them. The consequence is that the fellow who draws that line on the map in locating the highway has more influence on the planning of the city for the next 50 years than anybody in the world. But that is not his job. He is a technician and not a city planner. His influence is a consequence of the fact that we have not developed techniques of long-range planning necessary to solve this sort of problem. Now, we are going to have to design our own tools.

A multidisciplinary institute working objectively may arrive at findings which might prove unpopular in the private sector, but it could conceivably also arrive at findings as to what the Government is not doing well or right. And if that institute is performing its functions, these findings will be objective and provide again the facts and analysis. The institute will not be the decisionmaking body. It is analytical. Its product would, however, be made available to both the Congress and the officials of the agency in which such a multidisciplinary institute was housed. And I don't believe we have enough of that kind of documentation available today.

Mr. BROWN. If I may coin a phrase, what is one man's objectivity is another man's bias.

Let me ask one other question. I am very much concerned with this point that you make about the lack of an adequate policy planning function within the Government in this area of basic science.

To what extent is this policy planning function being attempted by the National Science Foundation or the Science Adviser in the Office of the President? Is it accomplishing anything or does it need strengthening-well, obviously from your point it needs strengthening. How do we strengthen it?"

Dr. WENK. Both of the groups you mentioned have key roles to play. It is my impression that the National Science Board was given a somewhat stronger charter by the new NSF legislation, and their annual report and other actions that they may take may be a step in this direction. I do not know, however, what research capability they have available to them. I believe that it is necessary for the Board to have a staff whose only role is to do policy planning, and I do not believe they have such a staff available to them today, nor does the Science Foundation itself. At least in the sense necessary. They can have such a staff, however, and it may be only a matter of funds and

terms.

With regard to the Office of Science and Technology, I believe the same thing may be said. They have recognized that they do have a policy-planning role, and they have played this role to the extent that their resources permitted. This is quite a small office, however, considering that it is obliged to cover all fields of science and engineering. And the Government may want to consider whether or not to expand its policy-planning capabilities. That is a logical place for such policy research.

Mr. BROWN. I am glad to hear you indicate that, because I think the committee is looking for not only a clear understanding of the problems, but specific recommendations by which we could strengthen this whole matter of organizing science. Your suggestions are specific and clear cut about some immediate steps that could be taken.

Dr. WENK. If I may add just one footnote on this matter of science policy research capabilities, I realize that those three words, "science policy research," have been linked together only in recent years. It is not fair, therefore, to go back to the universities and ask why we haven't had more in the way of either research or training. But I believe that the universities, again-now with perhaps more funding from the National Science Foundation-could build capabilities here that would not only serve the Federal Government, but also the State governments and the local governments as well. It is fair to say, I think, that the Federal Government is far better equipped and, on the average, has far greater competence than State governments and municipalities to deal with these very questions which more and more have got to be solved on a local basis.

And I would also add, coming back to the automobile manufacturers, that I see a role for science policy research in industry. Major industry has such a sharp relevance now to our social purposes that they cannot follow the pursuit of their own goals without some recognition of the impact. My own feeling is that industry realizes this and is trying to articulate itself more effectively than it has before to our social purposes. But I believe that it is not any better equipped than the Government is in the policy research necessary. Incidentally, I would not expect these studies by industry as to social impact of their initiatives necessarily to be made public. But within their own private domain, they can educate themselves on the impact of their research or their actions or their development or their advertising programs-before there are adverse consequences, not after.

Mr. MOSHER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROWN. I certainly will.

Mr. MOSHER. Dr. Wenk, concerning this new role that you suggest the universities should play, I am sure you are familiar with what Gene Skolnikoff is trying to do at MIT. Is that the start of it?

Dr. WENK. It is indeed. And I would strongly encourage this development. It isn't necessary for every university in the country to develop this capability, but we must recognize the need for some geographical distribution of these capabilities, among other things that I mentioned, because of the relevance to State and local problems and the need for the universities themselves to exert some leadership on their own to try to build up such capabilities.

I think it would be quite wrong for the Government repeatedly to have to go to the universities and try to encourage them to do this. I would much rather see this develop as a grassroots spontaneous interest.

Mr. BROWN. Dr. Wenk, there is in the National Science Foundation budget, as you probably are well aware, $10 million for interdisciplinary research.

Mr. DADDARIO. Six million.

Mr. BROWN. Six?

Mr. DADDARIO. We cut it back to six.

Mr. BROWN. Not in the authorization; in the appropriations?

Mr. DADDARIO. In the authorization.

Mr. BROWN. Well, there is six, and there is also a million or two in the area of assistance to science policy planning at the State level, as I recall.

Do you regard this item of $6 million for multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary research and this item of a million or two-do you think this will make a contribution to the solution of the problems that you are suggesting, and do you consider it to be an adequate amount?

Dr. WENK. Well, on the first part of the question, it definitely will make a contribution. It is aimed very clearly at building up this kind of capability.

I really don't believe I am equipped to answer the question whether it is adequate, because I would have to look at this more carefully than I have up to this point.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you. That is all the questions I have.

Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Wenk, you caution us as we look at organization to ask the question, "What are we organizing for?"

As you summed up your previous testimony leading into your testimony this morning you seemed to indicate that what we ought to do is take what we have and strengthen it rather than change it. Yet you ask, after all these years of involvement, with tremendous expenditures in these areas, and with the unanswered questions which remainyou ask six worrisome questions. You spell out what you need in policy planning, eight steps leading in that direction. I just wonder if when asking the question "What are we organizing for?" cautioning the committee to ask this further question about what we should be doing in organization, if the answer to it is not we must do something far beyond what we are doing even though you say, as I see it, that we ought not to, simply because you have asked these questions, and simply because you have posed these policy decisions.

Dr. WENK. Well, let me answer the question this way:

As far as these six problems are concerned, one point that I tried to bring out was that the Federal Government itself does have a key role in helping to meet all six. It has a key role because it has been the major sponsor of research and development in this country as measured by dollars. On the one hand, it has thus been the major customer. But on the other hand, the Federal Government is being looked to today to help solve the Nation's social problems. So it has the responsibility to solve some of our social concerns, and it also has some, in a sense, management responsibility for these tools.

Mr. DADDARIO. One of the questions constantly lurking in the minds of this committee is how we can better apply our knowledge in the institutions which develop it to deal with the solution of the problems of our society. And we wonder, then, if the organizational pattern might not be one of the inhibiting factors in dealing with this particular question.

Dr. WENK. Well, I guess my answer to that-and again I am talking broadly about science and technology, not about specific areaswould be "No." I feel that the next step is strengthening science and technology in each of the agencies which have already been assigned a clear mission by the Congress to meet some public purpose. And it is in the Departments of Commerce and Interior and HUD and Transportation and so on that I would foresee some strengthening of the role of science.

For example, the support of science in the universities by the Office of Naval Research set a pattern not only of good, basic research, but

also of a mode of communication between those scientists in the laboratory and the fellow out in the field responsible for ships, aircraft, or ground troops. We do not have that kind of relationship in the civilian agencies. The amount of research being sponsored by the Federal Government in the civilian agencies, in the universities, is quite small. They have not had much money to support research in their own laboratories either.

But there is no comparable mechanism by which officers of civilian agencies can pick brains in the universities as was done in dealing with military problems. That is the kind of strengthening, I think, would be immediately productive.

Mr. MOSHER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DADDARIO. Yes; of course.

Mr. MOSHER. The answer "No" you just gave to the chairman: Does that apply in the area of marine sciences and engineering?

Dr. WENK. Well, I may surprise you with this answer, Mr. Mosher, but I would say no, it does not apply there. Let me say why.

Mr. MOSHER. Well, I was hoping that would be your answer, you don't surprise me at all.

Dr. WENK. Well, let me be clear about why I give that answer.

I believe that the Congress and the executive branch, and now the Stratton Commission, have all been fairly clear in recent years in saying what we ought to organize for, so far as the oceans are concerned. They have said that this has been a neglected part of our environment, and that not only should we do more marine science, but that the oceans can contribute to our economic development, by providing protein to meet a world hunger problem, and to the quality of an environment. They can provide opportunities for recreation that we do not now have, and provide information for better weather forecasting. All of these are clearly set forth in terms of what is it we need to organize for.

Since that point is generally accepted, the most important question becomes: what is the best organization? And the present one may not be the right answer.

Mr. MOSHER. We are tackling that question in another committee, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DADDARIO. I think the question is a very good one, because it highlights what I see to be a sort of a melee setting in. You who are in Government are for keeping everything the way it is except in those areas where you have already agreed to make some changes, and the people who are looking at it from the outside think there ought to be a lot more organizing than just that. If we should reorganize for the oceans, and if that is proper, because we have not been doing as much as we ought to in this particular area, which I would certainly agree with, it would be strange if that would be the only place where we would restructure.

Dr. WENK. Well, let me say this: I don't believe that we can say unequivocally that science in the Federal Government should not be reorganized. In my own thinking, however, I have not gotten much beyond the two points just brought out. As far as the oceans are concerned, and I believe we have the kind of a problem that now needs to be looked at in terms of organization.

With regard to science and technology across the board, the problem that first struck me as warranting attention is that of the coupling between the knowledge producers and the knowledge consumers that to me is lacking in every single area of social purpose for which science can make a contribution. Therefore, my approach would be not to pull science and engineering out of these social-purpose-oriented agencies and integrate them into a new Department of Science and Technology, but rather to strengthen the transmission line from the research bench to the fellow who has got the problem in each of these areas of concern. Each one is a little different. Not only are they different in terms of the science, they are different in the social institutions by which science and engineering is applied. And they are different in terms of the non-Federal customers of that research. Getting the benefits of that research to the nongovernmental participant, that strikes me as the most difficult. It is there we go back to my earlier point of the cleavage between science and the humanities, where some people may even have a resistance to scientific ideas-not only a natural human resistance to change, but also a resistance to science and technology because of some emotionally charged attitudes that I believe have grown.

Mr. DADDARIO. Well, isn't it possible that the way we are organizing has kept them in these compartments and has prevented them from coming together and working under a more harmonious relationship? Dr. WENK. Yes. Yes; this is certainly true. However, I think you can identify this relationship between science, technology, and social goals, quite properly, as sort of a vertical linkage and flow of information. As we set our priorities, both in the executive and the legislative branch, we think in terms of social purposes-that is, of one goal versus another rather than in a competition among funds within each major R. & D. budget.

What I am saying is that even though we catalog all the Federal research and development for purposes of understanding, when we make decisions on priorities in science and technology we do not look at the total R. & D. pie and then slice it. We look at the amount of science and technology that should be supported on the basis of the opportunities afforded by science and of the needs for research reaching down in that particular category of social purposes-the needs for research related to transportation, the needs for research related to the prevention of crime, the needs for research related to managing our environment. And it is here that I believe that we have an imperfect connection between those who sense the problem and can identify the needs and those who can provide the information to solve it.

I think it is that vertical function now which is too weak.

Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Wenk, along these lines, I will submit a whole series of questions to you for the record, because we do have Dr. Handler as a witness.

(Questions submitted by the subcommittee to Dr. Edward Wenk, Jr.:)

Question 1. It is common knowledge that the National Science Foundation has always had difficulty selling itself to Congress and the American public. What positive steps can you suggest that the Foundation might take to improve its image, extend its constituency and secure the funds corresponding to a national policy of continued pre-eminence for U.S. science?