67 



ease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve 

 this goal. 37 



Having launched its "War on Cancer," the Nixon Administration 

 began placing great pressure on the biomedical community to move 

 rapidly from basic research to development programs. Such a crash 

 program tended to cut back on the breadth and diversity of basic 

 research, and to concentrate on programs based on existing 

 ideas. 38 



Office of Technology Assessment 



The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was founded in Octo- 

 ber 1972 to serve as a science advisory body for the Congress. 39 

 Like the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget 

 Office, and the Congressional Research Service within their respec- 

 tive fields of expertise, OTA was a support agency meant to provide 

 Congress with independent scientific and technical information. 40 

 It was intended that it would operate to free Congress from its de- 

 pendency on the Executive Branch agencies for such information. 



Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) 



The Nixon Administration's emphasis on applied research, mani- 

 fested in the War on Cancer, was extended to the National Science 

 Foundation during the early 1970s. As part of its attempt to stimu- 

 late the nation's faltering economy, the Office of Management and 

 Budget 4 1 called on the NSF to increase its expenditures on applied 

 research, while at the same time reducing the proportion of its 

 funding for educational and institutional endeavors. The result was 

 the establishment in 1971 of a program called Research Applied to 

 National Needs, or RANN. The creation of RANN was really the 

 expansion of a more modest NSF program, entitled Interdiscipli- 

 nary Research Relevant to Problems of Our Society, which had 

 been established in 1968. 42 



RANN received mixed reactions from the science policy commu- 

 nity. The Association of American Universities, for example, wor- 

 ried that RANN was yet another example of the Federal Govern- 

 ment's post-1966 shift in science policy toward support of targeted 

 or applied research. 43 Many scientists were openly concerned that 

 the NSF's basic research mission might be undermined by inclu- 

 sion of the new program. It was pointed out that RANN received 



•■""Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," 22 January 1971, in Public- 

 Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1971 (Washington: GPO, 1972), 53. 



38 See Dorothy Nelkin, "Technology and Public Policy," in Spiegel-Rosing and Price (eds.l, Sci- 

 ence, Technology and Society, pp. 402-40."?. 



39 Public Law 92-484. Former Representative Emilio Q Daddario was the first Director of 

 OTA. For the background of the technology assessment idea, see Carroll Pursell. "Belling the 

 Cat: A Critique of Technology Assessment, "Lex et Scientia. 10 (October-December 1974), 130- 

 145. 



40 Both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Research Service stepped up 

 their efforts in assessing science and technology policy during the 1960s. 



41 When reorganized in 1970, the Bureau of the Budget was renamed the Office of Manage- 

 ment and Budget. 



42 See Milton Lomask, A Minor Miracle: An Informal History of the National Science Founda- 

 tion (Washington: National Science Foundation, 197(>> pp. 237-250; and John T. Wilson, Academ- 

 ic Science. Higher Education, and the Federal Government: 1950-198-1 (Chicago: University of 

 Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 34-38. 



43 See Smith and Karlesky, The State of Academic Science, pp. 32-37. 



