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ORGANIZATION AND 



SUPPORT OF SCIENCE 



IN THE UNITED STATES 



L. C. DUNN, PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, FACULTY OF PURE SCIENCE, 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



THE WAR and the sudden need to improvise means for 

 supporting and directing war research have brought into 

 high relief an important fact which has been dimly recognized for 

 many years: there has been in the United States no orderly means for 

 the continuous support of fundamental scientific research, and no 

 policy or method for the deliberate utilization of science by our society. 

 Science has been a hardy plant which grew where and how it could, 

 thriving in the comfortable greenhouse of a research institute, or 

 turning ample fertilizer into real fruit in an industrial laboratory, or 

 in the more usual case struggling for sustenance in the thin soil of 

 colleges and universities, occasionally enriched by temporary growth 

 stimulants from a foundation or private donor. Except in the case 

 of certain industrial developments and in a few government depart- 

 ments, the support of science in the United States has not been the 

 result of decision but of chance, operating in a milieu which contained 

 good scientists and a good deal of fluid wealth. 



The most blunt and truthful statement we can make about the 

 reason for the lack of continuity and of public policy regarding science 



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