The National Academy of Sciences at 150

FROM THE ACADEMY: SACKLER COLLOQUIA SACKLER COLLOQUIA The National Academy of Sciences at 150

Steve Olson1 Seattle, WA 98121

On March 3, 1863, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts rose in the Senate chamber to, as he told his colleagues, “take up a bill...to incorporate the National Academy of Sciences.” He read two short paragraphs concerning membership and the obligation of the Academy to “whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art.” The Senate passed the bill by voice vote, and a few hours later, the House passed it without comment. Later that evening, President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law. In the century and a half since 1863, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has grown from a small band of 50 charter members—each of whom was specified in the founding legislation—to an organization of more than 2,500 national members and foreign associates. In 1916, the Academy created the National Research Council, which today recruits thousands of specialists each year from the scientific and technological communities to participate in the Academy’s advisory work. The establishment of the National Academy of Engineering in 1964 and the Institute of Medicine in 1970 resulted in a multifaceted institution that investigates issues ranging widely across the sciences, technology, and health. The charter members of the Academy, who met for the first time on April 22, 1863, in the chapel at New York University, scarcely could have envisioned what their fledgling organization would become. To celebrate the Academy’s sesquicentennial, the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences, with additional support from the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, held a meeting in Washington, DC, on October 16–18, 2013, entitled “The National Academy of Sciences at 150: Celebrating Service to the Nation.” The meeting began the evening of October 16 with the 2013 Annual Sackler Lecture by Daniel J. Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor of History, History of Medicine, and American Studies at Yale University, who reviewed the first century of the Academy’s history in the context of its dual mission to advance science and serve the government. Over the next 2 days, eight groups of speakers examined topics where the Academy’s advice has been especially consequential. On the first day, which was focused on science, politics, and policy, the speakers discussed national security and international relations, the International Geophysical Year and the space sciences, climate change, and biology in public policy. On the second day, which examined the nation’s infrastructure in health, information, and education, the topics addressed were radiation hazards, biodemography and vital statistics, computing and information, and K-12 science education. This supplement to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences contains the edited spoken remarks of the presenters along with short introductions to each of the eight areas discussed. Free downloads of many of the reports mentioned by the speakers are available at www.nap. edu, and Webcasts of the colloquium are available on YouTube.*

The National Academy in making in an increasingly technical age from Henry was at first far from pleased, but he charlatans and pretenders. accepted membership in the Academy and, the American Democracy Like the French Academy of Sciences, upon Bache’s death, its presidency. He kept the 1863–1963 which provided the model for the two men, Academy scrupulously out of politics, estab- theUSNationalAcademywouldchooseits lishing the tradition that the Academy would Daniel Kevles, Yale University own membership and be limited to 50 mem- not volunteer its services to the government. bers. Agassiz, elected as the first foreign sec- Perhaps this explains why during the 10 years ’ In 1863, Congress created the National retary, was thrilled, holding that the nation s of his term, the government made only two “ Academy of Sciences, a private agency with men of science now had a standard for sci- requests for advice. the public role of advising the government entific excellence.” Bache was elected as the on policy-related technical issues. The prime first president. During the 5 years of his ad- The First Half Century movers behind the action were Harvard’s ministration, which ended with his death, in ToputtheAcademymoreinlinewith Louis Agassiz, a native of Switzerland and a 1867, the Academy received 13 requests from American democratic institutions, Henry brilliant student of rocks and fossils, and the the federal government for advice on topics obtained a removal of the membership ceil- geophysicist Alexander Dallas Bache, Ben- ranging from assessments of weights, mea- ing so that five new scientists could be elected ’ jamin Franklin’s great-grandson, the head of sures, and coinage to the insulation of ships each year. Henry had come to think that an compasses from the influence of iron cladding the Coast Survey, and an authority on ter- “intelligent democracy” could properly bestow and to tests for the purity of whiskey. restrial magnetism. Agassiz, the academic, Agassiz and Bache had gone behind the saw in a national academy an institution back of their friend, the physicist Joseph This paper results from the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the that would raise the quality of science in the Henry, to achieve their goal. A world-class National Academy of Sciences, “The National Academy of Sciences ” – United States by granting the imprimatur of authority on magnetism and the Secretary of at 150: Celebrating Service to the Nation, held October 16 18, membership not to men of mere learning but 2013, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. the Smithsonian, Henry had opposed the The complete program and audio files of most presentations are only to men of original scientific achieve- creation of such an academy, suspecting that it available on the NAS website at www.nasonline.org/NAS-150. ment.Bache,thelongtimefederalscientist, might be considered “at variance with our 1E-mail: [email protected]. ” felt the need for an institution of authoritative democratic institutions and might become *Free downloads are available on YouTube at http://www.youtube. scientists who would safeguard public policy- “perverted...to the support of partisan politics.” com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK29zj2uOvOByCgQlcUU3tYh.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9327–9364 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 honors for achievement, and the creation of happily bypassed the Academy, some de- Mount Wilson Observatory. His entrepre- theAcademyhadopenedinAmericaanother liberately. For example, the American Physical neurial vision increasingly extended beyond “avenue for the aspirations of a laudable Society was founded in 1899 at the initiative astrophysics to turning the National Acad- ambition.” of a physicist at Clark University named Arthur emy, of which he was foreign secretary, into For most of its first half century, however, Gordon Webster. He resented the Academy, to a vital agency in the affairs of national science. a variety of circumstances militated against the which “few of us can hope to belong, and which Hale endorsed increasing the limit on annual Academy’s fulfilling its twin goals of stimulat- wemightnotenjoyifwedid.” For Webster, elections to 15, and he called for the Academy ing the development of American science and as for scientists in other disciplines, their pro- to cooperate with local and national societies, providing reliable scientific advice to the gov- fessional societies provided nonexclusive a venture that would mitigate the exclusionist ernment. Although it was common for Euro- forums where scientists could hear papers objection. He also urged that the Academy pean academies to receive subsidies from their by the leading members in their fields. enlarge its influence by dispensing money for governments, the US National Academy, in These developments undercut the Aca- research, particularly to promising young men, its determination to avoid political corruption, demy’s twin purposes. Unlike the Academy, publishing a proceedings, and acquiring a sought and received none. Its financial resour- most of the specialized societies published building, a permanent meeting home with ces were severely limited, insufficient to publish journals, spun off local sections, and estab- lectures and exhibits open to the public. more than an occasional proceedings and lished systems of awards and recognitions, all All this would of course take money. To obituaries of its members. The Academy met ofwhichmadethemaforceinthedisciplines that end, American science in general and the in the Smithsonian, having no headquarters of they represented. Their members were en- Academy in particular needed to promote itsown,andthemeetingswerepoorlyatten- listed by federal and state agencies to provide greater public appreciation and financial sup- ded. Could an honorific body without resour- expert assessments on the multiplying issues port of research, especially from industry and ces have an impact on the life of American of high-technology society, including, for industrialists. However, both his failed attempts science?No,saidLeoLesquereux,apaleobota- example, conservation, the purity of food and at fundraising and his study of science in nistwhohadmovedfromEuropetothe drugs, and the regulation of the financial and “ “ Europe had taught Hale a critical lesson: to United States In Europe, honor conferred is industrial system. By the early 20th century, accomplish great results,” academies had to worth more than money, but in America the there were plenty of experts to provide sim- “enjoy the active cooperation of the leaders of samehonorisworthnothingbyitself.” ilar services in the federal government’sown ” ’ the state. Hale held, in short, that the Aca- Then, too, alternative avenues were pro- agencies. Withal, the National Academy s demy’s major twin purposes of advancing liferating for the satisfaction of laudable sci- advisory activities steadily declined. In the 10 American science and advising the government entific ambitions. The nation’s scientific years between 1879 and 1888, the Academy were mutually dependent and had to be sym- enterprise was rapidly expanding in tandem had received 10 requests for advice from the biotically joined. with the growth of the country. To meet the government. In the 23 years between 1890 Hale’s opportunity came with World War need for knowledge, federal science grew and 1913, it received eight, including none in I(WWI).EventsinMay1915madedra- enormously, proliferating with agencies such the 4 years after 1909. matically clear that more than any other as the Geological Survey, the Weather Service, In contrast to the collective panoply of the conflict in history, this was a war of science the Forestry Service, the National Bureau specialized societies, the Academy was rela- and technology. That month, the Germans of Standards, and the Department of Agri- tively ill equipped to play a significant role in initiated chemical warfare by unleashing chlo- culture’s multiple research bureaus and the helping the federal government deal with the experiment stations it supported around the great questions involving science and technol- rine gas from hundreds of cylinders on the country. Comparable and then even greater ogy then confronting the United States. Even front at Ypres, in Belgium. Also that month, a growth was prompted in the private and aca- though it had doubled the election of new German U-boat sank the Lusitania. demic sector by what historians call the Second memberseachyearto10,itsexclusiveness Both American scientists and the admin- Industrial Revolution. This was the transfor- continued to arouse resentment, with some istration of Woodrow Wilson were appalled mation that drew on the exploitation of the nonmembers regarding it as “amenacetotrue by the use of poison gas, and neither pro- laboratory sciences to create new technologies democracy,” to quote the observation of one of posed a program of even defensive research in and new industries—notablyinelectriclight the members. It was largely disconnected from chemical warfare. However, American ship- and power, communications, cinema, petro- the Second Industrial Revolution, having re- ping was now clearly vulnerable to the dep- leum, and a myriad of other products of organic peatedly declined to admit engineers, even redations of German submarines, whether the chemistry. A number of companies—notably Edison himself, from the rise of the regulatory nationwasinthewarornot.Shortlyafterthe G.E., AT&T, Westinghouse, and DuPont— state, having no social scientists among its sinking of the Lusitania, Secretary of the Navy established industrial research laboratories, en- ranks, and from the mounting requirements of Josephus Daniels established a Naval Con- larging the demand for technical expertise. medicine and public health, having hardly any sulting Board headed by Thomas Edison to The demand called forth the beginning of representatives of scientific medicine on its use “the natural inventive genius of Ameri- what would prove to be a long exponential en- rolls. In the unhappy judgment of a biologist at cans to meet the new conditions of warfare....” largement and diversification of the American Princeton, the membership generally preferred The Board’smembershipwasdrawnover- scientific, engineering, and medical communi- to continue as a mere “blue ribbon society.” whelmingly from the country’s major engi- ties. The desire to understand and manage the neering organizations and included only two new urban industrial order helped energize the The Coming of War scientists, one a physicist and the other a growth of sociology, anthropology, and eco- George Ellery Hale intended to change all that. mathematician, both as representatives of the nomics. Also, as the new disciplines grew, they “Make no small plans,” Hale liked to say. An American Mathematical Society. Early in Oc- organized, forming an abundance of specialized accomplished astrophysicist, he was even more tober, at the Board’s first meeting, the physicist scientific societies in the half century after the effective at scientific entrepreneurship. In 1904, demanded to know why Edison had omitted founding of the Academy. All these societies Hale persuaded Andrew Carnegie to fund the the American Physical Society.

9328 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 Edison’s chief engineer explained: “Because amplifying telephone signals so that they Council. It also explicitly provided for future

it was his desire to have this Board composed would reach from one side of the Continent US Presidents to appoint to it federal repre- SACKLER COLLOQUIA of practical men who are accustomed to do- to the other. He effectively straddled the sentatives nominated by the Academy, which ing things, and not talking about it.” Afew worlds of academia and high-tech industry, assured the Council the continuing participa- minutes later, the physicist returned to his and he was effective at working with officers tion of the leaders of the state, without their theme. Why hadn’t the National Academy in the military’s technical bureaus. interference. Hale, who was principally con- been represented on the Board? Because the NRC had neither governmen- cerned with what could be done for science “Possibly,” the inventor Peter Cooper tal authority nor significant funds, its officers outside the federal establishment, elatedly de- Hewitt speculated, provoking considerable accomplished the mobilization of science by clared “We now have precisely the connection laughter, “because they have not been suffi- enlisting in the military or going to work as with the government that we need,” and he ciently active to impress their existence upon civilians in federal laboratories, some of which intended to make good use of it to promote Mr. Edison’smind.” were taken over by the military. Millikan American science. George Ellery Hale, discontented by the himself became a colonel in the US Army. The connection with the state did not in- omission of the Academy from the Board, LedbyMillikan,theNRCjoinedwithother clude ambitions for public funding of NAS/ wondered: Could not the Academy’s reputation army and navy officers to inaugurate research NRC activities. Hale and his allies feared that be raised to the point where it might “penetrate and production for high-quality optical glass, would open the door to distasteful supervi- to the sanctum of the Secretary of the Navy?” drawing heavily on the substantial expertise sion or perhaps tyranny. He would “not be Hale shared the members’ traditional war- of scientists at the Geophysical Laboratory of disappointed if we have to rely on private iness of thrusting the Academy on the gov- the Carnegie Institution, and to develop in- funds for a long period in the future.” ernment, but surely in a national emergency telligence tests for the assessment and place- they could offer its services to the adminis- ment of the Army’s 1.7 million recruits. Between the World Wars tration without appearing like mere political Under the auspices of the NRC, the Bureau of The Academy solidified its connections with supplicants. They did just that, and in June Mines launched a program of research in industry in 1919 by finally creating a section 1916, following a meeting with President chemical weapons—the distinction between for men who had contributed “to the science Wilson and a formal presidential request for offensive and defensive chemical warfare dis- or art of engineering.” Now, with its admi- assistance, the Academy created the National appeared once American soldiers were com- rable war record and its extensive con- Research Council (NRC). The NRC’sobjective: mitted to fight in France—and by May, the nections through the NRC to the multiple to encourage both pure and applied research Bureau had farmed out problems to 21 uni- sectors of basic science and engineering, the for the ultimate end of “the national security versity laboratories. All of the while, Millikan Academy obtained private funds in abun- and welfare.” Its strategy was to promote “co- and John J. Carty of AT&T wrestled with dance. The Carnegie Corporation provided operation” among all of the research institu- approaches to the detection of submarines, operating money for several years, and then it tions of the country. Its planned composition with a considerable sense of urgency. The de- granted the NAS/NRC $5 million, about a third was leading scientists and engineers from uni- tection of submarines, Millikan declared, was for what became the Academy’sbuildingon versities, industry, and the government, in- only a “problem of physics pure and simple.” Constitution Avenue and the rest for the op- cluding the military. Many scientific societies, Soon the NRC became the sole agency erations of the NAS/NRC. research foundations, and universities quickly in Washington that straddled every scientific The NRC rapidly developed into an in- pledged the NRC their cooperation. So did constituency. Industrialists, working together tellectually expansive operating arm of the a number of industrial leaders, especially from with the people like Millikan in numerous Academy, doing much that, with its limited the emerging high-tech corporate world. agencies and committees, learned that aca- membership and disciplinary diversity, the When in April 1917, the United States en- demics could be hardheaded administrators Academy was ill equipped to do. The NRC tered the European conflict, Hale declared that and could treat technical matters with a prac- established 13 interdisciplinary divisions, among “War should mean research...and unless we get ticality worth of an Edison. By Hale’sreport, them divisions of Biology and Agriculture, of it started some other agency will do so.” How- the close contact of the NRC with federal and Engineering, and of Anthropology and Psy- ever, the NRC had little money of its own, and industrial officials was winning “many new chology. The divisions in turn spawned multiple as a creature of the Academy, it was a resolutely friends for pure science.” In March 1918, committees. Among those with high impact private organization with no authority in Hale moved to make the Council and its gov- were the committees on Research in Sex and government. It had to operate by argument ernmental connections permanent by obtain- Reproduction, whose activities led to the Kinsey and persuasion, making use of its members’ ing an executive order for the purpose from Reports; on Industrial Lighting, which un- connections in industry and government. President Woodrow Wilson. expectedly yielded the striking result of the The key persuader was Robert A. Millikan, Hale himself wrote the draft of the order. It Hawthorne Effect; and on Highway Research, a likeable and energetic physicist and a future provided, among other things, that the NRC which helped shape the design of the nation’s Nobel Laureate for the work he had done in continue to foster cooperative efforts in re- rapidly expanding roads. Other committees 1909–1910 on measuring the charge on the search in the government as well as elsewhere. spoketosomeoftheday’s other salient science- electron and showing that every electron was That raised a red flag with Wilson, who related issues, dealing with drug addiction, identical. Then at the University of Chicago, doubted his “right to give any outside body” medicine and physics, and nutrition. Millikan was a consultant and a supplier of the power to coordinate the scientific work of The new and handsome funding also trained physicists to Western Electric and the government. Wilson modified the order to equipped the Academy to play a far more AT&T (one of his students, Frank B. Jewett, ensure that the NRC, being a private organi- significant role in the development of ba- later rose to the top of the company). The zation, would not have any authority over sic science, starting with the publication of company valued him highly for his expertise federal scientific agencies and programs. its Proceedings. The Rockefeller Founda- in figuring out the intricacies of the vacuum Issued on May 11, 1918, the order asked the tion established a program of postdoctoral tubes it was developing with the aim of Academy to perpetuate the National Research fellowships that was administered by the

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9329 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 NAS/NRC and that would prove to have administration refused to appropriate what Both the NDRC and OSRD were of course ahugeimpactonraisingthequalityof one official termed “alarge‘free fund’” for agencies of government, but both were au- American science between the wars and projects that were not socially purposeful. thorized to obtain assistance in their work beyond. All of the while, the NRC created Indeed, the economic payoff from the federal from the NAS/NRC. And obtain it they did, a set of committees to consider to major investment would come in the vaguely distant as did other federal agencies. During the war, problems in various scientific disciplines future, and people needed relief in the here the NAS/NRC provided multiple advisory and call attention to them by publishing and now. The Board’sprogramremindedone and administrative services to the scientific bulletins—for example, John Van Vleck’s key administration staffer of trickle-down eco- mobilization on issues ranging from surveying Quantum Principles and Line Spectra. nomics, an approach to recovery that boiled the availability of scientific personnel in the Although President Calvin Coolidge ad- down to Herbert Hoover’s point of view. nation’scollegesanduniversities to assessing dressed the Academy at the building’sdedi- Nothing came directly from the Board’s the feasibility of going ahead with a project cation in 1924, the NAS/NRC received hardly efforts, but the experience gave several of its to produce an atomic bomb. The Academy any requests for scientific advice from the members—notably Compton and Jewett, the signed 34 war-related contracts with 10 federal government. In 1931, a committee appointed head of Bell Labs who would become presi- agencies for such purposes. Its building here on to look into the issue noted that the Academy dent of the Academy in 1939—abasicedu- Constitution Avenue was occupied by several had “not been taken seriously the by the cation in federal science policy-making that divisions of the NDRC, by the whole of the Government” and attributed the problem would shape their approach to the mobili- OSRD Committee on Medical Research, and in part to the rule that it “speak only when zation of science in the coming war. by some 20 other groups with war contracts spoken to.” They key mobilizer was of course Comp- from the NDRC. Every nook and cranny of Amid the emergency of the Great Depres- ton’sformerMITcolleague,VannevarBush, the building was laced with partitioned offices. sion, however, the Academy deciding once a veteran of a branch of the NRC’ssubmarine again to be proactive, obtained an executive detection effort in WWI that operated at The Postwar Era order from President Franklin Roosevelt and New London, Connecticut, under the control After the war, the leadership and the establishing a Scientific Advisory Board for of the Navy. He had chafed at such control membership of the NAS/NRC understood 2 years beginning in 1933 that would operate because it prevented the civilian scientists and that there was no going back, no returning under the auspices of the NAS/NRC. Chaired engineers from pursuing research in military to the era when the Academy’sfunctions by the physicist Karl T. Compton, the presi- devices that made sense to them but not comprised, as one scientist put it, “electing dent of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- necessarily to the naval officers. He believed members and writing obituaries.” Nor nology (MIT), it was to report on how science that if science for defense was to be organized should there be, many members realized, and technology could contribute to the ame- effectively, it had to be done independently given the essential importance of science to lioration of the economy and the operations of the military, under the wing of the Presi- national security and the importance of of federal science. In December 1934, the dent of the United States, and not through avoiding the divorce of academic and in- Board proposed a major program: a federal the Academy. dustrial science and engineering from the appropriation for research of $75 million for 5 Bush had no trouble enlisting to this view military that had followed World War I. years, justified on the grounds that new either Compton, given his experience with However, under what arrangements was knowledge would lead to new industries, new William Wallace Campbell in the episode of the Academy, still an insistently private jobs, and a boost to recovery. the Science Advisory Board, or Jewett, who organization, to serve national security in The proposal was virtually dead on arrival. had met Bush in the submarine warfare lab- the postwar world? For one thing, the Board was undercut by oratory at New London, Connecticut, during At first, the NAS overreached, much as internecine warfare between Compton and WWI and, having been a member of the Hale had done in framing the executive order thePresidentoftheAcademy,WilliamWal- Academy since 1918, was more steeped in its for the continuation of the NRC in 1918. The lace Campbell, a former head of the Univer- traditions. Jewett thought that an agency other overreach took the form of a move to es- sity of California. He objected to the very than the NAS had to mobilize and direct de- tablish in the NAS/NRC a Research Board for existence of the Board because, while oper- fense research. The NAS was like “adoctor National Security (RBNS) that would con- ating in the Academy, its membership had waiting for clients.” It could not act as “an duct defense research for the armed services. been appointed by President Roosevelt. He aggressive salesman” hawking its expertise for Harold Smith, director of the Budget Bureau, complained repeatedly to members of the military purposes. To do so would turn it into had warned President Roosevelt in March administration about President Roosevelt’s “just another agency of government” and de- 1945 that the Academy was “very jealous of violation of the Academy’s apolitical auton- stroy its most valuable asset, “the authority of its non-governmental status, and under its omy. Paying Campbell a visit to try to work distinction without power.” control the Research Board for National Se- things out, Compton found him adamant, With the support of Compton, Jewett, and curity would [work on weapons of war but and in his recollection of the meeting, he JamesB.Conant,thechemist,presidentof inappropriately] not be responsible to...the “blew up,” writingthattheAcademyand Harvard, and also a scientific veteran of World Commander-in-Chief.” Campbell could “be damned if they were War I, Bush prevailed on President Roosevelt The proposal for the RBNS failed, but the going to insist on such trivialities and legalities in June 1940 to establish the National Defense Academy was of no mind to withdraw from in preference to grasping the opportunity to Research Committee (NDRC), and then, in engagement with the government simply be- do a great public service.” June 1941, the Office of Scientific Research and cause it could not have that engagement on its However, also, the proposed appropriation Development (OSRD), which included the own terms. On the contrary, Jewett, in rec- for research failed because the Board declined NDRC. The work of OSRD helped mightily to ognition of the wartime experience and now to accept normal democratic oversight and achieve the stunning and decisive technical the looming Cold War, abandoned the policy accountability, insisting instead on autonomy successes of World War II, from microwave that the NAS could act only when called on, in the allocation of the research money. The radar through the atomic bomb. and his successors also embraced proactivism.

9330 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 In the postwar years, the NAS/NRC provided was pilloried for his left-leaning politics by the Academy fortified the link by creating its

an increasing number of advisory and ad- House Un-American Activities Committee Committee on Science and Public Policy SACKLER COLLOQUIA ministrative services to the government, with (HUAC). Frank Jewett deplored the HUAC’s (COSPUP). COSPUP took the initiative, with- significant boosts occurring during the Ko- actions, and so did many other members of out waiting for requests from the government, rean War and in the several years after Sputnik, the Academy. A number wanted the Acad- to report on important and promising direc- in 1957. The efforts ranged from inner space— emytotakeapublicstand,buttheCouncil, tions for future scientific research and in the oceanography—to the sciences of outer space; including Vannevar Bush and President A. N. applications of science to critical public prob- from studies on the long-term health effects Richards, was reluctant to do so. “The most lems. Its reports spanned topics from basic re- of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and unfortunate outcome would be to jeopardize search and national goals to a 10-year program Nagasaki to inquiries on food and nutrition. our relations with Government” Richards for ground-based astronomy. Throughout the period, the Academy also con- said. In the end, the Academy confined itself President John F. Kennedy perhaps helped tinued to promote science—for example, ad- publicly to a tepid expression of “grave con- inspire the creation of COSPUP when, ad- ministering the National Science Foundation cern” over HUAC’s treatment of Condon. A dressing the Academy in April 1961, he spoke (NSF) fellowship program and sponsoring the few years later, however, in January 1955, the of the “many new frontiers” of science and of landmark conference at Shelter Island in 1947, Academy courageously issued a report that his conviction that never before, even in where, among other things, Willis Lamb repor- ended security restrictions on most federally WWII, had there “been a time...when the re- ted his unexpected spectral shift and Feynman funded fellowships, declaring that no one lationship between science and government first publicly discussed his remarkable diagrams. should be denied a fellowship for unclassified must be more intimate.” By then, after a cen- Between 1945 and 1960, the NAS/NRC budget research solely on grounds of an allegation tury of experience in the American democracy, more than quintupled to $14,725,000. of disloyalty. the Academy had, by and large, figured out The Academy’s entanglement with the In all, during the postwar years, the Academy how it could insulate itself from political con- government at times strained its principles, richly realized the twin purposes that Alexander trol while serving a government that insisted notably in the postwar decade when consid- Bache and Louis Agassiz had established for it: on oversight and accountability. The relation- erations of loyalty and security threatened the advancing science and serving the government. ship had at times been uneasy, but when civil liberties of scientists. For example, in If George Ellery Hale had recognized that President Kennedy returned to speak at the 1947, the physicist Edward U. Condon, the the two were symbiotically linked, his postwar Academy’s Centennial in 1963, he found it head of the National Bureau of Standards, successors did so even more. In 1961, the worthy of admiration, and so can we.

function looked mostly inward to domestic National Security and International processes. However, through developments like the NRC fellows program in the 1920s, Relations the Academy increasingly sought to connect American science to the international scientific The members of the Academy elected the institution’s first foreign associates in 1864, just a year community. after the Academy’s creation. Since then, the institution’s involvement in international activities That meant reconciling the aim of serving ’ has steadily increased. An 1866 study looked at the navigability of Nicaragua s San Juan River as national security with pursuing the ideals part of a possible canal across Central America. The Academy’s Committee on Weights and Measures encouraged the United States to become the first signatory, in 1875, to an 18-nation of scientific internationalism. At times these treaty on international standardization. In 1907, astronomer George Ellery Hale became the goals have aligned, but at other times they Academy’s delegate to the conference of the International Association of Academies, and in 1908, have been in tension. For example, during ’ he became chairman of the Academy s Committee on International Cooperation in Research. World War I and its aftermath, the Academy The Academy’s international activities expanded greatly after Hale presided over the formation of the National Research Council in 1916. Four speakers at the colloquium examined aspects of this acted to exclude German scientists from in- involvement. Peter Westwick, assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California, ternational scientific organizations, whereas examined how the Academy has sought to reconcile its service to government with its commitments after World War II, the Academy backed the ’ to internationalism. Richard Garwin, fellow emeritus at IBM sThomasJ.WatsonResearchCenter, integration of German science to aid in the described the Academy’s efforts to maintain bilateral communications with Russia, China, and other countries even during the worst days of the Cold War. Matthew Meselson, Thomas Dudley Cabot reconstruction of Western Europe. Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University, recounted several highlights of the Aca- demy’s work on chemical and biological arms control. Michael Clegg, Donald Bren Professor of Science in Warfare Biological Sciences, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine, detailed A development paralleling the growth of the some of the activities of the Academy’s Foreign Secretary as examples of how the institution’sin- — fluence has come to extend well beyond the borders of the United States. Academy over the last 150 years and one that the Academy itself helped bring about— Reconciling National providing technical advice to the US has been the increasing presence of science in military was one of its original justifica- warfare. It is tempting to connect the Aca- Security with Scientific tions. Subsequent history seems to have demy’sgrowthtothismilitaryrole,tosay Internationalism reinforced this military connection, from the that World War II and the Cold War helped creation of the NRC during World War I drive the growth of the Academy, as they Peter Westwick, University of Southern to the Academy’smanycontributionsin helped drive the growth of much of Ameri- California World War II. can science in this period. Indeed, in the mid- The Academy’s founders had an additional 1950s, half of the academy’s funding came The Academy was created in the context motivation, which was to promote American from the Department of Defense (DOD) and of war—specifically, the Civil War—and science. For the first several decades, this the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9331 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 However, ironically, science’sincreasing its main mark not on the Academy but rather by Hale and others to create the NRC, or military importance seems instead to have on the military. WorldWarII,whentheAcademyhadtohelp diminished the Academy’s influence, so that In major strategic debates in the later jumpstart the atomic bomb project, or even the much of the Academy’s growth over the last Cold War, such as the Strategic Defense Academy’s creation during the Civil War, 50 years seems to have occurred outside its Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s, the Academy which was instigated by the maneuvering of direct military role. The reason is the pro- was again notably absent. Perhaps Lewontin scientists. The pattern may be universal; in the liferation of science advisory committees, like and the other Vietnam protestors achieved French Revolutionary wars, Lavoisier and other the AEC’s General Advisory Committee, the their goal not by forcing the Academy to French chemists struggled to persuade political Defense Science Board, and the JASONs, turn away from the military but by per- leaders to support their work on new weapons. along with think tanks like the RAND Cor- suading the military that the Academy was Perhapsthispatternisforthebest.The poration and the MITRE Corporation, which an unwilling partner, so the military looked Academy in peacetime has kept some dis- have competed with the Academy for an elsewhere for advice. tance from the military, not becoming captive advisory role. The Academy’svoicewasno- or being perceived as captive to military tably absent from several key issues, including Arms Control interests. That gives it a valuable independent the debate over the hydrogen bomb in 1949, The Academy played a larger role in arms perspective, but it might mean that each time conducted largely within the AEC’sGeneral control. In the age of the nuclear arms race, there is a national emergency, the Academy Advisory Committee; the intercontinental the Academy provided advice not so much has to reestablish its role in national security. ballistic missile debate in the mid-1950s under on developing new weapons but rather on By comparison, the Soviet and Chinese Air Force groups; and discussions of missile controlling them. Amid the Vietnam debate, academies were under the state and more “ defense in the 1960s, where the JASONs were Handler began pushing for a Commission tightly integrated with national security ” prominent. for Peace to balance military projects. This interests, which meant more direct influence Some defense work did continue through role took some time to emerge. For one, the but also less independence. the early Cold War—for instance, on un- Academy struggled to find sponsors willing to dersea warfare and civil defense. Food and pay for such work. For another, the Council Science Exchanges nutrition, transportation, education, and other worried that technical issues in this arena The Academy has promoted international topics were related at the time to national were inseparable from political ones. The science through many means, including in- Academy had had some interaction with the ternational conferences and unions, the In- security. However, direct advice to the De- arms control group Pugwash going back to ternational Geophysical Year, and interaction fense Department declined, and by 1970, only the 1950s. However, when there were pro- with science academies abroad. 3% of Academy work involved classified posals to increase these interactions in the One important avenue has been science defense topics. 1970s, George Kistiakowsky judged that the exchanges. The Academy entered into an Even that amount was enough to attract Academy and Pugwash were “immiscible.” exchange agreement with the Soviets in attention, because in addition to competition Handler’seffortseventuallyledtothe 1955, after the death of Stalin, with the goal from advisory committees, defense work was Committee on National Security and Arms of building cultural and political ties. Like challenged from within. In the Vietnam era, Control (CISAC). Through CISAC, the Acad- the NRC fellows in the 1920s who helped Academy members Richard Lewontin and emy played an important role for the SDI, al- rebuild European science after World War I, Bruce Wallace resigned to protest the Aca- ’ though behind the scenes instead of in public. exchanges encouraged a sense of international demy s military studies, with Lewontin at one Another important distinction is that CISAC, cooperation amid the Cold War. Trip reports point asking, “Is the Academy just another ” in the case of SDI and other arms control issues from American scientists visiting the Soviet RAND Corporation? This episode roiled the in the 1980s, was advising the State De- Union, even in the wake of the Cuban Missile academy for several years around 1970, and I partment and not the Pentagon. In the 1980s, Crisis, convey an impression of genuine understand it made for some lively annual the State Department’s lack of scientific ex- warmthbetweenAmericanandSovietscien- meetings. Part of the issue, as Dick Garwin pertise not only hampered it in negotiations tistsandthehopethatscientificrelations will describe, was the relation between the with the Soviets but also in internal debates would build bridges between the two coun- Academy and NRC reports. Academy Presi- within the administration. tries. However, the Soviet scientists doubted dent Philip Handler perceived a deeper ques- the situation would improve, owing to the tion of whether the Academy should exercise The 9/11 Attacks meddling of Soviet party apparatchiks. There “ ” moral as well as technical leadership. Han- The Academy responded to the 9/11 attacks also were bureaucratic hassles on the Ameri- dler generally answered that question in the with a study entitled Making the Nation can side, such as visa issues. However, perhaps affirmative, but he defended military studies— Safer. All three academies wrote to President more important were the deeper ideological not only because the Academy was obliged to Bush volunteering their services in the na- divisions, which persisted despite shared sci- do them by its Congressional charter, but also tional emergency. When the President did entific values. It was the Cold War, after all, because it might serve as a moderating in- not jump at their offer, the Academies took it when Doug Cornell, the Academy’sexecutive fluence. In the end, the Academy elected to upon themselves to do the study, funded out officer, spoke of a war to the death between continue classified studies, with the member- of the Academies’ endowment, and the sub- ideologies, and Academy President Detlev ship to receive unclassified summaries of de- sequent report proved to be influential. How- Bronk warned of “the predatory advance of fense projects, and within a couple years, the ever, this strikes me as interesting. Here we the godless ideology of communism.” controversy subsided. have a major crisis in national security—just East-west exchanges sputtered along into By the 1980s, a review of the classification the situation the Academy was created for— the détente of the 1970s, at which point the policy found that few Academy members and the government did not ask it for advice. Academy undertook several reviews of the ex- knewaboutit,letaloneadheredtoit.One This was not necessarily a new development. perience. These reviews concluded that the might speculate that the Vietnam episode left Consider World War I and the maneuvering exchanges were worthwhile in strengthening

9332 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 American international science and in re- seeking to engage the Soviets on arms con- through these exchanges, the American aca- “ ducing political tensions. However, two dec- trol. And Soviet scientists indeed warned that demic community was training the next SACKLER COLLOQUIA ades of experience had clearly led to lowered cutting off relations only strengthened the generation of Chinese leaders.” Press per- expectations. A more pessimistic Academy hand of Soviet hardliners. However, when the ceived that this training included values as member called the exchanges “a disaster area.” Academy resumed exchanges a few years well as specific techniques and theories. Also, Few Americans wanted to spend much time later, it was roundly criticized for sending although Press did not say it, scientific values in the Soviet Union, except perhaps for social scientists to Moscow while Sakharov was could perhaps provide a liberalizing influence. scientists. In the other direction, the Soviets wastingawayinahungerstrike. The Tiananmen Square protest seemed to sent over second-rate scientists, or worse, The Academy expressed this tension in realize this possibility, as physicist Fang Lizhi party hacks who spent their time in the states competing committees. The Committee on and other scientists played leading roles on shopping trips instead of science. USSR and Eastern Europe pushed science ex- in the democracy movement. Similarly, in Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Inves- changes, whereas its counterpart, the Com- the Soviet Union, scientists were among the tigation (FBI) feared that many Soviet ex- mittee on Human Rights, pushed for stronger leading dissidents. In one view, this was no change students were in fact spies. A COSPUP moral stands. The Committee on Human accident, because the international ideals of panel asked if that meant that scientists got Rights had been created in 1977 to address the science stress open communication, rational debriefed on their return; if so, well, the United issue of human rights in the Soviet Union, but debate, and other democratic ideals. More States did that too. That did not mean that it expanded its purview to Chile, Somalia, and recently, after the 9/11 attacks, an NRC panel scientists were engaged in active espionage. several other countries, including China. urged science exchanges with Muslim coun- The role of intelligence in these exchanges The example of China posed some familiar tries that had thriving scientific communities is understandably hard to assess, but it again problems. The Academy had earlier formed to foster mutual communication and un- suggests some of the potential tensions be- a separate committee on cooperation with derstanding, and, perhaps, liberal values. tween strengthening national security and China in May 1966, which was eventually promoting international science. There were named the Committee on Scholarly Com- Balancing National Interests and other examples from the early Cold War munication with the People’sRepublicof International Ideals of scientists providing scientific or industrial China. This was not great timing, coming just The Academy’s national security role has intelligence—for instance, as attachés in before the onset of the Cultural Revolution, diminished over the last several decades, in oversees embassies. One of the explicit justi- which targeted science in particular as a part because the Academy succeeded beyond fications for science exchanges was to help bourgeois influence. However, the Academy its wildest expectations in helping the military keep the United States abreast of Soviet demonstrated great prescience and patience. realize the value of scientific expertise. A developments in science and technology, and It kept the committee alive so that it was corollary has been to realize the goal of en- the Academy reviews judged them successful ready and waiting when the revolution con- hancing the American science community, in this respect. sumed itself and relations between the United including international projects, which can States and China improved in the 1970s. extend the goals of promoting national se- Human Rights Nixon’s agreement with China in 1972 ex- curity and promoting American science. A Perhaps the thorniest issue for exchanges was plicitly called for science exchanges as a way political scientist might call this a shift from human rights. In the 1970s, human rights to build bridges. The Academy’s nongov- hard power to soft power, and the Academy emerged as a central issue for US-Soviet ernmental status made it a more acceptable indeed must be worried that its international relations, expressed especially in the Helsinki mechanism to the Chinese, and the Academy programs are not just seen as another asser- Accords of 1975. At the time, the dissident supported a flurry of exchanges with China tion of American hegemony or as a way to movement in the Soviet Union included many in the 1970s, helping pave the way for formal Americanize international science. For ex- scientists, most notably Andrei Sakharov. The diplomatic relations. ample, American science initiatives in West- Academy faced a dilemma: how to pressure Even before formal relations resumed in ern Europe in the early Cold War were the Soviets on Sakharov and other refuseniks, 1979, enthusiasm was eroding in the Acad- sometimes viewed this way, even when they yet maintain science exchanges. emy. China sent many more delegations than were consensual. As it had earlier under McCarthyism, the it hosted, and it tended to send engineers and However, international science programs Academy balanced pragmatic accommoda- receive social scientists. Handler and others were not just about power calculations. They tion against moral principles. Science offered worried about the asymmetry and pressed for also were driven by the ideals of science. a way to improve political relations, but co- parity. Initial idealism gave away to a more That has often required difficult balancing operation might imply acceptance of human pragmatic calculation of national interests. between national interests and interna- rights abuses. Some Academy members A decade later, in 1989, the protest at tional ideals, but it seems to have been sought to keep science and politics separate, Tiananmen Square again raised the issue of worth the effort. but others insisted that, as one put it, “sci- human rights. As the Tiananmen tragedy entists must take strong moral and social became clear, the Academy debated whether stands as well as intellectual ones.” to maintain exchanges as a way to relieve op- In 1980, Handler gave a widely noticed talk pression or to suspend them to protest the Maintaining International in Hamburg that included a strong statement massacre. The Academy in the end sus- Dialogue on human rights, and the Academy sus- pended exchanges, but it continued to debate pended exchanges. Many members applau- whether this was helping or hurting Chinese Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow Emeritus ded Handler’s stand, but others, including scientists. Within a year, it elected to gradu- Harvey Brooks, thought it was a mistake, ally resume the exchanges. The Committee on International Security and possibly cutting off interaction and hence The China program had a longer-term Arms Control was created in 1981 with the influence, especially just when CISAC was impact. As Frank Press noted in 1978, support of NAS presidents Philip Handler

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9333 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 and then Frank Press to meet semiannually by the Institute for Applied Physics and by mandatory classification review, and with Soviet counterparts. These bilateral Computational Mathematics (IAPCM), the government elements often take advan- meetings with Soviet scientists, engineers, and theoretical design branch of the Chinese nu- tage of that to censor the substance of military officers, all of whom were used by the clear weapon effort. Sometime IAPCM Di- reports and delay publication. However, government of the Soviet Union, led to greatly rector Hu Side chaired and still chairs the the Academy study process has become increased understanding of the attitudes of the Chinese counterpart group. Meetings began more efficient with the ubiquitous em- two sides and to options for reducing the peril under CISAC chair Pief Panofsky and con- ployment of computers for report genera- of nuclear war. tinued under John Holdren and now Ray- tion. I also believe that the impact of the As was the case with President Eisenhower mond Jeanloz, through good times and bad reportsismuchenhancedbytheNational onhiselectionin1952,MikhailGorbachev, times. Important achievements of these Academy Press’s policy, decades in the when he took office in 1985, sought inde- interactions, which take place without pub- making, of providing all NAS/NRC reports pendent expertise in matters of military tech- licity and with no open reports, include free as PDF files for download. Very often nology. Feeling he could not rely on the a deep understanding of the attitudes on an advisory report of some kind within the military, Gorbachev created an informal na- the two sides and, in particular, the Chinese governmentoroutsidecannotbeproduced tional security kitchen cabinet of Evgeny government’s signing the Comprehensive at the moment in which it would be more Velikhov, Roald Sagdeev, Evgeny Primakov, Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. effective. However, it helps to educate the and Georgi Arbatov, all of whom had been One major achievement between the two people in government and people who will involved with the CISAC process for several groups was the Chinese-English Nuclear Se- be in government in the future: if not years by that time. curity Glossary, which is available on the web. senators and representatives, at least their Frank von Hippel has recently published The effort led to the Chinese government future staff. Providing reports in archival an account of his interactions with Gorba- proposing to do a similar glossary effort and searchable form is terribly important. chev’s informal advisors. Particularly notable among the five permanent members of the is the early discussion of directed energy Security Council, and the Chinese chair of the weapons in space, before President Regan’s Academy glossary effort led the Chinese thunderclap of a speech in March 1983 ini- delegation to the P5 meeting. Similarly, the The Academy and Chemical tiating the program his White House liked to Chinese group and CISAC convened the first and Biological Weapons call “Star Wars,” which went formally by the meeting between Chinese and US nuclear name Strategic Defense Initiative. This was laboratory and forensics experts. After these Matthew Meselson, Harvard University a shock, coming a week after a March 16, two meetings were convened in this way, the 1983, meeting at the Academy in which the governments were able to establish regular In 1963, I was working at the Arms Control focus was the technology of beam weapons meetings of these experts without us. This is and Disarmament Agency and was assigned in space, but with no hint of the presidential a model that the CISAC hopes to replicate in to look into biological and chemical weap- announcement. The Soviet side published an its other dialogues. ons. I went to Fort Detrick, Maryland, and analysis based, as was common then, on US The bilateral meetings have been extended when I asked why we were developing these publications, concluding that space-based anti- to discussions with India, although not to the weapons, I was told by the man who was missile systems are too technically complex, depth or to the involvement of the counter- taking me around that it would save us expensive, and easily defeated by counterpart government, as with the Soviet Union, money, because it would be cheaper than measures to be worthwhile. This was portrayed Russia, and China. This interaction has been nuclear weapons. That lit up an incandescent by many in the United States as insincere and very active of late and recently convened an bulb in my brain. I went back to the agency disingenuous propaganda. In my opinion, it unprecedented joint India-US workshop on and discussed it with my officemate, Freeman was anything but. Indeed, the conclusions science and technology for nuclear materials Dyson. We agreed that cheapness was the stand the test of time well. security, including scientists from the weap- worst possible justification for developing In the CISAC Russian-Academy Bilateral, ons establishments of both countries. a weapon of mass destruction. Ever since we discussed substantively and frankly the The Academy also has been active in then, I’ve been interested in biological and prospects of nuclear war command and con- counterterrorism and organized to provide a chemical weapons. trol systems, monitoring and verification of response immediately after the Al-Qaeda Early on, I took part in an academy panel disarmament, the Comprehensive Nuclear- attacks of 2001. The report was, in my judg- chaired by George Kistiakowsky, who was Test-Ban Treaty, and the like. CISAC became ment, a remarkably rapid and reasonable also instrumental in creating the Report Re- virtually the only bridge of communication on analysis of the situation. Also along the lines view Committee. The Army had a lot of issues of arms control between the USSR and of countering terrorism, the CISAC held a obsolete nerve agent weapons outside of the the United States. The Russia dialogue today workshop in Goa, India, in January 2004. In- Denver airport at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, continues to address these and other issues, dian colleagues at the Institute for Advanced and there was great interest in getting rid of which remain both irritants in US-Russian Studies indicated a desire to reprise this topic these. The Army had loaded various chemical relations and potential opportunities for following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, so munitions and agents in bulk tanks on rail- cooperation. another joint workshop will be held in Feb- way cars and was going to ship them to ruary, 10 years after the first one. Elizabethport, New Jersey, put them in liberty Interactions with Other Countries ships, and dump them in the ocean by In 1988, the CISAC meetings were extended The Value of Information scuttling the ships. However, governors of to bilateral sessions with the Chinese Acad- The NRC and CISAC are limited by the states along the way said they would not let emy of Engineering Physics, which is the availability of funds for travel, lodging of the trains go through, so the Army turned to nuclear weapon organization in China. In volunteers, and staff salaries. Also, the prep- the Academy for advice on how to dispose particular, the activity in China was organized aration of classified reports is much impeded oftheweapons.Thiswas,asfarasIknow,

9334 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 the first involvement of the Academy in or are still being used, and several other tech- meetings. We are all active in other venues.

chemical demilitarization, something that nologies considered but not adopted. Also, Academy reports are not a one-way SACKLER COLLOQUIA became an immense job after the entry into street. Panels educate the members of the force of the Chemical Weapons Convention, Biological Weapons panels, so that when Academy members which requires destruction of the entire In 1983, Joshua Lederberg established a bi- and other members of those panels go out stockpile. ological weapons subgroup of the CISAC, into the wider world, their understanding is At one of our meetings, Kistiakowsky asked and it met with the Soviets numerous times. more fact based than it would otherwise be. whether the generators were still in the ships, This was very different from the nuclear In this way, Academy activities help to and the Army representative said no, we have discussions of the CISAC because of a pro- create a body of knowledgeable opinion taken them out. However, at one of our found asymmetry. In the nuclear area, there within the body politic of the country. meetings, George showed a movie. He had was access to the key Soviet experts and gone down into the hull of one of these ships, officials who were making policy about nu- and there were the generators, still bolted clear weapons. There was nothing like that ’ tight. He explained that as a ship sinks, it does with respect to biological weapons on the The Academy s Office of not go down flat; it tilts. George was a master Russian side. As a result, it was a completely Foreign Secretary metallurgist, among many other things, and asymmetric discussion. Our objective was to he knew the generators would rip off their make friends, begin to create a degree of Michael Clegg, University of California bolts and crash into the cargo. The cargo transparency, and fortify the norm against at Irvine consisted of 21,000 cluster bombs, each con- the use of chemical and biological weapons, taining 76 bomblets, including 2,000 tons of and it remains an ongoing effort today. The National Academy of Sciences was sarin. George was concerned that there might One of the key issues between the two formed in the image of European academies, be a sympathetic explosion of the entire load delegations was the discussion of the anthrax and in the 18th and 19th centuries, European of chemical bombs if the generators rammed outbreak at Sverdlovsk, USSR, in 1979. Here, academies had a tradition of electing foreign into the cargo as the ship tilted, especially Iwanttopointoutawayinwhichthe scientists to membership and encouraging considering that the acoustic coupling con- Academy can have important indirect effects. scientific exchange and correspondence. stant in water is much greater than in air. During one of the CISAC biological weapons Not surprisingly, the initial constitution and The image brought up was of a lethal nerve meetings, we hosted a Soviet delegation vis- bylaws of the Academy included an Office of gas cloud coming westward from about iting Fort Detrick, and I got to know one of Foreign Secretary with two stipulated duties. 100 mi east of Atlantic City and covering a the Russian visitors. A few years later, Boris One was to manage the election of foreign very large land area. Finally, after a dead si- Yeltsin asked this man to study the Sver- scholars to the Academy. The other was to lencethatseemedtolastalongtime,apanel dlovsk anthrax outbreak. Learning of this, I manage the correspondence of the Academy member from the Navy said, “That just shows sent him a telegram asking if I could come with other academies around the world. what can happen if you let the Army play and help him and go to Sverdlovsk to study The initial class of Academy members in- around with ships.” The Academy panel the outbreak. He replied that, yes, I could cluded 50 individuals, and in the next year, the recommended that the cluster bombs not come to Sverdlovsk, but I would need to be Academy elected an initial class of 10 foreign be dumped at sea, and in the end, they invited by someone there. The Academy had associates, including such distinguished sci- were all destroyed at Rocky Mountain an exchange agreement with the Soviet Union, entistsastheIrishphysicistW.D.Hamilton without, so far as I know, a single lost- and in 1979, an American physicist from the and the British chemist Michael Faraday. time chemical accident. University of Illinois was living there for 3 Today about 420 distinguished foreign With the advent of the sea dumping law, weeks during the outbreak. I called him in scholars are members of the Academy. the Law of the Sea Treaty, and finally the Illinois to ask if he knew anybody in Sver- For most of its history, the foreign asso- Chemical Weapons Convention, the United dlovsk who could invite me. He replied that ciates of the Academy have been drawn from States embarked on a massive effort to de- his physics colleague from Sverdlovsk was European countries. However, over the last stroy all of its large stockpile of chemical visiting Illinois and was sitting next to him at 15 or 20 years, the Academy has sought to weapons. There was mustard that had been that very moment. That got me an invitation broaden its rank of foreign associates to rec- made during World War II. There were sarin to bring a small team to Sverdlovsk, now re- ognize the development of scientific excel- weapons that had been made at Rocky stored to its old name, Ekaterinburg, to in- lence and competence globally, and the Mountain Arsenal. There was another nerve vestigate in 1992 and again in 1993. foreign associates now include many more agent called VX, which is more persistent As you may know, we were able to show scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin than sarin. There were also the facilities for that this epidemic resulted not from the America than before. making these things. All had to be destroyed eating of contaminated meat, as the Soviet Foreign associates play an important role, under the Chemical Weapons Convention, government had claimed, but from an air- becausetheyarenotonlydistinguishedscholars which entered into force in 1997 and is now borne release. We found and published in but also, in many cases, people who have had about 90% complete and estimated to cost Science that the cases occurred in a narrow high posts in their own government and have a total of some $40 billion. zone extending 50 km from a military bi- access to the highest levels of government. Several different technologies for chemical ological facility in the city into the country- They constitute an important informal re- weapons destruction were extensively evaluated side, and there was 1 day and 1 day only just source for the work of the NRC throughout and compared in a still-continuing succession before the first cases when the wind was in the world. of Academy reports. These included alkali hy- exactly that direction all day long. drolysis of agent, incineration (with the argu- What this story demonstrates is that ev- Inter-Academy Cooperation ment that this gets rid of everything), and finally eryone who serves on Academy committees The second part of the job—correspondence explosive decomposition, all of which were used does not go into cold storage between with other academies—has become very

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9335 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 complex. Many different programs involve with many partners simultaneously. This predecessor as Foreign Secretary. Following cooperation with other academies around the history of engaging many partners goes this, Bruce Alberts, during his presidency of the world. A few examples will demonstrate the back to the end of the 19th century, when Academy, helped create a second organization kind of work that has evolved and has become the Academy, together with a number of linked to the global network of science acade- particularly active during the last 25 years. European academies, banded together to mies whose purpose was to do NRC-type One of the first efforts to do a joint policy create an organization known as the In- studies addressing global issues. This organi- study with another academy was initiated ternational Association of Academies. zation, called the Inter-Academy Council, is under Frank Press, in which the Academy The primary purpose of that organization headquartered in The Netherlands and has worked with the Mexican Academy of Sci- was dealing with the communication and done a number of important policy studies on ences on the water supply of Mexico City. commerce of science across linguistic and major issues at a global level, including reports The joint project initiated a continuing close national boundaries. It addressed such on the importance of scientific capacity in relationship between the NAS and the things as scientific measures, agreement national development, theissueoffoodsecu- Mexican Academy of Sciences. Another on scientific nomenclature, and other im- rity in sub-Saharan Africa, the global impor- important project on water futures in the portant issues for the commerce of science. tance of women in science, the 21st-century Jordan Valley involved the Israeli and After about 30 years, this organization energy transition, and a worldwide framework Palestinian Academies of Science and the evolved into the International Council of for scientific ethics. Jordanian Higher Council of Science. This Scientific Unions in 1931, an organization joint project represented an ambitious effort later renamed the International Council Regional Cooperation to use science as a bridge-building exercise for Science. Today, it is the scientific During his presidency, Bruce Alberts also between societies in conflict. In some regards, counterpart to United Nations Educa- helped conceive and find financial support the project was very successful, but the po- tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation litical situation has continued to decline in and other United Nations (UN) agencies for a 10-year project to work with academies that region of the world, so follow-up efforts andseekstoarticulateandhelporganize in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of this pro- have been difficult to achieve. ambitious global science projects. gram, called the African Science Academy An ongoing effort aimed at using science in In the early 1990s, the Academy and about Development Initiative, was to help the acad- a bridge-building exercise is a series of more eight other academies, including the Royal emies of sub-Saharan Africa develop the skills than 25 workshops held since 2000 between Society, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and to provide science policy advice to their own theNASandtheScienceAcademyofIran. the Mexican Academy of Sciences, banded governments. That program is now in its 10th This exercise receives tacit support from the together to write a white paper on the issue year and has been remarkably successful. Iranian Government and active support of human population growth. The resulting A final example of regional cooperation from the US State Department. These document was quite important at the time, among academies is an organization known as workshops have dealt with a wide array of and it made what was then a novel argument: the Inter-American Network of Academies of different topics, including seismic hazards, that the key to human population control Sciences. This organization includes all of the scientific ethics, and wildlife management was the empowerment of women. A couple academies of the American Hemisphere from issues. The goal is to keep channels of com- of years later, in an effort led by the Royal Chile and Argentina to Canada, and it works munication open with the Iranian sci- Society of London, an ad hoc group of sci- on a number of important issues, including entific community. ence academies developed a white paper on improving the quality of K-12 science educa- It is difficult to achieve funding for most of the issue of transgenic crops in agriculture. tion, advancing opportunities for women in these exercises, and there is much more that On the basis of these experiences, the acad- science, and water and energy issues. This the NAS could do in using science as a link emies decided jointly to create a global network network of academics has brought the NAS between nations. Therefore, to be as efficient of science academies, and this was done under into much closer contact with our counter- as possible, the Academy has sought to work the leadership of F. Sherwood Rowland, my parts in the Americas than in the past.

From IGY to the Space The International Geophysical Year and Science Board Beyond: From the Earth to the Solar System Sylvia Fries Kraemer, Former NASA Chief Historian and Director of Policy Development The Academy’s work on space exploration has been an important complement to its leadership of international science. Beginning with the planning of the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY), the Academy helped coordinate national and international efforts to study the earth from its Complex human events like the beginning of interior to the edges of the atmosphere. So successful was the IGY that it was extended for the space exploration are endlessly fascinating to International Geophysical Cooperation year of 1959. historians, because they typically consist of The creation of the Space Science Board by the Academy in 1958 “to survey the scientific problems, opportunities, and implications of man’sadvanceintospace” created an institution that many moving parts. Individuals and institu- would cement the Academy’s role in the nation’s rapidly growing space program. At the colloquium, tions that enable those moving parts to Sylvia Fries Kraemer, former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chief historian function together effectively are among the and director of policy development, described the creation of the Space Science Board and some of its successes in advising government. Allan Needell, curator in the Space History Division of the most important and most underappreciated National Air and Space Museum, then focused on Lloyd Berkner, one of the architects of the IGY and actors in the history of human enterprise. the first chair of the Space Science Board. In the exploration of space, the National Academy of Sciences played this essential

9336 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 role, coordinating and mediating a number of The second salient feature is pluralism. Al- If the international principle of freedom of

essential moving parts. though the Federal Government has financed space for objects in orbit could be established, SACKLER COLLOQUIA much of this nation’s space research and de- all spacefaring nations could make foreign and Drivers of the US Space Program velopment, it has been scientists trained in military policy decisions on the basis of rela- The first and quite literally foremost factor in private or state operated universities and used tively accurate knowledge of each other’s’ the development of the US space program by them, as well as research-intensive com- military capabilities. What better object to es- was the sun. The periodic flares and electro- panies in the aerospace and defense in- tablish that principal than a scientific satellite magnetic storms known as the solar maxi- dustries, that have done the bulk of the work. orbiting over the earth’s airspace below as part mum were due to recur in 1958, creating a The Academy attracted the first generation of a peaceful international scientific venture? rare opportunity for the growth of global and of space scientists to a truly cosmopolitan As inclined as President Eisenhower was to atmospheric science. undertaking far beyond the laboratory. approve the earth satellite program, the route Second was the preparatory work done The third salient feature has been in- to his desk was guarded by several agencies during the late 1940s on rocketry at the ternational participation in US space explo- that needed to vouch for the program’sfea- California Institute of Technology and else- ration. The Academy represented the United sibility. Only the Defense Department could where. At White Sands, New Mexico, the States on COSPAR, the international com- provide and operate the launch vehicles and Army and Navy Ordnance Bureaus and the mittee on space research. More importantly, communications networks. Because foreign Office of Naval Research launched rockets beginning in 1957 when the National Acad- governments were involved, the State De- into the upper atmosphere that consisted emy of Sciences masterminded participation partment also would have to give its support. initially of reassembled German V2 rockets in the IGY, US space science missions have For comparable reasons, approvals were with scientific instruments instead of explo- combined launches, payloads, and experi- needed from the National Security Council, sives in their warheads. ments from around the world. the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Third were the scientists and technicians The National Academy of Sciences brought Bureau of the Budget. from universities, as well as the military to the dawn of space exploration a vital legacy Nevertheless, by all accounts, Bronk, with services, who designed the scientific rocket of experience with a broad range of research the help of Berkner and National Science payloads and reviewed the results of each in which the distinction between pure and Foundation Director Alan Waterman, gave flight. They provided the core of the un- applied science was an academic distraction persuasive briefing after briefing and partici- official upper atmosphere rocket research pated in meeting after meeting and discussion at best. In accumulating this experience, the panel formed in 1946 and would become key after discussion. In the end, they managed to Academy had formed working relationships figures in the scientific exploration of space in funnel all of the necessary recommendations among a diverse range of individuals and the next three decades. into the Oval Office. institutions and had developed a solid ap- Fourth were the institutional capabilities of Thus, it was at the opening of the In- preciation of the needs of its federal client those among the nation’s universities that ternational Geophysical Year on July 1, 1957, agencies. The Academy was the US repre- had rapidly grown their physical science when President Eisenhower said toward the sentative to the International Council of Sci- faculties and research plans under the stim- end of his remarks, “Ishouldliketocon- entific Unions, which asked it to develop and ulusofWorldWarIIandearlyColdWar gratulate all who have helped to make our federal grants and contracts. direct the scientific and technological pro- program possible, and particularly the Na- Fifth was the national security environ- gram for US participation in the IGY. In turn tional Academy of Sciences. Through its ment. Launching an artificial satellite into the Academy would coordinate funding with National Committee for the International orbit required the capabilities of guided mis- the National Science Foundation, which Geophysical Year, the Academy has worked siles. Until the creation of NASA in 1958, the would have to come from Congressional ap- tirelessly to plan and coordinate the program only institution in the United States both able propriations. Thus, on February 10, 1953, in cooperation with other nations.” andauthorizedtolaunchguidedmissileswas Academy President Detlev Bronk formed the The division of responsibilities among the the military. US National Committee for the IGY and Academy’sUSNationalCommittee,theDe- The National Academy of Sciences, and appointed UCLA Professor of Physics Joseph fense Department, and the National Science especially its US National Committee for the Kaplan as Chairman, with Lloyd Berkner, Foundation was sorted out over dinner at the International Geophysical Year, coordinated an ionospheric physicist at the Carnegie Cosmos Club in July 1956. Briefly, the Acad- andmediatedamongthesemovingparts.As Institution, taking over as chairman after emy would be responsible for all scientific it did so, it laid the template for the future Kaplan resigned the following year. aspects of the program. The DOD would de- conduct of US civilian space exploration. This termine the workability of instruments pro- template had three salient features. Developing a Civilian Space Program posed for the satellites; develop, procure, and First, socializing risk and privatizing gains Elected in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was the launch the vehicles; deliver the satellites into have been the national policy for the pro- first president since Ulysses Grant to have orbit; confirm their orbits; and provide logis- motion of research and development in this had personal experience of the indiscriminate tical and technical support as well as radio country ever since the first federal research and unforgiving carnage of modern warfare. tracking. Any public information required and development (R&D) contract was nego- Millions of lives could be spared if military clearance from the DOD as well as the tiated with Eli Whitney in 1798. However, in confrontation with the Soviet Union could be Academy. The National Science Foundation the post-World War II era of big science and avoided, and untold amounts of money could was the fiscal agent. technology, socializing risk and privatizing be saved for domestic needs if a costly First and most fundamentally, the nation’s gains became a far more complicated task buildup of the military-industrial complex space program would be a civilian, and thus than merely issuing a contract from an office could be minimized. This would require on- peaceful, undertaking. Second, the scientific in the War Department. The Academy mas- going and accurate assessments of the Soviet content of the program would be the respon- tered that complexity. Union’s actual fighting capabilities. sibility of the scientific community, whether

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9337 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 used in the country’s universities or, as was the the emotive fuel necessary to sustain a suc- preventing contamination of celestial objects case after 1958, used in a civilian space agency. cessful national space program. by space probes. Although now taken for granted, it was never As often happens in Washington, much of the Another was a successful effort to persuade written in the stars that it should be so. energy behind this controversy was dissipated by NASA, once the initial Apollo lunar landings Bronk undoubtedly had misgivings about a change of administrations. After the Demo- were completed, to train scientists to serve as the NASA bill that would be introduced into cratic Party recaptured the White House in astronauts and develop a genuine science astro- and approved by the House of Representa- November 1960, John F. Kennedy announced naut program. From 1971 through December tives in 1958. The bill lacked any provision, what became the Apollo manned lunar landing 1972, NASA flew four primarily scientific Apollo comparable to the National Science Board program. At the urging of Lyndon Johnson and missions, 14–17, to the moon, with full-fledged that advised the National Science Foundation, others, he named James E. Webb as NASA scientists trained as astronauts on their crews. for a group of outside scientists to oversee the Administrator. Meanwhile, Berkner wrestled his Scientist-astronauts soon became regular mem- NASA space science program. colleagues on the Space Science Board into bers of human spaceflight crews. On June 4, Bronk invited NSF’sWater- adopting a policy statement supporting NASA’s A third example is the Board’s 2005 as- man, Berkner, Herbert York, who was chief human exploration of the moon and planets. sessment, at NASA’s request, of the compar- scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Webb was one of this country’ssharpest ative benefits and risks of a robotic mission Agency (which managed all civil and military and most talented public servants, a veteran versus a manned shuttle mission to service the space activity between 1957 and the opening of the hill, the Department of State, and the Hubble Space Telescope one last time in its of NASA in October 1958), and Hugh Bureau of the Budget. His appointment also then anticipated life. The board argued per- Dryden, who was director of NASA’spre- produced a sea of change in NASA relations suasively that a shuttle servicing mission was decessor agency, the National Advisory Com- with space scientists. Webb understood from well worth the same risks that were being mittee for Aeronautics, to meet with him at his own Washington experience that if NASA taken to service the International Space Sta- the Academy to design what would become was going to be able to achieve its mission, tion. The fifth and last servicing mission for the new Space Science Board. every congressional district, every research the orbiting telescope was flown in May of The principal mission of the board would be industry, and the entire aerospace industry 2009, and the Hubble Space Telescope con- to ensure that the Academy could and would would have to have a material interest in the tinues to generate extraordinary images of the represent the views of American scientists in US agency’s success. This meant that NASA’s heavens to this day. space program planning and also to promote procurements, contracts, and research grants In the mid-1980s, the Space Science Board international cooperation in space research. needed to be genuinely accessible to anyone changed its name to the Space Studies Board Unfortunately, from the board’s perspective, across the country. This also meant, in to recognize that its portfolio had expanded President Eisenhower declined to name Hugh Webb’s reorganization of NASA headquar- from the academic space science disciplines Dryden, a Johns Hopkins PhD in physics who ters, the creation of an Office of Space Sci- that emerge from the IGY to preparing studies was a familiar presence at the Academy, to the ences on par with an Office of Manned Space and testimonies not only for the Congress and NASA post. Instead, Eisenhower gave the nod Flight. The Space Science Board soon became NASA but for the National Oceanic and At- to T. Keith Glennan, a Yale-trained electrical an officially acknowledged direct advisory mospheric Administration, created in 1970, engineer and a proven executive in corporate group to the administrator. and for the US Geological Survey. government and academic organizations. For its part, the Academy and Space Science Glennan’s organization of NASA headquarters Board eventually accepted the fact of human A Template for Space Science placed space science at a third tier management exploration and the political realities that In contrast to the situation in the Soviet level. As for its Space Science Program, NASA’s NASA had to deal with in serving many con- Union, the Academy had no power to com- official policy was that the agency, and it alone, stituencies while doing justice to its founding mand the human and material resources would formulate a national program of space mission. The role of the Space Science Board necessary to launch a space program. It had research, although using recommendations became to take the long view, a perspective to work within the political and fiscal realities from the Space Science Board, educational re- difficult for agency managers to maintain of our system of constitutional government. search institutions, industry, other con- during the constant political and budgetary In the course of coordinating the necessary tractors, and internally generated ideas. changes afflicting government programs. moving parts within those realities, it shaped The Space Sciences Board, in its diminished the template for the following decades of space role, was to become NASA’s chief critic. The Role of the Space Science Board exploration, not only by the United States but board complained to the President’s Science The Space Science Board has advised NASA to a large extent by our international partners Advisory Committee that NASA was doing through its periodic summer studies, through in space. The Space Science Board has pro- science in-house and thus failing to support its decadal studies of future space research vided guidance in the short run and has be- university-based scientific research. It com- needs, and through investigations responding come a vital source of vision in the long run. plained that NASA was neglecting basic sci- to federal agency or congressional requests. ence, that government-conducted science was This can be illustrated by the influence it not as good as science done in university and and the Academy exercised over three key industrial laboratories, and that NASA’scon- decisions. Lloyd Berkner and tractor payload engineers were failing to involve The first was the board’s successful pro- International Science Policy the payload scientists sufficiently in the work. mulgation in 1963 of a code to avoid the However, all was not critical. Board Chair contamination of the moon, planets, and Allan Needell, National Air and Berkner would break the mold among many other celestial bodies, a code that was adop- Space Museum space scientists and publically distance himself ted by the International Council of Scientific from their opposition to the space program. Unions as well as NASA and the DOD. The Lloyd Berkner was among the most influ- Instead, he supported human exploration as board has continued to promote methods for ential figures to come out of World War II.

9338 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 Following his service during the war in the in Antarctica, military planners pressed the To bolster that impression, in early April,

Navy Bureau of Aeronautics as the leader of State Department to increase diplomatic before the Van Allen dinner, Berkner attended SACKLER COLLOQUIA the bureau’s radar and communications efforts to forestall such action. the business session of the Academy’sannual electronics procurement effort, and as It is hardly remarkable that Berkner would meetingtoformallyreportontheresultsof primary liaison with the scientists work- champion international scientific cooperation the State Department’sstudyandthecon- ing at the MIT Radiation Laboratory on in Antarctica, having worked throughout the tributions made by the Academy. Berkner was radar, he built for himself an impressive 1950s cultivating just such cooperation in determined to emphasize the stake he believed reputation as an organizer, administrator, ionospheric research. What is remarkable is his Academy audience had, not only in the and government advisor during the Truman howwellandwithhowlittleapparentstrain report’s endorsement of the importance of Administration. In 1947, he served as the the revival of such efforts could be made scientific research, but also in the more con- first postwar manager of the Joint Research to mesh with the newer, and increasingly troversial aspects of the report. International and Development Board, whose job was to secret, peacetime national security agendas science policy, he stated, should be devoted to evaluate defense-related research and de- then emerging. “the maintenance of that measure of security velopment activities to prevent duplication Berkner was confident in his belief, one ofthefreepeoplesoftheworldrequiredfor and to maintain close relations between the that was widely shared among scientists of the continuance of their intellectual, material, nation’s defense and scientific communi- that era, that the interests of increasing and political freedom.” ties. He also served as an official advisor to knowledge, promoting intellectual freedom, Left unsaid was that science was then the Department of State. and maintaining American national security perceived as an increasingly important target Never actually earning an advanced de- neatly coincided. Berkner was uniquely pre- for national intelligence gathering. In that gree himself, it was with great satisfaction pared for the sensitive role of middle man regard, Berkner had prepared a classified and professional pride that in 1948 he ac- between science and the emerging Cold War appendix to the 1950 report outlining ways cepted formal nomination to the Academy. national security state. in which American scientists could be of Especially welcome was the prospect that direct assistance to the intelligence commu- in addition to recognizing both his own The Berkner Report nity. One of the major recommendations scientific achievements and his organizing Berkner’s role at the now legendary April 1950 was to increase participation in international activities, the Academy would provide him dinner party at the Silver Spring, Maryland, activities, along with the creation of both with further opportunities to organize sci- home of James Van Allen, in which planning overt and covert intelligence operations to entists as a force for addressing national for a third International Polar Year, which exploit them. problems. eventually becoming the IGY, was begun, is In his work with the State Department, Berkner soon was asked to take part in perhaps the story best known about Berkner Berkner was walking a delicate line, attempting Academy business. In July 1948, Isaiah among scientists. It is no coincidence that the to serve as a broker between the national se- Bowman, President of Johns Hopkins Uni- dinner party occurred during the same month curity bureaucracy and the professional com- versity, agreed to a State Department request in which Berkner completed another major munity of scientists. Although to the Academy to chair a special Academy conference on project involving the Academy, the so-called audience he emphasized the service to science research in Antarctica. Aware that Berkner Berkner Report, Science and Foreign Relations. the State Department could provide, in the had participated in a 1928 expedition to During the early part of 1949, with Secretary confines of the State Department meeting Antarctica, Bowman asked the Academy, and of State Dean Acheson’s concurrence, then rooms and in classified documents, he em- specifically Berkner, to contribute a report on Under-Secretary of State James Webb estab- phasized the government’s hidden agenda. ionospheric research in that region, Berkner’s lished an internal review of State Department The revelation of Berkner’s secret agenda research specialty. Berkner agreed and pro- responsibilities in the field of science. Berkner should not be taken to indicate a lack of posed a relatively ambitious Antarctic research was tapped to manage the report writing ef- sympathy for the goals, needs, and ideals of program to study atmospheric electricity fort. Writing over Webb’ssignaturetoA.N. his fellow scientists. Subsequent actions sug- and magnetism. Richards, the President of the Academy, gest that he remained sincerely interested in This program was not unlike that under- Berkner invited the Academy to assist in furthering those goals and in pursuing the taken during the IGY. In his report, Berkner whatever manner it considered appropriate. proposals made in the unclassified report, not emphasized that such research could best be He suggested the appointment of an advisory only for nationalistic reasons but also because accomplished by the combined efforts of committee within the National Research of an abiding personal interest in inter- scientists from many nations. Berkner’s rec- Council to review the analysis and recom- national science. That the IGY coincided with ommendations made a great deal of scientific mendations once they were prepared by in- the separate needs and goals of several sense, but it is no coincidence that they ternal government working groups, and he agencies of the Federal Government did not also provided the State Department with asked the NRC to produce its own paper to bother Berkner to any extent. To the con- the sort of diplomatic ammunition it had reflect the views of universities, research trary, the opportunity to work simulta- been seeking. organizations, and other nongovernmental neously for science and for the nation had Contemporary documents reveal that it entities concerned with the problem. By call- a tremendous appeal to him as a planner, was the military that had sparked the sudden ingontheAcademyandtheNRC,Berkner administrator, and scientist. To him, as to State Department concern with Antarctica. added prestige and influence to the State most of the leaders of the scientific estab- The Navy feared that the Soviet Union might Department report and helped ensure that lishment that emerged after World War II, try to use bases established there to gain American scientists would feel that they had the goals of science, the goals of the in- control over shipping lanes. Unwilling to al- at least some say in the recommendations that ternational community of free people, and low the Soviets to pursue sovereignty claims were made. the interests of America neatly coincided.

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9339 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 be unprepared for either a natural or a Climate Change manmade climatic catastrophe. The committee agreed that there was a significant Climate change is a problem well suited to the Academy’s multidisciplinary structure. It involves likelihood of a major deterioration of global energy production and consumption, land and water use,agriculture,international cooperation, and climate in the years ahead but could not say scientific communication. The scientific disciplines involved in studying climate change range from what sort of a deterioration. Global warming atmospheric chemistry, geophysics, and ecology to economics, anthropology, and sociology. Al- was just one possibility. though coordination of all these topics within the Academy has sometimes been challenging, the institution has produced a steady stream of reports since the 1970s that have alerted the public to In 1960, the Academy had established a the problem and have recommended ways to ameliorate it. geophysics review board, which dealt with At the colloquium, Spencer Weart, director emeritus of the Center for the History of Physics at the international research in the field and co- American Institute of Physics, reviewed the Academy’s four decades of work on the issue of climate ordinated the Academy’s activities. In the early change. The Academy’s president, Ralph Cicerone, explained why the response to the threat posed by ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere has been so much more forceful than the response 1970s, the board took up the idea of a decadal to the threat posed by greenhouse warming. Peter Gleick, cofounder and leader of the Pacific In- survey of geophysics. This survey grew to 24 stitute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, cited several areas in which further reports in all, given the fragmented nature of work by the Academy could advance the science and build momentum for social change. Naomi the geophysical community. Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, pointed to the need for much One of the reports was on energy and greater involvement of social scientists in the Academy’sworkonclimatechange. climate. This panel of experts announced, in 1977, that average temperatures might climb A History of the Academy’s year 2000. Without attempting to say any- as much as 6 °C by the middle of the 21st thing specific about impacts, the subpanel century. Unlike previous reports, the panel Involvement in Climate remarked that the changes could be delete- was specific about the potential impacts. On Change rious for humans. thepositiveside,theArcticOceanmight Meanwhile, another form of climate change eventually be open to shipping. On the neg- Spencer Weart, American Institute had become a national issue—namely delib- ative side, marine ecosystems might be seri- of Physics erate modification of climate through artificial ously disrupted. Stresses on the polar ice caps rain making or other interventions. In 1966, might lead to a surge of ice into the sea, The National Academy of Sciences has been the Academy answered a government request bringing a rise in sea level of about 4 m within extensively involved with the issue of climate to report on climate modification. The report 300 years. In agriculture, there could be change, but the first collective statement on of the panel included, as a minor side issue, benefits, but also terrible disasters like the global warming by a group of scientists, the question of inadvertent climate modifica- recent African droughts. The panel concluded issued in 1963, was not from the Academy. tion from greenhouse gas emissions. The panel that world society could probably adjust, ’ The impetus was David Keeling sdemon- warned against what it called dire predictions given sufficient time and a sufficient degree stration that the level of carbon dioxide in of drastic climate changes. It remarked that the of international cooperation. However, over the atmosphere was rising dramatically year geological record shows swings of temperature, shorter times, the effects might be adverse after year. That prompted the private Con- and although some of these natural climatic and perhaps even catastrophic. servation Foundation to convene a meeting, changes had locally catastrophic effects, they The Academy’s experts were by no means and that meeting set the pattern for many did not stop the steady evolution of civilization. prepared to recommend actual changes in later ones. However, the panel did believe that the the nation’s energy policies. They only sug- Several experts on the role of carbon di- buildup of carbon dioxide should be watched gested that the world might eventually need oxide in climate, along with a handful of closely. Its primary conclusion was, again, that to reduce the use of fossil fuels. As a page 1 experts in forestry, agriculture, and so forth, more money should be spent on research. headline in the New York Times summed it produced a consensus report warning that if Among the few scientists who paid atten- up, “Scientists fear heavy use of coal may fossil fuel burning continued, the earth will be tion to climate theories, concern grew. A bring adverse shift in climate.” changed, more than likely for the worse. They landmark study on human impacts on the The Academy’s call for more and better could scarcely say what would happen in the global environment was conducted at MIT in organized research did not fall on deaf ears. next century. The only thing they felt confi- 1970 and concluded, among other things, The meteorological community and its dent about was that there would be a rise in that greenhouse warming might bring wide- friends in the federal bureaucracy were de- sea level, bringing immense flooding to low- spread droughts and changes to the sea level. termined to push for a consolidation of cli- lying areas. Their primary recommendation Meanwhile, the international community mate research. In 1977, the Academy created was that more research was needed and more launched the Global Atmospheric Research the Climate Research Board with, unusually, money should be spent on research. Mean- Program (GARP), partly in response to a full-time chair, Robert White. The board while, they called on the Academy to create greenhouse warming concerns but mainly to coordinated the Academy’sclimateworkand a committee to look into the issue. improve weather prediction and other near- provided a channel for advice to the gov- The next step was taken by the President’s term issues. To manage American participa- ernment. It also took the lead in promoting Science Advisory Committee, which had tion in GARP, the Academy set up a US a consolidated federal research program, and formed a pollution panel to address issues committee that included many top scientists. in 1978, the Congress passed the National such as smog. It included, however, a sub- Climate Act and established the National panel to discuss the effects of carbon dioxide The Academy’s Involvement Grows Climate Program Office. on climate. The subpanel reported that there In 1975, the Academy’s GARP committee The next significant report came from the could be marked changes in climate and published an influential report. More alarming JASONs. In a 1979 study, they looked into predicted, with remarkable foresight in 1965, than previous Academy statements, it de- the chances for a climate change of any kind, that such changes might be apparent by the clared that society simply cannot afford to whether global warming or otherwise. They

9340 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 concluded that the world’s food supply could recommendation, ambiguous although it may profoundly affected by governmental policies,

shrink and sea levels could rise. In either case, be, related to global warming. the Villach report called on governments to SACKLER COLLOQUIA there could be a displacement of populations, Eventually, Congress passed the 1980 En- consider positive actions. Indeed, the confer- creating a national security problem. ergy Security Act, which set up a synfuels ence’s report gave direct policy advice, calling The president’s science advisor, geophys- program and provided for renewable energy on governments to consider a global con- icist Frank Press, now asked the Academy for sources. It also appropriated funds for a more vention to prevent too much global warming. a report. In particular, he wanted a second substantial Academy study of greenhouse In 1988, a world conference convened about opinion on what the JASONs had identi- warming and its policy implications. 300 scientists and others in Toronto. For the fied as the most crucial issue—namely, the In 1983, the Academy issued the product of first time, a group of prestigious scientists validity of computer models of climate. this effort, a 496-page report entitled Changing called on the world’s governments to set strict A summer study convened for a week in Climate. The scientists agreed that they were specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas Woods Hole in July 1979 under veteran deeply concerned. They pointed to con- emissions—namely, to reduce carbon dioxide computer modeler Jule Charney. sequences that could barely be imagined—for emissions by 20% from 1988 levels by the year Charney’s group found that the different example, if global warming released methane, 2005 as an initial global goal. It helped that this computer models were all in the same ballpark a potent greenhouse gas, from seabed sedi- conference was held during the summer of for the temperature in an atmosphere con- ments. These cautions, however, were only 1988 when exceptional heat and drought in the taining twice as much carbon dioxide. To make passing remarks within a summary that was, United States caused much public worry about its conclusion more concrete, the Charney on balance, reassuring. climate change. panel announced, with rather high confidence, The committee chair, William Nierenberg, Congress, concerned by the public uproar, a specific range of numbers: 3 °C, give or take and some of the economists involved in the called on the Academy to conduct a new 50%. This has stood up remarkably well over policy advice sections of the report were study. The charge was to establish the sci- the years. The latest report of the Intergov- skeptical of warnings of future disaster. They entific consensus on the rate and magnitude saw environmental regulation as a danger to of climate change, estimate the projected ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ’ cites 3 °C as the most probable value, give or free markets, and they believed that America s impacts, and evaluate policy options for take a degree or two. technological prowess and adaptability mitigating and responding to such changes. The panel also remarked that absorption of would surmount any problems. Projecting The Academies, including the National a mere degree or two of temperature change Academy of Engineering and the Institute of heat by the oceans would delay a noticeable in the foreseeable future, Nierenberg’ssum- Medicine, undertook a massive effort. The rise of heat in the atmosphere by decades. A mary of the report said that climate change is scientists involved ranged from so-called wait-and-see policy, the panel declared, may far from novel. Large numbers of people live alarmists like Stephen Schneider to so-called mean waiting until it is too late. in all climatic zones and move easily between deniers like Richard Lindzen. The panel fi- them. At worst, people who found them- nally produced a 944-page report, Policy From Energy to Climate selves in the wrong place could move, as Implications of Greenhouse Warming,which This quiet conclusion was not entirely remote people had often done in the past. Heading was published in 1992, although the public from politics. In the wake of the oil supply off any threat of government policy-making, had seen the main results in April 1991. crisis of the 1970s, the nation was considering the panel’s chief recommendation was that A common first impression was captured a massive program to produce synthetic liquid the only thing to do at present was spend by the headline in the New York Times: “Panel fuels from coal. Some scientists warned that more money on research. says nation has ability to adapt to global this would lead to a massive outpouring of Americans might have ignored the report, warming.” The Associated Press story found carbon dioxide and used greenhouse warming but 3 days earlier, the Environmental Pro- the panel optimistic about the ability of as an argument against the synfuels program. tection Agency (EPA) had released its own American industry and farming to adapt to One incident provides a small example of report about the greenhouse effect. The science the climate change andquotedfromthere- the work that the Academy does outside the was mostly the same, but the tone was more port: “Human adaptability is shown by people formal structure of reports and out of public anxious. Substantial increases in global warm- working in both Riyadh and Barrow. Recent view. On July 18, 1979, even as the Charney ing may occur sooner than thought likely, with American migration has, on average, been panel was gathering at Woods Hole, the Aca- possibly catastrophic consequences. The report toward warmth.” ’ demy s president, Philip Handler, got a call insisted that work on new energy policies In an unusual step, the Academy pub- from Senator Abraham Ribicoff. The Senator should get underway without delay. The result lished a dissent by one of the panel mem- was cosponsoring a bill on synfuels, and he was a public debate. As Time magazine put it, bers, the policy expert Jessica Matthews. wanted to know the implications of green- at the very least, the inhabitants of the planet Disruptionswouldbeworsethanthepanel house warming. Handler went to the National must begin looking more seriously into how predicted, she insisted, and she remarked Research Council’s Climate Research Board, they might live in a new, hotter world. tartly, “Thefactthatonecanmovewith and the very next day, it produced a statement Starting in 1983, various organizations came ease from Vermont to Miami has nothing on carbon dioxide and energy policy. The together to develop an international geo- to say about the consequences of Vermont statement confirmed that global warming sphere-biosphere program, and other inter- acquiring Miami’sclimate.” could be a problem. The statement told Sen- national activities were under way. Most Looking closer at the report, the panel was ator Ribicoff that the massive expenditures significant was a conference that gathered sci- far from advocating the wait-and-see position required to create a national synthetic fuels entists from 29 nations at Villach, Austria, in that had dominated the report chaired by capability should not commit the nation to 1985. The scientists found that global warming Nierenberg. It recommended undertaking large-scaledependenceoncoalforthein- would be faster and more serious than mitigation with international cooperation. By definitefuture.Thisisthefirsttimethatan Nierenberg’s group had predicted. Pointing the panel’s reckoning, insurance against global Academy group issued a specific policy out that the rate of future warming could be warming was cheap. The panel considered

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9341 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 restricting emissions directly through taxes cooling. It was as if one set of observations policy response. The Academy issued specific and regulations. It judged that, in general, could disprove that the planet was warming. and urgent demands for legislation to address incentive-type measures are preferable. The In an attempt to settle the controversy, the both mitigation of climate change and adap- government should impose national energy- National Research Council again appointed tation to the changes that are already in- efficient building codes, strengthen support of a panel to conduct a full-scale review. The panel evitable. The report, however, had no effect on mass transit, use incentives to increase auto- concluded that something was wrong. Perhaps the legislation that was before Congress. In mobile gasoline mileage, and so forth. Overall, some temporary influence was keeping the 2009, the House of Representatives had man- the panel felt that emissions could be cut be- midlevels of the atmosphere from showing the aged to pass a bill that would institute a cap and tween 10% and 40% below the 1990 level at warming that was bound to happen. The pan- trade scheme. The Academy report was pub- low cost and at some net savings. el’s hunch was confirmed in 2004 when me- lished in May 2010, and in July, the bill died in As Time magazine put it, both sides could ticulous analysis of the satellite data showed the Senate where the Republican minority ex- find some support for their positions in the that, in fact, the earlier analysis had been in- ercised a veto through threats of filibuster. study. Its findings and recommendations could correct and that there had been warming in the prod the go-slow faction in George Bush’s middle levels of the atmosphere. A Report Card “ White House and brush aside claims, many One final example involved the hockey What does this history of half a century of ” ’ emanating from the White House, that re- stick controversy. Michael Mann and col- activity tell us about the Academy s choices ducinggreenhouseemissionswouldbewildly leagues produced a curve showing a sudden and its influence? In the 1960s, the first im- expensive and a blow to economic growth. recent rise of temperature with a slope like a portant initiatives were taken by groups Overall, the report provided a comprehensive hockey stick. Deniers of climate change came outside the Academy. From the 1970s on, ’ and sophisticated menu of options for both up with many objections to the curve sval- Academy panels and committees repeatedly mitigation and adaptation. If a good fraction of idity, and, in 2005, Representative Joe Barton, and correctly took the lead in stating that the panel’s recommendations had been imple- chair of the House Energy and Commerce there was a possibility of harmful impacts, mented, the nation would be in a much stronger Committee, launched an investigation that which would show up around the start of the environmental and moral position today. Un- promised to give the deniers a platform. The 21st century and get worse thereafter. As expected from panels of leaders in cli- fortunately, the report got scant attention from new president of the Academy, Ralph Cice- rone, wrote to Barton to oppose a Congres- mate science, their judgments reflected the the White House or from Congress. sional investigation. Better, said Cicerone, to stateofconfidenceinthecommunityas ask the Academy to undertake a study. a whole. The conclusions ranged from un- The Academy and the IPCC A defender of science, Representative certain worries in the 1960s and early 1970s That was the last comprehensive Academy Sherwood Boehlert, asked the Academy to to precise warnings in the 1990s and there- global warming study for a long time because review all of the evidence of surface tem- after. Beginning with the Charney report of work had risen to the international level. perature measurements. Again, a panel was 1979, the Academy’s reports said it was vir- Starting in 1988, the IPCC began a process duly formed, and again it found that the tually certain that global warming was on the leading to massive reports that far exceeded, hockey stick was basically valid, which has way. This was in the face of denial from in international political clout, anything that been borne out by many subsequent studies. a minority of scientists. On several occasions, the Academy could have attempted. On a larger scale, the George W. Bush ad- the Academy confronted deniers and refuted That did not leave the Academy without ministration wanted to reject the conclusions their claims with statements that history has a role. There remained many kinds of special- that the IPCC was reaching. As Time.com shown to be correct. ized studies relating to global warming that it reported, skeptics in the administration sus- In policy-related areas, the record is more was in a good position to undertake. Mean- pected that a left-wing conspiracy had sought spotty. Into the 1990s, Academy reports were while, a minority of scientists were speaking totakecontrolofenergypolicybywhipping ambiguous or even optimistic on the question ’ out against the IPCC s gradually coalescing up a panic based on science. They believed of how severe the impacts of future global consensus. The most widely noted technical that asking questions would disprove the warming might be. Impacts research was then criticism came in brief reports issued between claims of those calling for action on global in its infancy, and this was a judgment call. It 1989 and 1992 by the conservative George C. warming, so they went to the Academy with is worth noting that international conference Marshall Institute. The anonymously authored questions framed to give them the answers reports tended to issue stronger warnings pamphlets came with the endorsement of that they wanted. The Academy had less than than the Academy’spanelsdid.Untilthe Frederick Seitz, a former head of the Academy. a month to respond to the questions. Di- 1990s, the Academy only called for more ’ Most prominent of the skeptics claims verging from the usual slow process of solic- money and advised a wait-and-see policy. was that if warming had, in fact, been ob- iting funds from government agencies, the This, too, was backward compared with the served in the 20th century, it could all be Academy supported the study out of its own calls for action issued by international con- explained by an increase in solar activity. In resources. The result was exactly the opposite ferences of climate scientists. However, in 1990, the National Research Council’sBoard of what the White House wanted to hear. The retrospect, if the Academy had issued earlier on Global Change decided on its own ini- committee reported that the IPCC’scon- calls for policy, they likely would have tiative to look into the question. In 1994, it clusions accurately reflect the current thinking been futile. issued a report that unequivocally rejected of the scientific community on this issue. Thecallsforbetterorganizationandmore these skeptical claims. In 2010, the National Research Council money for research were partly successful, but The skeptics now turned to measurements released the Academy’s most comprehensive only partly. There was never as much money by satellites that monitored the earth. survey on the issue to date. With more as the gravity of the problem demanded. According to an analysis by one group, there forcefulness than ever, America’sClimate The specific calls for policies to mitigate has been no rise of temperature of middle Choices insisted that future climate change was greenhouse emissions that the Academy levels of the atmosphere but, instead, a slight a severe problem that required an immediate issued from the 1990s all met with limited

9342 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 success. The press took note of the reports, got invited again and again to state and fed- scientists see this coming? How could you

and some recommended measures were eral hearings in 1974 through 1978. We be- have missed this continent-wide disap- SACKLER COLLOQUIA enacted, such as restrictions on automobile gan to meet with staff people, who told us pearance of the ozone layer? gas mileage and support for renewable that the volume of mail that Congress re- The Montreal Protocol took effect in 1987, energy research. ceived on the CFC-ozone problem exceeded and it has been updated several times since However, the Academy’svoicewasonly anything that they had ever experienced be- that time. Substitute chemicals have been one in a cacophony of shouts. Indeed, all fore, except for the Vietnam war. discovered and put into widespread use. It scientific bodies together were only one group There were demands for regulation of these has been mostly a success story. among the bloggers and news media, the en- products. After all, if there was a threat to the What is the difference with the climate vironmentalists and industry organizations, entire global environment and to something situation? the politicians, and many others who had that would involve human health and bi- In the case of CFCs, the public had al- much to say about global warming. ological productivity, something should be ready judged that aerosol spray products Overall, the Academy devoted repeated done. However, Congress did not know what were not essential, and there were sub- and arduous efforts to global warming, but it to do, so President Gerald Ford put together stitutes to these chemicals. In the case of was exerting its weight on an issue where a federal taskforce. carbon dioxide, the strong connection be- much larger social and economic forces come Thefirstjobforthetaskforcewastofind tween human energy consumption, fossil to bear. out where in the federal government juris- fuels, and carbon dioxide levels is pervasive. diction would be. However, only about 2% of It is hard to escape the need for trans- the aerosol spray products being sold with portation, heating, electricity, and lighting. CFCs as the propellant were under the ju- In the case of the CFCs, there were only six Ozone Destruction and risdiction of any federal agency, including the producers in the world, and the public could Climate Change Food and Drug Administration, the Con- blame the problem on them. In the case of sumer Product Safety Commission, or the fossil fuel use, it is hard to avoid seeing Ralph Cicerone, National Academy Environmental Protection Agency. At that yourself in the mirror as one of the people of Sciences point, the federal government turned to the causing carbon dioxide releases. Renewable Academy. There were many hearings and sources of energy, although very appealing ’ The world s response to the threats posed to popularstatementsthatCongresswouldnot and necessary, are not yet available at the the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons has do anything until the Academy had analyzed needed scale. been very different from the response to cli- the situation. Climate is inherently more complex than mate change. In 1974, a theory came forward The Academy formed two groups: one understanding ozone in the stratosphere. For that chemicals in widespread use worldwide, a subgroup of the other, to look at the physics example, the biota are involved in climate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), could survive and chemistry of the atmosphere and, to change in a fairly direct way, whereas the the upward journey into the ozone layer in a lesser extent, at biology. As usual, the pro- biota are only affected by ozone loss. the stratosphere, where they would be broken ject took longer than expected. It was The ozone situation was framed as a science apart by mechanisms much more powerful scheduled to be released in the spring of 1976 issue, and the ozone hole turned out to be than they encountered at the surface of the and came out in the fall, but for a good completely due to chlorofluorocarbons and a earth. There they could release chlorine reason. Some new chemistry had been pro- few bromine compounds. In the case of cli- atoms, which in turn could catalytically de- posed by Mario Molina and Sherwood Ro- mate change, because of what is needed and stroy about 100,000 ozone molecules before land showing that the atmospheric chemistry how difficult and expensive changes might be, the catalyst had to be renewed. might be more complicated than originally the issue has not been framed largely as a sci- Meanwhile, years after the discovery of the thought and that more intermediate chem- ence issue. The people who are fighting about DNA molecule, it was determined from lab- icals could be involved. the realty of climate change focus mostly on oratory measurements that UV light can Headline stories in the New York Times policy and very little on science. decompose human DNA, such as in skin. At and Washington Post, on the same day, There are, of course, other dimensions, the same time, epidemiological work had responded to the report. The writers of the such as people in industries who are trying to demonstrated connections between exposure report wrote skillfully and with a great deal of undercut the science. Nevertheless, I am often to UV light and skin cancer, at least in light- qualification. They said that a couple of more asked how we could be so successful in pro- skinned people, which generated enormous years of research could determine if regu- tecting the ozone layer from further damage public interest. lations could be adopted and optimized. while failing to enact even the low-hanging fruit Chlorofluorocarbons had started out to be Federal regulations did follow within a cou- responses to climate change, such as strong ideal refrigerants, enabling air conditioning to ple of years on the production, sales, and use commitments to better energy efficiency. go to places like Florida and Washington, of these compounds. In addition, consumers DC. However, by 1974, the world was using had made up their minds, and sales of these most CFCs in spray cans of catnip, hairspray, products dropped. underarm deodorant, and many other prod- In 1985, the ozone hole was discovered Next Steps for the Academy ucts, constituting a multibillion dollar in- over Antarctica. It was totally unpredicted dustry in the United States. and could not be explained by the original Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute for Studies in An active group of science journalists, chlorine vs. ozone theory. At that point, Development, Environment, and Security which does not exist much anymore, wrote the public got very concerned. I remember about the story. Congressional hearings were giving a lecture in California in front of The Academy deserves enormous credit for immediately convened, and not many people 500 or 600 people. The crowd turned angry tackling the climate change issue early and were involved in the science, so a few of us at the end of my lecture. Why didn’tyou often, even in the midst of a difficult political

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9343 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 climate. The Academy has many strengths in effective as a way to talk about the strength Whether Weinberg’s critique was right or this context. It was established explicitly to do of the science. wrong is beyond the scope of today’scon- nonpartisan research, it is independent of versation. What I would like to call attention government, and it has the ability to do in- to is whether the panel had the appropriate terdisciplinary research, which is not as easy expertisetomakeclaimsofthatsort.There in universities or professional societies. Also, Climate Change and the was a significant gap between the expertise of the committee structure of Academy panels Social Sciences the committee and the reassuring claims permits expertise from a wide variety of areas made by the executive summary. The key to be brought to bear on problems. Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University claim was that people could and would adapt Another strength of the Academies is the easily to climate change without undue hard- ability to reach out to the public with public Who are the appropriate experts to evaluate ship. From Nierenberg’s personal papers and communications. The climate issue is highly a complex issue such as climate change? This other writings, it is clear that he was particu- politicized and polarized issue, which means question is simultaneously an issue of science larly moved by the argument that humans had that more effort is needed on communica- and technology and also an issue of politics, a long history of adapting to client change in tions. Finally, because it is independent, the economics, ethics, and values. the past. He argued that there was no reason to In recent decades, the Academy has ad- Academy cannot be shuttered like the Office think they would not continue to do so in the dressed numerous issues like climate change of Technology Assessment was. future. He did allow that some climatic effects, that are not just matters of science and What does this mean for climate change? including sea level rise—which particularly technology. However, to address the social, First, more science remains to be done on worried panelist Roger Revelle—might drown political, and economic aspects of these such issues as the role of radiative transfers, major cities and make some coastal areas problems requires expertise beyond the na- complex forcings, and the sensitivity of the uninhabitable. However, he thought that this tional scientific disciplines of physics, chem- atmosphere to greenhouse gases. Further- could be addressed by outmigration. istry, biology, and geology that constitute more the IPCC reports are not always based However, the report itself, despite its 400 most of the membership of the Academy. on the latest science because there is an early pages, referred to no historical, sociological, The Academy acknowledges this by the in- cutoff date for considering research. Maybe or anthropological studies on known past clusion of social scientists, particularly econ- thereisarolefortheAcademiesinhelping migrations. The panel included no historians, the IPCC restructure its treatment of science omists, in its ranks, in its Division of Social sociologists, anthropologists, or archeologists and its review process. and Behavioral sciences and on NRC panels. who might have been able to speak to some The Academy also could look more closely However, despite the growing recognition of relevant evidence. Indeed, an earlier report to at impacts of climate change and how to climate change as a social and policy problem, the Academy on this same subject by econ- adapt to climate change. The climate argu- the panels that address the issues have been omist Thomas Shelling, completed 3 years ment is shifting from a focus on the science dominated by physical scientists. earlier in 1980, noted that past migrations of climate change to questions about how One interesting aspect of the 1983 report might not be a reasonable analog to the sort policy makers and the public might respond Changing Climate is the gap between what the executive summary said and what the rest of migrations that climate change could to now unavoidable impacts of climate “ ’ of the report said. The executive summary trigger because today s political barriers change. The Academy has done work on ” the consequences of climate change but it was largely reassuring, suggesting that the hamper migration. Shelling might also have has done less work on adaptation. problem of climate change, if it even was a added that past migrations had been associ- The roles of technologies, economics, and problem, was far off in the future, that humans ated with large cultural, social, economic, policy constitute an interdisciplinary prob- could adapt to any changes that would ensue, linguistic, and demographic losses. In addi- lem. The Academy has worked on such and that environmental demands for regulation tion, some things, such as infrastructure, problems in the nuclear winter debate, the were a danger to free markets. These positions cannot be moved without very substantial health impacts of ozone depletion, and other were potentially reasonable ones and potentially economic costs, and other things, such as issues. It has experience with cross-disciplin- supported by evidence. However, were these cultural heritage, cannot be moved at all, or at ary analysis and its impacts. claims supported by evidence in the body of least not without significant changes in their However, we also live in a world where the report? cultural and social meaning. communications methods are changing. Research done in the Academy archives Nowhere was this point addressed in the Twitter, blog posts, and newsfeeds are new has revealed that the summary was not ac- 1983 report. However, the report was widely ways to communicate. The Academy needs to tually written by the panel but by an NRC cited in the mass media to suggest that cli- explore even more comprehensively than it staffer, Jesse Ausubel, in consultation with mate change was not a very serious problem. hasdonesomeofthesenewmediumof William Nierenberg, the chair of the com- It was also used by the Reagan administration communications. mittee. There was little, if any, input from the to counter the EPA report that came out at Finally, we should not underestimate the other panelists, and we know as well from the the same time, suggesting that it was. value of having the Academy public state- archives that some of thepanelistswereun- A second example is the 1992 report Policy ments on science and policy related to the happy with the executive summary. The entire Implications of Greenhouse Warming,which work done by Academy groups, even if the report was severely criticized in the internal also focused considerable attention on policy community ignores it for a while. It review process by reviewer Alvin Weinberg, adaptability. Given its title, one might has proven incredibly valuable to say that the head of the Oak Ridge National Labora- have expected heavy representation on this the National Academy of Sciences thinks the tory, who argued not only that the executive panel from academic experts who could science of climate change is strong, and the summary did not accurately represent the speak to adaptation, perhaps demographers, joint statements issued by the Academy with contents of the report but that many of the sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and other national academies have been very claims in it were not supported by evidence. maybe even psychologists or psychotherapists.

9344 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 However, a review of the 14 members of erable economic dimensions, the panel in- The dominance of natural scientists and

the panel reveals just one archeologist, Robert cluded a former governor, a former member academy panels is understandable given the SACKLER COLLOQUIA McCormickAdams,who,atthattime,was of the House of Representatives, a former history of the Academy, founded as it was by the head of the Smithsonian Institution. chief executive officer of the DuPont Cor- a group of natural scientists. The list of Several of the panelists had strong political poration, a professor of law, an environ- Academy presidents is indeed a who’swhoof credentials. The chairman, Daniel J. Evans, mental activist specializing in environmental physics and chemistry in the 20th century. was the former governor of the state of justice, and a public relations expert affiliated Some important biologists are present as well, Washington, and Maurice Strong was the with the firm of Hill & Knowlton, which is but no social scientists and, at least thus far, one-time head of the United Nations Envi- known for its work on behalf of the tobacco no women. ronment Program and an architect of the industry. The panel also included an econo- Despite the fact that we call them the social ’ 1992 Earth Summit. However, Evans edu- mist, a business school professor, three sciences and that many contemporary sci- cational background was in engineering, and geographers, and a professor of sociology. entific methods and statistics were first de- Strong was a businessman turned environ- Somewhat unusually for an Academy panel, veloped in the social sciences, many natural mentalist who had started his career in the physical scientists were not in the clear ma- scientists still have trouble accepting the so- Alberta oil and gas fields. jority. However, many of the policy-oriented cial sciences as equally valid as the natural My last example is the four-volume report, scholars, including several of the geog- ones. The fact that so many members of these America’s Climate Choices, issued in 2010, raphers, had their scholarly training in panels who held policy positions in academia which again explicitly addressed the policy and think tanks had their original training in dimensions of climate change. Again, as ex- the physical sciences or engineering and plicitly noted in the title, America’sClimate the professor of sociology held a PhD science and engineering perhaps also reflects Choices might have been expected to include in ecology. a cultural bias in the years since World War II representation from experts who know My point here is not to say that the in favor of science and engineering training something about choice, about how people members of these panels were not highly and in favor of political reliance on experts make them, about how we often make the distinguished people. Clearly, they were. whose knowledge base was presumed to be wrong ones from a rational perspective, and Norisittosuggestthatthereportswould apolitical. As much research has shown, about what the consequences of our choices necessarily have been better or more useful however, the presumption that physical sci- are likely to be. However, once again, we find politically or socially had they included entific expertise can be made apolitical is, at a panel heavily dominated by natural scien- more experts from the social sciences. How- best, arguable. Scientists, even physical scientists, starting with the two cochairs: an engi- ever, the strength of these reports has been tists, struggle to create, define, and maintain neer and an atmospheric scientist. Perhaps onthephysicalscientificside,andthey a clear boundary between science and policy, reflecting the obviously and explicitly political have a somewhat weaker scientific record between findings and recommendations, and character of the topic, as well as the consid- on the social scientific side. between science and society.

often have social and economic interests in Biology in Public Policy the outcome of policy debates.

More than twice as many of the incorporators of the Academy were in the physical sciences The Committee on Population and technology as in the biological sciences. However, as the life sciences grew and diversified in These two themes of tension and interests the 20th century, so did the Academy’s involvement with the issues raised by these disciplines. can be clearly seen in two reports issued ’ — From the institution s 1897 report on forestry in the United States which contributed to the by the Academy and the National Research creation of today’s national forests—the Academy expanded its purview to the conservation of natural resources, the uses of noxious gases in warfare, food and nutrition, ecology, sex and Council in 1963 and 1965, respectively. reproduction, immigration, drug addiction, medical research, biological warfare, anthropology, Both of these reports are little known today, and many other subjects. but in the 1960s, they had a significant From such a diverse array of potential topics, the speakers at the colloquium had to be selective. Ruth impact. The title of the first one was The Schwartz Cowan, professor emeritus of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, described committees focused on population and on genetic engineering to provide Growth of the World Population: Analysis examples of the tension that can arise between private and public interests. Jane Maienschein, Regent’s of the Problems and Recommendations for Professor and director of the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University, drew on her Research and Training. Thesecondonewas experience as a congressional fellow to raise several prominent questions about Academy reports and Growth of the US Population: Analysis of the the messages they seek to convey. Eliot Meyerowitz, George W. Beadle Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, discussed how Academy committees are put together to achieve Problem and Recommendations for Research, a balance of interests. Maxine Singer, president emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Training and Service. recounted some of her personal experiences with public policy debates over genetic engineering. Briefly, both reports came to the same conclusion: namely, that there was a pop- Public and Private Interests andthepeoplewhodoitrequiressomething ulation crisis in the world’s future and that it quite different: academic freedom, which is was going to happen sooner rather than later. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, University of the freedom to do research without political The solutions that would avert these crises, Pennsylvania control or interference. The tension between both in the world and in the United States, these goals is an integral part of the history of were contraception, more research about The goal of providing advice to government theAcademy,atensionmademoreacuteby contraception, and more training for those requires both oversight and accountability. the fact that even those of us who practice who would teach families how and why to However, the goal of supporting good science what we think of as disinterested scholarship use contraception.

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9345 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 Both of these reports were intended for industrial potential; if they had the right or moral to give the members of the public public dissemination. Both reports were accom- DNA sequences spliced into them, they could any power whatsoever (which several local panied by press releases, and both were sent rapidly and inexpensively synthesize chem- governments attempted to assert at the time) to all members of Congress and to the media, icals (e.g., human insulin) that were otherwise to influence the direction or the conduct notjustintheUnitedStatesbutworldwide. difficult or even impossible to produce. of research. Both of these reports appear to have been It had also become clear that these experi- The controversy eventually died down (par- efficacious; there is some evidence in the ments were very risky. At a Gordon Confer- ticularly after a safer bacterial vector was de- archives that they were specifically requested ence held in the summer of 1973 to assess the veloped), but it lives on in the writings of those by a few members of Congress. Beginning in state of the field, so much alarm was expressed who study science policy because of the ques- 1963 and stretching into the latter part of the about what might happen if one or more tionsthatitraisesbetweentheidealsofpublic 1960s, Congress authorized the expenditure persons was accidentally infected by these responsibility and the ideals of scientific free- of funds through the Agency for International altered bacteria that the attendees voted to ask dom. The controversy reminds us that in a de- Development (AID) for the purchase of con- the National Academy of Sciences to convene mocracy, it is sometimes difficult to promote traceptive devices and the dissemination of a study committee to assess the risks of this the interests of the public and the interests of contraceptive information throughout the research not only to the health of the people thescientificcommunityatthesametime. undeveloped world. Also, Medicaid legisla- working in laboratories but also to the health tion, which was being debated as the first of of the public. That report was completed in Conflicts of Interests in Study thesetworeportscameout,ultimatelycon- the spring of 1974; it suggested a voluntary Committees tained provisions that made subsidies avail- postponement of some kinds of experiments, My last example reminds us that it is also able for contraceptive devices and counseling a set of general guidelines for safe research sometimes difficult even to define the inter- at subsidized costs. procedures, organization of an international ests of the public and the interests of the However, neither report expressed a scien- conference, and finally the creation of a Na- scientific community. tificconsensusamongdemographers.Some tional Institutes of Health (NIH) advisory In 1972, Congress passed the Federal Ad- prominent demographers publicly disavowed committee to conduct research on the safety visory Committee Act (FACA) in an effort them; some questioned whether a crisis was of the experiments and to issue final guide- to ensure both the independence and the brewing either in the undeveloped world or in lines for containment. transparency of expert advisory committees the United States, whereas others believed that In a remarkable effort to achieve trans- to the federal agencies. The act required that a population problem existed but doubted parency, the original letter to the Academy members of such committees should have no whether voluntary contraception, which is what and the final report of the Academy’sstudy conflicts of interest with the deliberations the reports advocated, could be realistically committeewerebothmadepublic.The being asked of the committee and that the expected to solve it. The names of the com- Academy organized a press conference when deliberations themselves should be at least mittee members do not appear in either report, the report was issued; it then raised money to partially open to the public. As they are but the archives reveal that neither the chair pay for the international conference, which private institutions, both the Academy and nor a majority of the members were experts on was held at the Asilomar Conference Center in NRC are exempt from FACA. However, after medical aspects of contraception or on social California 6 months later. The conferees in- long Executive Council deliberations, a de- aspects of reproductive counseling. cluded scientists, lawyers, physicians, and cision was made at least to require that NAS/ It is difficult not to conclude that the bioethicists. They engaged in wide-ranging NRC study committee nominations should Academy’s leaders in the early 1960s let their discussions of the benefits and risks of the take conflict of interest potential into account interest in creating effective partnerships with research, as well as the moral questions that it and that appointed committee members Congress supersede their interest in dispas- raised—almost all of the sessions were covered should be asked to sign conflict of interest sionate science; this may be part of the reason by the press. The conferees also called for statements. As wise as these policies may be, why, a few years later, the Royal Society de- a voluntary and temporary moratorium on they turn out to be exceedingly difficult to cided not to cosponsor a joint publication experiments until appropriate containment administer in practice, as can be seen in one on the population crisis with the Academy. procedures could be established in laborato- example from the 1990s. Ironically, taking the long view, this may also ries, and they provided temporary guidelines When the Environmental Protection be a case in which poor science led to sound for containment at different levels of risk until Agency decided to issue regulations about policy, at least on the domestic front. such time as an NIH study committee could certain genetically modified organisms, some agree on permanent guidelines. Academy members asked that a study com- Recombinant DNA As a result of this transparency, a very mittee be created to examine the proposed A second example of a policy debate that public discussion of the radical implications of regulations. When, following established pitted public accountability against scientists’ genetic engineering—its risks and its potential Academy policy, the staff members assigned to interests in academic freedom is the contro- benefits—ensued and has continued from this committee made member nominations to versy about the safety of the first recombinant that day forward. Leaving aside the freighted thepresidentoftheAcademy,theywerevery DNA experiments. question of whether the creation of transgenic careful to exclude people who were employees Between the fall of 1971 and the summer organisms was either wise or moral, many of the companies that were making the organ- of 1973, several research groups at Stanford questions were raised at the time (and con- isms, as well as people who belonged to not- University succeeded in splicing the DNA tinuetoberaised)aboutwhetheritwaswise for-profit consumer advocacy organi- from various organisms (ranging from a virus or moral to suspend research activity, even zations who opposed the making of those to a toad) into the bacterium Escherichia coli, temporarily;whetheritiswiseormoralfor organisms. which normally inhabits the human gut. By scientists to preempt the regulatory function Again, following established Academy the summer of 1973, it had become clear that of governmental bodies charged with pro- policy, the names of the potential committee so-called recombinant bacteria had enormous tecting public health; and whether it was wise nominees were made public. This generated

9346 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 several protest letters from the not-for-profit public trust in expert advice. In recent years, exist. With the science education standards,

organizations, who argued that the suggested at least, it has required that members of the for example, Project 2061 from the American SACKLER COLLOQUIA committee was biased toward commercial AcademyandstaffoftheNRCregularly Association for the Advancement of Science interests. As a result of the protest, the make these difficult and subtle distinctions— had already been written, yet it was important Academy president decided to place one of and be willing to tolerate the public contro- somehow for the NRC to produce another set theprotestleaderswhowasanexpertonthe versies that they can engender. of standards. Although there is a role for subject on the committee. When she replied those standards, people in Congress and in to the invitation, she pointed out that she had the public ask why. Why are the experts at a potential conflict of interest, because her the Academy better than the experts at the organization was suing EPA over those same Expertise and the Roles of AAAS? What is the difference? Can credit regulations. She was told that she was still the Academy be shared and thereby build a larger sense welcome to join, which she did. Two of the of agreement? original nominees recused themselves from Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University An interesting project would be to look at service, because (unbeknownst to the NRC changes over time in the way that Congress staff) they had financial interests in compa- In 1997 and 1998, I served as a congressional has received the Academy’s reports. How did nies that would be affected by the regulations. fellow on the staff of Congressman Matt they receive them, what got quoted, what got Shortly after the committee began its Salmon, who was on the science committee. cited in the Congressional Record? What was deliberations, two things happened. First, one It was extremely valuable and educational to the impact of different reports? Did reports of its members was asked to join the scientific serve in the office of somebody who was very that took a long time to produce have impact advisory board of a start-up company. When conservative and also interested in learning later? Did a leader emerge to take a report- this person notified the Academy of his di- about science. Three examples illustrate what forward? lemma, he was told that he could accept the Imean. invitation and also remain on the committee. How Science Is Presented Second, one of the staff members assigned to Expertise and Authority Finally, what is the message that science is thecommitteeresignedtotakeajobwith Who do we believe as the experts or as an trying to communicate? The existence of a trade association in the biotechnology in- authority? Is it the 3-ft-deep pile of scien- consensus around climate change or evolu- dustry. At that point, the woman from the tific experts, or is it the book by Dixy Lee tion is of course a strong message. However, consumer advocacy group leaked the story of Ray, the former governor of Washington in these cases, social scientists are not always the resignation to the New York Times and and a biologist, that Newt Gingrich was helpful. They can talk about the social con- was quoted, in the subsequent new story, as giving everybody? struction of knowledge and lead people to questioning the integrity of the committee. When I was a fellow, the Office of Tech- conclude that science is a constructed set Because she had not disclosed anything about nology Assessment recently had been closed. of knowledge like any other constructed set the committee deliberations themselves (to The Congressional research service was a of knowledge. this day, the prepublication deliberations of placetogoforexpertiseonsomethings.The The messages being communicating, to Academy study committees are considered National Research Council was regarded as whom, and for what purpose are all impor- private and confidential), she was allowed to solid in some areas but suspect in others. tant things to understand. remain part of the committee and her name For example, this was a time with lots of appears on its final report, issued several hearings and discussion about climate change months later. and warming. One particular hearing, which Thus, over the year or so of this commit- was about the impact of warming on bio- Origins and Purposes of tee’s existence, many people (staff members diversity, had four experts and about four Academy Reports of the NRC, all of the experts who were in- congressmen listening, which is more than for vited to serve, as well as the president of the many hearings. The experts presented four Eliot M. Meyerowitz, California Institute of Academy himself) were forced to make sev- models. At the end, one of the congressmen Technology eral difficult and subtle distinctions in the who were there said, “What would it take to effort to decide what constituted conflicts of know which of these models is best?” Each of The committee procedures that have been interest in violation of Academy policy. the experts said that it would take more money instituted over the last decades for NAS and These distinctions were probably never easy for research, and in particular for their own NRC reports treat conflict of interest. The to make, but in the years since universities research. The congressman pushed them by first meeting of any of these committees is and funding institutions began to emphasize saying, “Well, which of you is the expert? You given over to people discussing their conflicts technology transfer and translational sci- are disagreeing about what is going on here and biases and signing conflict of interest ence, it is, no doubt, even more difficult to and how to understand it.” The idea of what reports. The point of this part of the meeting, find people with expertise who do not have expertise is needed or what authority exists whichisalwaystaped,isnottoeliminateor some potential conflict of interest in study is very muddled in such cases. Although it is avoid bias or to eliminate conflicts of interest. committee deliberations. Everyone involved clear that the Academy and scientists want It is to balance biases and conflicts. In this needs to be, and often is, committed to the to be experts, they often have trouble playing way, a consensus report has the benefit of notion that a nonpartisan consensus can be that role. It is not just that people are willfully different points of view and reflects a con- achieved by partisan people. saying that they do not want to listen. sensus, if one is achieved, that is acceptable to The tension between the need for public the committee members regardless of the side accountability and the need for academic Role of the Academy of a public argument where they find them- freedom can be considered a creative ten- A related question is why another report is selves. It also apprises the staff and the sion. When it works well, it helps produce needed at times when other reports already members of the committee of preexisting

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9347 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 points of view that can be discussed, and it the staff, who are wise enough to know DNA situation arose, it did not arise in allows for an assessment of whether all sides that criticisms can make a federal official a vacuum about appropriate laboratory of a scientific argument are present among stop reading a report. techniques. the committee members. An increased number of Academy reports In addition, during the report review pro- mightmakeitpossible,atleastgently,tocrit- A Dinner Party Conversation cess, a separate set of people, who are not icize some of the government programs for There was a dinner party at my house that members of the committee, consider the re- which that sort of criticism is today avoided. figured in the recombinant DNA story. It was port in depth and make certain that the sci- when Paul Berg was first considering his entific statements in it are well supported and Audiences for Academy Reports recombinant DNA experiments. that all points of view are presented. Finally, for whom are NRC and NAS reports At the dinner party was another friend, The social construction of scientific written? Are they written for the sponsors? Leon Kass, who was very interested in issues knowledge, at least in its strong program, Are they written for the members of the of bioethics and appropriate behavior for holds that everyone has interests. Implicit in Academies or for scientists in general? scientists. An interesting conversation took that statement is that everyone will act on Sometimes they are at quite a high tech- place around the dinner table, only part of their worst or lowest interest, which is not nical level, so it would take some degree which I heard because I was also cooking true. In my experience on NRC committees, of expertise to read them and understand and serving the dinner. From that con- peopletryashardastheycantosetaside everything. versation and from other information that their biases and listen to other people, to Are they written for the journalists so came to Paul from colleagues in various achieve an appropriate consensus, or at least that they can then take the next step and places, he dropped the experiments that he to define those areas where it is possible to inform the general public of what is in the had planned. achieve a consensus. reports? Or is it really for the general After I brought to the Academy the con- The statements of conflict help to eliminate public or for congressional staff? Perhaps cerns that were expressed at the Gordon hidden biases, which are the ones that are different reports should be written for Conference in the summer of 1973, the most suspect. I believe that we can count on different constituencies. Academy had already seen the letter that the integrity of committees to do their best Dieter Soll and I had written on behalf of the not to insert their biases and personal opin- attendees. That letter was drafted while we ions into a consensus report. were at the Gordon Conference and was Genetic Engineering and voted on by the members of the conference. Origins of Academy Reports the Public Interest Thenthemembersoftheconferencesepa- The reports put out by the Academy have rately voted to make the letter public. Dieter different origins. Some have sponsors such as Maxine Singer, Carnegie Institution and I were concerned because some members government agencies, industry groups, or for Science of the conference had already left, so both of othergroups.Othersarefundedbythe those votes were repeated by mail ballot be- Academy itself. According to Philippe Kourilsky, a former fore we sent the letter to Science and Nature If it was possible, the Academy should do director of the Pasteur Institute, “On the to be published. more of its own reports. This takes money, frontiers of the unknown, the analysis of Phil Abelson, who was then editor of Sci- but if the Academy had an endowment benefits and hazards are locked up in con- ence magazine, immediately called and said, sufficient to fund a dozen or so reports centric circles of ignorance. Without exper- “Do you really want to do this, because it will a year, it would allow the members of the imenting, without taking a minimum of risk, be public?” Becausewehadthevote,wetold Academy to establish what they think is how could one determine the reality?” That Phil that, yes, we really wanted to do this. Phil important rather than just responding to pretty well sums up the situation in the early said that we were going to have years of government requests. 1970s with respect to the introduction of trouble and of course, he was right. However, That may be opening a Pandora’sbox,but recombinant DNA experiments. By then, we published it to make it public. it would make the exercise of more interest to laboratory safety was a well-known concern. It Can you serve the interests of science and the members of the Academies and to the was important for chemists to avoid blowing the public at the same time? For me, the ev- other scientists whom they represent. It also things up in the face of themselves and their idence says that many people in the United would assure more participation by members colleagues. It also was important to pay at- Statesandaroundtheworldbelievethatit of the Academies, which sometimes is sparse. tention to the spread of chemicals around the must be possible. Our country has NASA, the One potential conflict of interest is the room. There were specific practices, which as NationalScienceFoundation,theNational unwritten but not always unspoken rule that a student of chemistry one learned. Institutes of Health, the Department of En- NRC committees should not directly, or at Similarly, as a student of microbiology, one ergy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric least severely, criticize existing government learned certain techniques that were designed Administration, and public agencies, funded programs. This represents a conflict on the for two reasons. One was to keep your ex- with tax money, that serve the interests of part of the NRC because it needs repeat periment clean by not infecting your experi- science. On the whole, our country and the business. It also creates a tension between ment with unwanted organisms. The other world have benefited from the investments the members of the committee, who often was to avoid infecting yourself or your that the American taxpayer has made want to criticize what has gone before, and laboratory mates. When the recombinant in science.

9348 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 with X-rays and radium, so had the power of

Radiation Hazards radiation to treat disease, especially cancer. SACKLER COLLOQUIA Postwar optimism about the medical uses of At 8:15 AM on Monday, August 6, 1945, a uranium-based nuclear weapon exploded at an altitude radioisotopes and neutron sources drew on of about 2,000 ft above the city of Hiroshima, Japan. About 65,000 civilians in the city died within decades of efforts to harness the therapeutic the first few months from burns, concussion, and radiation. Three days later, a plutonium-based promise of radioactivity, beginning with the nuclear bomb detonated above Nagasaki, Japan, killing about 40,000 people. The year after the war ended, President Truman asked the Academy to conduct “a long-range Curies. In the 1930s, cyclotrons supplied the continuing study of the biological and medical effects of the atomic bomb on man.” Angela Creager, growing demand for artificial radioisotopes, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University, described some of the especially phosphorous-32 and iodine-131, history surrounding this study and the Academy’s creation of the Committee on the Biological both of which were used clinically. Effects of Atomic Radiation. Kevin Crowley, senior board director of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the NRC, focused on the Academy’s studies of low-level radiation, both among the Reactors developed for the bomb project Japanese survivors and others exposed to radiation. John Garrick, a member of the National could produce radioactive materials on an Academy of Engineering and vice-chair of the NRC’s Committee on Lessons Learned from the industrial scale. After Americans achieved Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of US Nuclear Plants, considered the victory against the Axis Powers, many pro- risks to health posed by nuclear power accidents. Susan Lindee, the Janice and Julian Bers Professor claimed that atomic energy would next win of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed some of the many ways in which the social sciences can contribute to the understanding of the effects of radiation the war against cancer. on humans. On May 15, 1947, Representative Everett M. Dirksen argued during budget hearings that The Committee on the private official bodies, such as the International the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) should Commission on X-ray and Radium Pro- have a $25 million cancer program. Cancer “ ” Biological Effects of Atomic tection, or, in the United States, the National killed one person every three minutes, he † “ Council on Radiation Protection. These ad- asserted, which amounted to 72 Pearl Harbors Radiation ” visory bodies tended to focus exclusively on every year. It seemed especially fitting to Angela Creager, Princeton University somatic effects of radiation, which they Dirksen that the successor to the Manhattan sought to control through what was called Project should take on the cancer problem. As “ My charge today is to talk about what role a tolerance dose for visually detectable dam- he said: If we are going to spend a few hun- the National Academy of Sciences played in age. At the end of World War II, the termi- dred million dollars in the atomic energy field research and policies around radiation haz- nology was changed to “permissible dose” in to perfect an instrumentality of death, then let ards. While working on the history of ra- acknowledgment that even the “tolerance us take a little of that money to develop an ” diological risk and protection, an enigma dose” might not be certifiably harmless. instrumentality to preserve life. presented itself. Why was it not until the Nonetheless, a threshold mentality about One of the main programs that the AEC fallout debates of the 1950s that the US safety persisted—that, below a certain level, mounted to fight cancer was the production government and many scientists begin to hazards were essentially negligible. and distribution of radioisotopes. The initial take seriously the hazards of low-level radi- At the end of World War II, the US gov- plan for it was hatched byscientistswithinthe ation, even though many geneticists have ernment was surprisingly unprepared for the Manhattan Project as a way to try to “free the been warning of radiological risks for deca- devastating effects of radiation due to its atom” from military control, and it was des? After all, Hermann Muller had dem- atomic weapons in Japan. The military expec- the Manhattan Project that announced the onstrated in 1927 that X-rays could induce ted, as Norman Ramsey has said, that “any program on the pages of Science in the mutations, and this finding was rapidly ex- person with radiation damage would have summer of 1946. Over the next several years, tended to other forms of radiation. Radiation been killed with a brick first.” The distinctive a full-fledged radioisotope production and also had been correlated with the appearance and disturbing effects of atomic weaponry were chemical facility was built up at Oak Ridge of cancer, especially leukemia, from the documented by the military’sJointCommis- National Laboratory, and the supply of ac- 1920s and 1930s, most tragically in the young sion for Investigations of the Effects of the cessible and inexpensive radioisotopes trans- women who were radium dial painters. Atomic Bomb in Japan and subsequently formed fields as diverse as molecular biology, However, these two observations were bytheAtomicBombCasualtyCommission ecosystems ecology, and nuclear medicine. rarely linked. Scientists and safety officials (ABCC). The NRC oversaw the ABCC, which Popular coverage of the AEC’s program pre- usually treated “genetic” effects, principally became and remains the most important sented radioisotopes as “magic bullets” that mutations, as distinct from “somatic” effects. source about data on the long-term effects of would cure diseases, especially cancer. The elevated risk of cancer was considered radiation in humans. However, the American This was the public face of radioactivity a somatic effect of radiation, as opposed to its government did not widely disseminate this immediately after World War II. David genetic effects. Thus, somatic effects could information, and Japanese accounts were Bradley blamed this mentality for the blasé directly affect the health of the individual; censored, although some journalists did attitude about radioactive contamination these were effects on the body. Genetic effects document the peculiar suffering of Japanese following the 1946 test explosions in the were thought to affect only one’s offspring. survivors in the American press. Pacific. As he wrote in No Place to Hide: This separation had a long history. In the “We were surprised at first to find so little 1920s, radiation safety guidelines were set by The Positive Side of Radiation interest in the Bikini tests. But we really However, it was not only a question of the had no right to be. Atomic energy was an suppression of information. Atomic energy uncomfortable subject. Things like John † This paper includes material from my book Life Atomic: A History had already developed a different, more pos- Hersey’s Hiroshima were rough. How much of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (© 2013 by the Uni- versity of Chicago Press). This material is reprinted here with itive, image. Although the dangers of radiation more pleasant to consider the coming permission. had been documented since the earliest days miracles of healing, the prolongation of

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9349 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 life, the days of sunny leisure which people based on the spontaneous mutation rate in shot ended up falling on a Japanese fishing were everywhere promising.” Drosophila and calculated that exposures boat, the unfortunately named Lucky Dragon. within the permissible dose could alter the Nearly two dozen fishermen suffered injuries A Growing Sense of Danger incidence of mutations significantly, although from the radiation exposure, and one even- Some did voice concern about the dangerous perhaps not detectibly, because most muta- tually died. This was widely covered in the effects of radiation. For example, in 1947, Paul tions are recessive. press, both in the United States and in Japan. Henshaw, who was an officer in the occupation The military safety guideline at this point However, the American government made forces in Japan and a biophysicist who went was set according to a doubling dose on the no concessions to critics that these fishermen on to work for the AEC, wrote a popular assumption that exposures up to that, causing were suffering from radiation. Lewis Strauss, article entitled “Atomic Energy: Cancer Cure double the spontaneous rate, should be con- the Chair of the AEC, publically denied that or Cancer Cause?” Strikingly, however, his sidered normal and safe. Evans’ numbers gave fallout could be harmful to humans, animals, main concern about cancer was that the burns a doubling dose of 300 roentgens, whereas or crops. on Japanese survivors might turn malignant. Wright’s revised number lowered it a hun- Challenges followed. Geneticist Alfred This was based on an inflammation view of the dredfold to three roentgens. At this level, Sturtevant rebutted Strauss’sdenialoffallout cause of cancer, together with a related concern personnel working near the permissible ex- risk in a Presidential Address for the Pacific that cell damage resulting from high-energy posure limits might accumulate that dose Division of the American Association for the radiation could cause cancer. However, in within a few months. Advancement of Science, and his address his view, low-energy radiation was entirely The AEC’s own intramural research rein- subsequently appeared in Science magazine. off the hook. As the article concluded “We forced Muller’sandWright’s concerns. Wil- In recounting the hazards of radiation ex- know now that exposures less than one liam and Liane Russell’s “mega-mouse” study posure, Sturtevant connected mutagenicity roentgen a day are safe.” at Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggested with so-called somatic effects. As he said, Many geneticists dissented from this sunny that the mammalian spontaneous mutation “There is reason to suppose that gene view of the risks of low-level radiation ex- rate might be an order of magnitude lower mutations induced in an exposed individual, posure, and eventually they were heard. than that for Drosophila,thenumberthat also constitute a hazard to that individual— However, physicians and health physicists Sewell Wright had used for the doubling especially in an increase in the possibility tended to hold the key government positions dose. That would make the exposure level 0.3 of malignant growths, perhaps years after and articulate its policy, which rested on the roentgens for the doubling dose, well within exposure.” In comparison with the kind of assumption that there was a safety threshold the permissible dose set by the AEC for radiation injuries taken into account in set- for radiation exposure. atomic plant workers. ting a permissible dose for exposure, there The genetic effects of radiation were Evidence from two other sources cast was no lower limit to the amount of radiation addressed in 1949 by Robley Evans, a physi- further doubt on the AEC’sassumptionthat that might induce mutations and, in Sturte- cist known for his studies of radium dial low-level radiation did not cause somatic vant’swords,“no clearly safe dosage.” painters. In an article published in Science, damage. First, by 1952, the ABCC’s survey In linking genetic effects to cancer, Stur- Evans gave a relatively reassuring picture of of leukemia incidence among survivors in tevant picked up on a suggestion that had the genetic effects of radiation. He asserted Hiroshima and Nagasaki documented a higher beenmadealongtheselinesbyMullerin that exposure at or under the government’s rate of leukemia among those individuals, 1948 that radiation-induced mutations in permissible level would not significantly in- and distance from the blast correlated with somatic cells might be responsible for ma- crease the mutation rate beyond the sponta- leukemia incidence. Even those more than lignancies. This idea not only subverted the neous level. Hermann Muller, whose public 2,000 mi away (who had never shown any signs strong distinction between somatic and ge- statements on this were clearly being rebutted of radiation sickness) exhibited higher rates of netic effects but also raised new concern by Evans’ article, sent a long letter of criticism leukemia than expected. Second, H. C. March about the carcinogenic potential of fallout to Evans, or as Evans put it: “Afewpointsof investigated leukemia rates among physicians products such as strontium-90 and iodine- scientific interest, and many matters re- over a 20-year period and found a ninefold 131. If there was no threshold for genetic garding personalities and prejudices.” higher incidence of leukemia among radiol- damage, then even low doses of ionizing ra- Evans, it has to be said, had a sense of ogists than in the group as a whole. diation might induce cancer. humor about Muller. I found a mimeograph of a Science Service press release about this Increased Testing Formation of the Committee on the 1949 article in the Evans papers, and it says After 1950, the pace of atomic weapons Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation “Queried at Bloomington, Indiana, Dr. Muller testing increased dramatically. Between The initiation of this open debate between stated that he had examined Dr. Evans’ World War II and 1950, there were only five leading scientists and the AEC made for great manuscript before its publication, and had atomic weapons tests, whereas between 1950 media coverage, and this in turn fueled public criticized some of its assumptions and its and1952,therewere26atomicweapons alarm. Responding to this mounting concern, conclusions in considerable detail.” On the tests. In addition, this is the time when hy- the National Academy of Sciences appointed press release, Evans wrote in green ink: “And drogen bombs were being develop and tested, a committee, supported by the Rockefeller that ain’tall,sister!” which released significantly more radioactive Foundation, to address the Biological Effects It was not only Muller who criticized fallout. Also, much of the testing was being of Atomic Radiation (BEAR). There were Evans’ calculations. Sewell Wright argued that shifted to the Nevada Proving Ground in the six subcommittees focused on genetics, pa- thefigurethatEvansusedforthespontaneous continental United States, exposing many thology, agriculture and food supply, meteo- − mutation rate in humans, 10 5,whichwas more civilians to fallout from test blasts. rology, oceanography and fisheries, and extrapolated from pathological conditions In March 1954, the AEC conducted a test radioactive waste disposal. The 1956 publi- such as hemophilia, was likely two orders of of a thermonuclear weapon in the Pacific cation of the first BEAR report, as it was magnitude too high. He used a lower estimate proving ground, and fallout from this Bravo called, included reports from each of these

9350 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 subcommittees. However, the media honed and (iv) radiologists. The risk of leukemia AEC officials and many of its researchers

in on the report from the genetics panel. As caused by the various kinds of exposure was resisted giving up the threshold concept or SACKLER COLLOQUIA the New York Times headlined its story, comparable, leading him to calculate a mini- accepting the somatic mutation theory. A “Scientists Term Radiation a Peril to Future mum estimate of induced leukemia as 2 × 1958 paper from Argonne National Labora- − of Man,” reporting that “a committee of 10 6 per individual per rem per year. This tory gave the results of a study in which mice outstanding scientists reported today that consilience, he suggested, could be explained were exposed to various doses of strontium-90. atomic radiation, no matter how small the by the somatic mutation hypothesis for The expected effects of life shortening and dose, harms not only the person receiving it carcinogenesis. Based on his analysis, Lewis leukemia were seen, but the mice that received but also all his descendants.” The overall re- argued that the growing concentration of the lowest dosage did not show any of these port recommended, among many other strontium-90 from fallout could be suffi- effects. The scientist Miriam Finkel argued that measures, reducing the maximum cumulative cient to raise the incidence of leukemia in a threshold for strontium-90 hazards existed, radiation exposure from 300 to 50 roentgens the United States by as much as 5–10%. one that was well below the human exposures and limiting the average exposure through There were genuine scientific uncertainties to fallout. This was challenged by Linus age 30 in the population to 10 roentgens. below this calculation, but his insistence on Pauling and others, and in response to the Both the genetics and the pathology sub- the linear dose-dependent nature of radio- debate, Argonne’s director Austin Brews committees addressed the health effects of logical hazard was very influential. went on record as asserting that the theory radiation, but they offered strikingly different A report from the United Nations Scientific of linearity remained unproven. assessments. The geneticists focused on low- Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, The genetic viewpoint eventually prevailed. level doses and emphasized that “any radia- published on August 10, 1958, predicted a rise As the 1972 BEIR report stated (by which tion is genetically undesirable.” Even small in additional deaths from leukemia worldwide time the name of the committee had shifted increases in radiation exposure would result due to radioactive fallout, just as Lewis had. to be the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radi- in deleterious mutations or “genetic defects,” The increase in radioactivity they pointed out ation), “Until recently, it has been taken for as they put it. As the report went on to say, was slight, only about 5% of the total radiation granted that genetic risks from exposure of “Each of these mutants must eventually be received from natural sources. However, the populations to ionizing radiation near back- extinguished out of the population through report supported the assumption that even ground levels were of much greater import tragedy.” The geneticists’ recommendation small increases in radiation could still lead to than were somatic risks. However, this as- was to “keep all of our expenditures of radi- measurable increases in cancer. sumption can no longer be made if the linear ation exposure as low as possible.” Strikingly, the BEAR committee on path- non-threshold relationships are accepted as As John Beatty has shown, it was not easy for ological effects issued a commentary on the a basis for estimating cancer risks.” The so- the geneticists to reach consensus. Two of the UN’s report. The panel specifically attacked matic mutation theory went on to become, as geneticists on the panel—I suspect it was Muller the somatic mutation theory, writing that one book on cancer biology puts it, the and Wright—werenotevenonspeakingterms, “while somatic mutations may be included “prevalent theory of carcinogenesis.” whichiswhyWarrenWeaverwasbroughtin among these effects, it seems doubtful that to chair the panel. He was not a geneticist; he a strict linearity analogous to that seen in the The BEAR Committee in Retrospect was an officer at the Rockefeller Foundation genetic effects of radiation is as likely to hold The National Academy of Science’sBEAR with a background in statistics and mathe- in the case of these conditions.” committee played a crucial role in this shift, matical physics, but he worked hard to get the Part of the disparity between how geneti- both as a discussion forum for practitioners of geneticists to arrive at consensus. cists and the individuals on the pathology the relevant science and as a source of in- The report from the pathology committee committee viewed low-dose radiation reflec- formation to both the US government and to addressed a number of serious health prob- ted disciplinary orientation. It is perhaps not theAmericanpublicabouttheconsequences lems associated with radiation exposure, but surprising that physicians or health physicists of that knowledge. One might see this history it was much more reassuring on the issue of resisted seeing the complexities of radiation- as a story of triumphalism, of marginalized low-level radiation. It claimed that radiation induced cancer reduced to mutations, and geneticists seizing the political opportunity under certain levels could be “harmless to there are problems with the somatic muta- provided by the BEAR report to get out their individuals.” In discussing the “late” effects of tion theory, especially for diploid organisms. perspective on radiation hazard. This is no radiation, namely leukemia, among Japanese However, the two panels were also different doubt true, but the perspective that they had atom bomb survivors and also radiologists, inthenatureandtheextensivenessoftheir on mutational damage was far from complete. they insisted that these individuals had re- relationships to the AEC, with the patho- The discovery of DNA repair in the 1960s ceived either a nearly fatal single dose of ra- logical effects panel populated largely by showed that mutations were not necessarily diation or, for those exposed occupationally, current and former Manhattan Project and irreversible, and the assumption that radiation “higher than acceptable permissible dose AEC employees. damage is linearly dose dependent at very low rates.” The implication was that exposure Warren Weaver, who headed the ge- exposures remains controversial. below the permissible dose rates would not netics panel through the publication of the Members of the successor to BEAR, the Bi- result in any of these long-term effects, such 1956 report, noted that there was a conflict ological Effects on Ionizing Radiation com- as leukemia or shortening of life. of interest behind the deliberations. As he mittee, were famously unable to reach con- A 1957 paper by Edward Lewis bolstered wrote confidentially to Detlev Bronk in sensus about the hazards of low-dose radiation the geneticists’ case. He compared studies of aletterIsawintheNASarchives:“In- exposure in the report that they issued in 1980. leukemia incidence in four exposed pop- cidentally, and quite confidentially, do you Moreover, the shift in the 1970s to analyzing ulations: (i) Japanese atom bomb survivors, feel entirely comfortable about the degree radiation hazards in terms of cost-benefit (ii) patients irradiated for a condition called of commitment and (perhaps unconscious) analysis further complicated efforts to assess ankylosing spondylitis, (iii)childrenwhowere loyalty to the AEC that exists in the pa- what risks were acceptable by rendering a po- irradiated as infants for thymic enlargement, thology group? I do not.” litical issue in largely economic terms, which is

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9351 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 apparent in the correspondence behind radiation on the offspring of survivors. It agencies to set radiation protection standards funding the BEIR reports in the 1970s. consists of about 77,000 subjects. for workers and the general public. The scientific committees appointed by the The ABCC/RERF studies are often referred For a single 100-mSv exposure delivered at National Academy of Sciences to address to as the gold standard for radiation epide- a low dose rate, the BIER VII estimates that these problems also were not free of entan- miology studies, because of their large size, risks of developing cancer over a lifetime glement with affected government agencies, decades-long duration, inclusion of both sexes would increase by about 1%. However, there nor could they resolve the most important and all ages, wide range of individual radiation are sex differences in the risk, and there are controversies. However, they did bring these exposures, and careful design and execution. large uncertainties in the estimates. Also, controversies to public attention, which itself these estimates are for cancer incidence, with is an important legacy of the Academy for Radiation Effects Among Survivors the risk for cancer mortality about one half of 20th-century American science and politics. Japanese atomic bombing survivors received these values. a wide range of doses from the atomic bombs The 1960 Radiation Protection Guidelines, because of their locations and shielding con- which were developed based on BIER report ditions. For the Life Span Study, most of the findings, established a 5-mSv annual limit for Understanding Radiation survivors in the cohort were located between 1 individual exposures, exclusive of natural Risks in Humans and 3 km from the bomb hypocenter. Rela- background. Allowable limits have been re- tively few people within a 1-km radius of the duced since 1960 because of the information Kevin Crowley, National Research Council bomb survived the blast and radiation. provided by ABCC/RERF and the NAS. As The Life Span Study cohort shows a clear an example, the annual limit for individual Much of the scientific research on radiation increase in mortality from cancer in the dec- exposures from nuclear fuel cycle facilities, effects in humans is being driven by two ades following the bombings. Excess deaths which include nuclear power, is now about questions: what are the effects of ionizing ra- from leukemia peaked about 5 years after the 0.25 mSv. This is a 20-fold reduction com- diationonhumanhealthandwhatarethe bombings. Excess deaths from solid cancers pared with in the 1960 radiation protection biological bases for these effects? These ques- started rising about 10 years after the bomb- guideline limit. tions have important implications for human ings, and they are still rising and likely will Much remains to be learned about radia- well-being and governmental policies for peak in the next decade. tion risks in humans. The shape of the dose– protecting people from the potential harms Excess deaths from noncancer disease, response curve below 100 mSv continues to arising from radiation exposure. primarily cardiovascular disease and stroke, be an important scientific and policy ques- These questions are especially pertinent for are also occurring in this cohort. The peak in tion because worker and public exposures exposures to ionizing radiation at doses that cardiovascular disease is anticipated to occur occur at low doses. The BEIR I committee people typically encounter in their lives. sometime after the peak in solid cancers. To used the linear no threshold hypothesis These exposures are sometimes referred to as date, the F1 cohort, which are the children of (LNT)—that is, a linear relationship between “low-dose exposures,” generally understood survivors, shows no evidence of increased radiation exposure and risk that extends to to mean radiation doses lower than about genetic risks from radiation exposures. zero exposure and zero risk—for pragmatic 100 mSv. Exposure to ionizing radiation increases reasons and not because it was indicated by Data on radiation effects in humans were the risk for most types of solid cancers. The available scientific evidence. The BEIR VII just beginning to emerge at the time the magnitude of the risk varies by cancer type. report (the most recent BEIR study) noted BEAR reports were issued. The most impor- Cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, that statistical limitations make it difficult to tant data on radiation effects in humans are liver, gall bladder, lung, breast, ovary, and evaluate the shape of the dose–response from studies of survivors of the 1945 atomic bladder all have statistically higher risks. curve at low doses. Nevertheless, the report bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These Cancer risks also are age dependent. Younger concluded based on a review of biology data studieswerebegunbytheAtomicBomb persons are more sensitive to radiation cancer that LNT applied at these low doses. Casualty Commission in 1947, and they induction than older persons, and their risks are being continued today by the Radiation persist for a lifetime. Females also have a higher Effects Research Foundation (RERF). The risk than males for some types of cancer, par- Academy established ABCC at the request of ticularly thyroid cancer, lung cancer, and of Risks of Nuclear Power the US government, and it has a longstanding course uterine and breast cancer. Systems cooperative agreement with the US Depart- ment of Energy to provide scientific support to The BEIR Studies B. John Garrick, NRC Committee for RERF, primarily by using US scientists to ABCC/RERF is the most important source of Improving Safety and Security of work at the foundation. data for radiation health studies carried out US Nuclear Plants ABCC/RERF has been carrying out long- by the Academy. These studies, which are term studies on three survivor cohorts. The requested and funded by the US Environ- Very large inventories of radioactive material Life Span Study is designed to investigate long- mental Protection Agency, are referred to as pose both safety and environmental risks, term effects of radiation on causes of death the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation with nuclear power plants being the primary and incidence of cancer. This cohort includes (BEIR) studies. example. The focus of nuclear plant risk about 120,000 residents from Hiroshima and Seven BEIR studies have been carried out studies is on the likelihood of high-conse- Nagasaki. The In Utero Exposed cohort was to date, with the most recent published in quence events, such as severe accidents that designed to investigate the effects of radiation 2006. A key objective of these studies is to might occur from within the facility, or a se- on fetal development and long-term health. It develop quantitative estimates of risk for ex- vere natural, external event such as the great consists of about 3,600 subjects. The F1 cohort posure to low levels of ionizing radiation. eastern Japan earthquake that occurred on was designed to investigate genetic effects of These risk estimates are used by federal March 11, 2011. In turn, the credibility of

9352 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 quantitative risk assessment depends pri- confinement capability of the radioactive ma- psychological or social effects of the bombings.

marily on two factors: the ability to identify terial during the progression of the accident, The research groups in Hiroshima and Naga- SACKLER COLLOQUIA events that lead to radiation exposure threats even in the presence of degraded contain- saki did not document the consequences for and the ability to represent the health and ments, than was incorporated in earlier risk society of so much death and destruction. Not safety effects resulting from an exposure, to- assessments. Of course, the next accident could until Robert Jay Lifton in the 1960s began to gether with their likelihood of occurrence. be a different story, and we have to account for interview the survivors was there even an effort More than 30 years ago, I led a full-scope that in our probabilities. However, for the four on the part of any American scientists to try to risk assessment that calculated such measures light water nuclear power plants that have understand the psychosocial dimensions of the of risk as early fatalities, injuries, thyroid can- melted their cores—Three Mile Island and the bombings. However, one of the key justifica- cers, latent cancer fatalities, whole body dose, three in Japan—therehavenotbeenacutera- tions for studying the survivors at Hiroshima and property damage and evacuation cost. diological consequences, which to the nuclear and Nagasaki was to provide insights to Such plant-specific full-scope assessments have facility risk professional is a major and positive American planners for civil defense. The ABCC not been performed since the 1980s. To be surprise. To be sure, we have yet to determine was at least partly intended to help American sure, there have been risk assessments, but they what the latent effects might be. populations be prepared for a future nuclear have been limited in scope. war. It is important to recognize that nuclear An important question is how the current Probabilistic Risk Analysis theorists in the 1950s generally expected state of knowledge should affect attempts at My judgment is that had we known then what nuclear war to happen. Anger at the Soviet quantifying the risk of complex nuclear sys- we know now: the uncertainty spread would enemy, and fear of a Soviet attack, shaped tems. The rules of engagement of probabilistic be somewhat less than shown in earlier risk decisions about studies of the biological effects risk assessments favor integrating or fusing the assessments. However, I suspect that the cen- – of radiation. Because genetic effects were so various dose response hypotheses probabilis- tral tendency parameters would not change important in these debates, the work of the tically, based on their credibility, to evolve an much because of offsetting effects. A probabi- National Academy of Sciences played a major evidence-based model. That way, the evidence listic framework can be an effective approach role not only in studies of the general biological supporting linear and nonlinear threshold for providing resolution between what is effects of radiation but in the development of and nonthreshold hypotheses is represented known and not known, and the various states the science of human genetics. The atomic in the dose–response model based on scientific of knowledge in between. Quantifying the un- bomb led to significant government support principles. Included in this fusion process certainties probabilistically greatly facilitates the for human genetics research and it justified would be such dose–response hypotheses as calibration of states of knowledge of funda- major field studies with isolated populations in LNT, threshold models, and hormesis models. mental processes, such as the biological effects the 1950s and 1960s. Such “primitive” groups Such an approach would seem appropriate, of low-level radiation. It allows for a systematic were seen as unexposed to radiation and especially given that the BEIR report notes process to integrate and fuse all of the hypoth- therefore a source of data on what the “normal” that there are still significant uncertainties eses considered into a representative model mutation rate was in human populations. about the mechanisms that lead to adverse without having to choose one over the other. Most prominent geneticists and environ- health effects following exposure to ionizing Thetotalityoftheevidenceshouldde- mental scientists in this period were sup- radiation, especially with respect to low levels termine the dose–response model. The BEIR ported by the Atomic Energy Commission. of radiation. Basing risk assessments on just studies have been enormously beneficial in However, the notion that AEC funding one of several hypotheses is not in keeping providing reference material on the state of the somehow produced a particular scientific with the spirit of quantifying the risk. relationship between exposure to ionizing ra- conclusion about radiation risk is not accu- Changes in modeling might lead to higher diation and human health. However, in my rate.H.J.Mullerreceivedsignificantfunding estimates of risk than estimated in the past. opinion, the information would be much more forabouta15-yearperiodfromtheAEC, One is the consideration of noncancer health valuable had the BEIR committee adopted a even as the AEC was attacking him publi- impacts, such as radiation-induced chromo- probabilistic framework to process their find- cally. Similarly, most of James V. Neel’sre- somal aberrations that could lead to adverse ings and present it more quantitatively, with health effects. Neurological damage is another the supporting evidence that they considered. search was funded by the AEC, and Neel was health effect that has a very different biology The goal of the risk sciences should not be clearly engaged in a very serious effort to ac- than cancer. Another frequently mentioned just to bound the results of risk analyses or curately assess the genetic effects of radiation. health effect that is not generally modeled and even to seek conservative results. The goal of He personally had a strict sense of a firewall probably should be is the psychological con- the risk scientist should be to present the between his results and the expectations of the sequences of being exposed to low doses of truth about the results, which means quan- leadership at the AEC. radiation, a factor that could be important in tifying the uncertainties and making trans- formulating nuclear plant evacuation strate- parent the supporting evidence and our Radiation and Genetics gies. In fact, stress-related phenomena in the confidence in the results. In a sense, then, human genomics arises out aftermath at Fukushima, some due to ex- of the question of the genetic effects of radi- tended evacuation and relocation, may have ation. The first IBM conference on mapping resulted in a significant number of deaths. genes was in 1959, and Victor McKusick was On the other hand, changes in our state of Radiation Risks and the suggesting mapping the human genome in knowledge could lead to lower estimates of Social Sciences the 1960s. nuclear facility risk. Probably the biggest im- Radiation studies perfectly exemplify pact on reducing estimates of nuclear power Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania a concept developed by Ulrich Beck. He plant risk has very little to do with the health proposed that risk and uncertainty have be- effects model. The evidence from the accidents The studies of the Atomic Bomb Casualty come the fundamental organizing principles that have occurred to date indicates far more Commission never included attention to in society and that scientific tools are

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9353 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 commonly now used to study risks created ces, lumpy consequences, uncertainty, risks at future war—reflected the anger and fear by scientific discovery. multiple levels, and data that do not speak in (however legitimate) that they experienced. Thus, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy a crystal clear way. These uncertainties have Emotion is present on all sides of this debate; create risks that can be assessed using a dif- been significant in terms of radiation risk. there is no way out of it. ferent suite of sciences and a different kind of When Neel, Muller, and their peers were Neutrality and disinterestedness remain technical knowledge. Scientists are asked to struggling to understand these risks, it was important and appealing in the scientific conduct a very strict and interesting cost– common for those who worried about radi- community. However, today scientists also benefit calculus of technology and risk, and ation to be called emotional. John Gofman face similar complexities in which perspectives many different kinds of scientific expertise was called an “opera star” by one of the AEC on all sides are animated by emotions. are involved. The distribution of these risks is commissioners. Muller was commonly called Perhaps a new vocabulary is needed re- lumpy, of course, with some people at high hysterical or overly emotional. Being overly garding emotion and neutrality. Thinking risk and some people not at risk. concerned about radiation risk seems to have about these questions of science and public The Academy’s contribution to science and been somehow irrational, or even feminine. policy can help us think about how the his- public policy is not so much about victories or However, in retrospect, the hardcore cold tory and future of the National Academy of failures. It is about respect for a process that is warriors were also emotional. The numbers of Sciences, which to a remarkable degree has carried out with integrity. It is a messy process bombs produced in the course of cold war— been in the middle of the messiest aspects that involves multiple voices, conflicting voi- farmorethanwereneededinanyimaginable of 20th century science.

were being produced, and the administra- Biodemography and Vital Statistics tive structures existed to collect, codify, and standardize data. Although the Academy focused largely on the physical sciences for most of its first 50 years, During the 19th century, the science of following both World Wars, its mandate broadened into the life and social sciences. By 1976, statistics grew inside the government and was the eight divisions of the NRC included three grounded firmly in the social sciences: the professionalized. The American Statistical Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the Commission on Sociotechnical Systems, and the Association was founded in 1839, a gen- Commission on Human Resources. eration before the Academy, with a foot Biodemography and vital statistics have been important components of this increasing involvement with the social sciences. At the colloquium, Margo Anderson, Distinguished Professor at in both the mathematical and the social the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, described the Federal Statistical System and the creation of sciences. By the time the NRC was estab- the Committee on National Statistics within the NRC. Robert Hauser, executive director of the NRC’s lished in 1916, the Census Bureau was a Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, delivered a talk on the Committee on permanent agency in the Commerce De- Population, which initiated a traditional of groundbreaking work on demography at the Academy. Michael Hout, professor of sociology at New York University, touched on the Committee on National partment, collecting not only the pop- Statistics’ influences on social science research. Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs ulation census but censuses of agriculture, at Columbia University, explored the extent to which the social sciences can be demonstrated to manufacturing, government operations, re- have influenced public policy. ligious organizations, and finance. The Federal Statistical American Constitution. This system has A History of Discovery and Innovation two legs. One is based on survey data, with One of the great discoveries of the Federal System the foundational instrument being the Statistical System was just how fast the Margo Anderson, University of census. Article I, Section 2 of the Consti- American population was growing com- tution required that “Representatives and pared with its comparator states in Britain Wisconsin–Milwaukee direct taxes shall be apportioned among and France. Rapid population growth also put a strain on the tabulation of the census The Federal Statistical System consists of the the several states which may be included in this Union, according to their respective results. By 1880, when the American pop- federal government agencies that produce numbers.” The nation has had 23 de- ulation topped 50 million, the tabulation official statistics. There are 98 federal agencies cennial censuses since 1790, and the US wasstilldonebyhandbylegionsofclerks. that produce statistics, with about 40% of the Census Bureau has grown into the nation’s In 1890, the Census Office introduced ma- expenditures in 13 lead agencies. They by and premier survey research organization. chine tabulation. The handwritten answers large create and codify the major classifica- The second leg of the statistical system on the census questionnaire were converted tion systems of the social sciences. They set derives from administrative data systems. to punch cards, and then the punch cards data stewardship and confidentiality stand- These are based on slightly different provi- were counted. The company that built this ards for the social sciences. They also archive, sions of the constitution, particularly the re- technology, Hollerith’s, turned into IBM, preserve, and distribute statistics free to the quirement that expenditures and accounts of and the Census Bureau and Federal Statis- public. The infrastructure of the social sci- public money shall be published (Article 1, tical System became innovators in machine ences in fields such as demography, political Section 9) and that the President is required processing. science, consumer behavior, labor force dy- from time to time to present the state of the On the administrative statistics side, the namics, income and wealth, education, and union to Congress (Article 2, Section 3). Treasury Department’s reports of tax rev- crime and justice depends on data produced Those provisions meant that very early in enues and expenditures became the basis in the Federal Statistical System. the development of the American state, ad- for more elaborate time series reports on the The United States has a decentralized ministrative statistics were both compiled and American economy. In 1878, the Treasury statistical system that is embedded in the published. By 1810, statistical compilations Department introduced The Statistical

9354 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 Abstract of the United States and began to significant privacy concerns. The proposal Aging, CPOP has increasingly and pro-

compiledataannuallytoprovidetherecord was quietly withdrawn. However, Congress ductively focused on issues related to the SACKLER COLLOQUIA of all sorts of domains of American life. Data and the President did agree to create the causes and the consequences of population on population, finance, commerce, agriculture, President’s Commission on Federal Statistics aging. This work began with the seminal exports, mining, railroads, telegraphs, im- of Wallis Commission, which recommended edited volume The Demography of Aging, migration, education, and public lands were theestablishmentoftheCommitteeonNa- which was published in 1995. Since then, all published and developed into time series tional Statistics (CNSTAT) in the National CPOP has produced a mix of consensus collections thereafter. Academy of Sciences. At the same time, reports, edited volumes, and workshop The leaders of the Federal Statistical System Phillip Handler was becoming the Academy’s reports, now numbering almost three dozen. became major leaders in American science new president, and one of his initiatives was as well. For example, Academy member to increase the presence of the social sci- The Science of Population Aging Francis Amasa Walker was census director ences in the Academy. Since its founding, Four themes of the series have had enormous in the 1870s and 1880s, president of MIT, CNSTAT has produced 242 reports, 181 of influence on the science of population aging. president of the American Statistical As- them in the last 20 years. If one looks at First, CPOP’s work has led to increasing in- sociation, and the founding president of some of the major technical innovations terdisciplinary studies of population aging the American Economic Association. The in the federal statistical system in the last and, in particular, to the integration of bio- member biographies of the Academy in generation, it is hard not to see the stamp medical, genomic, economic, social, and the 19th century include many people who of CNSTAT reports on the work. psychological research. The first contribution crossed disciplinary lines in this more The federal statistical system remains to this theme was an edited volume called amorphous period in science. decentralized, but the creation of CNSTAT From Zeus to Solomon published in 1997, has provided the venue for the leadership of which dealt with such diverse topics as Efforts at Centralization statistical sciences to work with and support the role of the elderly in other species and By the early 20th century, the US govern- the further development of the scientific in- among human societies past and present, ment produced a wide variety of high-quality novation and offer policy guidance. the contribution of evolutionary theory to statistics, both from the census and periodic our understanding of humans, and the po- surveys and from administrative statistics. tential for collecting genetic material in Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to household surveys. This work and its sequels Franklin Roosevelt proposed administrative The Committee on are now complemented by current study of streamlining and consolidation of the activi- Population new developments in biodemography. ties of the myriad agencies that produced of- Second, CPOP’s contributions have pro- ficial statistics. These efforts failed as Congress Robert Hauser, National Research Council vided a series of motivating, illustrative, and or supporters of particular agencies resisted instructive reports on the inclusion of bi- administrative reform. Franklin Roosevelt IntheearlyyearsoftheCommitteeonPop- ological measures in social surveys. The lead finally achieved a modicum of central co- ulation (CPOP), much of its activity focused contribution was a volume called Cells and ordination in the early 1940s with the on population growth, especially on fertility Surveys: Should Biological Measures Be In- creation of the position of Chief Statisti- control and the relationships between pop- cluded in Social Science Research? published cian in the Bureau of the Budget, Executive ulation growth and economic development. in 2001, and most recently, Conducting Bio- Office of the President. Individual statistical However, despite the continuation of rapid social Surveys: Collecting, Storing, Accessing, agencies would not be brought under the population growth in some parts of the world, and Protecting Biospecimens and Biodata, authority of the Chief Statistician, but as head and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, there published in 2010. of the Office of Statistical Standards, he had was a sharp decline in demand for NRC work Third, with leadership from the National the authority to approve all data collection in this area. Some of the factors in this decline Institute on Aging, CPOP has contributed to forms within the federal government. That were the success of family planning programs the development of an international cohort of power provided the capacity to eliminate in some parts of the world, a replacement of longitudinal biosocial surveys of aging and duplication, standardize procedures and clas- concerns about population growth and family health. More than two dozen such surveys sification systems across agencies, and en- planning per se with those of women’sem- around the world are located mainly in and courage technical innovations in data powerment and economic growth, and around Europe as well as the United States. In collections. In the 1950s and 1960s, statistical changes in the research agenda of the Agency the recent past, CPOP has conducted work- agencies introduced computer processing and for International Development (AID) and the shops and produced reports that encouraged management of statistical data, starting with major foundations that once supported re- the development of such surveys in Asia, and the Census Bureau’suseoftheUniversal search on population growth and policy. a project now under way at DBASSE will Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) for the For example, despite projections of con- undertake a similar effort, focusing on aging 1950 census. At the time, the individual tinued growth in the world’spopulationto in Latin America. agencies each built their own systems. 10 billion, and of increasingly deleterious Fourth, CPOP has addressed the factors in Further efforts at centralization were pro- effects of global climate change, the Division US longevity and mortality. Here the two key posed in the 1960s, when the potential for of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Edu- reports are Explaining Divergent Levels of saving money and fostering research by con- cation has been unable to win support for Longevity in High-Income Countries in 2011, solidating the myriad computer databases any large-scale study of sustainability and and in 2013, US Health in International attracted the interest of the Budget Bureau economic conditions in the context of these Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. and academic social scientists. Congress, projections. Instead, with guidance from At ages above 50, not only does life ex- however, did not see the value of building Richard Suzman, director of behavioral and pectancy in the United States lag behind such a “national data center” and raised social research at the National Institute on that in many other developed nations, but

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9355 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 thegrowthinlifeexpectancyfallsshortin The IPUMS website now has 238 samples Failures to Understand the international comparisons. Moreover, at from 74 countries in anonymized micro- all but the oldest stages, in almost every sample form. Other organizations have Use of Science in Public population group, the United States lags compiled other kinds of social science Policy far behind many other nations, both in data from across the world and have har- morbidity and in mortality. monized them in ways that make it possible Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia University Social, behavioral, and environmental fac- to use a multicountry dataset as if it was tors dominate strictly biological conditions in one study done in all of the countries Since its modern origins in the late 19th accounting for observed lags in morbidity and simultaneously. century, American scientific inquiry about mortality. Nor is the US system of medical An important aspect of this work has been human behavior and social structures has care as important as social, behavioral, and the linkages created between some of these also included research focuses on nation- environmental factors in accounting for the data files and administrative records, so that building tasks: strengthening democracy, observed lags in morbidity and mortality. The data from individuals about work can be promoting economic growth, securing two major consensus studies in this area, linked to data about their employers or about national security, and improving social both conducted via comparisons between the their state welfare system. These kinds of welfare. These two social science projects, the first deepening scientific understanding United States and other nations, have thor- data linkages can lead to disclosure of who and the second contributing to informed oughly debunked the widespread belief that the person is, and so they are not publically policy choices, have continuously fed on the United States is a world leader both in available and have to be accessed at a Census each other. health and in longevity. Bureau data center. This protects the privacy This was evident as early as studies of what of individuals while giving social scientists were labeled the “social problems” in the access to all sorts of these data. 1880s: labor relations, immigration, urbani- The Committee on National Statistics has The Committee on National zation,crime,andsoon.Thelinkbetween been crucial in providing advice on issues knowledge and policy was sharpened by an Statistics such as disclosure analysis, in which the data active partnership with government agencies Michael Hout, New York University aretestedtomakesurethatindividuals in the first World War, again in the de- cannot be identified. By speaking up on be- pression years, and, more extensively, during Until the 1960s, the Census Bureau and other half of the user community, the committee the Second World War. The tight links be- federal statistical agencies gathered data and has helped gain access to more and more of tween science and national goals was taken to produced statistical abstracts and census these important data. new levels with the arrival of Big Science at reports. However, details about individuals midcentury. For the social sciences, this led to Major Advances were not available because of privacy concerns. a policy enterprise designed to deliver the The release of these microsamples has pro- Beginning in the 1960s, the Census Bureau results of a steadily stronger science to policy- duced a revolution in understanding of who and other federal agencies figured out ways to makers. The policy enterprise included re- release to the research community what are works in the United States. The labor force search universities of course, but also spe- called microsamples: anonymized datasets participation of women and the withdrawal cialized institutes, think tanks, foundations, with all of the information about individuals from the labor force of older Americans rep- contract houses, consultants, and public except their name and with enough geo- resent tremendous societal changes, and the policy schools that trained the person- graphical details stripped out so that where data have helped reveal the processes involved nel for this enterprise. A specialized vo- they are cannot be imputed. These anony- in the decisions that members of households cabulary emerged: evaluation research, mized data files have revolutionized the make about going to work or staying home social experiments, evidence-based pol- population sciences, including demography, given such factors as pensions and access to icy, social indicators, performance met- ’ sociology, and labor economics. By the 1970 other people s income. Access to the census rics, and so on. census, for example, 1 in 100 samples from microsamples have also made it possible to A1978NRCreport,Knowledge and Policy: long form respondents were available with calculate correlations between attributes of The Uncertain Connection, assessed this en- different information stripped out for use in individuals within households, and labor force terprise. It identified a number of steps taken different contexts. At that time, a 1 in 100 participation, producing tremendous progress by the government to connect scientific sample from the 1960 census also was in the sociology of the family. knowledge and policy. However, the report released with data from an earlier census Almost everything known about income was unable to document how well the con- released subsequently. inequality in the United States also comes nections were working; hence, the uncertain These datasets were hard to compare until from these data sources. Some is reported by in its title. It concluded “We lack systematic an institution called IPUMS.org was estab- the census, but the details are based on de- evidence as to whether these steps are having lished at the University of Minnesota to in- tailed analysis of microsamples by sociolo- the results their sponsors hope for.” tegrate the datasets. The Integrated Public Use gists, demographers, and labor economists. This was 1978, following a decade of social Microdata Series (IPUMS) collection now Finally, the 1973 study of David Featherman experiments, large government-funded stud- includes all of the censuses from 1790 to and Robert Hauser on social mobility was ies, and impressive advances in social science 2010. Most of the Current Population Surveys based on a supplement to the March Cur- method and theory. Social scientists had, it (the monthly unemployment surveys) have rent Population Survey of 1973. That study was claimed, helped design great society been machine coded and anonymized and are extended a 1962 study and set the tone for policies. Other social scientists had docu- available through the IPUMS.org website. the other releases of microsample data. To mented unintended consequences and per- These ideas quickly began to spread, so that this day, it remains a landmark study of verse incentives associated with these policies, other countries began releasing microsamples. social mobility in the United States. and, it was claimed, helped dismantle them.

9356 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 However, a careful Academy assessment of of use” or even much in the way of the- tracted. The social sciences have the tools to

the formulation of evidence-based policy oretical statements taking into account that look systematically at these social settings SACKLER COLLOQUIA concluded, regrettably and ironically, that the use of science is undoubtedly highly from the point of view of whether science is there was little research knowledge about context dependent. being used or not, and if not, why. The en- when, how, and even whether scientific find- Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy gineer can predict that the bridge will collapse ings were being used in policy-making. reached another conclusion. Too much effort unless stress analysis has been correctly Three and a half decades later, the NRC was being spent proposing typologies of use, applied; the epidemiologist can say that a was again asked to assess the place of sci- arguing the virtues of evidence-based policy, disease will spread unless basic public health entific findings in policy-making. This 2012 and debating whether there are hierarchies of principles of sanitation are followed. Each report, Using Science as Evidence in Public evidence. There was too much focus on the can say that their science should be used, Policy, found that the policy enterprise con- production side and too little attention to the but neither is trained to study whether it cerned with bringing scientific findings to consumption side. To understand the how, will be used. This is the task of social science: bear on policy had greatly expanded. (I when, and why any science is used in cognitive psychology, political science, be- chaired the panel responsible for this report public policy means getting inside of the havioral economics, and the sociology of and was its lead editor.) Nonetheless, the 2012 heads of the people who are making pol- decision-making and group dynamics. Al- report reached the same conclusion as its icy.Whateverthenatureofthescience— though social science has relevant methods 1978 predecessor. Although research results engineering, biology, mathematics, chem- and theories, it has not made “the use were certainly being used as evidence in istry, or economics—its use is necessarily of science” an object of analysis. Until it policy-making, and equally certainly were a social phenomenon. Use and nonuse does so, cries and complaints that science being ignored or misused, all we have is occurs in social settings, where the players is ignored, or boasts about its importance anecdotal testimony. What we don’thave negotiate, compromise, deceive, mislead, and impact, will rest more on anecdote is anything that could be called a “theory forget, misunderstand, and become dis- than evidence.

than three decades before the invention of Computing and Information the first electronic digital computers. During World War I, a Princeton mathematician, Of all of the areas in which the Academy has played a role in building the infrastructure for Oswald Veblen, conducted mathematical re- modern science and technology, none has been as influential as computing. From its efforts to search as a captain in the Navy Department improve ballistics to the development of the Internet, the Academy has served as a vital in- of Ordinance. As the historian David Grier termediary among government, academia, and industry in motivating research and guiding the has documented, Veblen’swork“laid the direction of the field. foundation for the NRC’s Committee on Nathan Ensmenger, associate professor of informatics and computing at Indiana University, detailed the Academy’s early involvement with computing, which grew out of the institution’spub- Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to lication of mathematical tables between the wars. Robert Kahn, president and chief executive officer Computing (MTAC),” which was arguably of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, discussed someoftheearlydaysofelectronic the first scientific organization dedicated to computing and how difficult it is to predict the future of the field. Janet Abbate, associate professor research and development in the computa- of science and technology in society at Virginia Tech, drew from computing several broad lessons for the nation’s investments in science and technology. David Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of tional sciences. Veblen commanded the di- Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, pointed to several problems that vision of experimental research at the Army’s are likely to extend the Academy’s influence in computing. new Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. This was a massive operation that would From The Aberdeen libertarian milieu of Silicon Valley, govern- ultimately occupy more than 35,000 acres ment officials, elite academics, and other along the Chesapeake Bay, at a cost of more Proving Ground to the expert authorities are seen as barriers and than $73 million. Veblen’sjobatAberdeen Internet not opportunities. wastoproduceballisticstablesforusein Historically speaking, nothing could be naval artillery. To accomplish this task, he Nathan Ensmenger, Indiana University farther from the truth. The influence of the used more than 60 mathematicians, most of Federal Government, particularly the United them young faculty members or graduate A prominent myth in the history of com- States military, is everywhere apparent in the students. This wartime experience helped puting is that innovation in the industry has history of computing. From the Electronic establish them as leaders in the mathematical been driven by commercial firms and that Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) community. As one member of the group, government and academia have played very to the Internet, the visible and invisible hand Norbert Weiner, remembered, “For many little role. Indeed, the dominant narrative in of government has dramatically shaped sci- years after the first world war, the over- many popular histories of computing is that entific, social, economic, and political devel- whelming majority of significant American the really exciting and important develop- opments in electronic digital computing. mathematicians was to be found among ments often originate with individuals, and those who had gone through the discipline of not just individuals, but a very specific kind The Committee on Mathematical Tables the proving ground.” In this way, the NRC of individual—slouchy young men with and Other Aids to Computing and NAS provided the breeding grounds for countercultural tendencies, unconventionally In its role as advisor to the US government, new kinds of practitioners, for graduate stu- educated, unruly, and undisciplined. These the National Academy of Sciences has dents, and for emerging scientists. are the anti-scientists, the anti-bureaucrats, changed the course of the history of elec- Two direct lines can be drawn from the and the anti-establishment. In the techno- tronic computing. This story begins more work of Veblen and the other mathematicians

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9357 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds to the ori- of those two machines is similar. The Har- professional association that was to serve as gins of modern electronic digital computing. vard Mark I was put to work in 1937 making the premier scientific and technical organi- The first runs through the publication of the tables. It was so famous for its production of zation of the emerging computer sciences. NRC mathematical tables and other aids to tables of Bessemer functions that its operators Archibald’s vision for this new pro- computation and the foundation of the first referred to it simply as Bessie. fessional organization was foiled by two of journal of scientific computation. The second An electronic but analog version of a dif- his committee members, Samuel Caldwell carries us directly to the University of Penn- ference engine, the so-called Differential and John Curtis, who voted that no action sylvania ENIAC. Analyzer, was invented by Vannevar Bush in should yet be taken. Somewhat suspiciously, The productive contribution to the war the late 1920s and was used to produce bal- both Curtis and Caldwell quit the committee effort made by the mathematicians in the first listic tables at Aberdeen. Bush, of course, 6 months later and went on to form the World War encouraged the NRC to take a wouldgoontobethepresidentofMIT,the Eastern Association for Computing Ma- more active role in the creation of mathe- head of the Office of Scientific Research chinery, which was soon renamed the Asso- matical texts and, more importantly, tables. and Development during the war, and one ciation for Computing Machinery (ACM). Such tables were crucial to the work of of the founders of the National Science TheACMdidbecamethepremierpro- astronomers, physicists, chemists, meteorol- Foundation. He was also the visionary in- fessional organization devoted to the com- ogists, and other scientists. The NRC estab- ventor, in the 1946 article “As We May puter sciences and remains so to this day. lished a committee to encourage the creation Think,” of the Memex machine. It was A second prominent myth about the and publication of such tables and appointed intended to solve the problem of the pro- computer revolution is that nobody saw it toitsheadA.A.Bennett,whohadworked liferation of scientific overspecialization. The coming. A widely repeated but apocryphal under Veblen at the Aberdeen Proving machine could display all available scientific anecdote about Thomas Watson, the leg- Grounds. Among Bennett’s most successful information with sharable links in the ma- endary founder and longtime chairman of appointments to the committee was the British terial that traced out intellectual connections. the IBM Corporation, holds that he pre- scientist L. J. Comrie, who had previously run The Memex was never built, but it is seen as dicted as late as 1943 a total world market the world’s largest human computation proj- the progenitor of hypertext and the World for maybe five computers. This myth be- ects and who also had direct access to an ex- Wide Web. came a cautionary parable about the dangers tensive literature on computing and technology. The table-making operations at Aberdeen of relying on scientific and governmental Bennett, however, was not an effective would provide the direct inspiration for the organizations, because growth in the com- leader, and he was replaced by one of his ENIAC project at the Moore School of puter industry is so unpredictable that it is colleagues at Brown University, the mathe- Electronics at the University of Pennsylvania. best left to individuals. Despite being untrue, matician Raymond Clare Archibald. In less One of the first electronic programmable the myth of the corporate and bureaucratic than 18 months, Archibald completely rein- digital computers was, in the eye of its “dinosaur” who failed to recognize the rev- vigorated MTAC and developed an ambi- inventors, simply an automated form of hand olutionary potential of computing is still tious program for developing not only new calculations. Thus, the work of Raymond mobilized in the popular literature. In fact, mathematical tables but also forms of Archibald and MTAC, which was foun- many scientists and other experts were aware computational machinery. ded in the wake of the first World War by of the transformative potential of computer the NRC, leads directly to the ENIAC. In fact, technology, as the Committee on High-Speed Making Tables 3 years before the ENIAC was first success- Computing Devices demonstrates. Almost all of the great moments in the early fully demonstrated, Archibald had already Although the potential of large-scale com- history of computing are associated with the established the first journal focused on puting was recognized by the 1920s, no in- work of what the computing pioneer and computational science and technology. For frastructure for making that possible existed. physicist, Howard Aiken, famously referred the 10 years that the National Academy of Even when the National Science Foundation to as “making tables.” SciencepublishedthejournalMTAC,itwas wascreated,itdidnotanticipatethatcom- For example, in his role in the British the only publication in this field. Among puting grants would be part of its mandate. government as an astronomer, Charles other things, it published in 1946 a landmark However, as early as 1953, NSF was receiving Babbage was charged with developing astro- articlebyHermanandAdeleGoldstine,“The grant proposals with computing require- nomical tables for use in the computation of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Com- ments. These came not just from the big longitude. His famous difference engine and puter,” which was the first public prescience disciplines like physics and chemis- its even more famous successor, the analyti- sentation of the capabilities and architecture try but also from the biological sciences, the cal engine, which is often referred to the first of the ENIAC. environmental sciences, and increasingly the modern computer, were designed for the In 1945, the Academy hosted the first social sciences. For example, the first NSF production of tables and, more specifically, public conference on electronic computing, grant was to John von Neumann for work to eliminate human error in the production which predates by more than 6 months the on the significance and possibility of high- of these tables. famous Moore School lectures, which are speed computing in meteorology. In the late 1930s, at Harvard University, generally considered in the literature to be the Industry started to serve some of the role Aiken, working closely with the IBM Cor- first conference. In the fall of 1946, the NRC of providing computers to universities, but it poration, built an electro-mechanical com- founded a second committee devoted to was the publication in 1966 of an NAS report puter known as the Harvard Mark I, or as computing, the Committee on High-Speed about the digital computing needs of the IBM liked to call it, the IBM Automatic Computing Devices, which included among modern university, the so-called Rosser Re- Sequence Controlled Computer. Aiken very its members central figures in the history of port, that greatly influenced the course of explicitly looked to Babbage both for an in- computing. Among its many goals, the investment in computing. The Rosser Report tellectual authority and lineage but also for Committee on High-Speed Computing noted that the national investment in com- specific techniques. In many ways the design Devices was charged with creating a new puting grew from $700 million in 1958 to $7

9358 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 billion in 1964. It called for massive growth in were deep into logic theory, whereas I took at your front door and said, “Ihavethesetwo ’ ’ the federal investment of $65 million annually an Internet point of view. I mnotahistorian, wonderful inventions that you ve never seen SACKLER COLLOQUIA to a federal investment of $200 million an- but from what I understand, there were three them before. One is a computing chip based nually. The Rosser Report was not wildly in- distinct approaches to computing at Princeton on semiconductor technology. The other fluential. It was written in a language that did at the time Turing was there. One was prof- is a memory chip. Between these two you not engage with policy makers, but its suc- fered by the logician Alonzo Church who was can do wonderful stuff.” cessor, the Pierce Report, which was advocating an approach called lambda cal- Wouldanyonehaveunderstoodtheim- produced by the NSF and built on the Rosser culus, which later became the basis of the plications of that? To do so, you would report, was. The Pierce Report led directly to programming language Lisp. Another group have to imagine in one fell swoop all of a significant increase in investment in com- including the mathematician Kurt Gödel was the things that have happened in computing not just for physics, chemistry, and the pursuing recursive function theory, which puting over many years. The notion of emerging computer sciences, but also for the was a different approach to the mathematics computing, programming language, op- social sciences and eventually the humanities. of computing. Then there was Alan Turing, erating systems, files—all of the things who was writing a thesis on computable that today reflect computing were not The Computer Science and Telecommu- numbers. Turing’s approach may not have available back then. nications Board made much sense to people at the time, be- I could tell a similar story about ARPAnet The modern organization within the NRC cause few, if any of them, were thinking of and the Internet. Every one of these devel- that guides computer science policy and computing as machine based. Turing pro- opmentshaditsownmysteryandun- development is the Computer Science and posed a model with a single read/write tape certainty about future developments. Telecommunications Board. The NAS of infinite length in both directions. With his Archives contain some wonderful material model, you could write a symbol or erase a about its history. For example, a 1987 note symbol and you could move the tape left or in the archives from Joseph Traub says, right; Turing was able to show that, with this Lessons of R&D “SamFullersaysthisguyBillGateshas model, a very wide range of computations Investments really thought about software. He might was possible. Later, it was shown that all three be a good person to talk to our board.” of these approaches were logically equivalent. Janet Abbate, Virginia Polytechnic Institute In 1988, the board published the report John von Neumann was not the first to and State University Toward a National Research Network.The point out that infinite tapes were problemat- influenceofthisreportisundeniable. ical, but he proposed instead to create a finite One measure of the influence of Academy According to Michael Nelson, Al Gore “lif- 2D substitute in the form of a large electronic reports is the role they have played in pro- ted” whole sections of the report in preparing read/write memory. However, in those days, it viding Congress and the public with a way the High Performance Computing Act of was troublesome to accomplish even that. of thinking about science and technology. 1991. The act funded the National In- Some of the early electronic memories in- For example, a 1995 report by the Com- formation Infrastructure, or as Gore fa- volved the use of Williams tubes, which were puter Science and Telecommunications mously referred to it, the information tiny cathode ray tubes such as used in televi- Board (Evolving the High Performance superhighway. It allocated $600 million sion sets. Their screens were illuminated by Computing and Communications Initiative to high performance computing. It helped phosphorescent dots to indicate what the bits to Support the Nation’s Information In- develop the backbone of the modern Inter- were. Eventually that led to the von Neumann frastructure) had a particular graphic net. It founded a number of supercomputer architecture that has thrived until now. that showed the influence of government centers, one of which, at the University of When people talk about the Internet, most and industry funding on the development Illinois, produced the Mosaic web browser, think of it as a network; but that is not how of new businesses. Besides the obvious whichbecameNetscapeandledtoawhole I think about it. Creating the Internet was argument, three somewhat more subtle set of Internet-based companies. about enabling communication among and arguments were conveyed. Many reports were issued in the 1980s and between many different components, whether First, “the payoff for research takes time.” 1990s, and it is hard to assess their relevance. they be networks, computers, or devices, Ten to 15 years can elapse between gov- However, Toward a National Research Net- including wired and wireless devices, and ernment investments and industries that work illustrates some of the ways in which making them work together. It was about the ultimately are worth billions of dollars. these reports achieve a life of their own and protocols and procedures that would enable Research does not have a 2- or 3-year turn- become tangible. that. In addition to achieving interoperability around. The American people and Congress with today’s technology, these protocols make need to think of research as a more long- it possible to swap in and out the underlying term enterprise. technology as it will surely evolve over time. Second, “unexpected results are often The Power of Unpredictable Network technology has changed dramati- the most important.” That is probably Consequences cally, and computing even more since the true in all of science, but it is legendary early 1970s. However, as an architecture, the in computer science. There are many Robert Kahn, Corporation for National Internet has continued to function in enabling examples, such as e-mail becoming the Research Initiatives intercommunication between all of the com- killer app of the Internet. Again, time ponents that constitute today’s Internet. and slack are needed for unexpected results I recently was at the 100th anniversary cel- to percolate up and pay off. ebration of Turing’s birth held at Princeton The Unpredictable Future of Computing Third, “doing research involves taking University, where Turing did his PhD work In 1928, when the computing revolution had risks.” Again, that is probably true in every in the 1930s. Most of the other speakers not begun, imagine that someone showed up science, but it is certainly true in computer

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9359 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 science. Not everything is going to pan out, background in mathematics that they in terms that congressional members and but that does not mean that funding it was need in middle school and high school so their staffs can understand has also been a mistake. This kind of argument lays the they are not disqualified from the field an important factor. When they go to groundwork for thinking about investments before they get to college. It is not a simple Washington, scientists often speak in terms in science and technology. problem and does not have a simple solution, that go right over their heads. However, if In 1997, Paul R. Young, assistant director but people are working on it. you talk down to a congressional member, for NSF’sComputerandInformationScience Observing best practices, like simply you don’t get far. By translating science and Engineering Directorate, was speaking putting a woman on a hiring committee, into terms that are understandable, the at a Computer Science and Telecommuni- can significantly increase the pool of Academy has had a big impact. cations Board symposium and referred to women in the applications pool. It sends One interesting problem that the Academy this figure as a powerful rhetorical tool. a subtle message that they might want is going to have to deal with involves the “ It enables us to talk with policymakers to be there. Institutions that are moti- balkanization of the Internet. For a number and the general public about the fact that vated to improve their recruitment and of reasons, countries would like to have their ... research has a long life .Itenablesus retention can build on such practices, as own capabilities and minimize the in- to talk about the fact that the process is can industry. formation that comes into and leaves their nonlinear and that the particular goals borders. They plead privacy and other con- may be diffuse.” Therefore, it’s important, cerns, but when you dig down, you realize in thinking about the impact of these re- that it is economics, also. A lot of revenue ports, to look at their discursive impact as The Academy’s Impact on goes out of their countries and they would well as more direct impacts on research Computer Science prefer to keep it. No organization is yet funding or priorities. David Farber, University of Pennsylvania willing to bite off that problem from a Women in Computing global standpoint. The Academy has also had an important Whether computer science is a science is an Another interesting problem is the rapid role in producing reports about sex in interesting question. In computing, we create change of technology. Future optical inter- science. I serve on a committee at Vir- an artifact, a computer, and then start trying connections will change what can be done ginia Tech to improve the climate and the to understand how it behaves. What are the with networks and the devices attached to retention of women scientists, and we fundamental rules that govern it? What them. For many people, the Internet now use these reports to guide policies at our can be done with it? How does it evolve as sits on the end of a mobile device and not institution. it gets larger. That sounds like high-energy a laptop or desktop. On the other side, the Thesituationincomputingispeculiar physics, which uses big artifacts to do science. physics community and other sciences want because the percentage of women in com- However, computer science is a science of to move large amounts of data around on puter science rose until about the mid- the artificial. networks from many sites and bring the 1980s, peaked at around 35%, and since The Academy has had profound im- data together to analyze it. This will put then has declined. The Academy’sreports pacts on computer science. The Academy’s strains on the network, the technology, and have tried to understand this issue. It is support for the National Research Net- our understanding of how to run a network complex, including things like work-life work helped trigger congressional action. while retaining reliability, privacy, and so on. balance and encouraging girls to get the The Academy’s ability to communicate We are in for a fun time.

The Academy and K-12 Science Education Creationism As an institution composed largely of academics, the Academy has always taken an interest Edward Larson, Pepperdine University in science education. That interest intensified in the 1950s after the launch of Sputnik, when the federal government undertook major initiatives to improve science education and invest in educational research. In the 1970s, the Academy formed the Committee on Fundamental Polls suggest that half of all Americans Research Relevant to Education, inaugurating a formal involvement in K-12 education reject the theory of evolution, and most of that would intensify over the next two decades, culminating in the NRC’sleadershipofthe the rest believe that God guides the pro- national movement to develop science education standards. Meanwhile, the Academy became increasingly active in efforts to counter the challenges to science education posed by cess. In many places, these percentages creationists. are much higher. Edward Larson, University Professor and Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine Given these attitudes and America’slong University, discussed the latter issue at the colloquium, tracing the history of the creationism tradition of local control over public educa- controversy in the United States from the 1920s to the present. Michael Feuer, professor of education at George Washington University, described some of the difficulties in reforming tion, the question is not why is evolution not a system as fragmented as K-12 education in the United States. David Goslin, former exec- taught more in public schools but why is it utive director of the NRC’s Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, taught as much as it is? One prominent an- listed some of the areas in which the behavioral and social sciences can contribute to educational reform. Eugenie Scott, founding executive director of the National Center for Science swer is the work of the National Academy of Education (NCSE), returned to the topic of science, evolution, and creationism and toasted the Sciences and National Research Council. Academy’s next 150 years. The American controversy over teaching creation and evolution can be divided into three historical phases, with an ever-

9360 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1406109111 Olson Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 increasing role for the Academy in each condemns teaching creation science in the second is opposing the so-called intelligent

phase. The first phase of the controversy science classroom. design agenda. With regard to the science SACKLER COLLOQUIA featured a national religious crusade to This booklet had the effect of stiffening standards, in 1988, after the seminal ANa- outlaw the teaching of the Darwinian theory the resolve of science teachers, school board tion At Risk report came out, Republican of human evolution in public schools. This members, and state legislatures who accepted presidential nominee George Bush cam- led to the passage of the first such statute in the theory of evolution or opposed religion in paigned on a platform of education reform, Tennessee and the subsequent trial of John public schools. Of course, according to the the first time this traditionally state and local Scopes in 1925, in which several Academy National Association of Biology Teachers, issue dominated a national election. A highly members offered their expert testimony or up to a quarter of American high school publicized education summit was held soon publiccommentaryforthedefense. biology teachers reject the Darwinian theory after his inauguration in 1989, where Bush After Scopes’ successful prosecution, other of human evolution and want to include and the nation’s governors, led by then states and local school districts followed creationism in the classroom. An even larger governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, commit- Tennessee in excluding Darwinism from the percentage of school board members and ted themselves to the goal of having students classroom. The Academy debated entering state legislators accept creation science. demonstrate competency in science, mathe- into the growing controversy at this point, On these individuals, the booklet had matics, English, history, and geography by and in 1923, it even appointed a committee, less impact. the end of the century. “ ” the Committee on Organic Evolution, to look Under the then entrenched establish- Bush called the program America 2000, into the matter. That committee prepared ment clause principles, it did not take long and it focused the educational reform a statement that hailed evolution as truth and for courts to end this second phase of the movements squarely on formulating national denounced its opponents for ignorance and controversy. In 1982, after a widely publi- standards for what should be taught and intolerance, but the Academy ended up not cized fact-finding trial, a federal district learnedinAmericanpublic schools. In 1991, court declared unconstitutional an Arkansas at the invitation of the National Science releasing that statement and left the issue to ’ politics and the courts. law providing for balanced classroom treat- Teachers Association and Bush s secre- The Supreme Court’s landmark 1947 ment of creation science and evolution sci- tary of education, the Academy assumed decision in Everson v. Board of Education ence. Five years later, in Edwards v. Aguillard, responsibility for drafting the standards marked the beginning of the end of this first the US Supreme Court settled the matter by for science education. Long a champion of finding that Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment rigorous instruction in evolution, the Acad- phase of the creation-evolution legal contro- Act, “advanced a religious doctrine by re- emy, working through the NRC, now had the versy. By incorporating the first Amendment quiring either the banishment of the theory mandate to draft model standards for ele- bar against religious establishment to the of evolution from public school classrooms mentary and secondary science education in liberty protected by state action by the or the presenting of a religious viewpoint that American public schools. Fourteenth Amendment, Everson led to a rejects evolution in its entirety.” The Acad- One by one during the late 1990s, the series of rulings on state and local policies emy again stepped in by filing a well-written various state boards and departments of and practices that brought down the old amicus brief with the court arguing that the education worked through the initial stand- anti-evolution laws. theory of evolution was a purely and widely ards-setting process. Most states used the respected scientific theory, whereas creation NRC standards as their working draft. By Rise and Fall of Creation Science science was simply religious dogma dressed 2000, every state had adopted some form of With the disappearance of those laws, how- up like science. science standards that at least addressed the ever, opponents of Darwinian instruction topic of biological evolution, although a few began calling for the inclusion of alternative Rise of Intelligent Design Creationism avoided using the word itself. Forty-six spe- theories of organic origins in the biological Nevertheless, many Americans remained cifically included the concept of species curriculum. Those calls ushered in a second skeptical about Darwinism and rejected changing over time and of natural selection; phase of the anti-evolution legal controversy, the idea that it should be the only theory 38 included evidence for evolution; and 21 which began around 1970 and reached full of origins taught in public schools. Per- discussed descent with modification. Fur- forceby1980.Thiswasmarkedbystate haps the state could neither ban evolutionary thermore, what is tested tends to be taught, statutes and school board regulations man- instruction nor counterbalance it with re- and most states tied student assessment dating that, to counterbalance Darwinian ligious or “scientific” creationism, but could testing to their education standards. instruction, schools also had to teach either state or local school districts direct that bi- The triumph of evolution was not uniform the biblical account of creation or scientific ology courses incorporate questions about throughout. Some states treat biological evo- evidence alleged to support that biblical ac- the sufficiency of Darwinism in explaining lution very gingerly in their standards or count in Genesis, which goes under the natural phenomena? Also, could these ques- not at all. A few insert creationist buzz- term “creation science.” tions support Intelligent Design in nature as words such as “microevolution” and “mac- Now the Academy got more publicly in- an alternative to Darwinism? Such questions roevolution” into their standards. Three volved. In 1972, the NAS issued a resolu- gained traction among conservative Protes- states—Kansas, Alabama, and Louisiana— tion condemning measures mandating the tants during the 1990s and spawned litigation are special cases and illustrate the Academy’s teaching of creation science in science class- and legislation into this new century. This responses to the intelligent design agenda. rooms. In 1984, it published and widely launched the third phase of the creation- distributed an attractive glossy brochure evolution controversy, which continues un- State Challenges entitled Science and Creationism: A View resolved to this day. In Kansas, the federal mandate for education from the National Academy of Science,which The Academy remains fully engaged on standards and a gradual consolidation of state distinguishes between evolution as science two fronts. The first is promoting evolution authority over education and educational and creation science as religion and roundly teaching through state science standards. The policies provoked a conservative reaction.

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9361 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 By 1996, Republican candidates committed briefly from the conclusion, “The statements However, it has yet to checkmate its wily to local or parental control over public of science must invoke only natural things and determined creationist adversaries. schools won 5 of 10 seats on the state’s and processes...This understanding has great elective school board. Not all of these five practical value, in part because it allows us to conservatives came from the religious better predict future events that rely on nat- right, and none campaigned on the evo- ural processes...Thetheoryofevolutionis Changing a Fragmented lution issue, but each distrusted the pro- one of those explanations.” The booklet also Educational System fessional educational establishment. quotes from NAS biologist Ernst Mayr, who In 1998, the state commissioner of educa- said “Virtually all scientists known to me Michael Feuer, George Washington tion assembled a committee of Kansas sci- have religion in the best sense of this word, University ence educators to draft the state’s science but scientists do not invoke supernatural standards. The drafting committee hued causations or divine revelation.” When Bruce Alberts became president of close to the NRC model. Board conservatives, Alabama’s textbook disclaimer has never the Academy in 1993, he did so in large however, offered a creationist alternative. been challenged in court and remains in ef- part because he wanted the institution to Public hearings on the science standards fect. However, similar disclaimers that sug- have a more prominent role in the im- became bitter battlegrounds between cre- gested or endorsed religious, intelligent provement of science education, in particular ationist parents and evolutionist educa- design, or creationist alternatives to evolution at the K-12 level. Over the subsequent de- tors. The drafting committee offered the have been struck down by the courts. cade, the Academy undertook a number of compromise of just removing the word The mixed results of the disclaimer battles activities oriented toward the ideal notion of “ ” evolution from its proposal, but the led critics of Darwinian instruction to seek what bringing the best possible scientific inquiry to conservatives won the day by taking over they call academic freedom statutes. Typically, bear on problems of American education. ’ By law and by design, the American public the committee s proposal and deleting thesebillsasserttherightsofpublicschool “ school system is fragmented. The nation has offending content such as macroevolu- teachers and students to hold and express their ” something like 15,000 more or less in- tion and the big bang theory. own views on biological origins and other dependent school districts in 50 states and When it passed the board, a national media controversial science topics without identifying frenzy followed. As a practical matter, however, territories. These districts operate at a very any specific alternative theory. They also do attention soon focused on the 2000 Republi- local grassroots level in making decisions not single out only Darwinism for censure, can primary, when four board conservatives about content, pedagogy, and the governance which proved problematic in some bigger would face the voters. Scores of national science of schools and schooling. That reality is the cases, but also question global warming, hu- organizations, including the Academy, con- result of a system that has been evolving at man cloning, and other “controversial theo- demned the board’s actions. Indeed, as copy- least since the mid-19th century, when the ries.” These bills continue to pop up in southern right holder of sections drawn from its model, first “reform” movement led to the massive and midwestern state legislatures today. the Academy blocked publication of the state’s expansion of the educational franchise and Most of the proposed academic freedom new science standards. With the nation significant changes in school management bills have stalled, but in 2008, a proposed watching, Kansas voters turned out all but and public accountability. The word “sys- one of the conservatives. The reconstructed academic freedom statute found traction in tem,” however, is perhaps a misnomer: as the board promptly adopted new science stand- the Louisiana legislature and passed. Last former president of Harvard, James Conant, ards modeled on the Academy template. year, another passed in Tennessee. Expertly once said, “we don’tactuallyhaveanedu- Alabama took a different tack. As part of crafted to survive constitutional challenge in cation system in this country, we have a its science education standards, the state the current Supreme Court, neither statute hodgepodge, and we like it that way.” board of education declared, “Explanations thus far has been challenged in court. The fact that “we like it that way” is one of of the origins of life and major groups of the things that has led to tension in education plants and animals, including humans, shall Science, Evolution, and Creationism reform. The controversy over teaching evolu- ’ be treated as theory not as fact.” Shortly After Louisiana s academic freedom act tion or not teaching evolution in the schools thereafter, the board adopted a specific dis- passed, the Academy responded with another has a lot to do with the allergy that the claimer for inclusion in all evolutionary glossy booklet entitled Science, Evolution, American people have had for two centuries to biology textbooks used in public schools. and Creationism, which also was designed the imposition of a central authoritative posi- “ ’ This disclaimer, which is printed on the front for mass distribution. What swrongwith tion on matters of curriculum or standards. page, depicts evolution as a controversial teaching critical thinking or controversies During a meeting here at the Academy, the theory, differentiates between microevolution with regard to evolution?” the booklet asks. French minister of education, Claude Allègre, and macroevolution by noting that the latter It then answers, “Nothing is wrong with who is himself a member of the NAS, was “should be considered a theory,” and con- teaching critical thinking, but critical think- speaking with several US education policy cludes with a list of allegedly unanswered ing does not mean that all criticisms are leaders. The minister made the point that, in questions about biological origins. The dis- equally valid. Critical thinking has to be France, if a decision was made on Monday to claimer does not, however, expressly endorse based on rules of reason and evidence. There change the curriculum, then by Thursday all or invoke religion. is no scientific controversy about the basic of the schools in the country would start The Academy responded to this and other facts of evolution. In this sense, the intelligent doing it. Noting the envy of his audience, intelligent design challenges to teaching evo- design movement’s call to teach the contro- Minister Allègre said, “I understand that you lution with a new glossy booklet, Teaching versy is unwarranted.” have a certain desire for centralized control About Evolution and the Nature of Science. Through the science standards and and authority. But keep in mind that in Aftermanyexamplesandmuchdiscussion, publications, the Academy has advanced a system such as mine, where there is a great this booklet concludes, and again I’mquoting the cause of science education considerably. deal of decision making invested in the

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amount of centralization of opposition as ing, curriculum, assessment, and standards. programs before physicians are deemed SACKLER COLLOQUIA well.” Six months later, Minister Allègre It has been a very good thing to have prepared to practice independently. was out of a job because he had dared to eminent scientists engaged in the complex- How are schools structured and how are suggest that French teachers devote part of ities of education, despite how hard, murky, they influenced by the neighborhoods and their summer to professional development. and ideologically fraught these debates are. cultures that surround them? How do we Also, consensus has made it possible for the measure the output of schools? The mea- Voluntary National Testing science of education to advance. Consensus is surement of student performance has become In his 1997 State of the Union address, costly and time consuming to achieve, but increasingly sophisticated, but also more President Clinton introduced the notion it creates knowledge along the way, and controversial, particularly as proposals have of something called voluntary national test- no institution is as good as the Academy proliferated to link teacher evaluations to the ing (VNT). The idea for a VNT was that in at pursuing consensus. performance of their students on standardized the big hodgepodge of American education, tests. What is known about external influences states and districts were using all kinds of on learning such as peers, extracurricular ac- tests to measure the performance of American tivities, computers, and television, all of which students, and no one could get a straight The Social and Behavioral sometimes abet and sometimes impede answer as to how US students were actually Sciences in Education learning? A large literature in the behavioral doing. Voluntary national testing sought and social sciences exists on this topic. to bring some coherence and was hoped to David Goslin, American Institutes Regarding institutional issues, how can promote a more common ethos about the for Research schools be encouraged/helped to change? purposes of education and the responsibilities Policies such as the Race to the Top and of education authorities. The social and behavioral sciences have other incentive-based programs appar- This was a very complicated undertaking. much to contribute in addressing the most ently have had some positive effect, but Asonepolicywagsaidatthetime,therewere important questions in the field of education. the resistance of institutions to change is only two things wrong with the idea of national For example, what are the capacities of awell-knownphenomenoninthesocial testing: half the country hates the word “test- learners? What are the differences among sciences. In the area of economics, what is ing” and the other half hates the word “na- learners? What capacities do they bring to known about funding for schools, in- tional.” The VNT proposal triggered a heated the learning process from the earliest days of cluding funding disparities in areas with debate. One question that arose, by legislators their lives? How do those capacities change property-based taxes as the principal means generally not comfortable with the idea of and accumulate over time? for funding schools? national testing, was whether results from What are the most effective methods to In all of the foregoing areas, the social and existing state and commercial tests, in all their convey information from one person or behavioral sciences have relevant theory and diversity, could be reported on a common one group to another? How does transfer knowledge to contribute to policy debates. scale, thereby obviating the need for a new of learning occur from one domain to the program. An NRC committee was convened next?Howimportantisittolearnconcepts The Committee on Fundamental to look at the issue and tried very hard to figure in different contexts? What are the stages of Research Relevant to Education out if that was possible. Ultimately, the com- development of human beings? How do In 1974 when I became director of what was mittee concluded that it was not a good idea— these stages interact with attempts to teach then the NRC’s Assembly of Behavioral and there would be too much error in the kinds of people different things? For example, chil- Social Sciences, most of the social sciences inferences such a “linkage” technique would dren no longer have to pass a reading read- still were relative newcomers to the mem- generate. The VNT posed other problems also. inesstestattheageof5orsobeforetheycan bership of the Academy. Although psychol- Another important NRC study, aptly called be taught to read. ogists and anthropologists had been well “High Stakes,” highlighted the risks associated What is it that causes learners to persist and represented among the membership from with using such a technology to make impor- stay on task even when they are bored or early on, only in 1966 was the first sociologist, tant decisions about student retention in grade, confused? Herbert Simon once said that mo- the demographer Kingsley Davis, elected to promotion, and graduation. tivation is the black hole of American psy- membership in the Academy. Political sci- Finally, as has been mentioned, one of the chology. American psychology has many ence, sociology, economics, and social psy- most remarkable examples of how this in- theories of learning, but very few theories of chology all were added beginning in 1966. stitution has made a difference in the world motivation,yetthetwoareinextricablylinked. However, when I arrived to manage the be- of education policy and reform was the sci- What is known about teaching or in- havioral and social science division of the ence standards, one of President Albert’sfirst structional processes? What is the most NRC, relatively few members of the Academy and most challenging projects. Development effective way to train prospective teachers to were social and behavioral scientists. of the standards, which were summarized in teach? The instructional system for training Most members of the Academy were several landmark volumes that helped re- teachers in this country is as fragmented as still getting used to the fact that there shape science teaching and learning at the the rest of the education system, with schools were sociologists, political scientists, and K-12 level, also led to the creation of the of education varying wildly in quality, the economists around. However, the acceptance Board on Science Education, which had kinds of people they recruit, and the amount on the part of the Academy of all of the social the fitting acronym (BOSE; the board was and kinds of training they receive. In most and behavioral sciences has been quite re- chaired by Carl Wieman who received the places, little attention is given to the transi- markable over the last 35 years. Nobel Prize for his work on the Bose-Einstein tion from teacher training to actual practice In 1976, the National Institute of Educa- theorem). Since its inception, BOSE has been in the classroom. This is in stark contrast tion (NIE) asked the NRC to form a Com- responsible for continued and pioneering to the medical profession, which requires mittee on Fundamental Research Relevant to

Olson PNAS | June 24, 2014 | vol. 111 | suppl. 2 | 9363 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 Education to make recommendations to im- were joined by a strong teachers’ union and signed by scientific associations for Selman prove the scientific foundation of education the mainstream clergy, which did not want v. Cobb County, the Georgia case focused in the United States. The director of NIE, creationsciencetobetaughtMondaythrough on textbook disclaimers, we went first to Harold Hodgkinson, asked the committee to Friday in the classroom and then have to the Academy because we knew that if the recommend how that strengthening might be straighten kids out on the weekend, because Academy signed on, then the associations accomplished by identifying promising lines creation science was not their theology. would follow. Overall, 56 scientific societies of fundamental research. In 1981, I received a letter from Frank and educational associations signed that The committee’s report, which was pub- Press appointing me to an ad hoc com- amicus brief, which the judge cited in lished a year later, described eight examples mittee on creationism. We had a 1-day his decision. of bodies of fundamental research that, in the meeting in October at which I spoke about On many occasions, Bruce Alberts and committee’s view, were of particular rele- the problems of organizing scientists to Ralph Cicerone have had op-eds published vance to education. These were as follows: work on this issue. I agreed with another in regional newspapers where there have understanding cognitive development, brain member of the committee, a retired high been controversies over the teaching of and neurological processes, reading, educa- school biology teacher, Stanley Weinberg, evolution. Even more valuable has been tion outside schools, innovation and change that all politics are local. Whether and how the Academy asking its members in a par- in educational institutions, school environ- to teach evolution is a political issue much ticular state to speak up when evolution is ments, educating children for a multicultural more than it is a scientific or pedagogical under attack—to themselves write op-eds or and multilingual society, and opportuni- issue. The solution to problems that arise testify at board of education or legislative ties for higher education. The totality of over the teaching of evolution must be committee meetings. All politics is local, and the research and policy literature in the found locally by scientists, teachers, clergy, local scientists have much more clout than field of education over the last 35 years parents, and other interested people in do national ones. reflect the prescience of that first com- ’ individual states and communities. Behind the scenes, NCSE staff have mittee sinsightsin1977. Frank Press and the others agreed. If sci- helped the Academy’s staff answer letters The committee also spent considerable time entists were needed to testify at a school from the public about obscure points like thinking about the relationship between re- board meeting in a school, the Academy was why polonium halos prove the Earth is search relevant to education and educational not the institution to make that happen. It only 6,000 years old or why polystrate practice. It concluded, remarkably for 1977, was not set up for local activism. What the trees prove Noah’sflood.TheAcademy that education change is slower, more subtle, Academy could do, better than any other staff should not be wasting their valuable and more complex than usually envisioned organization, was to prepare an authoritative time figuring out these arcane con- and that the most important influences that document that could be used by lawyers in tentions. That’swhyweexist. fundamental research has on education come future lawsuits and might also help educate The 1994 National Science Education through diffusion rather than dissemination. Standards, largely because of the smart way Even then, they knew how difficult it was thepublicandthepress.Hence,thedecision in which the Academy conducted the writing, goingtobetochangeourschools. oftheAcademywasmadetopublishthefirst critique, and consensus analysis, had con- Since that first study, the social and be- edition of what eventually became Science, havioral science division of the NRC has Evolution, and Creationism. siderable influence on science education undertaken dozens of important projects standards prepared by the states during the in the field of education, each underscoring The National Center for Science Education 1990s and 2000s. By bringing in educational theimportanceofthesesciencesforthefield A separate decision by a group of scientists leaders from around the country, the Acad- of education. helped form a nonprofit organization that emy ensured that states were more likely to became the National Center for Science Ed- implement its approach when designing their ucation. The goal of the center was to work at own standards. Today, the next-generation the grassroots level to provide citizens with science standards, which focus on the inte- Defending Science at the the scientific information and organizing gration of inquiry learning with the content Local Level advice needed to defend science effectively in of science, could significantly change the the schools. teaching of science in the United States and Eugenie Scott, National Center for The Academy has been a hugely valuable significantly improve public science literacy. Science Education partner to the National Center for Science I would like to thank the Academy for its Education. It has published three versions of help and leadership in science not only on In 1980 and 1981, I was one of several the Science and Creationism booklets. It cre- the controversial issues of evolution and cli- scientists at the University of Kentucky who ated an extremely helpful website for teachers mate change but across science, technology, were opposing the introduction of creation and the public. When the National Center for engineering, and mathematics education. science in the public schools of Lexington. We Science Education needed an amicus brief Here’s to another 150 years.

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