greater opportunity for self-realization for all human
beings.  A new contract will measure the value of reasearch and
innovation not by number of publications or citations or patents, but by
progress toward these specific goals.  A new contract will focus not just
on research at the frontiers of knowledge, but on the utilization of
existing knowledge.  A new constract will require an increased emphasis
on exploring humankind's relationship with the surrounding world, through
research in the oft-maligned disciplines of the social and
interdisciplinary sciences.

Now is the time to begin drafting this new contract.  We must not wait
until increasing population, polluion, resource consumption and
concentration of wealth become insurmountable obstacles to the
well-being of society.  Scientists and politicians must abandon the
self-serving rhetoric that drives today's science agenda, and work
together to ensure that tomorrow's scienfic research better serves the
needs of all humanity, not just a privileged few.



------
Sorry that I left out some paragraphes that would show how he got to his
conclusions, but typing is boring.

Near the article is a cartoon titled "When the Senate voted to revive
the $8-billion Super Collider".  It shows a bunch of Senators streaming
down the stairs, saying:

"We'll jus' fire up some protons an' POWEE!  We're number one!"

"Boy, I'd like to see them Japanese fellers when those nucleus things
start poppin'!"

"They got a big surprise comin'!"

"Hey, can I get some protons to show my constituents?"

"No problem... I'll talk to some people..."

"Red ones!"

"Absolutely, for 8 billion we should get some red ones..."