Third and Fourth Thoughts About Research Instrumentation
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Third and Fourth Thoughts About Research Instrumentation Rustum Roy Pennsylvania State University
T
he Council of the National Academies of Science and Engineering has recently reminded the community of the dangers inherent in certain developments in the seeking of Federal funding for research and instrumentaton. Its statement of October 30, 1983 says: "We urge that the academic community and public officials exercise vigilance to protect this informed evaluation and decisionmaking process in the awarding of funds, not only for the support of scientific research proposals, but also for major scientific facilities and instrumentation.''
The Academy was reacting to extraordinary actions beginning with the attempt of George A. Keyworth, President Reagan's Science Advisor, to allocate very large sums of money (some $200 million over a few years) to the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory for a synchrotron light source, under the label of "materials research." This was blocked by an aroused materials community writing letters to their Congressional representatives, pointing out that no materials group had ever said materials research saw synchrotrons as the highest priority item. But this attempt started a forest fire of other Congressional representatives' efforts to obtain direct funding for pet projects in their own districts: Catholic University (for a Vitreous State Laboratory), Columbia University (for a chemistry facility), University of Florida (for a supercomputer), and on and on. There is no way we can say with certainty that their actions are bad or good for "science" or the "universityworld" or whatever; but it is certainly different from the way the Federal government has funded science these last 40 years. These efforts represent dissatisfaction within and outside the science community about resource allocations in science. How much money should we devote to radioastronomy as compared to materials research or biotechnology? And some are asking, if Navy shipyards can be allocated by the political process why not supercomputers for materials research? These situations led to second thoughts on the part of some scientists about how to get what they wanted. They were largely physicists interested in high-intensity light and neutron sources which require big expensive machines. A committee was very properly established under the auspices of the NAS with an extraordinarily narrow charge: to come up with a list of big (>5 or 10 million dollar) machines which were "needed" by the "materials community." This committee, the SeitzEastman Committee, has very conscientiously done its work (666 pages in the Appendix alone) and reported a list of instruments which it believes shows the priority needs, if big machines are indeed "needed." The price tag for building and operating some half-dozen facilities is nearly a billion dollars over several years. As a materials scientist who is also a science policy analyst, I lean back in my armchair, reflect on these facts,
and say: wait a minute, I have so
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