Large-scale military funding induces culture clash
Abstract Mission-oriented research shifts the assessment of research products and potential from scientists to external factors. This is the point of mission funding, but it introduces what the author calls ‘epistemic drift’, which is part of a more general clash between different value systems and cultures. The culture clash between the military and industry has led to a shift in debate from spin-off to dual-use technologies. Similar conflicts and tensions are introduced into the university research system by large-scale mission funding such as that of SDI, and it is imperative that universities establish a strong civilian base for fundamental research funding instead of lobbying for military support.
Strategic defense and directed-energy weapons
About 8 months after President Reagan called on the US scientific community to develop SDI, the American Physical Society commissioned a study to evaluate the status of directed-energy weapons (DEW). Focus was on DEW because they would be needed in almost all stages of the destruction of a missile, including: detecting the launch; locating and tracking the target; distinguishing warheads from decoys; and destroying the target itself and verifying the kill. Results of the study were released in the spring of 1987, and SDI partisans have attacked and SDI critics have invoked the findings of the APS committee. The authors were cochairmen of the 17-member committee, and here summarize their conclusions, namely: (1) although substantial progress has been made in many technologies of DEW over the last two decades, significant gaps remain in these technologies; (2) successful resolution of these issues is critical for extrapolation to performance levels needed for an effective BMD systems; (3) at present, there is insufficient information to decide whether the required extrapolations can be achieved; improvements of several orders of magnitude are needed; (4) under the best of circumstances, another decade of intensive research is needed to provide the knowledge needed for an informed decision;more » and (5) important issues of overall system integration and effectiveness depend critically upon information that does not yet exist.« less
Department of Defense R & D in the University
The DOD carefully evaluates its technical needs and executes programs of sponsored research and development to fulfill them. Thus, while individual projects proceed in accordance with established scientific principles of objectivity, the overall system of DOD funding allows the military to influence the development of science technology. Many have argued that this system of contracts and grants has well served science and the universities. One cannot deny that the influx of money led to rapid progress in selected scientific fields and increased scientific institutions' affluence. With this fact we have no quarrel. However, these same people often continue to argue that the systems of federal funding for science, specifically DOD funding of science, follows merely on the work's scientific merit, not on how it fits any larger scheme. They continue, that, since DOD supports good science for its own sake, the combination of military money and universities strongly encouraging faculty to seek that money encourages healthy competition for faster scientific progress. The DOD's approval process is seen to follow from the scientist up, with the military deciding which proposals for research have the most intrinsic (scientific) merit, then after the fact, thinking up a military justification for congressional budget requests. It is this latter belief with which we take issue. The DOD considers the scientific worth of the proposals for research it receives, but only after it has determined that the proposal fulfills a specific military need. This fact and its implications for the university as an institution charged with protecting the process by which man discovers new knowledge have been ignored in the debates over DOD sponsored research and development in universities. In addition, the Nixon Administration's efforts to tighten management controls over civilian research, especially in the biomedical and energy areas, promises to further undermine the university's role as an institution charged with fostering a search for truth free from bias in both methodology and subject selection.