The Laboratories of Democracy

Nothing is more galling to scientists than outsiders questioning their research priorities. Witness the indignation of several leading physicists when the superconducting supercollider project was axed in 1993, or, more recently, the outrage expressed by members of the biomedical research community at being stymied in their pursuit of human embryonic stem-cell research. Beneath the research community's sense of entitlement lies a deeply rooted fact about science policy: Since World War II, the United States has socialized the costs of scientific research without socializing its governance.

But given the powerful influences science and technology exert on society, shouldn't the public be given a greater role in shaping science's agenda? Even before Hiroshima seared an awareness of the powers of science in the American mind, New Deal policy-makers had begun answering in the affirmative. Their attempts have renewed relevance today, as military imperatives reassert their influence through bioterrorism and missile defense research, and as academia's courtship of industry imperils what little public accountability exists in science.

The cause of democratic science was first championed in the early 1940s by freshman senator Harley Kilgore. Described as a "round faced gum-chewing man," Kilgore introduced a bill intended to reverse what he perceived as corporate domination of research and to give the public an important role in directing the course of science. The centerpiece of his bill was a provision that called for creating a large, pan-scientific federal agency to coordinate and conduct both basic and applied research. In line with Kilgore's New Deal commitments, his agency would be governed by a board of directors that included one representative each of labor, agriculture, consumer and industry interests, in addition to two scientists.

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