The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, created in 1988 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as a five-year-long effort to assess the way science is taken into account in the formulation of United States policy, ends its tenure June 30. The commission, its advisory council, and its 15 committees and task forces have included "the elite of the science policy community in the country," in the words of Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.)--among them three Nobel-ists (Rockefeller University geneticist Joshua Lederberg, University of Chicago physicist Leon M. Lederman, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Robert M. Solow) and two former U.S. presidents (Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford).
In assessing the success of the commission, outside observers as well as those associated with the group point to several of its recommendations that were implemented by the Bush and Clinton administrations and others that have earned a ...
