United States Science Under Siege

AUTHOR: Elie A. Shneour, pp.14 The standing and credibility of the United States scientific community are under unprecedented political and economic challenge. At issue are such matters as animal rights terrorism; limits on reproductive and fetal research; discrediting of scientific evidence in the making of public policy; accountability in the management of research funds; and a parasitic bureaucracy purporting to define, review, and punish scientific misconduct. The contrast with the post-World War II period could not be starker: Then, science was glorified with the invention of radar, the prospect of benevolent nuclear power, and the promise of more to come. Science was poised to enter the golden age of molecular biology and peer into the nature of our universe. Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R.I.), working closely with National Institutes of Health director James A. Shannon (1955-1968), dedicated much of his legislative life to expanding the scope of biomedical research, while other members of Congress did the same for the National Science Foundation and for NASA. Today, instead of John Fogarty, we have Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), instrumental in the creation of the clumsy Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) and the Office of Scientific Integrity Review (OSIR) within NIH. OSIR, in good bureaucratic fashion, recommended the adoption of a definition of scientific misconduct as "practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research," oblivious to the evidence that in many instances those deviations have led to substantive scientific advances. The scientific community barely protested. Is it any wonder that so many of our best and brightest students question the wisdom of making a career commitment to scientific research? The blame for this state of affairs ultimately rests not with our science bureaucracy but with the science community. We have failed to recognize and appreciate the shift in public perception. We suffer from the hubris of believing that we retain a special claim on taxpayer money. We shun outspoken advocacy as inimical to the scientific ethic, forgetting that candid advocacy is an important intellectual tool that we routinely apply to explain our working hypotheses among our peers. We may find it painful, but in the public view, we have become just another special-interest group, feeding at the public trough. Most surprising to me is the extraordinary resistance of the scientific community to political advocacy. One example is the response to my editorial in Science ("Too Much Accountability," 195:4282, 1977), in which I argued against the damaging trend of counterproductive paperwork in the management of research funds. More than a thousand supportive responses were received, but, subsequently, nothing seems even to have been attempted to resolve this problem. Another example is the creation of a promising, high-level scientific liaison between a society of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and members of Congress. This effort, which had the commitment of senior scientists nationwide, had to be abruptly ended when the National Academy of Sciences objected, placing concerns about the bureaucratic structure of the venture above the potential gains of such a liaison. The message here is that nothing is likely to change unless we have another shock, such as the one meted out by Sputnik. The all-important continuity and integrity of the scientific endeavor ultimately rest in our hands. If we do not take up the challenge, no one can or will do it for us. We should encourage, first of all, a responsible but candid dialogue with our federal, state, and regional representatives. They need to understand the overriding importance of what we are trying to do. For the rest of the nation, at stake is nothing less than the political, cultural, and economic position of the U.S. in the 21st century. Elie A. Shneour is director of Biosystems Research Institute, San Diego, and president of Biosystems Institutes Inc., its funding organization.

United States Science Under Siege

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