From: Laurent Vuilleumier < >
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:04:05 -0700

Hello everybody,
                I would like to point out two journal papers (that are
available on the internet). They both are somewhat related to the
evolution the science-society relationship is undergoing currently.
Obviously, the science is going through a quite painfull adjustement of
its relationship to the society. It looks like some era of generous and
ever increasing support of science by the society is over. A paper
(http://www.caltech.edu/~goodstein/crunch.html), recently pointed out by
Laurent M., argued that the development of science was exponential at
least until the 60s. Many people agree that the era of 'generous
funding' was related to the cold war and the competition in trying to
achieve supremacy in weaponry, space science and technology, computers
and telecomunications. Now that cold war is other and military spending
decreased, the relation (and the funding going with it) between science
and society is increasingly being questionned. The first paper from The
Economist (http://www.economist.com/issue/24-05-97/fn6681.html) is
reviewing a recent report from the OECD. This report argues that the
notion that public funding of science is a measure of how innovative a
country is, is incomplete. This report says the influence of direct
spending on R&D is overestimated. A better measure would be this
funding, the capacity to apply the result of such R&D AND capacity of
the country to acquire new technology developped elsewhere. Of course,
the previous lines are just my interpretation of a review of a report,
so if you are interested, please read the original. The second paper
(http://www.sciam.com/0697issue/0697review2.html) is a review by
Scientific American of a book: "Frontiers of illusion: science,
technology, and the politics of progress" by Daniel Sarewitz. The author
is questionning some axioms that are often used by scientists: (quotes
from the review) "These 'truths' of science policy--that basic research
should be unfettered by consideration of its likely practical
consequences and that more research is always better--are among the
sacred cows that Daniel Sarewitz lines up and unceremoniously slaughters
in his bracing critique of the research enterprise."
    I do not think we have to blindly endorse all these positions; but
if we want to continue to be scientists, if we want to defend public
funding of science, we certainly have to build a solid argumentation and
know how to advertise science. In any case, I think that it is necessary
that scientists are aware of the debate about science utility and public
funding. This has also some ties with the book "Mut zum Aufbruch/Ayons
le courage d'un nouveau depart/?Italian title?" that we (or at least I)
have been ask to review. This book was presented as a proposal for a
politic boosting Switzerland competivity and had some paragraph devoted
to science and education. Unfortunately, I am not aware of it being
available through internet, but I believe most of us received a copy (at
least I did).

As usual, I'll be pleased to know others opinions.

Laurent

-- 
Laurent Vuilleumier               e-mail: L_Vuilleumier_at_lbl.gov
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory      phone : (510) 486-6108
1 Cyclotron Road, 29C             fax   : (510) 486-7303
Berkeley, CA 94720
==========================================================================
This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list
server.  If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the
message body of "unsubscribe swiss-list" to majordomo_at_lists.stanford.edu