DISDAIN FOR SCIENCE PORTENDS DECLINE OF NATION SCIENCE

Google the phrase "so goes the nation" and you'll find a multitude of
claims for the determiner of national direction. Most of the hits apply
that distinction to states - from Maine to Ohio to Texas to
California. But you'll also find sites contending that the nation goes
as does Harvard, the family, Microsoft, gay marriage, and Google
itself. Sadly, you won't find the correct answer - which is, of
course, science.

Science's lack of prominence in the popular mind certainly doesn't
match its importance for public life. Even though science drives the
economy, medical care, entertainment technology and intellectual
culture, it gets about as much respect as the late Rodney
Dangerfield.

For decades, however, that didn't seem to matter. After World War II,
U.S. science and engineering became the world's model, turning
nature's untapped resources of knowledge into the commodities and
comforts of the planet's richest country.

It used to be that science enjoyed particular prestige within the
halls of government, where grateful politicians acknowledged the
benefits of nonpartisan expertise. But lately, among many of the
nation's leaders - both political and industrial - science has been
treated with neglect and disdain. Consequently U.S. pre-eminence in
the scientific world no longer goes unquestioned, and the future of
science has become more and more questionable.

Some of the nation's scientific decline is dramatic and clear, such as
the exodus of leadership in high-energy physics to Europe - the
predictable outcome of the 1993 congressional refusal to finish a
super atom smasher then under construction in Texas.

Other signs are more subtle. Enrollment in science and engineering
graduate programs has been unable to regain its 1993 peak, and would
be vastly below that level if not for rising numbers of engineering
and computer science students from foreign countries. Judged by papers
published in top science and technology journals, U.S. scientists are
producing a diminishing share of the world's scientific output.
Government funding levels for federal science research agencies, after
several years of growth, are now projected to be flat or declining in
the years ahead.

"How can we recruit the best young people to science careers if they
foresee a grim funding picture for their future work?" asks Alan
Leshner, the chief executive officer of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.

But the real issue, Dr. Leshner asserts, is not American pre-eminence
over the scientific world. "The United States should not be wasting
energy right now on the question of its global scientific dominance,"
he wrote in the Oct. 8 issue of the journal Science.

Rather, the pressing problem is science's relationship to society, and
especially the government's policy-making process.

"Both the U.S. policy climate and funding trends for science are
deteriorating, and those changes pose significant risk to the future
of U.S. science," Dr. Leshner declared. "The relationship between
science and large segments of the U.S. public and policy communities
is also eroding."

In the closing weeks of the U.S. presidential race, a cadre of
scientists, including half a dozen Nobel laureates, have embarked on a
speaking tour in several states to deplore political interference in
scientific research and ideological distortion of scientific evidence
in the policy process. The scientists allege that policies on AIDS,
global warming, stem cell research, environmental protection,
evolution education, missile defense, space missions to Mars and
future energy sources have all ignored or distorted the consensus of
leading scientific experts and the preponderance of established
scientific evidence.

Scientists requesting funding for their work have been questioned
about their political allegiances. Research in "sensitive" topics
(such as sexual behavior and drug abuse) has been subjected to special
scrutiny, Dr. Leshner points out. Congress has voted to disallow
research grants "whose subject matter made them uncomfortable."

Officials defend the government's actions, but cannot deny the
scientific community's perception that the free pursuit of scientific
knowledge has become endangered by politico-religious ideological opposition.

"We are now experiencing," wrote Dr. Leshner, "a counterproductive
overlay of politics, ideology, and religious conviction on the U.S.
climate for science."

And so it seems that U.S. science's real enemy is not stars of foreign
science, but ourselves. It was science that provided the economic,
military and intellectual power that made America supreme in world
affairs. If that very power is turned against science, then its source
will evaporate, and America will go the way of past empires where
dogma trumped intellect and propaganda overwhelmed reason.

"Worry about whether the United States is better in science than
everyone else in the whole world is misplaced anxiety," wrote Dr.
Leshner. "We need to focus our full energy on the U.S. home front,
because the serious erosion of the climate that originally led to
America's pre-eminence in science is now threatening its very eminence
- and thus, its future."