39 



(c) The issue as defined by staff documentation. — Some indication 

 as to how the committee staff defined the issue may be drawn from 

 the kinds of documentation and \ntnesses they assembled for the 

 hearing. There was evidence of the interest of battery manufacturers 

 m halting the promotion of AD-X2. There were NBS circulars and 

 memoranda on battery additives. A great deal of military test data of 

 the additive, as well as the MIT test data and report, were included. 

 Some documentation of NBBB interest had been collected, although 

 most of this was supplied by Ritchie as he testified. ^°^ 



The -witnesses included two scientists, Dr. Astin and Dr. Harold 

 C Weber, professor of chemical engineering at MIT; 10 practical 

 technologists, all but one of whom appeared to present testimonials 

 supporting AD-X2; and Ritchie himself. The hearings concluded 

 with testimony by an east coast sales representative of Pioneers, 

 Inc. 



Evidently the staff interest was in the performance of the additive 

 in the laboratory and in service, and in the role of NBS both in 

 technical evaluation and in influencing the competitive position of 

 the product. 



Assessment of the issue 



The apparent lack of definition of the issue is both understandable 

 and tolerable in a case before a committee with investigative rather 

 than legislative functions. However, it would seem that before the 

 Congress could resolve the issue it needed to be analyzed, and al- 

 ternatives considered. These alternatives would need to go beyond 

 whether Ritchie had been fairly treated or not, whether AD-X2 was 

 any good or not, and whether it did or did not contain any mysterious 

 ingredients that differentiated it from numerous additives the Bureau 

 of Standards had previously found worthless. 



It does not appear that any analysis was made of the AD-X2 case 

 in terms of its public or political significance. Accordingly, the testi- 

 mony was based on each witness' interpretation of the issue; the 

 choice of witnesses and documentation introduced in the hearings re- 

 sulted mainly from committee staff interpretation as to what the 

 issue was; and the questions asked of witnesses were essentially ad 

 hoc — responding to the need for clarification or testing of the testimony. 



Definition of alternatives 



The most fundamental statement of alternatives offered to the 

 committee was that of Secretary Weeks. He saw the issue in the con- 

 text of the dichotomy of business vereus Government. For him the 

 alternatives were as to whether the test of the marketplace should be 

 permitted to prevail or whether the Government regidation should 

 serve in its place. 



It is interesting to note that the report of the National Academy 

 Committee on Battery Additives was later on to take the position 

 that the surest means for the testing of the validity of scientific find- 

 ings was in the "marketplace of ideas." Only the worthy survived. 

 Whether the commercial marketplace served equally well, however, 

 was not as evident. There were lacking some of the main som-ces of 

 validation available to the institutions of science, such as the prestige 

 of individual critics, the critical selection of items for publication, the 



'«» Ibid. (An index of exhibits contained in the appendix appears on pp. 10-11.) 



