1. Freedom of Scientific Inquiry and the Public Interest
2. The NAS Surveys of Fundamental Research 1962-1974, in Retrospect
3. An eloquent personal testimony to the challenges of basic research has been given in an essay by Steven Weinberg in Gerald Holton and William A. Blanpied (eds.),Science and Its Public: The Changing Relationship(Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1976), pp. 33–46.
4. Historically, of course, the most familiar attempts to control scientific inquiry have resulted from the conviction, by some, that knowledge itself can be subversive. Loren Graham suggests that this motivation is still apparent in current suggestions to circumscribe the freedom of inquiry. SeeDaedalus, 107:2 (Spring 1978), 8–10.
5. “It may be good for the morale of a scientist who is caught up in political difficulties to make speeches recalling Galileo's suppression by the Church, or Lysenko's support by the Party. But in contemporary America, the main problem is just the opposite. Politicians have been persuaded by scientists that political power issues can be solved by scientific methods, and hence use political power to increase the proportion of research work that is devoted to applied problems, to increase the amount of support that is given to institutions and programs for political reasons, and to drag (or welcome) scientists into political activity. All this may work against the best interest of basic research, which must be supported on a longer time perspective and with different motives, and for highest quality must depend on the work of a smaller proportion of interested talent. But it is not moving in the direction of thought control in the interest of a coherent ideology, but rather in the direction of dissipation of the energy of scientific institutions by too much involvement in the specialized interests that are the stuff of politics.”Daedalus, 107:2 (Spring 1978) 86.