A century ago, blue water sailors coined an expression, “He bought a white horse,” to ridicule a mate who had squandered his money ashore. Is our country, as it presses its quest for scientific supremacy and technological pre-eminence, in danger of acquiring large herds of white horses? Or is there yet time to invest our no-longer-limitless resources in two proven horses of a different color—horse sense and horsepower?
Our horse sense will help us fathom how we arrived at our present precarious scientific and technological position and, perhaps, point out a new heading. But only concerted national horsepower can take us out of the doldrums in which we now seem to be becalmed.
Various factors have been blamed for the disparity between our scientific rate of growth and that of the U.S.S.R. A lack of sufficient emphasis and a late start in space exploration, a difference in national priority in the use of resources, and a lack of continuity of effort caused by fluctuations in government financial support, have all been singled out. An equally important factor, many claim, is national apathy. We do not seem to recognize the overriding importance of achieving scientific progress or understand what actions must be taken to accomplish it.
This lack of deep national concern and interest does not exist in the Soviet Union, according to George Klein, associate professor of philosophy at Columbia University. After a visit to the Soviet Union in 1958, he wrote:
It is doubtful that any society has ever poured such a high proportion of its energies and resources into scientific education as the Soviet Union is doing today. Soviet leaders from the beginning have treated education with greater seriousness than political leaders in any other country. This seriousness is widely shared by Soviet students and teachers at every level of the school system.
Khrushchev, in a speech in New York in 1959, stated:
Today we have forty times more specialists with a higher education than there were in pre-revolutionary Russia, and our schools train almost three times as many engineers as American universities and colleges.
These statistics were generally confirmed by the Report of the First Official Education Mission to the U.S.S.R., published by the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1959. While comparative statistics based on different assumptions are not accurate in an absolute sense, they indicate the scope of the Soviet’s interest and priority.
There simply are not enough students receiving sound scientific educations in this country at the present time to maintain world scientific leadership. Perhaps our greatest handicap has been the lack of motivation on the part of young people to undertake the arduous work and impose the self discipline required to obtain a scientific education. A large segment of public opinion regards the scientist as a “club foot” in the rhythm of society. This poor public image plus the relatively low average salaries which scientists receive cause a high percentage of students capable of mastering scientific subjects to choose careers in law or business instead. Many other high school graduates do not have the money to pay the high costs for a scientific education. While the number of private- and government-sponsored science scholarships have been increased in recent years, the number of students competing for them has increased in the same proportions. Consequently, the chances of a qualified student getting financial help from a scholarship are little better than they were 30 years ago. And Congress has recently demonstrated a lack of interest by rejecting a bill which would have broadened government financial support for science training.
We must take a new, hard look at our scientific programs. Perhaps there is merit in a program in which every qualified student might enlist in the same manner that all young men who meet minimum standards are offered the opportunity to serve in the armed forces. The scientific enlistees could be paid a basic monthly salary to pursue a scientific education at the university of their choice. The $2,000 to $4,000 per year per student that this would cost is only a small percentage of the cost of training and maintaining a man in the armed forces for one year.
The recruits enrolled in this program would be required to serve the nation in a scientific or technical capacity for a prescribed period after they finished their schooling. They could be offered a choice of either working in a government or commercial laboratory, performing government scientific work, or serving in the armed forces during this period. They could be paid in accordance with civil service scales and given credit for fulfilling their national military obligation. A vigorous and well-publicized program of this type would serve to focus national attention on the importance of scientific training.
The U. S. Navy, which has long recognized the importance of scientific progress to provide the capability in the ships and weapons necessary for it to carry out its mission, has provided the precedent for such a program with its imaginative, highly successful Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program (NESEP). Already the Navy has reaped the benefits of this three-year-old program, whereby hundreds of meritorious enlisted men have attended a score of universities, with the Navy footing the entire bill. But this program meets only a small part of the nation’s needs.
Providing adequate numbers of trained scientists is only a part of the answer to our scientific problems. An equally pressing national requirement is to utilize the scientific talent already available in an efficient manner. Our present methods are grossly wasteful. A large part of our valuable, but very limited resources, is being lost through misuse and misapplication. This totally unacceptable situation is a result of assigning indiscriminately some of the government’s scientific functions to private industry.
Industry and government must operate as a team to carry out national scientific programs. Both have important jobs to perform. But the fundamental nature and motivation of the government and industry are different. Ideally, the objectives of the government agencies are to insure an adequate defense and to advance science. Industry’s, on the other hand, is to reap a satisfactory profit on a continuing basis.
Industry, by its nature and interests, should be qualified to determine the most profitable production and marketing processes. Recent price fixing cases, however, have served to point out that industry sometimes will seek means other than increasing efficiency to make a profit, when not constrained by competition. But when competition can be assured, the most profitable methods are also the most efficient.
The government agencies have an equally important role to play. They must determine future requirements, relate these to the state of the art, establish development priorities, conduct basic research, and carry out feasibility tests. When industry is required to perform these functions, a conflict with its basic interests may result. In making decisions, leaders in industry must give primary consideration to company profits. In a producer-consumer relationship, such as that of industry and the government, it is never wise to assign to the producer responsibility for deciding what the customer needs. The government cannot rely upon proposals from industrial salesmen for decisions on what should be developed. When government agencies do so, they are unwittingly using as a criterion a course of action which is most profitable to industry rather than one which would most enhance the nation’s capabilities. Using such criteria, many doubtful projects have been started, only to be dropped later at a great cost of time, money, and effort.
It is worth examining the thinking which has influenced policy makers to believe that private industry can discharge properly the functions which must be performed by the government. One line of reasoning has utilized false generalizations of cause and effect relationships to reach erroneous conclusions. These relationships were true in a particular set of circumstances, but when the factors are different, they are no longer valid, Thus, they have reasoned as follows: The United States has grown in strength because of the motivating force of economic competition. To get efficiency or achieve progress in any undertaking, there must be competition. Private industry is competitive, while the government universities, and non-profit organizations are not. Therefore, to accomplish worthwhile results in the national research and development programs, they should be carried out by private industry, since it alone is competitive.
There can be no doubt but that economic competition is a powerful stimulus toward efficiency and productivity. But private industry, by itself, lacks the resources to carry out the long range scientific research and development necessary to meet national objectives. Government support is necessary to finance most of this effort. And there is very little price competition for government- funded programs. Hence, the conclusion that the national scientific program should be carried out by private industry, because it supplies economic competition, is not valid.
The present government policy requires government agencies to contract with private industry for the bulk of the scientific effort they finance and sponsor. It is the government’s intent to award these contracts to the company which will produce the greatest amount of research and development for the least amount of money. Unfortunately, it is difficult, and often impossible, for the government agencies to evaluate industry’s proposals adequately against this criterion. Much of the time, neither the government agency nor industry can accurately predict the ultimate cost of an advanced research project. This is particularly true when the government can furnish no more specific definition of the job than general performance type specifications generated early in a program. The Armed Forces Procurement Regulations recognize the limitation of using the contractor’s bid price as the criterion to determine the best procurement source. They require that other factors be considered in making this determination. These include the quality of a company’s technical proposal, its management organization, the technical talent available for the project, its present work load, past performance, available facilities, and the company’s location. A contractual award based upon these criteria is not competition in an economic sense. Further, once the contract is let, competition dies. The government is committed to carry out the program with the selected contractor. It cannot afford the loss of time and money which would result if it attempted to change contractors. It can rarely afford a parallel development. Furthermore, the first and often subsequent production contracts which come from a development, normally are awarded to the developing contractor. Contrary to popular opinion, then, the complete program is often carried out by private industry without economic competition ever being induced.
Another popular line of reasoning is that private industry achieves better results in research and development work than government laboratories or universities. There is some justification for this appraisal, since industry is able to provide the flexibility in personnel practices and organization necessary to carry out a program. Those in the government are fixed by law and are relatively inflexible. The civil service laws and system are largely to blame for this. Civil service was established to provide protection from the political spoils system and job security for government employees. When applied to engineers and scientists, it often serves to protect the jobs of the incompetent and stifles the initiative of the well qualified personnel. Because seniority plays a predominant role in determining position and salary, there is little flexibility to provide jobs at a pay scale competitive with industry for personnel with special talents. In a country with an acute shortage of competent engineers and scientists, there is no justification for a system whose apparent purpose is to provide job security. But these defects can be remedied. An increase in pay scale for government employees would certainly make the government service more attractive. But it must be accompanied by the necessary changes in personnel practices to achieve really worthwhile results. The Navy’s example has demonstrated many times in the past that government work can be carried out efficiently and effectively, when the organization is set up properly.
In addition to the grave defect of delegating decision-making functions to private industry concerning national welfare, the practice of relying on government contracts with private industry to carry out the major part of the scientific effort has other critical weaknesses. Foremost of these is the result that the scientific information derived in a project tends to be bottled up within a company and not made immediately available to the rest of the scientific community. Industrial firms grow and prosper by gaining an advantage over competitors. One of the major inducements for a contractor to bid on a government research project is the anticipated scientific knowledge he hopes to gain. This “breakthrough” information often has application to commercial and other government business. If a company can withhold information from its competitors for a period of time, it can gain a competitive advantage. Most government contracts with private industry have clauses which preclude industry from withholding the scientific information derived in a program. Many companies ignore this requirement and do withhold vital knowledge, and thereby force competitors to repeat needlessly much of the basic research. This causes duplication of scientific effort, which this nation can ill afford.
Another critical weakness in this way of doing business is the government’s loss of control over the resources applied to a program. A contractor’s technical talent and management organization is evaluated prior to the award of a contract. But once the contract has been awarded, the contractor is relatively free to assign personnel or to change his management organization as company interests dictate. These often do not coincide with the best interests of the government. It is a common practice for industrial firms to transfer personnel from a going development project to form teams to propose and carry out other development. This can seriously dilute the effort and talent on the first program. The standard of judgment, unhappily, is often not what is best for the government, but what is best for the company.
In an era of essentially level budgets, the initial, inaccurate cost planning for a number of programs will cause some of them to be squeezed out for monetary reasons later on, when true costs become apparent. The cost-plus-fixed-fee method of contracting is an open invitation to the contractor to make an unrealistically low bid. He bids low and accepts a low fee initially to improve his chances of getting the development contract. His real objective, however, is to get the lucrative production contract which is normally awarded to the developer. Again the result is that programs must be cancelled and scientific effort is lost.
The process of letting a government contract for a development which is in its early stages is very costly to industry and to the government. A large number of industrial firms often compete. Each performs a systems analysis. This involves an extensive engineering effort, utilizing some of the firm’s best talent. Yet these studies are rarely done thoroughly, because of time and cost restrictions. It is here that the seeds for later trouble are sown. The contract is signed on the basis of the system definition resulting from this partial and incomplete analysis. The contractor is usually anxious to proceed with the job of mechanization and testing, because this appears to be the most direct path to production. Furthermore, the pressure resulting from optimistic cost and time estimates forces him to start mechanization without further analysis to meet these schedules. The system which results is frequently not the best solution to the problem, as a more thorough analysis would have revealed. The engineering analytical work of the many other “also- ran” competitors, is, for the most part, lost effort. Likewise, the government agencies expend an appalling amount of engineering time and money in evaluating these proposals. The return to the nation for this great effort is obviously very low.
There are ways to correct this situation. The present system can be changed, but not without resolution and effort. What are some of the ways in which we, of the naval service, can co-operate with the dedicated men of private industry and government? To begin with, organizational rules must be overhauled to provide flexibility to promote those scientists now serving within our government agencies on ability alone. A “without fear nor favor” system of rating personnel at frequent intervals should be inaugurated. The Navy’s promotion system, generally considered to be far superior to that used in the civil service, could serve as a guide. An attrition rate for non-productive workers should be established and enforced.
Next, we must carefully re-examine our top echelon government scientific personnel. There are many well qualified men now occupying senior management positions in the government development agencies, but others have attained their positions solely on the basis of seniority. To insure a competent senior echelon, scientists with the highest qualifications from universities, industry, and the government should be induced to serve on a board which would review the performance records of the senior civilian personnel in the government and recommend the retention of the most competent and the release or retirement of those who are not. The survivors of such a selection board should, in turn, be given authority to fill the other government positions with the best qualified personnel from any source who will measure up to the same strict standards.
Third, an adequate pay scale must be provided and kept on a par with that of industry.
Finally, an engineering-scientific recruitment program, previously mentioned, must be inaugurated. Such a program would provide the depth of personnel needed in the government to carry out its responsibilities. If our young scientific enlistees witnessed imaginative, competent leadership in their immediate superiors in the laboratories, many would undoubtedly choose to remain in government service. The government, acting in partnership with industry, could then discharge its essential function.
The magnitude of the challenges facing us cannot be underestimated. Our bureaucracy has its share of dinosaurs who will, to their dying “nay,” resist change in order to maintain their positions. And there are other, formidable road blocks ahead. Industry has sometimes worked to reduce the government’s “in-house” capability by lobbying to have government laboratories closed and by hiring many of the most capable scientists from the government. Some members of private industry believe and work in the mistaken conviction that what the government loses in scientific capability and control, industry will gain. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We live in a world which recognizes and rewards only national achievements. Industry can no more take over the vital role the government agencies must perform, than the government can take over competitive mass-production processes and perform them efficiently. A properly balanced team effort between industry and government is required.
Dynamic leadership and action will be required to reverse the present trend. The Greek and Roman empires were overrun because they were unable to adjust to the changes they themselves had wrought. The shift in the balance of power which has been taking place at an accelerated pace in the last decade is ample warning that we are approaching (some contend we have arrived at) the same critical crossroad. Let us analyze ourselves objectively, but let us not tarry once we have reached our conclusion. We must then move. History provides a clear answer as to what lies in store for us if we choose the wrong road or hesitate to act.