1.1 Government-funded science: vannevar bush and the national  (Page 4/4)

Bush’s vision of the national science foundation*

Basic ideas

Bush strongly advocated the formation of a unified agency for the funding and coordination of basic research; in his letter, he described science as “fundamentally a unitary thing,” one whose advancement is hampered by compartmentalization. The various scientific disciplines are interdependent, and so Bush wished to keep their regulatory separation to a minimum. The entire conception of the functioning of the National Science Foundation centered around what he called the “five fundamentals:”

• Stability of funds dispersed over long periods of time. Unlike applied research and development, basic research has little surety of when (or if) it will produce useful and/or marketable results. Funding must be consistent despite this uncertainty in order for basic research to have a chance at uncovering important knowledge.
• The administration of funding by “citizens selected only on the basis of their interest in and capacity to promote the work of the agency.”
• Assistance of research by funding projects outside the Federal Government; the agency “should not operate any laboratories of its own.” This provision promotes freedom of researchers, and seeks to avoid bias of funding toward labs and projects in which the agency itself has direct interest.
• Private colleges, universities, and other institutions receiving funding should be given free reign for “internal control of policy, personnel, and the method and scope of the research.”
• Responsibility to the President and Congress. Standard government procedures of auditing, budgeting, etc. are to be applied to the agency, with leeway for any necessary adjustment due to the special nature of research as opposed to other federally-funded activities.

In addition to funding research, the National Science Foundation (or, as Bush termed it in Science: The Endless Frontier, the National Research Foundation), was to promote science education, furnishing scholarships mentioned in the section above. Bush also saw a need for international sharing of scientific research, and intended for the NSF to oversee and facilitate this.

Administrative structure and organization

Fulfilling the second of the “five fundamentals” listed above, the NSF was to be headed by nine Members not affiliated with the government in any way save through the NSF, and these Members would elect a chairman on a yearly basis. The Members would also appoint a salaried director for the “fiscal, legal, and administrative functions of the Foundation.” Bush initially suggested five Divisions for the NSF that would make recommendations of policy and funding in their particular zones of research, and would be responsible for review of the research quality in the particular division:

• Division of Medical Research
• Division of Natural Sciences
• Division of Scientific Personnel and Education (dealing with the dispersal of grants and scholarships)
• Division of Publications and Scientific Collaboration (“encouraging the publication of scientific knowledge and promoting international exchange of scientific information”)
• Division of National Defense – This division is distinct from various military projects in applied research such as weapon development; it is intended to be composed of civilian scientists only. Bush saw a need for sustained, long-range research pertaining to defense above and beyond immediate, wartime concerns, and felt that civilian researchers were best equipped to carry this out.

Each division would, under this system, have its own set of Members answerable to the Members of the Foundation. The Foundation Members would hold the regulatory power of the Foundation, making rules of policy, managing the flow of funding, working with other government bureaus and agencies if necessary, and assisting the flow of scientific information on the international stage.

The ultimate emphasis in this idea of a National Science Foundation is placed on creating an environment of intellectual freedom for private researchers to the greatest extent possible, because Bush believed this was the key to productivity and advances in science. Cutting the financial strings of industry from the limbs of scientists in this way was to free them to make the oft-unexpected advances in basic science that may come to revolutionize the world.

Realization of the national science foundation

In the case of the National Science Foundation, which was to implement the recommendations for basic research support made in the Bush and Steelman Reports, controversy raged over the relation of the proposed agency to the presidency. Should it be headed by an independent group of scientist-commissioners or by an administrator appointed by the President? Five years later the NSF finally emerged in 1950 with a presidentially appointed director and a board of part-time scientists with veto-power over awarding of research grants. Smith, 6 By the early 1960s Congress had taken the full plunge into science policy rewriting the NSF’s charter, creating new NIH institutes, and unsuccessfully attempting to establish a central Department of Science.

Currently operating with an annual budget of about $5.5 billion, the NSF is the major funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal funding.

NSF leadership has evolved to be comprised of two major components: a director who oversees NSF staff and management responsible for program creation and administration, merit review, planning, budget and day-to-day operations; and a 24-member National Science Board (NSB) of eminent individuals that meets six times a year to establish the overall policies of the foundation. The director and all Board members serve six year terms. They are all, including the NSF deputy director, appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Presently the NSF has a total workforce of about 1,700 at its headquarters in Arlington, VA. This includes approximately 1200 career employees, 150 scientists from research institutions on temporarily employed, and approximately 200 contract workers.

“NSF operates from the "bottom up," keeping close track of research around the United States and the world, maintaining constant contact with the research community to identify ever-moving horizons of inquiry, monitoring which areas are most likely to result in spectacular progress and choosing the most promising people to conduct the research.” National Science Foundation