Stopping Big Science`s Big Slide

December 16, 1991|By Alan Marcus, director of the Center for Historical Studies of Technology and Science at Iowa State University.

Twenty-two years ago, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the dusty surface of the moon, it marked the end of an epic scientific adventure. This ``giant leap for mankind`` made it look as though science and technology had no boundaries.

Today, it is highly unlikely an event of such monumental scope and expense as the lunar landing could be pulled off. Scientists are touting much grander projects like the space station, the human genome project and the Superconducting Supercollider as being too important to ignore. But great national scientific adventures no longer seem possible.

Today, there are two major barriers to ``big science.`` Scientists appear to be unable to agree on a scientific agenda. And the public-which is no more united than the scientists themselves-is unwilling to grant scientists the authority to take on such huge projects.

The impetus for grand scientific adventures, such as the lunar landing, was born out of a unified scientific community that maintained a broad consensus, at least publicly, about the importance of particular projects. Scientists appeared to be in agreement with the professional organizations and societies that spoke for them. Individual members who opposed the common cause, and there were many, did so behind closed doors because public disagreement was a violation of trust and responsibility, akin to a breach of professional ethics.

Peer review, in which a scientist`s work is analyzed by other scientists in a closely related field, is the cornerstone of this delicate professional web. It presumes that only scientists in similar fields are qualified to judge the research of individuals in those fields, that their decisions are objective, beyond reproach and final.

A belief that science was pristine and consistent and that scientists were incapable of considering any question other than a thing`s purely scientific merits lay at the heart of this romantic formulation. Its most dramatic expression is the creation of huge federal peer-review-driven granting agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, which guide the nation`s scientific endeavors. But if these grand edifices were erected as shrines to the peer review process, and the idea of a scientific consensus, they also stood as memorials to an earlier time when the public truly believed that science and technology could provide solutions to the nation`s social problems.

These understandings held important consequences for scientific research. The image of scientific research coming to bear on social ailments granted it an immediacy it might otherwise have lacked. Through the peer review process, scientists were allowed to determine research agendas, to dole out funds and to direct where research money would go. Disputes were kept under wraps within the scientific society.

Achieving the needed national consensus to undertake huge scientific adventures, such as the lunar landing, was possible in that milieu. But that time has long since past.

Now, scientific disciplines fight for funding. Harmony is rare. Investigators within disciplines attack each other as they pursue scarce research dollars. Debates over the Superconducting Supercollider, the space station and Star Wars take place inside and outside the relevant disciplines and demonstrate just how contentious these battles can be.

Furthermore, scientists have fallen into a trap of sidestepping peer review and publication in professional journals, instead rushing to announce discoveries and conclusions to the press. Controversies among scientists are broadcast the same way. The announcement of cold fusion and early results of high-temperature superconductivity came via the press, not scientific journals.

Public airing of scientific laundry is fraught with danger. The public is asked to choose among similarly credentialed scientists who advocate different, often contradictory, positions. The untrained become the referees. Competition for public attention encourages scientists to dramatize and popularize their views. The more catastrophic a prediction or conclusion, the more likely it will score newspaper and television coverage.

How can the public make a choice? Can it afford to ignore the most melodramatic warning even when supported by only a shred of scientific evidence? Can the public afford to buck even a harebrained scheme when the alternative may be dramatically increased cancer rates, massive famine or even extinction?