A Look Inside NAS Election Process

WASHINGTON—The recent controversy over the rejection of Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington for membership in the National Academy of Sciences, which spilled over into a rare public debate, has focused attention on the academy's election process. It's an elaborate procedure, deliberately shrouded in secrecy, that repeatedly screens out candidates until a consensus emerges on those most worthy of NAS membership. it is built around a system that divides all of science into five classes, each of which receives a share (called a quota) of the 60 member slots that can be filled each year. (Non-U.S. citizens may be elected as foreign associates.) The quotas are set by the Council, a 17-person policy-making body that meets six times a year. Although several present and former councilors admitted that the quota system is not entirely rational, many are reluctant to discuss a process that has set them above their colleagues. The academy's bylaws say the actual quotas shall remain "strictly confidential." Currently president of the American Political Science Association, Huntington was voted down for the second year in a row after an unusually visible and heated campaign. Critics questioned his use of mathematical equations in articles dealing with social issues, calling it "pseudoscience" and "nonsense." Supporters suggested Huntington was really being attacked for his long association with the country's military establishment. Some observers also saw the controversy as a litmus test for members' views on the proper balance between the "hard" and "soft" sciences in the NAS. The latter received a boost in 1971 with the addition of Class 4 (medicine) and Class 5 (behavioral and social sciences) to the three existing classes covering the physical and mathematical sciences, biological science, and engineering and applied sciences. Members will be asked later this year to approve creation of a sixth class, separating the applied biological and agricultural sciences from the applied physical sciences. Up and Down The quotas for Classes 4 and 5 were raised during the mid-1970s, boosting the overall total, as a remedy for past neglect of those fields. But their quotas were lowered in 1977, when the current annual maximum of 60 new members was set, and the numbers are said to have changed only slightly in the intervening years. Class 1 (physical and mathematical sciences) and Class 2 (biological sciences) together comprise a majority of the 60 slots. Class 5, by comparison, has a quota of eight slots. There are some 185 social and behavioral scientists among the academy's 1,523 members. Membership in the NAS, a private organization founded in 1863, is an honor unsurpassed for many scientists. The academy, through its National Research Council, also advises the federal government on technical and scientific issues. "I suppose the whole business of selecting members is best done quietly," said Bryce Crawford, a University of Minnesota chemist who is finishing his second four-year term as NAS home secretary. "[The determination of quotas] involves a discussion of the relative status of individual fields, and you don't want to talk about it openly unless you can document it thoroughly. "We don't mind a headline in the newspaper from an NRC [National Research Council] report that is the result of months, or even years, of intensive study. But we don't want one that says, 'Social scientists are no good' because we decided one year to lower their quota." The current system, observed Francisco Ayala, a council member and a geneticist at the University of California at Davis, is an attempt to reflect "the relative ratio of excellence in the various fields within the country. There's no precise algorithm; rather, it's a perception built up over time." There is an ongoing debate within the academy about its proper size. Many members argue that it needs to remain small to retain the collegiality that is necessary to conduct its business. "I think the overall quota should be lower, perhaps 50 per year," said former Council member Richard Garwin of IBM. "We can never admit everybody who is worthy of election, and in many ways the process would be simpler if fewer people were chosen." Unavoidably Flawed At the same time, there is widespread agreement that the academy needs enough members to operate its extensive network of advisory committees, boards and task forces. As Herbert Simon, a former Council member and Nobel prizewinning economist at Carnegie-Mellon University, noted, "if the academy were just an honorary society, then few would care about its membership criteria. But the fact that it is also the governing body for the National Research Council makes its procedures important." Simon believes any system that tries to weigh the various parts of science is flawed. "You have the same problem when people discuss the federal science budget," he said. "The quotas get decided the same way people make any type of difficult decision," he continued. "They mull it over and negotiate with their colleagues. Then a magic number appears, and everybody says, 'OK, that's it.' His description could apply equally well to the entire election process, according to Crawford. "The system became a little more Byzantine each time it grew," he said. "Of course, one could devise a simpler system, although it might not be as democratic. The fact is, the academy is not particularly eager to have its election mechanism discussed in the popular press."o Mervis is on the Staff of The Scientist.

A Look Inside NAS Election Process

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of