CORRESPONDENCE

T H E PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISERS

20 February, 1965.

Sir,--In evaluating Dr. Abelson's critique of scientific advice in the Execu- tive Office of the President, 1 it is important to keep clearly in mind the nature and functions of the Executive Office as a whole, the departmental organisation of the executive branch and the characteristics of the budgetary process in the American system of government. Although the questions which Dr. Abelson raises are significant ones, it appears to this observer that neither the criticisms nor the suggestions for reform correspond to the realities of the situation. The following points seem of special relevance in this connection.

I. There is a basic difference between advice and executive decision-making, between influence and authority. The Special Assistant and the Office of Science and Technology (O.S.T.) give advice and have influence, but they do not make decisions and they have no formal authority. The influence of the Special Assis- tant derives from the fact that he has the confidence of the President and that he has available to him the information and perspective of the government as a whole rather than that of any particular agency. Because of his freedom from operational responsibility, he is less committed by prior actions or agency positions. However, the Special Assistant is by no means the only technical adviser to the President, nor the only channel for scientific advice. The Chair- man of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Administrator of the Space Agency, the Secretary of Defence and his technical advisers, the Director of the National Science Foundation as well as the heads of other technical departments and agencies can and do advise the President on matters related to the scientific concerns of their respective organisations. In virtually all technical decisions affecting a given agency, the agency head and his advisers participate in the decision at least as much as the Special Assistant.

The measure in which the Special Assistant holds the confidence of the President and of the Bureau of the Budget derives not from any special position or authority but from his ability to make his case in the forum of high policy discussion which precedes any important decision in government. Thus the potential for abuse of power is not as great as would be inferred from Dr. Abelson's remarks. Any arguments or positions taken by the Special Assistant which lack a cogent basis in technical fact or professional judgement would have a relatively short life and would in fact soon undermine a position which depends primarily on persuasion rather than on bureaucratic authority.

1 Abelson, P. H., " The Prer~dent's Science Advisers ", Minerva, II1, 2 (Winter, 1965), pp. 149-158.

THE PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISERS 393

Dr. Abelson's observations concerning the influence of the Special Assistant and the Office of Science and Technology:in the budget-making process imply a na~vet6 and ignorance on the part of the Bureau of the Budget staff which seem very far from reality to anybody who has dealt with the bureau at first hand. In fact, Dr. Abelson's views betray a belief, typical of many scientists not familiar with government, that nobody but a Nobel Prize scientist can possibiy understand any policy issue having technical or scien.tific content. The fact is that government administrators, who have long been concerned with issues involving science, become extremely sophisticated about such issues and are able to ask the kind of penetrating questions which often surprise the scientist who encounters this sophistication for the first time. While it is true that the bureau staff cannot be expected to make independent judgements on matters which depend primarily on detailed technical analysis, the idea that the Office of Science and Technology can lead the bureau around by the nose in technical matters is wrong. Over time ~hey develop a sure instinct for significant issues and for what decisions depend mainly on professional judge- ment and what mainly on informed interpretation of national goals. The O.S.T. is not a separate budget bureau for science but, through its detailed knowledge .of technical programmes in agencies, it is in a unique position to assist the bureau in formulating issues, asking the right questions and evaluating the degree to which ,the detailed technical activities in a programme support its asserted goals. The relationship between the bureau and O.S.T. is a dialogue in which neither party takes for granted the judgements of the other but each has something important to contribute to the discussion.

2. The execution and much of the initiative for ,the plans and programmes of American government are the affair of the departments and independent agencies of the executive branch, all of which report, at least in theory, directly to the President. The initiative for new programmes, the effective manage- ment of certain programmes and the defence of both the programmes and the execution of them before congressional committees are the responsibility of the agencies. As is only natural, each agency feels its mission is the most important; each feels it has to grow; each sees the national scientific and technological effort from the standpoint of its own mission, assigned to it not only by the

President but by legislative authority. The federal government is not a mono-

lithic structure in which every action or operation can be deduced through an

unambiguous logical chain from some clearly-stated national goal, agreed to

by all the participants in the decision-making process.

The federal departments and agencies are partly competing and partly

cooperating. The natural "empire-building" tendencies of all organisations manifest themselves especially strongly in science and technology because of

the "chain reaction " nature of science. Each new discovery opens up more

questions than it answers and more technological opportunities than can be exploited.

394 CORRESPONDENCE

The process of competition between agencies is helpful both in preserving freedom and enhancing initiative in American science and technology. The competitive nature of the governmental process necessitates a locus of technical judgement in the President's Office but also limits the authority and scope of the Science Adviser. The veto power of the Special Assistant and his staff is limited by the energy with which agencies are prepared to argue their own points of view and, in turn, the policy initiative of ,the Special Assistant is limited by his ability to convince agencies of the validity of his views.

Because agencies are competing for funds and authority and because there are always more promising projects than funds, the Executive Office of necessity spends a good deal of its time and energy refusing to authorise projects and programmes which agency staff deeply believe in and have worked hard to prepare. It is not surprising that members of specialised agencies often feel deeply hurt in the process of budget-making, especially if they are at a level at which it is difficult for them to see their own efforts and concerns as competing with all the o/her manifold activities of government. In the 1950s this resulted in a good deal of resentment being directed at the "accountan,t mentality" of the Bureau of the Budget. Today, with the wider role of O.S.T. in advising the bureau on technical matters, it is natural that some of this uninformed resentment should be turned against the staff of O.S.T. This is not to assert that O.S.T. has invariably exerted its influence either wisely or tactfully, or that its effectiveness could not be improved by a strengthened staff. However, statements, that an O.S.T, staff member has greater influence over decisions than an agency's own advisers, if true, raise a question as to whether the agency has really done its "homework" or learned how to make effective use of outside technical advice. The function of O.S.T. in evaluating the tech- nical proposals of agencies is more often to question the underlying assumptions or to disclose the wider implications rather than to question the details of the studies themselves.

3. There are practically no decisions involving scientific or technical matters at the presidential level which hinge solely on scientific or technical considera- tions. Furthermore, such issues can seldom be resolved by technical innovation or invention at the Executive Office level. Thus the kind of staff competence needed in O.S.T. is not necessarily the same kind as is needed for scientific creativity in the laboratory. Experience in government, knowledge of govern- ment agencies, understanding of economic and political factors, ability to deal competently with a diversity of problems and to balance many factors involving

varying degrees of technical certain`ty rather than to penetrate a single problem

in great depth in all its ramifications--these are the importar~t qualities of an

O.S.T. staff member. Scientific or engineering competence and experience are important, :too, but scien,tific distinction achieved by original creative work in

science or engineering are not of particular value in themselves. The skills required are, in fact, even harder to find than scientific creativity. Many of

TIlE PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISERS 395

the O.S.T. staff have been recruited from within government, often because of their unique experience in government programmes. It is frequently difficult to induce active scientists from the academic or industrial community to enter the relative anonymity of government service, especially in a staff position without the career security of a regular federal agency.

Dr. Abelson's comments concerning the scientific competence of the O.S.T. staff are unjust. A number of the staff members do have a record of creative scientific work. On the other hand, many of those with a long record of service in government technical staff positions are largely precluded from independent scientific research or publication. Most of their published "papers " are the traditional anonymous government staff papers that of necessity do not receive the publicity of the writings of eminent scientists outside government.

4. One of Dr. Abelson's principal suggestions for improvement is to separate the functions of Directar of O.S.T. and of long-range planning for federal support of science. The full import of this suggestion is not clear from his brief statement. However, from the fact that he criticises the Special Assistant for playing too many roles, one would infer that he intends O.S.T. "policy for science " and long-range planning to be entirely separate functions reporting either directly and independently to the President, or possibly reporting, to the President through the Director of the Bureau of the Budget. I am in full agreement with Dr. Abelson concerning the importance of each of these functions. On the other hand, in the con.text of American government I am convinced they could not be performed effectively unless they came under the general supervision of the Special Assistant and reported to the President through him. In the first place, increasing the number of individuals reporting to the President directly would be administratively impractical. In the second place, the Presiden,t would inevitably look to the Special Assistant to evaluate and interpret whatever advice came to him from the Director of O.S.T. or of long-range planning and to blend this advice with the rest of government policy involving science. The Special Assistant would be in a much better position to do this than the Budget Director, since interPretation of technical matters is involved. Finally, and perhaps most important, much of the influence which the Special Assistam exerts in the area of long-term science policy derives from his success in dealing with the emergencies which continually beset the President. This Js simply a fact of life in government which must be faced and it is not peculiar to science. The archives are full of excellent and

thoughtful reports written by government advisers remote from the scene of

decision, In the long term these have their uses but the influence of O.S.T.,

the President's Science Advisory Committee and the Federal Council all derive in the last analysis from the presence of the Special Assistarrt on the scene

where decisions are made.

In fact, both of Dr. Abelson's suggestions are somewhat out of date, though

i t has not been possible to follow either of them to the extent Dr. Abelson, or

396 CORRESPONDENCE

for that matter the Special Assistant, might have desired. The Deputy Director of O.S.T. has for some time now taken over some of the functions which Dr. Abelson had envisaged for the Director, and a committee o n long-range planning under the Federal Council has been active for more .than two years. However, it has not proved practical or desirable to remove the Special Assistant entirely from the process of budget-making or "policy for science ", as seems to be implied by Dr. Abelson's proposal. The problem of long-range planning, despite intensive efforts, has proved exceedingly difficult within the depart-

mental framework of American government. This is because planning is traditionally the responsibility of individual agencies and it is often difficult to establish and coordinate the assumptions underlying the plans of agencies, let alone for the government as a whole. Despite these difficulties, encouraging progress has been made in developing coherer~t government-wide plans for such fields as oceanography, high energy physics and atmospheric sciences, though admittedly greater coherence has been achieved within fields than in balancing widely different fields against each other.

Progress has also been made recently in better understanding the future requirements of academic research and its relationship to graduate education and in developing a more government-wide approach to academic science. There is a long way yet to go but the problems are not of the sort that can be approached through offhand opinions and subjective judgements, unsupported by careful fact-gathering and analysis. The system of support for basic and academic science is the product of a complex organic growth that can only be disrupted by arbitrary and poorly understood decisions. The past few years have seen more innovation in mechanisms of basic science support than any similar period since the establishment of the Office of Naval Research after the war. For example; this period has seen the launching of the National Science Foundation traineeship programme and its science development pro- gramme, the inauguration of the interdisciplinary materials science laboratories of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defence, the traineeship programme and the university-sustaining programme of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the expansion of many federal programmes related to graduate and undergraduate science facilities. The period has also seen the beginnings of fruition of the curriculum reform movement in science and mathematics, largely stimulated by federal funds. It has seen the partial mobilisation of national efforts in water resources and the control of air pollution. Many other initiatives are still in the discussion stage.

Within the past year probably more time has been devoted to the problems of academic science than to any other single question. Yet this effort has only tended to show how much work is needed before we can really understand where we are going and how it is desirable to alter much further our present

procedures and policies. For example, many offhand opinions are expressed publicly on problems of the relation of teaching and research in the universities

THE PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISERS 397

and of the institutional or geographical concentration of research funds. Yet

attempts to study these problems in depth only serve to demonstrate that the simple or obvious conclusions or policies are probably not valid. The most ambitious effort by the executive branch to evaluate a major part of the federal research enterprise has been the study of the programmes of the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) by a group under the chairmanship of Dr. Dean E. Wooldridge, an electrical engineer with no previous involvement in N.I.H. programmes. The results of this study, which made use of more than 100 scientists and experienced administrators, will be made public short!y. 2

Yours faithfully,

HARVEY BROOKS Harvard University.

For further discussion of the role of the Scientific Adviser in government and of several ~ssues rNsed by Dr. Abels on's article, I should like to call attention to my essay, " The Scientific Adviser " in Gilpin, R., and Wright, C. (ed.), Scientists in National PoIicy- Making (New York and London: ColumNa University Press, 1964).

In reply, Dr. Abelson writes: There can, indeed, be a difference between influence and authority but there can also be circumstances in which influ- ence is so potent and unchallenged that, in effect, it functions as authority. The President, of course, does have access to a variety of sources of scientific and engineering counsel. But the overwhelming burdens of the presidency necessarily lead to a situation in which the person designated as Presidential Science Adviser is sometimes in a position to exert vastly more influence than the agency heads who only occasionally meet with the President. M y concern is that the organisafional structure of presidential science advice is so constituted as to discourage diversity of opinion and careful examination of alternatives. For example, the adviser plays a key role in selecting the heads of federal agencies and, in seeking advice in the nongovernmental scientific community, he also decides whom to ask.~ It is natural for people to tend to work with persons who share similar sympathies and viewpoints. I t would be useful instead to organise the advisory apparatus so as to encourage diversity. One way to do this would be to break up the monolithic structure of federal science advice. Tension~ and conflict would then be introduced into the system and there would be painful consequences. However, the present system, relatively placid though it may be, is not without deleterious consequences for the quality of American science and the employment of scientific resources for national purposes.

Professor Brooks makes two minor comments which should not go

unchallenged. He states that "Dr . Abelson's observations concerning the

influence of the Special Assistant and the Office of Science and Technology in the budget-making process imply a na[vet6 and ignorance on the part

398 CORRESPONDENCE

of the Bureau of the Budget staff . . .". My remarks were intended to imply no such view. My contacts lead me to respect highly the quality of the Bureau of the Budget staff. However, almost any member of an executive agency can be forgiven if he defers to someone who has great influence and, especially, free access to the President. One consequence of events of the past year and a half has been a change in the relations between the Special Assistant and the Bureau of the Budget.

Professor Brooks also states that " . . . Dr. Abelson's views betray a belief . . . that nobody but a Nobel Prize scientist can possibly understand any policy issue having technical or scientific content ". I do not subscribe to such views.

There are hundreds of United States scientists who have demonstrated competence in creative science and who have had administrative experience. These men potentially could be effective in advising the government--as much so as Nobel Prize winners or for that matter the narrow clique which has been in charge in recent years.

DR. K A R V E A N D T H E I N D I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S

January, 1965.

Sir ,--May I offer a few observations on the issues raised by Dr. Karve's recent article. 1 First, with respect to the tasks of the Education Commission: all the problems concerning all sectors of education come under review, year after year, in sessions of the central advisory bodies appointed by the Union Education Ministry and, every five years, the Planning Commission and its panels are supposed to take an integrated view of education in India. The need for the appointment of an education commission with comprehensive terms of reference was not therefore very obvious, nor was it appoin,ted in response to any clearly expressed public demand. But now that it has been appointed and is at work, one may expect it, not so much to furnish new insights as to draw pointed attention to some major educational reforms awaiting implementation.

There is already a fair degree of uniformity in educational organisation, practices and achievement in India, despite the vesting by the constitution of the legislative and executive authority for education, except for standards of higher education, institutions of national importance, technical training or scientific research, in the states. This uniformity is in part a product of periodic con- ferences at university level and the deployment of financial assistance by the central government in accordance with the five-year plans. The concurrent

1 Karve, D. D., " On the Improvement of the Ii~dian Universities ", Minerva, III, 2 (Winter, 1965), pp. 159-171.