PERSPECTIVE ON SCIENCE RESEARCH : It’s Down to the Last Blank Check : We’ve paid for 45 years of discovery; let’s start requiring its application to the critical problems in the civilian sector.
Science inexplicably has come to occupy a place in American culture somewhere alongside Plymouth Rock, Johnny Appleseed and the Bill of Rights. Science and the technology that it spawns are viewed as a cornerstone of our past, the strength of our present and the hope for our future.
An unofficial contract between the scientific community and society has arisen from these beliefs. This contract confers special privileges and freedoms on scientists, in the expectation that they will deliver great benefits to society as a whole.
The scientific community enthusiastically embraces this relationship. Our leading science journals publish an unending stream of editorials and articles citing past accomplishments while making the case for increased federal funds in support of research that can improve national health, protect the environment, free us from dependence on foreign oil and provide us with the tools to rejuvenate a stagnant economy and achieve a better quality of life.
The promise of science--a miracle cure--serves politicians, who always are looking for a tonic to sell to the public, and it 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 science may be at the root of our problems, because it is easier--politically, economically, socially, scientifically--to support more research than it is to change how we behave.
In truth, the path from scientific discovery to societal benefit is neither certain nor straight. Today there are more human beings living in abject poverty throughout the world than ever before. The gap in the standard of living between industrialized and developing nations continues to expand, fueled in large part by concentration of scientific and technological resources in the industrialized world.
At home, our global leadership in science and technology has not translated into leadership in infant health, life expectancy, rates of literacy, equality of opportunity, productivity of our workers or efficiency of resource consumption. Neither has it overcome a failing education system, decaying cities, environmental degradation, unaffordable health care and history’s largest national debt. All this in a nation that spent $110 billion on civilian R&D; last year, $30 billion more than any other nation on earth.
In the 45 years since World War II, the federal government has given the science community carte blanche, secure in the faith that 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 within our academic system, which is organized around traditional disciplines and pressure to publish, and is structured so as to encourage specialization and discourage both radical approaches and interdisciplinary initiatives.
The disciplinary organization of the sciences and the relative distribution of resources that support these disciplines 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 program--derives directly from the dominance of nuclear physicists in policy-making circles, which in turn derives directly 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--especially by shifting funding priorities--rather than through the play of unfettered scientific inquiry.
Yet we have developed an uncritical faith that wherever science leads us is where we want to go. We accept the argument that objective scientific knowledge leads to subjective benefit for humanity. We assume that society will absorb and disseminate those research results and technologies that make life better, while suppressing or controlling those that are threatening. We believe that all of our problems will be worked out as long as we keep generating new scientific ideas and new technologies based on those ideas. We create, as if incidentally, a self-perpetuating market niche for scientists.
But the fact is, we already have much of the knowledge and many of the technologies necessary to decrease population growth, increase energy efficiency, reduce and recycle wastes and improve public health and education throughout the world. What we lack are the social and economic systems that can assimilate and use the information and the hardware that are already in our possession.
Indeed, as the pace of technological development continues to accelerate, so does the speed with which we encounter new, unanticipated societal crises. The current debates over issues such as global climate change; energy production, consumption, and conservation; endangered species and disposal of hazardous waste all hinge on the expectation that science will provide the data and the technologies needed to overcome these challenges, many of which were caused by technological innovation in the first place. But there has never in human history been a long-term technological fix; there have merely been bridges to the next level of societal stress and crisis.
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 research 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 contract 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, pollution, 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 scientific research better serves the needs of all humanity, not just a privileged few.
