1. In 1981, President Reagan had health systems agencies and professional standards review organizations on the fiscal chopping block. This indicated the general anti-consumer climate of his administration and its public philosophy of deregulation. The Reagan administration has also been equivocal about individual liberty. It has advocated freedom in theory but restricted free speech in practice. The most notable examples of the practice are the national security directive, the defense department order demanding the withdrawal of scientific papers that were to be presented at an international conference on lasers and optics, and the state department letters limiting the activity of scholars from the USSR and the People's Republic of China.
2. The system of peer review at the National Institutes of Health was formalized in 1947, when the Division of Research Grants was established. In 1965, twelve working panels analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of NIH and made twelve recommendations (“Biomedical Science,” 1965). For a brief comparison with the peer review system at the National Science Foundation, see Grants Peer Review Study Team, 1976. For an evaluation, see Mitroff and Chubin , 1979.
3. Sayre Wallace (1961: 861) defines American science policy as a “unified, comprehensive, coherent, rational statement of goals and methods for science.” It was “aspired to but not yet achieved” in 1964 and, in 1982, is still a goal.
4. By equality, I mean equality of opportunity, where everyone has equal access to decision making. For a variety of reasons only a few choose to exercise this opportunity. This discussion of the theoretical and practical justification of popular control is based on Pateman (1970), Bachrach (1967), and Dahl (1963).
5. Beckwith John , one of the leaders of the drive to halt the XYY studies, disagreed with Hecht and with earlier reports about voting.