Dangerous Neglect

In its preoccupation with immediate, practical results, the U.S. is badly neglecting pure scientific research. The warning was sounded last week by Nobel-Prize-winning Atomic Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg* before a joint meeting in San Francisco of the Atomic Industrial Forum and Stanford's Research Institute. Seaborg's clincher: of the nation's huge ($3 billion) annual outlay for science, "no more than 5% . . . is used for basic research."

Seaborg outlined the real difference between "basic" and "applied" science. Actually, most "pure" scientists have long been closely involved with practical applications of their studies, e.g., the H-bomb, radar, rocket propulsion. Indeed, when defending their research budgets to outsiders, they "almost universally point to the most outstanding practical applications [they] can single out, and swear that these could [never] have happened without the basic research of past years." Yet, despite all its useful byproducts, pure research stands apart. It is motivated not by the need for an answer to an immediate problem, said Seaborg, but by an "intellectual curiosity [which can] be rated with the highest qualities of mankind," with far-reaching, broad goals and indefinite deadlines. Out of such curiosity come the discoveries which guide all scientific endeavor.

Nevertheless, said Seaborg, industry and government shortsightedly allocate funds piecemeal, harnessing university laboratories to small projects with constant red tape and supervision. "It should be possible to say to more [topnotch] scientists: 'Here is some money to keep you going. Run along and do whatever you want . . . All we ask is that you work hard . . . don't even do that if you can get more accomplished in another way.' "

Just as important, said Seaborg, pure research should be encouraged as the best training for the nation's short supply of young scientists and engineers; in such work develop the Einsteins and Tellers of the future.

How can the present neglect be corrected? Chemist Seaborg's suggestion: double the outlay for pure science. The resulting increase in scientific knowledge, he believes, would make a bigger basic research program "the greatest bargain the American people ever received."

* With University of California Colleague Edwin M. McMillan, for their synthesis of "trans-uranian elements," e.g., plutonium, used in A-bombs.

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