Crisis in The Labs

Without scientific progress the national health would deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our standard of living or for an increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny.

-- Vannevar Bush, presidential science adviser in Science: The Endless Frontier, 1945

It was the glory of America. In the decades following World War II, U.S. science reigned supreme, earning the envy of the world with one stunning triumph after another. Fostered by the largesse of a government swayed by Vannevar Bush's paean to science, it harnessed the power of the atom, conquered polio and discovered the earth's radiation belt. It created the laser, the transistor, the microchip and the electronic computer, broke the genetic code and conjured up the miracle of recombinant DNA technology. It described the fundamental nature of matter, solved the mystery of the quasars and designed the robot craft that explored distant planets with spectacular success. And, as promised, it landed a man on the moon.

Now a sea change is occurring, and it does not bode well for researchers -- or for the U.S. While American science remains productive and still excels in many areas, its exalted and almost pristine image is beginning to tarnish.

European and, to a lesser extent, Japanese scientists have begun to surpass their American counterparts. In the U.S. the scientific community is beset by a budget squeeze and bureaucratic demands, internal squabbling, harassment by activists, embarrassing cases of fraud and failure, and the growing alienation of Congress and the public. In the last decade of the 20th century, U.S. science, once unassailable, finds itself in a virtual state of siege.

"The science community is demoralized, and its moans are frightening off the young," says Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "You have never seen such a depressed collection of people," says Stephen Berry, a University of Chicago chemist. "It's the worst atmosphere in the scientific community since I began my career more than 30 years ago."

In public perception, at least, that atmosphere has been fouled by a multitude of headline-grabbing incidents:

-- The federal researcher at whose urging Times Beach, Mo., was permanently evacuated in 1982 because of a dioxin scare has conceded that the draconian action was a mistake and that newer data suggest dioxin is far less toxic than previously believed. While some environmental scientists dispute the conclusion, the Environmental Protection Agency has launched a review of its strict dioxin standards, leaving the public confused about what to believe.

-- In space, the inexcusable myopia of the $1.5 billion Hubble telescope, the balky antenna that endangers the $1.3 billion Galileo mission to Jupiter, and even the Challenger disaster and the shuttle's subsequent troubles gave space science a bad name -- notwithstanding the fact that the failures resulted not from scientific errors but largely from managerial blunders and budgetary constraints.