59 



port for environmentally-oriented research. Rather than expanding 

 research, the effects were largely in the area of regulatory policy, 

 much of it directed at overseeing technologies. The movement de- 

 manded rapid action — not the patience to wait for the findings of 

 new research projects. 8 



Debate Over the SST 



The changing American attitudes toward technology and the en- 

 vironment were symbolized by the debate over supersonic trans- 

 port. During the early 1960s, the Federal Government — largely due 

 to the recommendations of NASA, the Federal Aviation Agency, 

 and the Department of Defense — and the aerospace industry com- 

 mitted themselves to developing a commercial supersonic transport 

 (SST), that is, a commercial aircraft capable of flying faster than 

 the speed of sound. With the emergence of the environmental 

 movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, a public 

 debate arose over the environmental consequences of the SST: pri- 

 marily sonic booms and the potential for the destruction of the 

 earth's ozone layer. The controversy became heated, and scientists 

 were marshaled to provide evidence for both sides of the debate. 

 This was especially true during the Congressional hearings be- 

 tween 1968 and 1971, at the end of which Congress terminated the 

 SST program. Although the SST conflict really dealt with the na- 

 tion's policy for technology rather than science, it signified new in- 

 volvement for scientists in the political process, through Presiden- 

 tial science advice and Congressional testimony, as well as through 

 involvement in citizen interest groups. And ultimately, it was a sig- 

 nificant factor in President Nixon's disbandment of PSAC and 

 OST. 9 



Projects Hindsight and TRACES 



Federal science budgets had grown rapidly during the late 1950s 

 and early 1960s. With the overall budgetary pressures of the mid- 

 1960s came increasing concern over the payoff of these expendi- 

 tures on basic research. Spokesmen for the scientific community 

 had been making claims for practical results flowing from basic re- 

 search, yet these claims were never systematically substantiated. 

 The Department of Defense, which had spent nearly ten billion dol- 

 lars on research and development in the twenty years since World 

 War II, attempted to examine the correlation between basic re- 

 search and practical results through a retrospective study, Project 

 Hindsight. The thirteen teams of scientists and engineers conduct- 

 ing the Hindsight study chose twenty currently deployed weapons 

 systems deemed critical to the nation's defense, and looked back 

 twenty years in order to determine the contribution of basic re- 

 search to their development. They isolated seven hundred research 

 "events" that led to the development of these weapons systems. 



8 See Harvey Brooks, "The Changing Structure," pp. 24-25. 



9 See Mel Horwitch, Clipped Wings: The American SST Conflict (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 

 1982); and Joel Primack and Frank von Hippel, Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political 

 Arena (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 10-29. For the role of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences in this debate, see Philip M. Boffey, The Brain Bank of America: An Inquiry into the Poli- 

 tics of Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 113-142. 



