nent, but by using its response to the missile age as a lever for increased basic research. Far from being helpless and pure, basic research became a beneficiary of a surge in support for science which has few parallels. This surge to opulence indicates that the appeal for support for science in the early 1960's was the most successful in our history. Again, however, the fundamental elements of the system were so obscure that they could be explained neither to the scientists nor to the American people. Indeed too clear a statement of the workings of the system made the leaders of the scientific community and politicians alike uncomfortable.

The delicate balance between the military component and basic research, might have continued to produce increasing support for science and technology in an exponentially increasing scale throughout the 1960's. Most criticisms of the system in the mid-sixties were rather superficial. Although Congress was occasionally restive, many individual members were actually part of the system through their committee service. Although small universities griped, they really wished to become big universities. Although several science administrators and many scientists had doubts about manned space explorations, they shrugged and allowed the choice of a manned landing on the moon to be made without a fight if not without a whimper. Indeed the scientific community could not maintain the balance of the system and at the same time make a serious and public attack on any part of it.

Then a series of shocks rocked the system. The disturbers were essentially four: First, the rise of the existentialist university and those affected by the whole outlook of the New Left. They did not care to understand the balances and compromises of the system and made no bones about attacking the military-industrial component with tactics that were deliberately designed, not to affect a particular choice, but to destroy the system of making choices. The extent to which this movement was a part of a revolt against society in general and American society in particular is a secondary matter here. The primary point is that the new style revolution is (1) aimed at the organizational and communications networks rather than at economic control, and (2) is not even designed to win completely. Thus it can support an idealized version of research tightly controlled for short-run social and political ends determined by charismatic processes within dissident movements and at the same time hope to enjoy the level of support for basic research to which the old system led them to become accustomed.

The second disturbing factor has been the beginnings of realization of one of the oldest dreams of science-an international community. This result came about, however, not because nationalism fell away from the support system we have just described. Rather the American national system has become (1) worldwide in its operation. The great scientific agencies of the Government have foreign policies and state departments of their own. (2) The American support system is so uniquely large that the level of research on the whole globe is determined essentially by American national scientific choice, with a consequent demand from the rest of the world to have a voice in it. (3) The cost of the results of scientific and technological choiceare transcending even American resources in that some projects can

only come into being with the collaboration of several nations. The logic of this drive applies as much to the Soviets and the Americans as it does to the Western Europeans.

The third disturbing factor in the system has been a violent perturbation in the area of the social science choice. In the 1940's the social sciences could not absorb large sums of money and could not produce large results. Hence the leaders of the scientific community could pass over the problem silently, and the social scientists had enough sense not to demand support beyond their power of delivery. In the 1960's the scientific horizons of the social sciences expanded considerably, not necessarily in step, however, with the explosive demands made under the heading of external criteria. The Federal Government has inadequate mechanism and inadequate concepts, as do the universities, for creating a balanced decision flow here.

The fourth disturbing factor is the complete confusion in which the discussion of the place of the military in American life has sunk. Vietnam has revived images which make warfare appear as it did before World War I, an area not compatible with the high tradition of science. Yet the necessity of maintaining a world balance of nuclear power still remains. The only access to the problems, much less to the answers, lies through a massive research effort maintained permanently at a high level both of quantity of support and of intellectual distinction. The metaphor of battle no longer signifies adequately the institutions associated with war. The word military has come to refer not only to a system of force but also to systems of information and education. It describes a set of social institutions whose structure is parallel to that of the society from whence they emerge. As such, the military dimension remains a challenge to the whole scientific community at the very farthest stretch of its capability. To propose that research funds be withdrawn from the military and transferred over in a straight-line fashion to pressing social problems is to misunderstand both the scope of military research and the nature of science. Precisely here is where the old arguments about the scientists making science policy come alive again to foil those who consider massive and simplistic action based on emotion-laden choices as the proper way to confront current national decisions about science.

Hence on the Government side of the partnership the problem is not to make a paper reorganization, to create a Department of Science, or to disturb the functioning of the science advisory complex within the White House, and the Executive Office of the President. It is rather to provide a comprehensive rationale by which the Government can continue to support free science both in the universities and wherever it can find an institutional home. The comprehensive National Research Foundation recommended by the Bush report in 1945 might conceivably have done this. The National Science Foundation created in 1950 had little chance of comprehensiveness and has consistently and prudently chosen not to try to do more than carry out the policy of the scientific community and especially the university scientists.

To accomplish the necessary function of providing coherence for science policy without centralizing all scientific activity in the Government, a new arrangement must improve on the position of the National Science Foundation in the following respects:

(1) It must emphasize the chain of connections, and not the disconnections, between long-range basic research and applied science generally, both in the interest of national security and of the alleviation of the social and medical problems which beset mankind. The National Institutes of Health have a more fortunate tradition of respecting basic research, applied research and their connections than does the National Science Foundation. Therefore, it has on this count earned the prototype position for a National Institute of Research and Advanced Studies.

(2) The new arrangement must take account of the humanities and social sciences as well as the physical and biological sciences. The fields conventionally outside the definition of science must be included, and must partake of the same rationale as makes Government support of any kind of science possible. The humanities and certain parts of the social sciences cannot effectively justify themselves by an argument of indirect practicality, and certain other parts of the social sciences cannot by any definition be separated from applications. Therefore the Government must come to see strong and effective intellectual activity regardless of field as a national necessity and a bulwark for free universities. The NIRAS model certainly recognizes this dimension.

(3) The new arrangement must recognize the connection of research and education in all fields more effectively than any present agency. It is all too possible to conceive of a divorce between research and university education, with high level scholarship retreating into protected research institutes and higher education becoming a kind of indoctrination into a permissive and disorganized life for the students. Britain in the 19th century had most of its scholarship outside the universities, but the investment and talent now on American campuses makes the prospect of such a divorce the specter of a national disaster.

(4) The new arrangement must not be utterly dependent on the univerities for the performance of research. Without abandoning university research, the Government must be able to shift activities out of the university orbit when they can be better done elsewhere. For instance, the in-house capability of the National Institutes of Health and the historic strength of the Government's bureaus devoted to environmental studies should be available as options to NIRAS for some lines of research. The creation of NIRAŠ—someone might help me with a word to call this thing. How are you pronouncing it around the committee?

Mr. DADDARIO. We haven't reached that point.

Dr. DUPREE (continuing). Would make possible the use of some inhouse research and many of the resources of the national laboratories without changing the NSF from a grantmaking agency.

The NIRAS model has more features to commend it and fewer serious flaws than any scheme of centralization put forward in recent years. Some questions remain with answers unclear, for instance how large fragments of the AEC would be digested while NASA remained intact on the outside. Yet these important questions can be ironed out. The crucial ingredient would be the policy planning capability available to the administrator. To develop it would not be easy. To fail to develop it would leave NIRAS a paper organization. The

position of the administrator would be somewhat analogous to that of the Secretary of Defense, who has had to develop a policy capability independent of his component departments.

While widespread changes in the interralated system are clearly going on at present, and we shall undoubtedly see fundamental changes both of institutions and procedure, some instruction may be had from the nonrevolutionary origin of the Government-science partnership. It was adapted to American democracy as it grew up, and if it remains adapted to American democracy in the large as it changes, the resulting system can be respectful of scientific community and its values at the same time it moves to respond to the needs of society. Internal criteria for choice can be applied by scientists who are in a position to judge their own problems and opportunities, but the best source for external critera for scientific choice still remains the democratic institutions of American society.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DADDARIO. Thank you, Dr. Dupree.

An excellent and provocative statement. Gentlemen, I had determined before you all got here that we would listen to all the testimony before getting to the questions. We will therefore proceed with Dr. Reagan, and followed by Mr. Price.

Dr. REAGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If I may, I will submit the statement for the record and summarize and paraphrase it at this time.

(Prepared statement of Dr. Michael D. Reagan is as follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL D. REAGAN

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the opportunity to participate in these significant hearings on the vital question of centralization of Federal science activities. These activities, and organizations for dealing with them, have grown with extreme rapidity in recent years, but in piece-meal fashion. It is clearly time to take another look at the overall structure, to consider whether some consolidation and rationalization may not be possible, especially now that the R&D budget has (at least temporarily) leveled off and the priority problems are becoming more severe.

First, let me compliment Mr. Richard A. Carpenter and his associates in the Science Policy Research Division for their fine background paper. Because that document lays out the existing range of arguments pro and con centralization in such complete fashion, I will not dwell on general themes, but will immediately sketch my particular ideas regarding the need for and appropriate organizational form of, a Department of Research and Higher Education. This is not to make a claim that my proposal is the answer, but only that I hope it will serve to provoke further thought and discussion.

The proper basis for a department of science, it seems to me, does not lie in the arguments used in the late 1950s-to achieve overall science policy coordination. Despite the interesting argument of Herbert Roback (Science, 4 July 1969), I would contend that that job can only be done at the presidential level. OST's functions cannot be transferred to a department. Government-wide agreement on the premises of policy in any given area is almost a will-o'-the-wisp in any case, but to the extent that it can be achieved at all, it is only through the imposition of presidential-level persuasion, not by the unsanctioned pleas of one department on the same level as the others it is attempting to coordinate.

Rather, the clearest case for centralization at the present time lies in the partial area of basic research and agency linkages with higher education institutions. Here there are a definable scope and an implicit unity of function and purpose that can provide the prerequisite common premises.

Let me recite some of the reasons why a Department of Research and Higher Education makes sense as a partial consolidation.

1. There is a discernible set of organizational purposes: to support the healthy development of basic research (in the humanities and the arts, as well as in science), to promote the education of future researchers and faculty members, and to provide a major share of funds for the health of the higher education institutions through which these other objectives are largely pursued.

2. The larger the share of an activity accounted for by a single agency, the better are the chances that a rational ordering of inter-field, inter-program priorities will be established. Further, the more comprehensive an agency, the better that agency can defend its program area politically, in the competition for funds and a place in the sun. And the more significant the agency in its area, the better the quality of program managers who can be attracted to the personnel roster.

3. It is a matter of high priority that we slow down the proliferation of agencies focusing on special areas of science. Instead of adding NOAA to NASA, and then an environmental science agency, and then, projecting ahead, an agency focusing on bio-political problems, we should have a Department of Science that can serve as a home for the rational development of emerging fields. As Don K. Price has emphasized, science is not a governmental purpose except in the case of the NSF mandate to promote a healthy basic research base. At least when a new field is not yet ready for exploitation in serving the missions of operating agencies, it is better cultured in a department covering several areas, so that it does not become a precious pet on its own.

4. Basic research and higher education are inextricably linked. This is a widely accepted fact, but government organization does not yet reflect it. Half of NSF's budget goes for education, not research as such; and almost all NSF research funds constitute back-door support for graduate education. On the other hand, NDEA fellowships and other higher education activities of the Office of Education now give that agency, too, a major role in university development. NIH, although focused by purpose upon health, plays so large a role in support of university research that it, too, has to be brought into the picture as an educational agency. Additionally, NASA and AEC have had major fellowship programs of their own, and DOD, under a Presidential memorandum of September, 1965, has inaugurated in Project THEMIS a major new instrument of institutional support for university groups. From the viewpoint of the universities, it is great to have so much support. It is most unfortunate, to say the least, that this support takes such a variety of forms as to require complex bureaucracies on the campuses to keep track of the myriad requirements. And it is tragic that this country has to use the Department of Defense to provide higher education support. Rationalization of higher education support, both in terms of research grants and direct educational aid, such as fellowships, is badly needed, and would constitute a major function of the proposed Department.

5. Similarly, although it would not be appropriate to pull all mission-oriented research out of the line departments, there is a greater fragmentation of basic research that is necessary or desirable. Given congressional willingness to transfer the tab from one agency to another, much basic research now in missionoriented agencies could and should be shifted to the Department of Research and Higher Education (DRHE). Partly this should be accomplished by outright takeovers-say the high-energy physics program from AEC-and partly also by the mission agencies obtaining their own research appropriations, but tasking DRHE with administering much of their extra-mural basic research.

Such consolidation would give DRHE a significant fraction of federal basic research (which NSF does not yet have), enabling it to be a much stronger spokesman, as well as a "balance wheel," as has been so often proposed in recent years. It would also make it possible to establish broader programs in each field, thus improving the potential for better priority evaluations among competing proposals. A broader research perspective in a single agency will mean a better mode of research planning.

6. Another major need, which DRHE can help meet, is for a common framework for federal support of science, social science, the arts and the humanities. The Federal government is now not just the patron of science, but the patron of research-in all disciplines. Although I would have some concern about the humanities and social sciences being swallowed up in a combined department (and have for that reason earlier supported Senator Fred Harris' proposed National Foundation for the Social Sciences as an entity separate from NSF). I think that under the DRHE concept the advantages outweigh the dangers. For if the Department is