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Scientists and the Policy Process*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Avery Leiserson
Avery Leiserson
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

Alan T. Waterman (retired Director of the National Science Foundation and past president of the A.A.A.S.) recently insisted that there is a considerable difference between observations and perceptual images of scientists' behavior in governmental and policy-making situations when made by scientists and when they are made by persons “outside of science.” Waterman went on to say that most natural scientists would prefer to write on “science” rather than “scientists” in policy-making. Reflection on the implications of these distinctions raises several fascinating questions. In what senses may there be a political science of science? Are only natural and biological scientists equipped to investigate and interpret the behavior of scientists in non-laboratory, public policy-formulating situations? Is it necessary to have separate “natural-scientific” and “social-scientific”—to say nothing of any number of “humanistic”—views of the political role of science? What does it mean to say that the proper focus of study is the representation of science, rather than scientists in government?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , June 1965 , pp. 408 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

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Footnotes

*

Delivered at the Annual Meetings, American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 9, 1964.

References

1 Science, Vol. 144 (19 06 1964), p. 1438 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A review of Gilpin, R. and Wright, C., Scientists and National Policy-Making (New York, Columbia University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

2 Wiesner, Jerome B., Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Systems Development and Management, Part 1, 87th Cong., 2d sess. (1962), p. 142 Google Scholar.

3 Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., p. 257.

4 National Science Foundation, 1960 (NSF 60–40).

5 Reprinted in Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., pp. 19–40; 97–112.

6 “Towards A National Science Policy,” Impact of Science on Society, Vol. XII (1962), pp. 157–175 Google Scholar; “Science and Technology in the New Europe,” Daedalus (Winter, 1964), pp. 434–58Google Scholar.

7 Beard, Charles A., The New Leviathan (New York, 1930)Google Scholar was an early effort to treat American government in the context of science and technology.

8 Hewlett, R. G. and Anderson, O. E., The New World: 1939–1946 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; the autobiographical works of A. H. Compton, Harold Groves, and L. L. Strauss; Dupree, Hunter, Science in the Federal Government (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Price, D. K., Government and Science (New York, New York University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Dupre, J. S. and Lakoff, S. A., Science and the Nation (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962)Google Scholar; Wolfle, D., Science and Public Policy (University of Nebraska Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Gilpin, R., American Scientists and Nuclear Policy (Princeton University Press, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Harvey Brooks, “The Scientific Adviser,” in Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., pp. 74–75.

10 Weber, Max, “The Vocation of Science,” in Gerth, H. and Mills, C. W., From Max Weber: Essays in General Sociology (Oxford, 1946)Google Scholar; W. R. Schilling, “Scientists, Foreign Policy and Politics,” in Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., pp. 144 ff; Bell, D., “Twelve Modes of Prediction,” Daedalus (Summer 1964), pp. 845–80Google Scholar.

11 Huxley's Brave New World; Orwell's 1984; Wheeler, Harvey, Science and Democratic Government (Center for Study of Democratic Institutions)Google Scholar; and the literary attack upon C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution are familiar illustrations of the controversies. But see Bronowski's, J. Science and Human Values (1956)Google Scholar and Polanyi's, K. Personal Knowledge (1958)Google Scholar.

12 R. C. Wood, “Scientists As an A-Political Elite,” in Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., pp. 41–72.

13 Lerner, D. and Lasswell, H. C., eds., The Policy Sciences (Stanford University Press, 1949)Google Scholar Lerner, D., ed., The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (Meridian Books, 1959)Google Scholar.

14 Gilpin and Wright, op. cit., pp. 48, 273.

15 Huntington, S. P., The Soldier and the State (Random House, Vintage Books, 1964), pp. 88–9Google Scholar.

16 Science and Government (Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 56–66 Google Scholar.

17 Price, D. K., Science, Vol. 142 (6 12 1963)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

18 See his memoir, Economics in the Public Service (New York, 1953), esp. pp. 203, 221, 270 Google Scholar; and Silverman, Corinne, The President's Economic Advisers, Inter-University Case Program, No. 48 (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill)Google Scholar, reprinted in Bock, E. A. and Campbell, A. K., eds., Case Studies in American Government (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962), pp. 301–24Google Scholar. Unlike Wiesner, Nourse wanted to dissociate himself from the advice the President took, while maintaining the scientific integrity of the Council's Economic Report; he soon found his position untenable.

19 88th Cong., 1st sess,. S. Rep. No. 16. The hearings and report reveal that the idea of a federal department of science is by no means defunct, both as a vehicle for congressional control and some scientists' conception of how science policy should be made, notwithstanding the almost unanimous opposition of the scientific establishment and informed political scientists.

The Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress has lately formed a Science Policy Research Division, headed by Edward C. Welsh, Jr., formerly Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. New York Times, August 30, 1964.

20 “Policy and the Scientists,” Foreign Affairs (04, 1963), pp. 571–88Google Scholar.

21 The essays by Albert Wohlstetter and Bernard Brodie in the Gilpin and Wright volume provide ample evidence for the fallibility and limitations of scientific judgment in policy situations.

22 Smyth, H. D., “Science and National Policy,” Lecture, Walter J. Shepard, Ohio State University, 02 8, 1961 Google Scholar.

23 See testimony of Col. G. A. Lincoln and appendices, Hearing Before (Jackson) Subcommittee of Committee on Government Operations, U. S. Senate, 88th Cong., 2d sess., “Administration of National Security,” Part 9 (June 25, 1964), esp. pp. 560–1.

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