0.9 Crisis or expanding agenda? 1968-1974  (Page 4/6)

The one agency that may have suffered most from Johnson’s displeasure was the National Science Foundation, whose constant-dollarbudget fell from $414 million in fiscal year 1967 to $269 million in 1970, and thereafter began to rise again, although slowly. Reductions in NSF’s budgetresulted from decisions made by the Johnson administration, the Nixon administration, and congressional actions. During the five-year period from 1965through 1969, the Bureau of the Budget reduced NSF’s budget request by anaverage of more than 15 percent; during those same year, Congress reduced that request by an additional 12 percent on average. Comparable average reductionsduring the Kennedy administration were 8 and 18 percent, respectively.

Only the National Institutes of Health were spared the budget axe during these years, with their basic research budget increasingcontinuously, except during fiscals years 1971 and 1973.

Shifting support patterns, shifting perceptions

During the Vietnam era, the academic community believed that the science-government compact forged in the late 1940s andnurtured through the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations was being abrogated by the federal government. Certainly, the pluralistic research supportsystem, accepted by default after Vannevar Bush’s proposal of a single federal basic research support agency failed to materialize, was seriously weakenedduring the Johnson and Nixon years. The pluralistic system permitted scientists and engineers to submit funding proposals to morethan one federal organization. For example, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation all supported (and still support) research inthe mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences; basic research in the biological sciences was (and is) supported by the National Institutes of Health,the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture. According to the pluralistic concept, the fact that more than one federal agencyprovided funds for university basic research assured a fair hearing in Washington for any good idea advanced by a competent investigator. An importantcorollary was that the National Science Foundation, whose primary mission was to support meritorious basic research, would act as a “balance wheel” to assure anequitable distribution of basic research support among scientific disciplines. The decrease in federal support during the Johnson and Nixon administrations,along with congressional fragmentation, undercut this balance-wheel concept.

In fiscal year 1967, the National Science Foundation ranked second among the five principal federal agencies supporting basicresearch, preceded by the National Institutes of Health and followed, respectively, by NASA, the AEC/ERDA/DoE, and the Department of Defense. A yearlater, the NSF ranked last, where it remained until fiscal year 1972, when it again moved into second place. Meanwhile, the basic research budgets of NASA,the AEC and the DoD continued to decline. As these agencies cut back or eliminated specific basic research programs, the pressure on the NationalScience Foundation to pick up support increased beyond its means to do so. For example, rocks from the moon gathered by expeditions supported by NASA were distributed to several universities—butwithout financial support for their analysis. Thus, the affected geologists turned to NSF for support.