In the vanguard of discontent is Nobel physicist Leon Lederman, author
of a gloom report concluding that ‘research in the US is in serious trouble.’
Lederman, president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, recently presented his report at the high temple of American
research, the National Academy of Sciences. The two bodies are at the heart
of the science establishment.

The report’s title, Science: The End of the Frontier? is a play on Science:
The Endless Frontier, the optimistic blueprint written in 1945 that set
science in the US on its world-leading course. Lederman’s version draws
its conclusion from a survey of 250 researchers at 40 universities, most
of whom said times are tough. Their ‘overall tone,’ Lederman concludes,
‘Is one of deep concern, dicouragement, frustration, and even despair and
°ù±ð²õ¾±²µ²Ô²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô.’

Addressing an audience of government science administrators and Congressional
staff, Lederman recalled nostalgically the year 1968 as ‘the peak year of
what we call the Golden Age’ in federal support for science. He urged a
return to the good times through a prompt doubling of government research
funds. Bloodied by long deficit battles, many of his listeners gazed in
disbelief. A few old-timers recalled that these crying sessions are standard
fare in science politics. In fact, in that cherished year of 1968, the New
York Academy of Sciences held a meeting on ‘The Crisis Facing American Science’.

The reality is that science in America has never been bigger, richer
of more productive than it is today. What it suffers from is an unrestrained
appetite for doing all things possible, while neglecting to set priorities
for research. For that we can blame the thick and unholy alliance of politicians,
who just want a slice of the scientific action for the folks at home, and
scientists, who merely want to pursue their intellectual interests. The
result is that, while the amount of federal money is unprecedented, it is
spread so thinly that many scientific projects are financially undernourished,
and time that should be spent on research is diverted to chasing support.

Ironically, US spending on research and development, including basic
research, exceeds that of Western Europe and Japan combined. In 1988, according
to OECD, US spending of R & D – from all sources – totalled $127 billion
(about 66 billion Pounds). Second was Japan, with $46 billion (for 1987).
The total for West Germany was $24 billion; for Britain, $15.5 billion (for
1986). Of course, the US far exceeded the others in defence R & D. Even
so, money has flowed through civilian research in a volume unapproached
by any other nation.

Given this inconvenient fact, doom-merchants point to a rare negative
statistic: several other nations slightly exceed the US in the share of
gross national product devoted to civilian research. Indeed they do. Left
out of the argument, however, is the fact that US GNP is two to four times
larger than its major industrial competitors.

The colossal acale of support is relected in the output of the American
scientific enterprise. The latest compilations by the National Science Foundation
(for 1986) show that American researchers are by far the dominant producers
of the world’s scientific literature – 40 per cent of the global total in
clinical medicine, 38 per cent in biomedicine and biology, 22 per cent in
chemistry, 30 per cent in physics, 42 per cent in earth and space sciences,
37 per cent in engineering and technology, and 40 per cent in mathematics.
These figures were virtually unchanged between 1981 and 1986 and it is doubtful
that they are significantly different today.

So how did we get into yet another of these funding ‘crises’, when research
budgets are bigger than ever, even when inflation is taken into account?
Federal spending for medical research, for example, now stands at over $8
billion a year, a ‘real’ increase of nearly 50 per cent in a decade. The
Lederman report claims, dubiously, that overall, American scientific purchasing
power has increased by only 20 per cent since 1968. Whatever the numbers,
comparisons of then and now are tricky, given the vastly increased productivity
of modern computers and other advanced scientific equipment.

The main problem of American science is that most ideas for research
are considered equal, particularly if they require big, expensive
facilities. The mammoth atom smasher destined for Texas, the
Superconducting Super collider, started with a cost estimate of $
4.4 billion four years ago, and is now at $8 billion, and rising fast. NASA’s Freedom
space station has zoomed from $8 billion to $37 billion. In terms of what
elso could be accomplished scientifically with that money, are they worth
it? Both science and politics shun that question.

American science also suffers from a penchant for running up bills in
the expectation that Congress will cover the gaps. The National Institutes
of Health currently finds itself with a big ‘mortgage’ arising from a decision
several years ago to increase the duration and scale of its grants. As a
result, money is short for junior scientists.

Adding up the R & D projects on the federal agenda, the Congressional
Research Service reports they will consume $160 million in construction
and operating costs over the next decade. Averaged per year, that’s perhaps
only 20 per cent of all government spending on R&D. But the ravenous
mega-projects are coming along just as tight lids have been set on federal
spending. The Congressional study notes concerns that ‘the growing commitment
to ‘big science’ is coming at the expense of grants to individual investigators,
the backbone of the US research enterprise’.

Science could make good use of more money, but so could many other worthy
enterprises on the parched American landscape. The difference between science
and many of them, however, is that Washington is consistently generous to
research.

Taking its good fortune as the natural order of things, the research
establishment prefers to cry for more, rather than establish priorities.
Evasion of the issue is easy, but it leads to the dismal paradox of crisis
amid plenty.

It should first be understood that the NIH, wholly federally financed,
is the global goliath of the medical sciences. Its budget of $8 billion
a year far exceeds the medical research spending of all other governments
combined. The NIH regularly finances the training of thousands of scientists.
Its policies and practices set the priorities and standards for health research
in its own laboratories and in universities and laboratories throughout
the country.

So it was with considerable concern and puzzlement that women members
of Congress noted that the NIH’s programmes for testing new medicines and
therapeutic techniques often involve only male test subjects, leaving blank
the question of how women would respond to such treatments. There have been
many instances of female omission, with the most glaring case involving
a long study of the value of ordinary aspirin for preventing heart attacks.

Medical folklore had long been held that aspirin does indeed provide
some protective effect. But the NIH researchers wanted scientifically exact
data. And so, in 1981, they undertook an experiment in which 22,000 male
physicians were enlisted to take a pill every other day, without knowing
whether it was aspirin or a placebo. The experiment was limited to physicians
because they are a stable, easy-to-follow population and could be expected
to recognise the importance of adhering to the pill schedule.

But women, too, suffer heart attacks. Why weren’t they included in the
experiment, which confirmed some protective effects? The answer is bound
up with the complexities and culture of science. Because of possible child-bearing
complications, researchers justifiably tend to be more cautious in testing
drugs on women. But beyond that, medical science is overwhelmingly male,
and men suffer far more heart attacks than women. Habit, momentum and tunnel
vision are no less influential in science than in other parts of society.
That experiement was limited to men.

When challenged by some of the few women in congress, officials at the
NIH lamely said that the ranks of women in medicine were too thin to warrant
their inclusion. The NIH strategists did not explain their failure to enlist
the nursing profession, which, of course, abounds with women.

In any case, just as the House committee dealing with legislation on
the NIH was passing an amendment requiring the organisation to set up a
women’s office, the NIH announced the creation of an Office of Research
on Women’s Health. The move was applauded by Representative Pat Schroeder,
from Colorado, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues.
And the acting head of the new office announced that from now on, proportional
women’s participation in research trials will be required, unless a sound
reason is established for not doing so.

ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s often complain about the intrusion of politics into research,
claiming that science is best left to scientists. In most circumstances,
they are right. But occasions do arise when we are all better off because
political pressure forces science to examine its practices and make corrections.

The exclusion of women from important health studies is so preposterous
and indefinsible as to arouse wonder about the scientific mentality. It
went on for years. And there’s no reason to believe it would have ended
if the women of Congress hadn’t demanded reform.

Daniel S. Greenberg is a commentator on science policy based in Washington
DC.

The authors, a team led by Fima Lifshitz, of Cornell University, describe
a survey of girls at a Catholic high school on Long Island in the US. They
found anxiety about overweight even among the underweight, and note that:
‘Fear of obesity and inappropriate eating behaviours are pervasive among
adolescent girls regardless of body weight or nutrition knowledge.’ They
add that the fear ‘appears to be deeply ingrained in our society as a result
of the cultural preoccupation with obesity and the value placed on being
²õ±ô¾±³¾â€™.

How did we get this way? The article in Pediatrics states that ‘television,
magazines and even the classroom promote the goal of thinness with regard
to both beauty and health.’ Love, happiness, admiration and wealth are closely
identified with a slender form.

But that observation takes us only to the doorstep of the brazen and
lucrative antifat industry: a colossal enterprise, spanning media, medicine,
entertainment and business, all collaborating in panicking the populace
into pursuit of body shapes that are impossible for all but a few.

The criteria of human beauty have varied over time and place, as can
be seen in art collections that span the centuries. But never, until recent
times, has a society assigned the highest aesthetic value to unnatural thinness,
and then idolised that shape as a holy goal for the masses. Most people,
of course, don’t resemble the ideal – as any streetcorner survey will confirm.
And very few have any chance of attaining it, no matter how diligently they
diet, which, it turns out, most people are always attempting in one way
or another.

Except in rare cases of bodily malfunction, for which medical attention
is appropriate, humans naturally arrive at a body weight and stay there.
Expert counselling and intense discipline might bring them through the feat
of dropping their weight by some large amount, but that is a formidable
task. For the ordinary person, a 10 per cent reduction in weight is a challenge
that few can meet. And, as is legendary, lost weight very often creeps back.
For the great majority, the goal of unnatural thinness is unattainable on
any permanent basis, no matter how great the effort.

And that sad fact of biological reality provides the foundation and
the permanent prosperity of the antifat industry. With TV, Hollywood and
advertising proclaiming superslim as the ideal, those who don’t meet it
are, by cultural definition, misfits.

Magazine articles and diet books, both mainly focused on the insecurities
of women, endlessly offer what are described as simple, painless ways of
rapidly losing weight. And even more astonishing, and reprehensible, some
offer prospects of new body shapes. If these formulas worked as promised,
there would, of course, be no need for an unending stream of articles and
books on still new ways to lose weight and reshape the form. But, inevitably,
waves of easy weight-loss formulas are followed by more waves, each promising
success, at last.

Fat anxiety is a wonderland of profits for food and drink manufacturers,
who promise the never-never combination of good taste, fullness, high nutritional
quality and low calories. Again, if the products perform as promised, why
does anyone have a weight problem? And then health clubs and doctors have
jumped in for a share of the profits, promising the scientific route to
the holy goal of thinness. As a last resort, modern medicine will eliminate
body fat with knives and suction pumps. And there’s no shortage of customers.

The report is that schoolgirls are so dreadfully fearful of obesity
that many undertake diets injurious to their health. Considering the barrage
of thinness propaganda constantly hurled at them, there should be no wonder.

Dan Greenberg is a commentator on science based in Washington DC.