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Appendix
A History of Government Funding
of Basic Science Research and the
Development of Big-Science Projects
in the Context of High-Energy
Particle Physics
MaryJoy Ballantyne
Research Associate
National Cancer Policy Board
Institute of Medicine
The National Academies
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Contents
Part I: HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF UNIVERSITY-
BASED BASIC SCIENCE RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND
TRAINING
Pre-World War II, 218
1787: The Constitutional Convention, 219
1807: Survey of the Coast, 220
1862: The Department of Agriculture and The Land Grant
College Acts, 222
1870: United States Weather Service, 223
1879: U.S. Geological Survey, 225
1887: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), 227
1916: The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), 228
1931: Lawrence Berkley Laboratory, U.S. High-Energy
Particle Physics, 230
1937: The National Cancer Institute (NCI), 232
Change in National Focus: Earth Sciences to Physical
(Laboratory) Sciences, 233
World War II, 234
1940-1941: National Defense Research Committee (NDRC)
and Office of Scientific Research and Defense (OSRD), 234
1940-1945: The Manhattan Project, 235
Post-World War II, 239
1946: The Office of Naval Research (ONR), 239
1946: The Department of Energy (DOE), 240
215
217
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216
APPENDIX
1947: The National Laboratories (component of the DOE), 241
1950: The National Science Foundation (NSF), 242
1952: CERN (European Organization for Nuclear
Research), 242
1954: The President's Science Advisor, 243
1989: The End of the Cold War, 243
Part II: ISSUES IN CONDUCTING LARGE SCALE
COLLABORATIONS IN HIGH-ENERGY PARTICLE PHYSICS 246
Funding, 247
Allocation of Federal Science Research Funds, 247
Traditional University Funding Mechanism, 249
Large-Scale Versus Small-Scale Research, 249
Basic Versus Applied Research, 250
Organization, 251
Size and Personnel, 251
Choosing Collaborators, 252
Communication, 253
International Collaborations, 253
Management, 253
The Spokesperson, 254
Management Issues, 254
Compensation, Career Advancement, and Academic
Recognition, 255
Universities Research Association (URA), Inc., 256
Staffing and Training, 257
Intellectual Property, 263
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
263
265
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Since World War II, the organizational framework for scientific research is
increasingly the multi-institutional collaboration. However, this form of re-
search has received slight attention from scholars. Without a dedicated effort to
understand such collaborations, policy makers and administrators will contin-
ue to have only hearsay and their own memories to guide their management....
(AIP, 1992)
This paper is a supplement to a study conducted by the National Cancer
Policy Board on big science in cancer research. As the study committee ven-
tured out in search of the available literature to address the issues in our
tentative outline, including how large-scale projects should best be priori-
tized, funded, organized, managed, and staffed, we received an abundance
of verbal and editorial affirmations regarding these issues and the direction
we were taking, but no analytical scholarship. To date, no studies have been
conducted in the biological sciences to address the questions we are asking.
Instead, we were repeatedly referred to the field of high-energy particle phys-
ics the field that inspired Alvin Weinberg to coin the phrase "big science" in
1961 (Weinberg, 1961~. The origins of the field of high-energy particle phys-
ics, as well as the evolution of federal investment in science research, can be
traced back to before World War II. During our study of this field, we found
a wealth of interesting and helpful historical summaries, papers, surveys,
and thoughtful analyses that address directly or indirectly several of the
issues the Board has associated with big science in cancer research.
This paper is divided into two major sections. The first is a brief
account of the organization of a group of key federal regulatory and
funding agencies that have influenced the formation of current federal
science and technology policy. This account is presented in the form of a
selected chronological history of the government's earliest support for
basic and applied science research, both intramural and extramural, lead-
ing up to university-based publicly funded research. Though the section
is outlined as a chronology according to the agencies' founding date,
there is noticeable but unavoidable overlap in several of the subsections.
The second section examines several of the issues unique to the develop-
ment, pursuit, implementation, and practice of big-science projects in the
field of high-energy particle physics, as indicated by scientists and policy
makers associated with that field.
PART I: HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF
UNIVERSITY-BASED BASIC SCIENCE RESEARCH,
EDUCATION, AND TRAINING
It has been basic United States policy that government should foster the open-
ing of new frontiers. It opened the seas to clipper ships and furnished land for
217
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218
APPENDIX
pioneers. Although thesefrontiers have more or less disappeared, thefrontier of
science remains. It is in keeping with the American tradition~ne which has
made the United States great that new frontiers shall be made accessible for
development by all American citizens. (Bush, 1945bJ
Traditionally, the U.S. government has used its resources to pursue
matters of national importance. As the country's foundations were being
laid, the nation relied very little on matters of science. Though U.S. scien-
tific pursuits had a slow start, strong foundations were formed early in
the nineteenth century through federally sponsored research programs in
agriculture, national security, and commerce that facilitated significant
momentum in government sponsorship of public-based scientific endeav-
ors in the early part of the twentieth century. It should be noted that
before the surge of federal funds into public research programs, private
philanthropic foundations, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Smith-
sonian, provided much of the earliest support for university-based basic
research. This was definitely true for the field of high-energy particle
physics, which received most of its initial support from such foundations
as Rockefeller and Carnegie (Heilbron et al., 1981~.
Pre-World War II
In the United States, the period of time closely preceding, including,
and following World War II had a significant impact on the govern-
ment's investment in university-based scientific research. During the
decade surrounding the war, from 1940 to 1950, various key people and
events facilitated the creation and expansion of several science-oriented
federal agencies whose main objective was sponsoring public research,
thus enabling the expansion of federal policy regarding science research.
The foundation for these developments had been laid during the previ-
ous century through the government's involvement in a variety of sci-
ence research programs in the areas of exploration, agriculture, security,
and settlement, though most of these initial programs were intramural
in nature. These pursuits led to the organization of a few federal agen-
cies that conducted or sponsored science research, including the U.S.
Coast Survey, the Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Geological
Survey. Although the government hired civil scientists to assist and
conduct research on these federal projects prior to World War II, it allo-
cated little funding directly to universities in support of scientific educa-
tion, training, and basic research. During and directly after World War
II, federal science policy was created and refined into the federal fund-
ing of university-based scientific research, which continued to evolve to
form the substantial endowment that has become the accepted and ex-
pected norm today.
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APPENDIX
1787: The Constitutional Convention
219
The idea that the federal government should become the patron of
science was easily within the grasp of the framers of the Constitution, which
was written by educated men who held all branches of philosophy in high
regard, and who knew that European governments often supported sci-
ence. As they went about their political task of writing the Constitution,
they gave consideration and debate to the constitutional position of science
with regard to the federal government they were establishing. Debate en-
sued during the Constitutional Convention of the late 1780s, as proposals
outlining government's relationship with science were presented. Propos-
als for a national university devoted to advanced scientific training, societ-
ies chartered by the government, technical schools, and prized and direct
subsidies for creative effort could all have become realities. Because of a
fear of powerful central organizations, the consensus was to restrict the
powers of the central government. The Constitution, ratified in April 1789,
contained very little language directly related to science. However, it did
include the concepts of "internal improvements," "general welfare," and
"necessary and proper," as well as a clause for patents that gave Congress
power to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respec-
tive Writings and Discoveries" (Dupree, 1986~. It was through these frag-
ments of language that the federal government would eventually support
and sustain science.
After ratification, interpretation of the Constitution began, and public
works of all sorts were inferred from the concept of "internal improve-
ments." During this time, most highly educated Americans had obtained
a university education in Europe and were still dependent on Europe for
equipment and ideas. Despite the debates, all sides agreed that universi-
ties and learned societies were in fact internal improvements, and that
they were necessary and proper and sustained the general welfare. The
idea of a national university was emphatically pursued by many, but
never came to fruition. One of the most avid supporters of this idea was
Thomas Jefferson, who was secretary of state; he would soon become
responsible for administering U.S. patents, which would be the earliest
connection between science and the federal government.
Although the framers explicitly avoided the word "patent," the quali-
fying phrases in the language of the Constitution suggest the English
practice of protecting new inventions for a limited time (Dupree, 1986~.
As a result of confusion surrounding this language, Congress passed the
first patent act in 1790 at the request of President Washington. The secre-
taries of state and of war and the attorney general constituted a board to
pass on inventions. The board had full authority to refuse patents because
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220
APPENDIX
of a lack of novelty, utility, or importance, which placed the heavy re-
sponsibility of making technical decisions on three of the four leading
men in Washington (Dupree, 1986~.
Jefferson, administrator of the patent law of 1790, disliked monopo-
lies of all kinds, including patents of limited duration, but came to see the
latter's usefulness as a grant from society to encourage inventors by giv-
ing them some chance of receiving a financial return for their work (Du-
pree, 1986~. Jefferson upheld a strict interpretation of the law, according
to which patents had to be real novelties, not familiar devices or prin-
ciples common to the public. Thus a principle abstracted from a machine
was not patentable, only the device itself. These assumptions had two
very important influences on lefferson's administration of the patent law.
First, science itself was rigidly excluded from patents. Second, and para-
doxically, all the techniques of science were to be applied by the govern-
ment to a patent application in an active effort to protect the public from
unwarranted exclusiveness. lefferson's personal contributions to and un-
derstanding and veneration of science allowed him to take these initial
steps connecting the federal government with science, while at the same
time protecting science from the federal government.
lefferson's influence on linking science and the federal government
would lead to the creation of the first federal science project the Coast
Survey. Through all the twists and turns of U.S. political history, and
through the immense changes wrought by over two centuries of rapidly
expanding scientific knowledge, the policies and activities of the govern-
ment in science form a single strand that connects the Constitutional Con-
vention to current science policy (Dupree, 1986~.
1807: Survey of the Coast
The earliest American pursuits in government-funded science re-
search began in the military. Congress did not authorize civilian scientific
activities in the federal government until 1807, when, with the support of
President Thomas Jefferson, it established the Coast Survey for the practi-
cal purpose of providing better charts of coastal waters and navigational
aids for commercial interests. The Coast Survey could not get under way
until after the end of the War of 1812, when it was transferred several
times between the Department of the Treasury (1816-1818, 1832-1834,
1836-1903) and the Navy (1818-1832, 1834-1836~. It became the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey and was transferred in 1913 to the Department of
Commerce, where it was later consolidated with the National Weather
Service, and where it currently resides as part of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Rabbitt, 2000; U.S. National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration, 2001~.
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APPENDIX
221
As is true of most successful ventures, the Coast Survey's significant
contributions to the advancement and development of American sci-
ence can be attributed largely to an influential leader. In 1843, Alexander
Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, took the helm of
the project. He had the ability to work within the American political
scene for the benefit of both the Coast Survey and American science.
The project prospered during his tenure as superintendent, becoming
the first great science organization of the U.S. government. Bache em-
barked on a policy of publishing the results of the Coast Survey and the
related work of other professional scientists in the Annual Report of the
Superintendent of the Coast Survey, elevating American science in the eyes
of the world scientific community (Coast and Geodetic Survey Annual
Reports, 1844-1910~. His accomplishments in promoting science included
his service in the organization of the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science (AAAS) and as a founder of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences (NAS).
The early years of the Coast Survey reflect the growth of nineteenth-
century American physical science, including rapid advances in knowl-
edge and technology in several fields of earth sciences, including geodesy,
geophysics, hydrography, topography, and oceanography. Early work on
the project also generated a number of noteworthy published papers in the
fields of astronomy, geology, and meteorology. Almost as a precedent for
today's technology momentum, the gain in basic knowledge made through
the work of the Survey spurred technological developments that made it
possible to facilitate geographic exploration; implement harbor improve-
ments; advance printing, engraving, and photographic technology; and
strengthen national defense. The benefits and success of this scientific en-
deavor made the initial influence of a federally sponsored science program
on national science policy and politics a positive one, enabling the expan-
sion of federal support within the nation's science-oriented programs. The
forerunner of today's National Institute of Standards and Technology re-
sided within the Coast and Geodetic Survey (Coast and Geodetic Survey
Annual Reports, 1844-1910~.
Work on the Coast Survey spanned the continental United States,
tying together travel between the east and west coasts. Through precise
nautical charting surveys, American commerce began to flourish as com-
mercial ships were led more safely into ports all along the Atlantic, Gulf,
and Pacific shores. Under Superintendent Bache, contributors to the Sur-
vey in both the field and the office were held to the highest standard of
accuracy in obtaining and recording scientific measurements. The office
force consisted of a wide range of professionals, including mathemati-
cians, physicists, geodesists, astronomers, instrument makers, draftsmen,
engravers, and pressmen.
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222
APPENDIX
Scientific contributions attributed to the Coast Survey include highly
accurate astronomic measurements, new and more accurate observational
instrumentation for sea and land surveying, new techniques for math-
ematical analysis of the data obtained in the field, and further-refined
techniques for error analysis and mitigation. It was the Coast Survey that
led American science away from the older descriptive scientific methods
to the current techniques of statistical analysis and the use of mathemati-
cal modeling to predict future states of natural phenomena (Coast and
Geodetic Survey Annual Reports, 1844 1910~. In addition, during its early
tenure within the Navy, the Coast Survey conducted activities that led to
the establishment of the Depot of Charts and Instruments in 1844, which
served as a central office where both naval and commercial seamen could
deposit and retrieve new navigational information and technology. In the
mid-1800s, this office was divided into the Naval Observatory and the
Naval Hydrographic Office, whose respective responsibilities included
gathering astronomical data for navigation and charting the ocean floor
(National Archives and Records Administration Records of the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, 1807-1965~.
1862: The Department of Agriculture and The Land Grant College Acts
Agriculture has always been a national priority, and was an occupa-
tion in one form or another for many U.S. citizens during the 1800s. The
usefulness of science for economic purposes in the field of agriculture was
documented in May 1862, when Congress established the Department of
Agriculture "to acquire and diffuse... useful information on subjects con-
nected with agriculture," and authorized "practical and scientific experi-
ments" to obtain this information (Rabbitt, 2000~. To this end, the Land
Grant College Acts, also known as the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, were
signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. The acts initiated one of
the first programs of federal support for university-based basic research.
The first act requested that the federal government provide each state
with a grant of land that could be sold to finance a college hence the
term "land-grant." The second act provided direct appropriations to land-
grant colleges that could show that race and color were not admission
criteria. These acts allowed members of the working classes to obtain a
liberal, practical education in such areas as agriculture, military tactics,
and mechanical arts, as well as classical studies.
Several other pieces of legislation further defined land-grant col-
leges. The Hatch Act of 1887 authorized $15,000 for direct payment of
federal grant funds to each state for the establishment of an agricultural
experiment station in connection with the state's land-grant institution
(Rosenberg, 1997; IFAS, 2000~. The funds were provided to enable the
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APPENDIX
223
colleges to conduct agricultural research and pursue scientific knowl-
edge that could be shared with students and farmers. Unfortunately,
many university administrators saw the Hatch Act as a windfall for
undernourished academic funds, and misused its appropriations to pay
salaries and other university expenses. The Department of Agriculture
set up the Office of Experiment Stations (OES) to regulate and review
the activities of the stations, but it took several years for this new office
to develop a sound and well-articulated policy ensuring that the Hatch
appropriations would be used as a research fund. The original wording
of the Hatch Act was ultimately unsatisfactory as an administrative tool
to control station research policies and as a source of funds to support
basic research.
The Adams Act of 1906 took the Hatch Act a bit further, gradually
increasing each state's appropriation to $30,000, this sum to be used
exclusively for "original investigationts)" in scientific research (Rosen-
berg, 1997~. To ensure that stations and universities would comply with
the Adams Act, OES established a new administrative tool now known
as the grant system; all plans for conducting research with the Adams
appropriations had to be submitted as a proposal for approval before
the work itself could be undertaken. The development of the grants
system, along with the research conducted by the stations, played a
substantial role in the development of a number of biological sciences in
the United States, including bacteriology, biochemistry, and genetics
(Goldberg, 1995~. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 extended the concept of
service to the community by creating the federal Cooperative Extension
~ .
service.
These measures contributed to the creation and success of many of
the country's well-known universities, including Purdue University, Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Rutgers University, Cornell
University, the University of Wisconsin, Texas A&M University, and Iowa
State University. The later success of the land-grant colleges was due, in
part, to experimental farms, which grew out of the experiment stations.
The achievements of these farms include improvements in fertilizers, seed
corn, pesticides, fruits, livestock breeding, and disease control. Today
there are 105 land-grant colleges and universities, including those in U.S.
territories such as Guam and the Virgin Islands and 29 Native American
institutions.
1870: United States Weather Service
At about the same time as the development of the land-grant colleges,
civilian and military weather observation networks began to grow and
expand across the United States. The telegraph was largely responsible
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258
1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 98
Year
APPENDIX
~ ~ ~Q~
- ~ 400
- ~ 200
- ~ 000
- ~Q~
- ~Q~
- 4OQ
- 2OQ
Number
degrees
FIGURE A-2 Number of physics Ph.D.s conferred in the United States, 1900-
1998.
SOURCE: NRC (2001).
70
60
50
cn
~ 40
tn
. 30
. _
Q
20
10
O~ ~RR ~a ~a ~8 ~8 ~a I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I .. . . .. . . . . ..
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1949 1954 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004
r ff^~ Defense R&D
Year
~ Nondefense R&D
FIGURE A-3 Federal spending on defense and nondefense R&D: outlays for the
conduct of R&D, FY 1949-2004, billions of constant FY 2003 dollars.
SOURCE: AAAS (2003).
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APPENDIX
259
during World War II, leading to immense expenditures in this area, had
several significant results. Along with the development of sizeable and
high-quality research facilities, these results include the extensive use of
the federal contract system to fund sustained university research, the
introduction of the scientist managers appointed to principal manage-
ment roles in large-scale research projects, the involvement of notable
scientists in government policy making, the creation of new and larger
graduate programs, and the training of university undergraduate and
graduate students.
Growth in physics continued after World War II with the onset of the
Cold War. The hostility between the Soviet Union and the West com-
pelled the United States to retain its preeminence in particle physics by
funding the building of large facilities as academic laboratories to train
new physicists and engineers who were needed to staff the national labo-
ratories. National and international competition within the field and a
concern to fill the demand for a "supply of well-trained physicists, engi-
neers, and technicians produced Nobel prizes, national prestige, substan-
tive knowledge, and many persons with doctorates in science and engi-
neering" (Heilbron and Kevles, 1988~.
In the midst of the Cold War, however, opposition was voiced that
physics had become too large and expensive, provided little of social
consequence, and was too closely associated with the military (in support
of the Vietnam War). As mentioned above, this opposition resulted in a
leveling in the growth of federal funds for physics. Although the federal
budget (in constant dollars) for R&D had dropped 20 percent by the mid-
1970s, the number of physicists had increased. Since the federal govern-
ment was the primary supporter of basic physics research everywhere it
was practiced, the contraction in funding adversely affected virtually the
entire enterprise of the physical sciences in the United States, making jobs
in academic physics, the center of basic research in many areas of the
subject, particularly difficult to find. High-energy accelerators were shut
down, and many research programs were terminated (Kevles, 1995~. Dur-
ing this same time, accelerator facilities were becoming outdated, and the
beginning of an energy crisis was making these facilities too expensive to
maintain. As the smaller university facilities closed, a select few of the
larger, more sophisticated, and efficient facilities were becoming centers
of collaborative research. During the early 1980s, funding for physics
research rose again, but the increase was short-lived after the Cold War
ended in 1989.
The dependence on government funding for university-based re-
search and training caused several problems after the Cold War in the
early l990s. The loss of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993 drew
a rather dramatic response from high-energy physicists, who feared it
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260
APPENDIX
would mark the death of their field (Flam, 1992~. As funding waned,
headlines appeared such as "Physics Famine: A Frenzied Search for lob
Stability," "Taking Roads Less Traveled by Researchers: Ph.D's Are Strik-
ing Off into Areas Such as Business and High School Teaching, With
Mixed Success," and "Unemployment Blues: A Report from the Field"
(Flam, 1992; Chollar, 1994; Tobias, 1994~. Nobelist Leon Lederman stated,
"Industry is shucking research, universities are retrenching, and national
labs are on a decayed mission and don't know what they are going to do"
(Flam, 1992~. The relatively steady federal investment in physics research
after World War II and through the Cold War era had created large train-
ing programs, numerous research projects, and a plethora of physicists.
The decrease in physics funding after the Cold War, compounded by an
influx of foreign students and scientists (see Figure A-4), left many physi-
cists at every stage of the traditional career path without clear prospects.
Throughout the 1990s, the landscape for many physicists was unpre-
dictable. Trained physicists had to find employment outside of traditional
channels. AIP conducted several surveys and found physicists employed
in all kinds of businesses, from venture capital, to finance, to running
their own companies (Chollar, 1994~. They became teachers, engineers,
computer scientists, or consultants. Many students felt misled, believing
that they had not been properly informed by their mentors about the lack
of jobs and funding within the field. A large population of newly trained
physicists with fewer traditional career options caused physics graduate
training programs to come under scrutiny. Within the field there was a
contradiction with regard to graduate training expectations. Most physi-
cist mentors expected their graduate students to participate in all types of
work, including the design, construction, running, and analysis of an
experiment, as part of their training (American Institute of Physics, 1992~.
For most mentors, this expectation paralleled the training they had re-
ceived, but they had undergone that training on significantly smaller,
shorter, and less complex experiments. Other individuals lamented the
effect of the length and complexity of experiments on graduate education,
believing that long construction times were interfering with students'
ability to both build the hardware and analyze data from the same experi-
ment. The current system encourages a student to either develop the
technical expertise necessary to keep an experiment going or analyze data
from a previous experiment. It forces students to spend too much time on
too few stages. To alleviate this situation, some scientists have recom-
mended that graduate students analyze data from an experiment already
under way while designing and building an apparatus to be used after
receiving their degrees (American Institute of Physics, 1992~.
Toward the latter part of the 1990s, amid a shortage of enrolling
graduate students, an excess of unhappy graduate and postdoctoral stu-
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APPENDIX
u)
N u m be r of
firs t-ye a r stu cl e n ts
o
~ 2
0
65 67 69 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99
Year
| ~ US Foreign _ Total
261
FIGURE A-4 First-year U.S. and foreign physics graduate students, 1965-1999.
SOURCE: NRC (2001).
dents, and skepticism surrounding the physics training programs avail-
able to students, physics graduate programs redesigned themselves
(Feder, 2000~. Several programs worked with industry, providing oppor-
tunities and internships for students. In other cases, interdisciplinary pro-
grams with business, engineering, or computer science were offered
(Pimbley, 1997~. Graduate programs also touted a physics education as
good general training, and they began to communicate to students the
realities of the physics academic world. According to some, despite these
efforts and other factors, including the recent increase in federal support
for physics and the development of new avenues of research, there are
not enough trained and qualified individuals in the field (Freidman,2000~.
A 2001 National Research Council study, Physics in a New Era: An
Overview, recommends that despite the many exciting frontiers in phys-
ics, changes in the recruitment and training of physicists are crucial to the
future success of the field. The report notes that the number of U.S.-
educated undergraduates in physics has decreased in the last 15 years,
leading to an imbalance between the supply of U.S. bachelor's degree
holders and the capacity of U.S. graduate programs. Physics departments
have reacted by increasing the flow of students from other countries.
Articles such as "Why Do They Leave Physics?" (Anderson, 1999), and
"From Bear to Bull in a Decade" (Kirby et al., 2001) have described these
trends. In recent years, the physics job market has opened up, and there is
concern about a lack of qualified personnel to fill the available positions.
The above National Research Council (2001) report confirms this, one of
its strongest recommendations being to increase support for and focus on
all levels of physics education.
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262
APPENDIX
Several factors appear to have played some part in the current trend
of undergraduates not entering physics graduate programs and of phys-
ics graduates pursuing alternative careers:
Sociological factors The end of the Cold War, government fund-
ing cuts, industry downsizing, the influx of talented foreign scientists,
and other events led to significant changes throughout science in the early
1990s and affected many young physicists who had promising scientific
careers ahead of them. Graduate students who began their studies in the
1990s came to physics with their eyes wide open about their job prospects,
and physics departments, as mentioned above, aware that applications
for admissions were declining, began trying to sell graduate physics edu-
cation as good training for many nonscientific careers. Consequently,
graduate education has shifted from a kind of guild/apprenticeship
model to something more akin to preprofessional training for private-
sector jobs (Freidman, 2000; Feder, 2000~.
Financial factors Financial compensation in science is signifi-
cantly higher outside of academia, and industry is hiring more young
people than is academia (Feder, 2000~.
Academic factors A shift is occurring in how a physicist is recog-
nized and credited for contributions. According to one physicist, "in lieu
of scholarship, scientific achievement, and reputation, we are now as-
sessed in terms of four so-called objective criteria: number of papers pub-
lished, prestige of the journals involved, number of invited talks given,
and amount of grant monies received" (Serota, 2000~.
"Horganism" Reflecting John Horgan's philosophy that there are
no new scientific laws to discover, some physicists conjecture that under-
graduate students believe there is nothing left to contribute to the study
of physics (Serota, 2000~.
The trend of trained physicists leaving physics and of graduate stu-
dents not entering physics is recognized as one of the most important
issues facing the field. With regard to physics education, the National
Research Council report (2001) points out that advanced undergraduate
and graduate curricula should reflect physics as it is currently practiced,
making appropriate connections to other areas of science, to engineering,
and to schools of management. The report notes that high-quality under-
graduate research opportunities are an important tool for introducing
students to modern physics practice. Physics education needs to reflect
the career destinations of today's students. Only a third of all physics
majors pursue graduate degrees in physics, and of those who do, nearly
three-quarters find permanent employment in industry. The report con-
cludes that undergraduate and graduate curricula must satisfy the educa-
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263
tional needs of all these students. Along with encouraging physics de-
partments to continue to revise their curricula to be engaging and effec-
tive for a wide audience, the report's recommendations encompass two
principal goals: (1) to make physics education do a better job of contribut-
ing to the scientific literacy of the general public and the training of the
technical workforce, and (2) to reverse, through a better-conceived, more
outward-looking curriculum, the long-term decline in the numbers of
U.S. undergraduate and graduate students studying physics.
Intellectual Property
Soon after Lawrence built his first accelerator, a not-for-profit research
facility, The Research Corporation, obtained the rights to the cyclotron on
the understanding that Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory would continue
to be a beneficiary of the corporation's policy of investing proceeds from
its patents back into research at the university. Throughout World War II,
accelerator laboratories across the country added their technical improve-
ments to the machines without knowledge of whether the basic design
was protected. After the war, The Research Corporation wrote a letter to
all the laboratories in possession of cyclotrons requesting that they grant
use of their machines without payment of royalties. Most scientists and
engineers who had worked on the accelerators knew nothing of the origi-
nal patent on Lawrence's cyclotron and were astonished when they re-
ceived this letter. When the AEC was formed in 1946, the wartime policy
of open access that had contributed greatly to the development of accel-
erators continued under the new agency. Since then, both law and policy
have tended to grant to DOE (formerly AEC) the ownership of patentable
inventions developed in its laboratories or by contractors, and to make
freely available the technology of particle physics to scientists engaged in
basic research. "The exemplary freedom with which high-energy physi-
cists are accustomed to exchange information and the speed with which
the information finds application rests on their belief that their field was
never thought to have commercial or military possibilities" (Heilbron and
Kevles, 1988~.
CONCLUSIONS
Throughout the history of government-sponsored large-scale research
projects, issues related to funding, organizing, and managing their re-
search, and to training qualified personnel have been in constant flux,
depending on how the government has allocated and reallocated the avail-
able resources, and as social needs and economic trends have changed.
When funding levels have declined and acquiring research funds has
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APPENDIX
become difficult, the issues have become more apparent, and a great deal
of debate has ensued, but the subsequent responses have yet to stop the
cycle. When funds have increased and experiments have flourished, with
results of technological or economic utility, the significance of the issues
has faded, and the need to create safeguards against a potentially detri-
mental cycle has diminished.
Academic high-energy physics has been involved with the issues of
large-scale science research, as discussed throughout this paper, for over 60
years, decades longer than any other academic scientific discipline. There is
consensus throughout this field, and in other fields as well, that these issues
need to be addressed. The studies conducted in physics that have been
cited in this paper, although few in number, have revealed that the major
issues associated with large-scale research projects involve prioritizing,
funding, organizing, and managing research, and educating, training, and
advancing scientists. According to these few studies, one of the longest-
running federally funded university-based scientific fields of the twentieth
century is still grappling with almost all of these issues. There appear to be
no overarching plans, solutions, or policies to serve as guidelines for large
collaborations and projects. The various issues that arise during a project
are quickly addressed as they appear, with no continuity.
Particle physics has followed a slightly different path from that of
most of the other sciences; even within the field of physics, it has a rela-
tively unique role. As particle physics has left the limelight, new frontiers
in other areas of physics have been opening up, such as new materials; the
properties and uses of fluids, plasmas, and gases; nanotechnology; and
even interfaces with biology. In comparing big particle physics projects
with large-scale research pursuits in biology in such areas as genomics
and proteomics, one finds several differences between the fields in the
definition and outcomes of their large-scale projects. Traditionally, the
vast majority of expense involved in particle physics has been in building
the facilities the accelerators and detectors. Over the years, the size of
the accelerators has grown of necessity from inches to miles, making them
more expensive and increasingly less accessible to scientists. In contrast,
technologies developed in big biology have tended to become smaller,
more efficient, less expensive, and more widely available to interested
scientists. Although the technologies developed in particle physics have
provided a great foundation of knowledge that has led to the develop-
ment of several technologies used in apparently unrelated fields, it has
directly produced relatively few commercially marketable applications.
Projects in biology, in contrast, have traditionally created products with
tremendous commercial potential that have appealed more readily to the
lay population.
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While constant fluctuations in the social and economic trends and
priorities of a wealthy democracy may make improving our current sys-
tem for funding of scientific research challenging, continual increases in
the cost of pursuing large-scale research and the competition among vari-
ous areas of science for the limited funds available make addressing and
resolving these issues crucial. Great utility has resulted from the pursuit
of large-scale science research in an array of outcomes. It is difficult to
evaluate or quantify the economic and social benefits derived from these
pursuits, and little effort has been made to assess the quality or accom-
plishments of the various programs and approaches involved, especially
in a comparative fashion. There is no doubt that the quest for scientific
knowledge has provided numerous conveniences and a tremendous in-
crease in the quality of life in less than a century. The abundance enjoyed
by U.S. society has provided the means that have enabled us to engage in
these pursuits. The most difficult factor has not been a lack of available
resources, but the question of how to allocate those resources. This is the
challenge in prioritizing research pursuits; knowing what discipline or
project to fund; and deciding whether to allocate funds to a few large
projects, distribute them to a large number of smaller projects, or divide
them between both large and small projects. It is unfortunate that we are
not able to follow Nobel Laureate km Watson's jest to Congress and,
"only fund the breakthroughs." Until we are capable of funding only
successful projects, it is important to establish helpful and realistic guide-
lines and policies that will ensure the ability to continue the pursuit of
knowledge in the most efficient and practical way.
~ . . . . . ~
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