The unrest threatens to reverberate far beyond the 47 employees of the division and the $6 million in contracts that it will award this year for reports on such issues as federal spending on research, the state of academic facilities and instrumentation, and trends in scientific personnel. Those who follow the division's efforts say that the problems, if allowed to continue, could delay publication, and even undermine the accuracy, of SRS data. Federal policymakers, among others, rely upon these findings for an accurate picture of the condition of science in the U.S.--a picture whose clarity they depend on when allocating funds to the research community.
There is general agreement that a revolving door at the top--the division has had four directors in the past 18 months--has aggravated the problem. Some of the directors, appointed with a mandate to straighten things out, have instead, according to sources, become victims of power ...
