and also work in certain disciplines. Thus, the 

 Government's total basic research effort was re- 

 duced. Scores of programs were closed and res- 

 ponsibilities were transferred from some mission 

 agencies to others, notably to the National Sci- 

 ence Foundation (NSF). NSF had difficulty in decid- 

 ing which programs dropped by other agencies 

 should be supported, since it could not fund all pro- 

 grams. 



The "drop out" sequence was initiated in the 

 Department of Defense (DOD) because of the so- 

 called "Mansfield amendment." The Navy des- 

 cription of the effect of this amendment follows: 

 It is surely the case that Section 203 of the 1970 

 Military Procurement Authorization Act, the 

 Mansfield Amendment, has had a significant 

 impact on the Navy's support of research. The 

 Mansfield Amendment changed the way the 

 Navy perceived its research program, it 

 changed the way university investigators per- 

 ceived ihe Navy research program and it gave a 

 title and focus to trends which had been under- 

 way in the Defense Department and in the gov- 

 ernment support of research. 



The Navy, the Office of Naval Research, has 

 from the beginning been acutely aware of its 

 role as a mission agency and of the necessity to 

 support research in the interest of the Navy. 

 The question of relevancy entered the earliest 

 debates as the first research programs were 

 being established in ONR. Over the years the 

 interpretation of relevancy tended to become 

 narrower. The Mansfield Amendment created 

 an atmosphere where it was felt that the pro- 

 gram, task by task, must be clearly relevant to 

 the man-in-the-street. After Section 203 it was 

 no longer sufficient that the programs" relation 

 to the present or future Navy be clear to the 

 scientists in the Navy and Defense Department; 

 the relation had to be reasonably clear to those 

 who chanced to look. With this kind of atmos- 

 phere it was naturally necessary to drop certain 

 tasks. 



Perhaps more important was the effect the 

 Mansfield Amendment had on Navy contractors 

 and potential contractors. Researchers in the 

 United States had been accustomed to bringing 

 to the Office of Naval Research their very best 

 ideas without prejudging the relevance issue. It 

 was always understood that the issue of rele- 

 vance was an issue to be decided by the ONR 

 scientific officer and not the proposer. The 

 Mansfield Amendment made researchers acute- 

 ly aware of the relevance issue and caused 

 them to prejudge the relevance of their work 

 with the ultimate result that the Navy failed to 



receive proposals that normally would have 

 come to ONR. 



The diversion of the flow of proposals away 

 from the Navy and toward other agencies, 

 mainly NSF, was surely accentuated by the 

 Mansfield Amendment, but the trend had al- 

 ready begun. Indeed the growing expectations 

 of the scientific community, the growth of NSF 

 coupled with the relative decline of ONR's in- 

 fluence, the reactions against the war in South- 

 east Asia, all had the effect of inhibiting the 

 flow of proposals to ONR. The Mansfield 

 Amendment was in a senses' legal symbol for a 

 trend already in force. It gave focus to the fact 

 that the National Science Foundation had taken 

 over a role that ONR no longer played. 



The end of the Draft had the interesting effect 

 of providing an impetus for a broad based pro- 

 gram in manpower research. Again, the trends 

 were already in force. The end of the Draft 

 signaled an increased urgency in attacking prob- 

 lems of recruitment, retention and all of the 

 other military manpower issues in today's so- 

 ciety. 



Every agency science administrator is plagued 

 by the mission relevance question, especially in 

 relation to basic research. For example, to the 

 Office of Naval Research (ONR), support of pure 

 mathematics is highly relevant to the Navy mis- 

 sion but perhaps this would not be so regarded in 

 some sectors. Similarly, NSF has been plagued 

 since its inception by persons who ask how many 

 of the supported projects can be justified and to 

 what extent they relate to any conceivable nation- 

 al purpose. Scientists within the agencies feel that 

 skepticism is due to a lack of understanding of 

 what basic science is about and how it relates to 

 the national purpose. The science administrator is 

 caught between the scientist, who believes any 

 scientific inquiry is justified, and skeptical citizens 

 or Congressmen, who wonder how esoteric inqui- 

 ries can warrant public fund support. As the pres- 

 sure mounts, the research administrator finds ap- 

 plied research easier to justify than basic. 



The relevance question, brought to the fore- 

 front in all Government agencies because of the 

 Mansfield amendment, has effected a serious re- 

 duction in basic research support. However, a 

 recovery is in progress, according to the statistics 

 on Government support of basic research. It 

 could be that quite solidly justifiable mission-ap- 

 plicable work, labeled "applied" in the statistics 

 of an earlier time, is now classified as "basic," and 

 vice versa. Because research support data reported 

 by the agencies change in response to a number of 



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BARRIERS TO OPTIMUM SUPPORT AND CONDUCT OF BASIC RESEARCH BY THE MISSION AGENCIES 



