Support of Science on the University's Own Terms.
Science serves its readers as a forum for the presentation and discussion of important issues related to the advancement of science, including the presentation of minority or conflicting points of view, rather than by publishing only material on which a consensus has been reached. Accordingly , all articles published in Science-including editorials, news and comment, and book reviews-are signed and reflect the individual views of the authors and not official points of view adopted by the AAAS or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. The faltering in the public support of science in America points to a deep and disheartening conclusion: Science has established no secure claim in its own right upon the priorities of our national treasury. A generation of time and billions of dollars of public funds should have secured a deeper understanding of the meaning of science on the part of contemporary Americans. Instead, much of the actual experience has created downright misunderstanding. At the end of World War II, the American taxpayer became the world's leading patron of science. For the next 20 years, public money flowed in increasing volume to the support of science. The rising curve of public support began to level out in 1965, and the support of university science is now down about $250 million from the 1965 peak of $1.3 billion. No one could deny that the ample flow of public funds set off a golden age of science in America. The country's universities and the scientific enterprise have yet to reckon, however, with the costs exacted by the terms on which the funds were extended and accepted. Now that the tide is ebbing, these costs are being revealed. It is clear that the harm done to science and the universities at the flood far exceeds any damage at the ebb. The scientists were content to accept funds from whatever source was ready to supply money most generously. They thus permitted the major funding of their work to come as a by-product of mounting public expenditures for other purposes, especially for weapons. University administrators, for their part, were glad to have the scientists on their faculty take on the task of obtaining the money. A university is a moral community, bound only by the common cause of the increase and diffusion of human understanding. In each of our foremost universities, the federal funding of science has exerted pressures tending …