On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation. Speaking on national television, Eisenhower warned the nation of the increasing power of a "military-industrial complex." He was right about some of the dangers the military-industrial complex posed but couldn't see some of the benefits or some of the other pitfalls.
Together, a more accurate portrayal of the problem would be the "National Security Establishment." This encompasses corporations, labor unions, tech companies, think tanks, lobbyists, the media, the Pentagon caucus in Congress, and the research and development establishment.
That last is another specific warning given by Eisenhower during his address.
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment project allocations and the power of money is ever present," warned Eisenhower.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields… ,” Eisenhower warned. “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
Eisenhower was not dismissing the contributions of science to the national security of the U.S. Nor was he saying that the government shouldn't be funding science at all. Eisenhower was worried that too much government funding was corrupting the scientific process, putting more emphasis on the priorities of the federal bureaucracy.
Eisenhower was right. The days are long gone when an Ernest Rutherford, working out of a country house in England with a few graduate students, could unravel the mysteries of the structure of the atom, or astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, peering through the telescope at Lowell Observatory night after night, comparing photos of the sky to discover Pluto.
"If you look at, particularly, 19th century Britain when science was absolutely in the private sector, we have some of the best science," says Terence Kealey, a critic of government science funding and a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham.
"It comes from the wealth of the rich. Charles Darwin was a rich person. Even [scientists] who had no money had access to rich men's money one way or another. The rich paid for science."
Certainly, the rich could pick up much of the funding cut by the government. An added benefit is that the rich wouldn't stand for a lot of the nonsense research being conducted using taxpayer dollars today.
Beyond the funding, there is the way the public looks at science and scientists. The climate change debate is a perfect example. For starters, there is no "debate," at least none worth discussing. Alternative viewpoints are thoroughly silenced.
More than that, scientists are discredited and penalized for their apostasy. You have to wonder if we had heeded Eisenhower's warning about "scientific elites" dominating the conversation and soaking up most of the research funding, if climate change "deniers" would have been ostracized in quite the same way.
The notion that the government needs to accelerate scientific progress was based on America's experience during World War II, when federally funded research led to breakthroughs in rocketry, medicine, and radar. The Manhattan Project, which cost $27 billion in today's dollars, employed more than half a million people and culminated in the creation of the atomic bomb and the discovery of nuclear fission.
"Lobbyists took the Manhattan Project and said, 'Look what government funding of science can do,' and they then twisted it," says Kealey. He acknowledges that the government can accomplish discrete, "mission-based" scientific projects—like racing toward a bomb—but he argues that this is very different from the generalized state funding of "basic research" that followed.
What eventually gave a huge boost to government-funded scientific research was the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in space. The feat panicked the scientific establishment and helped them make a case for massive government investment in science.
Those huge scientific breakthroughs mentioned above changed the course of history. But so have some massive government-funded projects, including the construction of the atomic bomb, medical breakthroughs in gene and cellular therapies, and others that are uncovering some of the mysteries of the cosmos.
The government has a role to play in scientific research. The wealthy and big corporations cannot fund all the necessary projects that contribute mightily to civilization's march of progress. With less money going to research, scientists should be forced to make good decisions about the kinds of research that are undertaken.
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