1340 



have an indefinite policy of procedure for the Scientific Ofiice." He 



urged that the office be given "more permanent status," suggesting 



a keen sense of insecurity which his staffing problems seemed to 



justify. 



Assessment of the State Science Experiment 



This first essay of the Department of State into the interaction of 

 diplomacy with science and technology, despite the apparently strong 

 initial support it had received, must be accounted a failure. There 

 were many reasons for this : 



There was no continuity in the relationship between the backstop- 

 ping committee and the team in the field. There was no committee 

 secretariat to ensure that reports were directed to the appropriate 

 members, and there was no "feedback" to show Evans and his team 

 that anybody was listening. It is not known whether the committee 

 ever met to consider the progress of the team in the field, or gave it 

 guidance, but the chances are that it did not. The needs of the people 

 or institutions the team was supposed to be serving were apparently 

 never communicated or ascertained. The burden of staff recruitment 

 was altogether disproportionate to the size of the staff and its produc- 

 tivity. The utility of the reports generated by the team was doubtful; 

 there is no evidence that any action resulted from them, either as use- 

 ful information or as inputs to policy analysis. The dwindling size of 

 the enterprise suggests that it was not especially useful to the Em- 

 bassy either. WhUe the team was evidently able to establish cordial 

 relationships at high levels in the host country, the achievement is 

 not impressive because failure would have been most remarkable under 

 the circumstances. However, no durable relationships or arrangements 

 appear to have been established. 



The asserted lack of preparation of the London science team was 

 certainly a factor. But it was symptomatic of a more fundamental 

 weakness: what sort of briefing would be useful to equip a team of 

 narrowly specialized scientists whose mission was so indeterminate? 



A sampling of the technical reports from the London science office 

 shows some of the difficulties. The writers were not sure what their 

 readership was. Some reports describe the broad structure of the 

 British science establishment but in vague and imprecise language. 

 Other reports present a mi.xture of scientific detail (unreadable outside 

 of the discipline) combined with broad general discussion of technologi- 

 cal applications, educational arrangements, research facilities and 

 funding, and details of legislation. Conceivably the identification of re- 

 search centers and the direction of their research programs might have 

 been used to establish contacts with U.S. investigators in like fields. 

 Discussion of research organization might have been of interest to 

 U.S. research administrators. But how these reports could have been 

 used in the formulation or conduct of foreign policy in the Department 

 of State is difficult to understand. 



The purpose of this rather detailed criticism of a small diplomatic 

 experiment nearly three decades old is not to criticize those involved 

 but to make expHcit the problem. The scientists who urged and 

 manned the experiment appeared to assume that the mere presence of 

 highly quahfied scientists in a diplomatic setting would be beneficial. 

 It is this assumption — that discovering facts is meritorious — that 

 governs all science. The earUer activity of John Green had been ex- 

 plicitly to transmit to the United States large volumes of documents 



