Science Sputnik’ed Response
posted by on October 4 at 17:38 PM
Sputnik orbited fifty years ago today—a tremendous accomplishment. But, let’s not mistake the meaning here. The Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite was both a fantastic technical achievement and a profound threat. If the Soviets could launch a new moon, they could also hurl an atomic bomb across the globe. In the context of the late 1950s, and under the very real threat of nuclear annihilation by a committed and dangerous foe, how did the country respond?
As my colleague and friend Tom Robey noted in todays P-I:
Science emerged as the antidote for America’s shortcomings. Policymakers jumped to talk about science and, more important, to fund it: President Eisenhower established the position of Presidential Science Adviser; the House and Senate incorporated scientific review into their committee structures; Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Agency; and lawmakers quadrupled funding for the National Science Foundation. Most people agreed we needed to improve education to draw more young Americans into science and engineering.
In no small way, these decisions made America what it is today: the leader in technology, finance, medicine, and economics. Prior to this push, science was largely a career for the wealthy, or patrons of the wealthy. By putting the full weight of the public coffers and general will behind research and academics, we became the first real scientific society and changed the course of the planet as a result.
How do today’s Republicans respond to our challenges—climate change, energy crunches, airline-transmitted pandemic illness, a world filled with hungry, bored, and girlfriend-less teenage boys to name a few?
The office of the Science Adviser to the President has been moved out of the White House; the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment was disbanded in 1995 after the Republican sweep of Congress; NASA has an image problem; science allocations lag behind inflation stifling innovation; and while more Americans than other nationalities win Nobel Prizes, those accolades go to scientists trained in a different era—the uncertain funding situation facing young scholars today is an impediment to many pursuing careers in science.
Even as a young scientist, coming to the end of my PhD training, I cannot easily recommend it as a path for younger students. The ever-tightening NIH budgets are only the start of troubles for a young American interested in science. Classrooms are under assault from throwback religious zealots; the president actively derides intellectualism, curiosity, and scientific pursuits from the bully pulpit.
When I think of the alternative careers I selected against—the NSA, biotech, financial services, software engineering—and the challenges facing me as I become an American scientist, I feel like an anachronism. Thankfully I live in Seattle, an island of the earlier spirit in a sea of reactionary fear.
I’m here. You’re here. And I’m happy for that.
FIRST!! 1!1
Thanks for fighting the good fight.
You're not seeing the bright side: By throwing the vast weight of American resources behind the burgeoning field of Willful Ignorance, we will undoubtably lead the world in that field for generations to come.
Agree with you on NIH funding. Sad but true.
"...the uncertain funding situation facing young scholars today is an impediment to many pursuing careers in science."
The main impediment is the enormous oversupply of PhDs. To many people are competing for the same postdoc jobs, the same faculty positions, and the same funding. The funding situation isn't great, but it's not a crisis. It just can't keep up with the growth in personnel.
Jonathan Golob! I'm so happy The Stranger has a Jewish science writer! Which Temple do you attend in Seattle? (I'm looking for one that welcomes atheists who love Torah).
I tried being agnostic for a while, but then I became atheist. I still believe that Israel was God's gift to the Jewish people of course. I just don't believe in God. You really should be more open about Judaism, I think we could all benefit from becoming more observant of halaka.
Thanks for the link, Jonathan. I think CG has a point, but my main beef is that the environment science finds itself in restricts innovation and hampers good decision-making in legislative halls around the country. PhD's don't have to turn into professors or work in labs or do the things PhD's have done for years. Unfortunately, the only real way to become an expert in science is to get a PhD, and we need science experts in government, the media, law, business (they're already there!), and medicine.
We also need brilliant young scientists who push the envelop. That's where you come along...
I presume this post is far enough down the list that you won't be too embarrassed that I said that!
Also worth noting is that NASA's chief administrator, Michael Griffin, said in a recent speech that it looks like China will beat the US back to the moon...
http://www.space.com/news/ap-071003-china-spacerace.html
"I think when that happens, Americans will not like it. But they will just have to not like it,'' Griffin said.
@8: That's great news. The scientific value of sending people to the Moon is negligible. If the Chinese government chooses to waste its money on aerospace gimmicks, we can continue to import their best scientists (and give them NIH grants).
Amen, brother. Our previous aggressive funding of science, regardless of practical benefit, has had uncountable unforeseen benefits and was a big part of what made America great.
Our gradual drift away from science in the last two decades, especially pure science, will doom America to second-class status among nations for decades to come.
Or in other words: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
It's true. Funding for American public science education skyrocketed in the 1950's pretty much as a direct result of Sputnik.
And while it's also true that the current NIH funding climate is horrendous, the long term picture is harder to gauge. It wasn't that long ago that the NIH budget more than doubled in less than 8 years ($10B to $20B from '93 to '01) before it got sidetracked by George Bush and the war on bioterrorism. And that now it's falling. But it very well could start to turn around again under the next administration. Potentially just in time for your 1st or 2nd postdoc.
Or we could all fall into the Arctic Ocean along with the polar bears.
Terrific post.
A few other items to remember on this anniversary:
Von Braun's team and their Jupiter C could have placed an artificial satellite into low-earth orbit before the Soviet Sputnik, but were specifically ordered NOT to. Test flights literally placed ballast (sand) into the rocket's upper stage to prevent an 'accidental' or 'inadvertent' orbiting. Vanguard would 'officially' take the U.S. into orbit. However...
Recently declassified documents reveal that contrary to being 'shocked, shocked, shocked' by Soviet technological prowess, Upper levels of U.S. intelligence were acutely aware of the plans of the USSR's rocket program. Once Sputnik flew over the heads of the world, the Kremlin would never hold the upper hand in any argument against spying by satellite.
The rest, as they say, is history.
@1:
That is so frickin' annoying. Who cares that you were first.
Not only that Larry, but it's also pretty clear now that the Soviets greatly exaggerated their ICBM capabilities post-Sputnik, something of which again the U.S. military and top political leaders were well aware. However, it served their agenda to continue to hold up the myth of Soviet nuclear superiority, and use it as leverage to get Congress to approve a massive arms build-up, as well as fund more research into nuclear weapons and delivery systems, as well as the "moon race" proposed by Kennedy in 1962.
So, while it's true on the one hand that Sputnik and the fear of the Soviet's holding what Johnson termed "the high frontier" significantly influenced public policy toward science education and scientific inquiry during the late 1950's and early 1960's, it also had the negative effect of perpetuating and accelerating an arms race between the two superpowers that could very easily have led to the annihiliation of life as we know it.
Luckily, it didn't, but tensions between the two blocks would have been severely reduced had certain key facts, such as these, come to light much earlier than they did.
The new science is being practiced in the areas of finance and control.
The immediate gratification of "pure' science is nonexistent. We instead focus our intelligence on ways to create wealth out of paper transactions and ways to make people devote their energies toward the consumption of useless shit.
When these activities start to fray at the edges, we have our military researchers to bring crowd control from the battlefield to our back yard.
Hey, we got NASCAR, we got our own HEMI rigs, we got FOOTBALL, we're number one!
I agree, the marginalization of scientific thinking is a big problem for America. The far Right fears science because it threatens the tenets of their religious beliefs. Just as bad though, in the dumbing of the American mind, are the sloppy anti-science and psuedo-scientific belief systems of many left-leaning folks like New Agers, Pagans and Wiccans, to name a few. There are also a lot of Jedi Knights and Matrix-heads out there too who want the laws of physics suspended. Fantasy is great but let's keep it unreal.
So I keep hearing about this golden age when the US was dominated by thoughtful, scientifically orthodox hordes of rational thinkers. But now, in these dark times, scientists are forced by armies of religious zealots to cower in their dusty labs, fighting one another for the trickle of pennies from the all-but-defunct DOE/NIH/NSF. Tell me, when was this time, when scientists didn't bemoan their lack of funding and public ignorance of their work?
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