Historically, scientists have been more comfortable with indirect—or so-called non-lobbying—lobbying efforts, such as those of the academies and national associations. But that is changing, here and abroad.
"The dependence of scientific research on the large sums that have to be voted on by popularly elected governments and legislative bodies has focused the minds of scientists on the public arena to an extent that is unprecedented," Edward Shils, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, observed recently. "The freedom they enjoyed when research projects were small and demands for practical results were less insistent is no longer the natural and inevitable condition of scientific research. The outer world has forced itself into the horizon of scientists as never before." ("Science and Scientists in the Public Arena," American Scholar, Spring 1987, p. 195) Indeed, necessity has converted many of us to political involvement. Here are a few examples from around the ...
