Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion (review)

Daniel S. Greenberg. Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion. Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2001. x, 530 pp. $35.

Daniel Greenberg has constructed a tour de force exploration of the world of science policy and politics over the past forty years, with pleasant forays into the worlds of big science, university research shops, government labs, scientific societies, and granting agencies. Along the way Greenberg introduces us to the notable personalities of science policy of the postwar era, including Vannevar Bush, Allan Bromley, Erich Block, David Baltimore, William Golden, Bernadine Healy, Harold Varmus, and Leon Lederman, and allows us to view the delicate balance in which these men and women built alliances among executive agencies, congressional committees, research universities, and scientific academies. We also gain intimate knowledge of the major scientific institutions which wield the power over science policy making in Washington, among them the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Universities, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and learn how these institutions have successfully promoted their own interests and agendas within government budgetary agencies over the past half century.

Greenberg, the former news editor of Science and the founding editor of Science and Government Report, is remarkably qualified to take us on this tour. He stands without peer as the outside science observer in Washington, and brings to his work both a fine appreciation for the work of scientists and the possible abuses of a system which funnels over $15 billion per year into basic research even as the majority of policy makers (and nearly all of their constituents) are highly ignorant of the work that they fund. It is this odd balance, in fact, which lies at the crux of the book and which impels Greenberg to report so assiduously and passionately on the topic, for science has been tremendously successful at nurturing support for its enterprise at the highest levels of government. A brief glance at the growth in federal research allocations—from $149 million in 1953 to $16 billion today—gives testament to this success.

Greenberg credits science for its successes, both in labs and in Capitol Hill hearing rooms, but repeatedly raises concerns over the lack of knowledgeable oversight in the process. Science has proven itself almost preternaturally popular with both lawmakers and constituents, and even in the tax-cutting days of the Reagan administration managed to emerge from the budget process mostly intact. (Between 1980 and 1988 federal funding of basic research grew from $4.3 billion to $8.5 billion, even as presidents of research universities expressed their concern for declining federal support.) On the other hand, few administration officials, members of congress, congressional staffers, or interested laypersons are capable of evaluating the scientific worth of most research conducted under federal auspices, and the historic drivers behind such consistent government support for the enterprise have been cold war politics, “wars on” various diseases and disorders, and the general popularity of biomedical research. (Support for the physical sciences has never been more than one-third of that garnered by the biological and medical sciences.)

Greenberg does a laudable job in gently prodding us to take a more skeptical attitude toward supporting research, without attacking the underlying scientific mission or process. Greenberg takes science to task not for lacking a moral center, but rather for producing too much research with little or no promise of future relevance or utility. Similarly, he criticizes university science departments for training superfluous doctoral students, for hiring faculty for which no concrete funding exists, and for expanding programs in generally reckless and irresponsible ways. This is not the same as saying that heartless scientists were responsible for the nuclear arms race, but it is a careful rebuke of an enterprise which...