The Nixon Years

By the time the presidential science advisory system was dismantled in January 1973, government leadership for national science policy was already shifting from the executive to the legislative branch, specically to the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development. Reacting to the changing political envi-ronment for science, the subcommittee held extensive hearings between July and September 1970 to review the previous twenty-ve years of science policy. One recommendation was to strengthen the presidential science advisory system. Another called for a national science policy to be formulated by the administra-tion, transmitted to Congress, maintained as a public law, and incorporated into the operations of every department or agency which utilizes science and technology in its mission.

During the same period, Congress, concerned about its dependence on the executive branch for scientic advice and analysis, moved to strengthen its own capabilities, creating the Oce of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1972. The OTA legislation also established an oversight committee consisting of ve senators (among them Edward M. Kennedy).

While Richard Nixon appointed a White House Task Force on Science Policy within a few months of his inauguration in January 1969, he apparently gave little credence to its recommendation to strengthen PSAC and OST. Like Johnson, Nixon preferred applied to basic research, and his science and technology initiatives generally lay outside the PSAC framework. In his January 1971 State of the Union message, he announced a $100 million War on Cancer program that emphasized his desire for practical results. In July, he announced a new program centered on the Domestic Council to stimulate new technologies. And in March 1972, he transmitted a special message to the Congress urging renewed emphasis on science and technology, but primarily for targeted programs outside of academia.

Nixon appointed eighteen new PSAC members, excluding his two science advisors. Cal Tech President Lee DuBridge, who had been among the leading scientists engaged in defense-related research during World War II and was SAC/ODM chairman under Truman and Eisenhower, was sworn in as Nixon's science advisor on inauguration day. Immediately, he became actively engaged in problems important to the president:

environmental quality, including a major oil spill in California, for which Nixon very publicly made a show of giving DuBridge responsibility for reviewing the situation and recommending corrective actions.⁹ But DuBridge also was known to have been openly opposed to the SST and was further tainted in Nixon's eyes by his image as a dyed-in-the-wool member of the academic community, which along with PSAC came to be regarded by the White House as a special-interest lobby. So DuBridge was forced to resign after two years, to be replaced by Edward David, an engineer from Bell Laboratoriesthe rst nonacademic nonscientist to be appointed presidential science advisor. Nixon reinforced the message about his science agenda at David's swearing-in ceremony, when he described his new advisor as a very practical man.

9William G. Wells, Jr., Science Advice and the Presidency: a View from Roosevelt to Ford, in William T. Golden (ed.), Science Advice to the President (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), 209.

Figure 10.6: In the Rose Garden following the searing in of Edward David, Jr., as President Nixon's second science advisor, Sept. 14, 1970. Left to right: David, President Nixon, Ann David, Nancy David, and Lee DuBridge. Individuals in the second row are members of the President's Science Advisory Committee. The name of the judge who swore in David is not known. Courtesy of Edward E. David, Jr.

The gradual diminution of the science advisory system was accelerated after the November 1972 elections, when the president abolished both the PSAC and the OST.

In some respectsaside from its being at political odds with presidents Johnson and NixonPSAC's demise can be attributed to the overall growth of science and science policy-making throughout the federal bureaucracy. As science and technology policy capabilities in the DoD and other cabinet departments and agencies increased (thanks in part to recommendations of PSAC itself), Johnson and Nixon had many more sources of advice, particularly with regard to national defense. By the time IBM physicist Richard Garwinthe most outspoken critic of presidential science policiestook the PSAC helm in 1969 (after having previously served from 1962-1965), PSAC was already on the political outs with Nixon and all but dead. In January 1973, Nixon accepted the resignations of the last of the committee members and appointed NSF Director H. Guyford Stever his science advisor. Stever often joked about his second job. When asked whether he ever saw the president, he responded, in essence: Certainly! I see him twice a day. Once in the morning when he walks in front of my window from his living quarters to the Oval Oce, and once in the evening when he returns. By then, it was abundantly clear to the scientic establishment that there no longer was a good working relationship between academic science and the White House.

The abolition of PSAC and OST inspired further congressional science-policy initiatives. These activities intensied with the ascension of Gerald Ford to the presidency after Nixon's resignation. Ford was more

than willing to work closely with his former colleges, and was also perceived as being friendly toward science.

The House Science and Technology Committee was now the only science-policy game in town. The sci-entic establishment began looking to it to restore its special access to the president. Other groups, both scientic and non-scientic, looked to it to further their own interests and to conrm their beliefs in how relationships between science and government ought to be structured. Thus began a series of maneuvers and hearings in both houses of Congress that culminated three years later with the National Science and Technol-ogy Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976, the rst and only ocial statement of a comprehensive national science policy ever enacted by the United States Government.

Chapter 11

Resurrection? 1974-76

The government has gone through decades of ad hoc situations, arrangements regarding science and tech-nology that have not been based on any rm policy but have responded merely to current crisis. The result has been a marked inconsistency in utility and eect. In some cases things have worked well; at other times they have worked poorly.

Legislative History of the OSTP Act, 1977