attraction of capable young people and, because 

 of the ridicule that is often unjustly leveled at 

 investigators carrying on basic research, a retreat 

 of many to "safer" fields of endeavor. One aspect 

 of this has been addressed by Benjamin S. P. 

 Shen (Science Literacy. American Scientist 63: 

 265 (1975)) but the issue is far more critical. There 

 is need not only to understand the potential 

 applications of science and technology but a 

 more realistic appreciation of the way in which 

 fundamental research makes its advances and 

 contributions. 



Albert Somit, Executive Vice President of the 

 State University of New York at Buffalo, 

 pointed to two more consequences: diminished 

 support for graduate students and instability of 

 funding: 



The misunderstanding of the nature of basic 

 research reflected in the Congressional debate 

 on NSF has the potential of destroying a favorable 

 milieu for scientific and technical research, of 

 extreme value to the nation, which has taken 

 more than a quarter-century to develop. The 

 failure to understand that basic research is 

 fundamentally of indeterminate outcome, and for 

 that reason uniquely capable of providing the 

 information with which unforeseen societal 

 problems will be solved, is especially disturbing. 

 The effect on the NSF budget, and on the relative 

 amount of all Federally supported basic research, 

 is better known to you than me. But the effect on 

 our campus has been to curtail very promising 

 research growth. 



There are two areas where this has been 

 particularly felt. First, graduate student support. 

 With the decline of NSF (and other Federally 

 supported) fellowships, it has been necessary to 

 turn to other means of student support. As a 

 consequence, the number of supported students 

 has sharply decreased; our resources just will not 

 stretch. We do not know how many able students 

 have decided not to enter the demanding 

 programs in science and technology because 

 they cannot anticipate sufficient support during 

 their studies, but we do know the difficulties 

 under which our students labor when they must 

 support themselves while working toward a 

 degree. 



Second, we have encountered increasing difficul- 



ty in planning our research programs because of 

 the recent discontinuous nature of NSF support. 



Finally, James O. Davis, Chairman of the 

 Department of Physiology at the University of 

 Missouri-Columbia blamed the lack of com- 

 munication between the scientific community, 

 on the one hand, and the public and government, 

 on the other, for problems like the increased 

 demand for accountability and for applied 

 rather than basic research. He compared the 

 present with a happier situation in the past, in 

 particular with former policies of the National 

 Institutes of Health. 



The first major problem might be classified as one 

 of lack of communication or understanding of the 

 importance of research by people at all levels of 

 endeavor. These include the American public, 

 university administrators and both national and 

 State legislators. This has been evident for 

 several years as we have seen a general shrinkage 

 of available funds from funding agencies such as 

 the National Science Foundation and the 

 National Institutes of Health. There has been an 

 increasing demand by the American public for 

 accountability in the use of funds and this 

 message has been passed on and implemented 

 by our National Congress and the Federal 

 Administration. To a certain extent, this has been 

 a fault of the scientific community in that they 

 have simply failed to take time out of their busy 

 research and teaching programs to inform these 

 various groups. One of the classic examples of 

 the importance of basic research in medicine is 

 illustrated by what happened at the National 

 Institutes of Health from 1949 until 1966 under the 

 leadership of Dr. James Shannon. Over these 

 years which have frequently been referred to as 

 the "Golden Era of American Research" Shannon 

 was able to convince Congress of the importance 

 of basic research and to get an increasing amount 

 of support. Clearly, it was because of this era with 

 almost two decades of intensive research and 

 numerous discoveries that we are now able to use 

 this information and provide much better health 

 care for the American people. Nevertheless, we 

 see that several levels of American society from 

 the American public to Congress and in some 

 cases to the Office of the President lack an 

 understanding of the need and importance of 

 fundamental research, and there are continued 



80 



CONFIDENCE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



