(5) The identification of the necessary resources to achieve these goals-Federal, State, local and private-and ways of mobilizing them:

(6) The delineation of impediments to progress and strategies for their circumvention, including politically conflicting interests and the areas of agreement as well as disagreement among these interests;

(7) Processes of feedback during implementation to afford corrective action; and

(8) The definition of new institutions or relationships between public and private sector needed to meet mutual interests.

One fundamental property of such policy planning is the adoption of a long-range view. We need "pre-crisis," not "post-crisis," planning. Sometimes it would seem that humans possess a genetic defect which rejects the notion of long-range planning. But no matter how cruel the discipline, we no longer can advance without a clear destination or a map of the pitfalls that lie ahead.

I believe it will be of great historical significance that President Nixon just a few short weeks ago established a White House staff to look to the future to determine the direction the Nation is moving and to offer alternative courses.

As the President said:

We can no longer afford to approach the long-range future haphazardly. As the pace of change accelerates, the process of change becomes more complex. Yet, at the same time, an extraordinary array of tools and techniques has been developed by which it becomes increasingly possible to project future trends and thus to make the kind of informed choices which are necessary if we are to establish mastery over the process of change.

Mr. Chairman, you and your colleagues have expressed that same sentiment in examining the need for a technological early warning system.

In governmental planning, we enunciate purposes in general terms on which everyone agrees, but we are inclined to be timid when we are obliged to take that one next step of being specific. We have to make a choice of one direction over another and that choice means stepping on someone's toes. From where I sit, Washington has wall-towall toes. I believe that the essence of planning is not only the illumination of alternatives but choices in terms of goals-and here I mean specific goals-each of which is amenable to the preparation of a plan for accomplishment. That is almost the definition of a goal-a plan which set forth the targets, the impediments, and the resources needed, and states very clearly where we would like to be in 1980 or 1990.

Last week we learned the meaning of such a goal-of sending a man to the moon. We have learned that one act of political leadership expressed by the President and supported by the Congress made it possible to define all the intermediate steps-and to meet alternative claims for funds that were often expressed vaguely.

We are in an unprecedented position today to plan in the presence rather than in the absence of fact. We have the machinery to collect information, to structure and to analyze it. We lack the people equipped by interdisciplinary knowledge and inclination, however,

and we seem to lack a determination to establish instrumentalities of objective analysis.

Let me just touch on one other aspect, the problem of allocating resources. During the early part of this decade, funding for science and technology was growing so fast that few real choices had to be made. Thus, we were spared the requirement of making choices, of deciding, for example, how much should go into research and development in contrast to welfare. We know now that such choices have to be made. I think we also recognize that, Vietnam or no Vietnam, there will never be enough money to do all the things that are attractive to do. And therefore, we must set priorities. If small increments of funding are available, sprinkling uniformly will not produce the results we seek. We must make choices and we must then concentrate our resources.

In a pluralistic society, in a democracy, these are priorities of the people. The President and the Congress represent that consensus in the political forum. Both of these branches of Government have equipped themselves with science policy research capabilities. But these may need strengthening, particularly those in the executive branch. The real gap lies in the ragged public understanding of science and in the retarded application of science at State and local levels of government. People in a democratic society cannot express views on key science-related issues they do not comprehend.

Public understanding, in my view, is poorer than ever before because the issues are becoming more complex. The public lacks appreciation for what science can contribute. Its contributions are often well presented by the mass media, but sometimes with a superficial “gee whiz" approach.

In any case, the lack of understanding goes back to an earlier point of cleavage between two sectors of our society.

All too often, the problem begins right in the secondary schools when quantitative evaluation of talent separates students into those who do well in their science and math and those who do poorly. As long as these courses are taught as though every student were to become a scientist, we will fail not only to give every citizen a deeper understanding of the meaning of science, but also fail to develop a sympathy and even appetite for science by every citizen. The nonscientists and engineers in this country outnumber the technical professionals by at least 100 to 1. I would thus suggest that we consider the meaning of science for the 99th as well as the 100th.

That problem of division becomes further exaggerated at the college level and in the graduate schools where the strict specialty builds blinders and sonic barriers to communication among those who pursue different lines of scholarly endeavor. These grooves of specialization do not add up to the whole of society.

I think, Mr. Chairman, you brought this point out in your questions last week, and I believe you may have had other witnesses who touch on it.

We do not seem today to have a viable academic base for multidisciplinary research that crosses disciplines horizontally and extends science through technology vertically.

In dealing with these problems, the Federal Government can only provide the climate and the resources. The leadership must come from outside the Government. As a matter of fact, I believe that last year's amendments to the basic legislation for the National Science Foundation that originated in this very subcommittee-will encourage these developments. When NSF exercises that new authority and the academic world casts aside some of its cautions and customs, I believe significant progress can be made.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, let me state that, while I am deeply concerned over our problems with science and technology, we should not overlook our successes. In a very short interval since World War II we have created a vigorous and productive base of academic research that has earned both admiration and recognition by professionals throughout the world. Our agility in transferring knowledge to the marketplace is really so good that it has generated a variety of apprehensions abroad, succinctly though improperly called the "technology gap." Our success stems not from the methods of science but from the processes of democracy. We have an open society; we disagree and debate but always look for improvement in the human condition. We foster communication through all sectors of our society. We encourage mobility and we have been willing to invest a sizable fraction of our wealth in trying to make education at all levels available to all of our people.

These are our strengths. No sensation of riding over a corrugated road during this interval of strenuous budgets should undermine our confidence that we are headed in the right direction.

In fact, we should recognize that our dissatisfaction stems from not having arrived rather than from heading for the wrong goals. The shock waves to evaluate our imperfections seem to come mainly from the young. And I believe this is a challenge to those of us in positions of public responsibility to examine ever more carefully the retarding forces and difficulties and the mistakes of the past.

The one urgent goal on which I believe we should focus attention is how to make our science and technology machine serve society's needs ever more effectively.

May I urge, Mr. Chairman, that as you inquire into Federal reorganization, you continue to ask the question-"what are we reorganizing for?" The answers you generate are necessary for consideration outside as well as inside the Government, if we are to realize the role of knowledge and discovery in modern society.

Thank you very much.

Mr. DADDARIO. Thank you, Dr. Wenk.

Mr. Cabell?

Mr. CABELL. No questions.

Mr. DADDARIO. Mr. Mosher?

Mr. MOSHER. Mr. Chairman, I almost feel like applauding after that testimony. It is so articulate, so eloquent.

But Dr. Wenk has made only a passing reference here to the role that the Congress plays in the organization of science policy, yet it is implied all the way through his comments, it seems to me—at least there are questions raised by implication all the way through here about the congressional role.

On page 3 you refer to the often primitive processes to sort out priorities, and I think I hope that some years from now we will look back at our present state in Congress and feel our processes were rather primitive right now in that function.

On page 12 these aspects of the policy planning that you delineate all imply-or are really all part of the process we in Congress have to go through in making certain decisions. And you refer to the fact that the nonscientists outnumber 100 to 1 in the population, and certainly that is reflected here in the Congress. I don't think there is one scientist in the Congress. We are all lawyers. And so this raises the question, I suggest one of many questions, about the capability of the Congress to properly make these decisions. How do we compensate for the fact that we are nonscientists?

I suppose one compensating factor is this-and I think you have said this yourself, Dr. Wenk, in some of your other statements: The decisions that we make in Congress concerning science are really not science decisions; they don't deal with the scientific technicalities, they are really management decisions and there is some hope for us, I guess, that we can make policy management decisions without being scientists.

But do you want to talk about the role of the Congress just a little bit, as it applies to the basic questions that we are considering?

Dr. WENK. Well, thank you, Mr. Mosher, for your kind remarks about the statement. In all candor, much of what I have said here I have learned from some years spent in the legislative branch. And so I feel that I have learned from the Congress a good deal about processes of public decisionmaking, which in turn have affected my views on how science may contribute. I will be specific about this.

First let me come back to your point on how the Congress prepared itself to consider these issues. I don't know how appropriate it is for someone from the executive branch even to touch on this point, but if I may be permitted to make observations as an individual rather than as an officer of the administration

Mr. MOSHER. Well, you were only recently an employee of the Congress, so I think you have a right.

Dr. WENK. I feel that in the first instance, the point that there are so few scientists and engineers in the Congress itself is not terribly relevant to the process of decisionmaking. The issues are political decisions that have to reflect the process of consensus. And this means that those of you who sit over here must understand the conflicts that occur, and then make some judgment as to the direction in which we should proceed.

The role of science and technology here, it seems to me, is first to increase the range of options. What is therefore necessary is to make sure not only that you have the facts, but that they are presented to you in your language, not the language of the scientist. This does not mean any diminution of the sharpness of the presentation. It seems to me that this is the role that you and your staff and the Library of Congress have been playing, trying to take scientific knowledge and discovery and identify its relevance to issues. This in turn indicates to you two things: No. 1, the wider choices you have as a result of the opportunities afforded by science, and two, the consequences of

making certain decisions where today we can see the future a little more clearly than before-in terms of technology assessment.

And I do not believe this takes a scientist or engineer. It takes a certain disposition to deal with public policy, and I believe that men from all walks of life who come to the Congress have this.

May I make one other observation, though, in this regard?

When I spoke before a science policy group assembled at the Academy the week before last, I was asked the question, "In what way should a graduate student be best prepared to deal with science policy?" I believe I surprised them when I said that the most fundamental combination of disciplines was science and the law. And the reason I mention this stems really from my exposure to the Congress where all of you are lawmakers, even though you may not be trained as lawyers. The law interposes a discipline that is not only intellectual, but reflects the very roots of the way this Government operates.

It is a government of the people. The law is first a way of providing clear definitions of our social goals, and purposes, arrived at by consensus. Furthermore, through the acts of Congress and its actions on appropriations, you are saying what resources you, the Congress, feel the people want to assign to these different objectives.

For our part, those of us in science and engineering have to try a lot harder than we ever have before to make the information available to you in terms that you can use, not in scientific or engineering jargon.

I believe a start has been made on this, but we have a long way to come. We did not do enough to gain an understanding during the interval in which science and technology were growing, and I believe this is one of the problems we face today. This committee has concentrated on these issues, but science and technology are a matter of concern of every committee of the Congress now, and every appropriations subcommittee. The Congress, I believe, has been entirely sincere in some recent actions such as the National Science Foundation budget. But I feel that we have not done well enough in communicating the problems to the Congress.

Mr. MOSHER. You are saying that engineers and scientists should talk more to Congressmen or talk more effectively to Congressmen. That is one thing you are saying, is that it?

Dr. WENK. Indeed, yes. This, of course, is where the action is.

Mr. MOSHER. Should the National Science Foundation, and perhaps other agencies, provide more effective liaison, more effective means by which Congressmen learn by-not just the members of this committee but other Congressmen learn about what the National Science Foundation means and what it is trying to do?

Dr. WENK. Well, I think the officers of each agency have that obligation. I have both been asked to prepare testimony and, when on this side of Washington, heard it and read it. I realize that those few hours that a senior public official has before you are crucial in communicating the essence of his whole program in terms of public purposes. The kind of statement required in this context must be not just an explanation of technical matters, but must attempt to relate them to the political process. And I believe that officials of every agency need to devote themselves to this.