SCIENCE EXAMINED AS QUINTESSENTIAL SPECIAL INTEREST

reviewed by Rick Borchelt

Fans of Dan Greenberg's withering sarcasm and acerbic wit have had to content themselves in recent years with back issues of Science and Government Report, the legendary D.C. rap sheet about the foibles of national science policy that he edited for 26 years. But since retiring from the editorship, he's been making up for lost opportunities to tweak the noses of the science establishment writing Science, Money, and Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2001), a recap, in vintage Greenberg style, of the politics and finance of science from the end of World War II to the end of the 20th century. This is a story, Greenberg tells us, of how science "left the cloistered laboratory to make its claims on resources in the clamor of competitive America," spawning along the way "a supportive, inventive bureaucracy that has eroded the right values of science and transformed it into a clever, well-financed claimant for money." And that's just the set-up from the book's first paragraph.

It's been more than 30 years since Greenberg's last thumb-your-nose book about scientific officialdom, The Politics of Pure Science, first released in 1967 and regularly updated (most recently in 1999). In the earlier book, Greenberg first described the early postwar development of a defined scientific establishment" that by the end of the 20th century has become a rampant entitlement program gorging itself at the public trough. The players have increased in number and aggressiveness, Greenberg says, and the result has been the formation of "the quintessential specialinterest group," so powerful "they make the oil industry look like a piker."

Greenberg's harshest criticisms are devoted to an examination of programs aimed at public understanding of science. As Greenberg describes it, public
enlightenment about science could be passed over as a worthy, unselfish public service were it not tainted with the political conviction that the public understanding of science is essential for public support of science. Instead, Greenberg tells us, programs to enhance the public understanding of science manifest "the cargo-cult mentality in science: Like the post-World War II Pacific Islanders who faithfully tended abandoned airstrips and piers in hopes of shipments of goods again coming over the horizon, scientists anguish over, and promote, the public understanding of science as indispensable to public financing of their work." This relationship does not, and never did, exist;
"nonetheless, the delusional association pervades the politics of science and generates voodoo assertions, questionable behavior, and career opportunities."

The proof, he notes, is that science has prospered in the 50 years since the Second World War in the face of declining scientific literacy and minimal civic involvement in the process of scientific discovery. Indeed, Greenberg says, this is how the scientific establishment likes it: "Scientific leadership does not seek to encourage public participation in the politics of science. Rather, it seeks public support for more money for science, without public interference in the use of the money."

Greenberg ties all these arguments firmly back to finance. He contrasts quotes from various NIH luminaries direly predicting a looming fiscal crisis for health science funding with the actual data for NIH funding: Beginning in 1996 at $12 billion, the agency recently claimed a $20 billion war chest, all "without a molecule of evidence of a commensurate increase in the public understanding of science or any indication of wobbling in public and political sentiment for even
greater support." NIH's pale public image may be a blow to its institutional pride, he notes, but has apparently been without fiscal consequence. By contrast, the
public-relations powerhouse at NASA has presided over flat or declining budgets during the same period.

Mass media are the willing and eager compatriots in this ruse, Greenberg alleges. In the case of cancer research, for example, he notes that "good news about
cancer must be emphasized and, if need be, manufactured, to keep up public spirits and support. The press collaborates, though in occasional fits of professional conscience, it balks and questions the contrived optimism that shades the news of cancer and so much else in the scientific enterprise," but with limited corrective action. The 1998 New York Times coverage of Judah
Folkman's research in tumor therapy merits special attention from Greenberg, but the problem is endemic and epidemic in science journalism. Harsh words from
one of its own.

But Greenberg is principled to a fault, and he even recounts his own role in furthering a scheme he spends much time debunking in his book: The necessity
for grassroots political action by the scientific community. Following the 1995 takeover of the House of Representatives by the Republican Party and subsequent budget-cutting plans that would have had the effect of eviscerating civilian science and technology spending, Greenberg penned an MIT Technology Review article, "Scientists Must Join the Fray." "With characteristically clouded journalistic foresight, I argued that political action, rather than mere petitions for kindness, was the only route to salvation for science. The article evoked no interest-a frequent, deserved fate of journalistic prophecy and prescriptions. Science continued to abstain from ballot-box politics, and came out of the supposed crisis with budgets plumper than ever."

In his review of this book, San Francisco Chronicle Science Writer Keay Davidson opined that "We need more Greenbergs. Too many science writers cover science as uncritically as fashion reporters cover fashion." Anyone who watches the annual fashion review of the Academy Awards done by Joan Rivers might question that last statement; Greenberg's is a no-holds-barred survey in the Rivers mold. But Keay's point is well taken. Dan Greenberg's is a clarion call for fellow science writers to follow the money trail before putting pen to paper.

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Rick Borchelt is the director of communications and public affairs for the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

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