MO HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



pleased to note that President Johnson on September 14, 1965, set 

 forth a new policy in a memorandum to the heads of all Federal depart- 

 ments and agencies, stating in part: 



Research supported to further agency missions should be administered not only 

 with a view to producing specific results, but also with a view to strengthening 

 academic institutions and increasing the number of institutions capable of performing 

 research of high quality. 



The Daddario subcommittee also had a salutary influence in 

 revising the standard procedure for allocating indirect (administrative) 

 costs in awarding Federal research grants and contracts. In its hearings 

 the subcommittee brought out that too many appropriation bills set 

 statutory limits on the ratio of indirect to direct costs of federally 

 sponsored research, and also that the older Bureau of the Budget 

 policy regulations were so inflexible as to hurt both the grantee and the 

 Government's interest. The hearings resulted in the issuance of more 

 flexible regulations on indirect costs by the Bureau of the Budget, as 

 well as having an educative effect in the subsequent appropriation bills. 



'"BASIC RESEARCH AND NATIONAL GOALS" 



In March 1965 the National Academy of Sciences furnished the 

 committee with its comprehensive study of "Basic Research and 

 National Goals." The study was made through a committee-Academy 

 contract -the first such contract with Congress in the 102-year history 

 of the Academy. The committee asked the Academy to furnish a report 

 on two questions: 



(1) What level of Federal support is needed to maintain for the United States a 

 position of leadership through basic research in the advancement of science and tech- 

 nology and their economic, cultural, and military applications? 



(2) What judgment can be reached on the balance of support now being given 

 by the Federal Government to various fields of scientific endeavor, and on adjustments 

 that should be considered, either within existing levels of overall support or under 

 conditions of increased and decreased overall support? 



As reported in the magazine Science on April 30, 1965, "the 

 vagueness of the questions and their essential unanswerability inspired 

 a fair degree of despair behind the Academy's marble facade. But there 

 were the questions — reasonable ones from the point of view of legis- 

 lators who must appropriate money — and the Academy accordingly 

 turned to the task of answering them." 



The assignment was given to the Academy's Committee on 

 Public Policy, which was headed at that time bv Dr. George B. 

 Kistiakowsky (who had been Science Adviser to President Eisen- 

 hower). The Committee on Public Policy then set up an ad hoc com- 

 mittee of 15 members, which in turn produced a set of 15 individual 



