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The National Interest In the
5 Support of Basic Research
CONCLUSIONS
In the committee's judgment, the evidence surveyed in the previous chapters
on research advances in the behavioral and social sciences and the range of
uses to which such advances have been put leads to a single, fundamental
conclusion: Basic research in the behavioral and social sciences is a national
resource that should be sustained and encouraged through public support.
Federal investment in basic research in the behavioral and social sciences,
like investment in other branches of science, is an investment in the future
welfare of the nation. Supporting this conclusion are a number of consider-
ations.
(1) Basic research in the behavioral and social sciences has yielded an
impressive array of accomplishments, and there is every reason to expect
the yield from future research to be at least as great. At an accelerating rate
during recent decades, such research has been responsible for (a) greatly
increased substantive knowledge of individual behavior, social institutions,
and cultural patterns under a wide variety of changing as well as stable
conditions; (b) markedly improved methods of data collection and analysis,
which have not only led to new discoveries and the resolution of old debates
but also have provided the foundation for information technologies (e.g.,
sample surveys, standardized tests, economic indicators) now regarded as
indispensable in the public and private sectors; and (c) continuing development
of pedagogical and therapeutic procedures, of devices and arrangements for
improving human performance and the human environment, and of procedures
~.
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94 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
for evaluating public policies and proposed programs. Some of these
developments are reviewed in the preceding two chapters and the papers
accompanying this report; many others could be cited as well. On the basis
of these kinds of contributions, the behavioral and social sciences merit
support.
(2) The benefits of basic research are seldom if ever predictable in
advance; they are often unanticipated and still more often the outcome of
complex, discontinuous sequences of discovery, insight, and invention.
Investment in basic research must be regarded as investment in a process
that is expected to yield substantial contributions to individual and social
well-being, but it cannot be regarded as a direct purchase of those
contributions. There are several reasons for this.
First, it is generally not clear in advance where or when major scientific
discoveries or breakthroughs will occur. The history of research in all fields
is one of unforeseen interpenetrations of findings, insights, and methodological
advances, false starts, miscues, and provisional answers later superseded by
superior formulations. Sequences of steps that, with hindsight, seem to
constitute a consistent advance toward a particular goal often were experienced
by those responsible for them as confused, accidental, and haphazard.
Similarly, rates of progress are seldom predictable to those immediately
involved. Although cumulative over the long run, the orderliness of scientific
research generally emerges only in retrospect. Hence it generally is not
possible to identify specific areas or topics as targets for special attention or
intensive support with any confidence that they and not some other area will
yield major new insights or discoveries.
Second, specific research findings rarely translate automatically or directly
to any particular use or application. Once it is published, scientific knowledge
becomes available for any and all possible applications. A common and
indeed highly desirable fate is that a particular finding will be utilized in
ways never even imagined by its discoverers. And, conversely, a given
application typically will exploit findings, methods, and procedures from a
wide variety of disciplines and research areas, often in a long and complex
.
chain of development.
An attempt to trace the research and development underlying 10 major
clinical advances in medicine and surgery (between 1945 and 1975) confirms
this view. On the basis of a thorough review of the research literature,
Comroe and Dripps (1977) identified 663 articles that they regarded as
essential for one or more of the advances. Four points are of special interest.
First, more than 40 percent of the articles "reported research done by
scientists whose goal at that time was unrelated to the later clinical advance.
. . . Such unrelated research was often unexpected, unpredictable, and usually
greatly accelerated advance in many fields" (Comroe and Dripps, 1977:29.
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The National Interest in the Support of Basic Research
95
Second, each of the clinical advances depended on the cumulation of dozens
of studies conducted by hundreds of investigators; no advance could be
attributed to the work of a single researcher or a single research group. Third,
the lag between an initial discovery and its effective clinical application was
usually substantial: Of 111 discoveries investigated, 57 percent had been
applied more than 20 years after publication. Finally, the 663 articles
identified as essential contributions were culled from a review of more than
6,000 published articles. It is highly improbable that "essential contributions"
could have been identified in advance, especially given the typical long lag
before application.
These findings provide firm support for the conclusion that basic research
must be encouraged without regard for its immediate applicability. While we
do not know from the study just described what fraction of basic research
eventually comes to be applied, we do know that, in the biomedical field at
least, clinical (that is, applied) advances depend heavily on basic research
efforts, that it takes a great deal of research to produce each "essential
contnbution," and that it is impossible to predict in advance which contri-
butions will prove essential. Moreover, applications are often very slow in
coming; hence a demand for shorten payoff would be shortsighted indeed.
While parallel research in the behavioral and social sciences has not yet
been conducted, the process described by Comroe and Dnpps for the
biomedical sciences is probably applicable to them as well.' Certainly, most
of the applications mentioned in the previous chapter have drawn on basic
'This process probably differs, moreover, from that reported in a study entitled "Project
Hindsight," conducted some years ago by the Department of Defense. That study, in attempting
to track the sources of the scientific and technological innovations that were employed in new
or improved weapons systems, reached the conclusion that only a small fraction of one percent
of them came from "undirected science." The study concluded, more sweepingly, that "it is
unusual for random, disconnected fragments of scientific knowledge to find application rapidly.
It is, rather, the evaluated, compressed, organized, interpreted, and simplified scientific knowl-
edge that we find to be the most effective connection between the undirected research laboratory
and the world of practical affairs" (Sherwin and Isenson, 1967:1577). We suggest that this conclu-
sion might have arisen from the circumstance that the investigators were looking backward from
the limited perspective of a single weapons system. Different conclusions might have emerged
if they had traced forward projections from a new and fundamental idea, identifying its combina-
tions and recombinations with other ideas, findings, and methods, to its ultimate applications.
In addition, Project Hindsight gave no consideration to scientific contributions that might have
occurred more than 20 years prior to the final completion of the weapons systems chosen for
study, thus possibly passing over basic scientific studies that contributed to the foundation for
later applications. It is quite possible that the basic physical, ballistic, and electronic principles
that underlie weapons design were established much earlier. If 57 percent of the essential
contributions to clinical advances in medicine were made more than 20 years before their
application, the percentage is likely to be far higher with respect to weapons systems.
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96 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
research developments in a variety of disciplines, as have many of the
applications mentioned in the papers.
(3) The coupling between basic research in the behavioral and social
sciences and its applications to public policy is significant and growing, but
it is also inherently loose, uncertain, incomplete, and often slow. Policies
are properly constrained by political, social, and cultural considerations that
may change in importance. To apply similar constraints to basic research
would limit its effectiveness as a long-term source of new insights and
approaches needed to meet unanticipated conditions. The health and vitality
of scientific investigations require that at times they probe into areas of deeply
held beliefs about human nature and the world. Research on the origins of
the universe, on the evolution of life, on recombinant DNA, and on the
heritability of traits can have this quality. In the behavioral and social
sciences, that quality sometimes can apply to human evolution, to the mutually
supporting or opposing influences of families, communities, and government
agencies on individual development and economic well-being, and to many
areas of deviance and unconventional or asocial behavior. Hence any direct
transmission of findings is hindered by the differences between contexts in
which scientific knowledge is generated and consumed. If the primary purpose
of basic research were to effect social change or reform, it would be a
frustratingly unpredictable and at best marginally effective way to achieve
that end. But what identifies research as basic is for the most part a
fundamentally different motivation-the concern to understand and explain
human behavior and the consequences of social arrangements.
Moreover, public policy decisions in all areas, including those involving
scientific and technical considerations, are made and implemented through a
political process rather than by means of strictly technical judgments.
Decisions involve considerations that are not resolvable on technical grounds,
such as individual and group values, ideological stances, and tolerance for
risk and uncertainty. While expert advice and technical judgments may make
an important contribution, public choices depend primarily on a balancing
of short-run and long-run considerations as to the deployment of scarce
resources that are worked out in compromise among cooperating, competing,
and conflicting interests. This is true of policies affecting the location of
dams and nuclear power plants, the provision of artificial kidney machines,
and the choice of weapons systems as well as decisions regarding fiscal
policy, crime control, school desegregation, and remedial reading. The
persistence of disturbingly high (although possibly declining) inflation rates
should not be regarded as a failure of economics, nor crime in the streets as
a failure of sociology, nor venereal disease as a failure of medicine, nor the
medfly invasion of California as a failure of entomology, nor the nuclear
arms race as a failure of physics. Each case mentioned is the consequence
.,
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97
of a myriad of factors, only some of which are amenable to scientific or
technical resolution.
Especially great difficulties in applying empirical knowledge to purposive
action can arise when there is lack of consensus on what constitutes a problem
or what solutions are acceptable. In many areas connected with health, there
is widespread acceptance of the social values in question. One of the reasons
that applications such as the Salk vaccine program are relatively uncontro-
versial is that there is a basic consensus supporting innovations to improve
health; the only issues involved are technical ones regarding the efficacy and
safety of alternative vaccines. But that is not always the case. When such
consensus brealcs down, as it has with respect to abortion, technical knowledge
is no longer a sufficient basis for action. Issues regarding what kinds of
knowledge from the social and behavioral sciences are felt to be pertinent
often entail a similar lack of consensus. The case of poverty was noted in
the previous chapter. Is it strictly an economic condition resulting from major
social malfunctions, so that those caught up in it deserve every assistance as
they strive to escape? Or is it also a set of self-reinforcing attitudes and
behaviors with negative moral overtones that society should seek ways to
modify? Both the definition of the problem itself and appropriate solutions
depend on one's value position along a wide spectrum of possibilities between
these polar positions.
Finally, many social policies have multiple, sometimes unanticipated
consequences, so that the effort to solve one problem may simply exacerbate
others. For example, efforts to improve the educational opportunities of
minority children through school desegregation may have resulted in some
instances in increased residential segregation as a result of "white flight"
beyond the boundaries of school districts. In a complex society in which
people are free to act in their own interests, as best they perceive them, the
translation of knowledge from the social sciences into the solution of social
problems is likely to be particularly difficult.
Despite this, there is evidence that basic research in the social.and
behavioral sciences does have an important impact on public policy. As with
other sorts of applications, the impact is long term and relatively indirect
(Weiss, 1977:534-535, emphasis added):
Evidence suggests that government officials use research less to arrive at solutions
than to orient themselves to problems. They use research to help them think about
issues and define the problematics of a situation, to gain new ideas and new
perspectives. They use research to help formulate problems and to set the agenda for
future policy actions. And much of this use is not deliberate, direct, and targeted,
but a result of long-term percolation of social science concepts, theories, and findings
into the climate of informed opinion....
This kind of diffuse, undirected seepage of social research into the policy sphere
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98 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
can gradually change the whole focus of debate over policy issues. The process is
difficult to document, but it appears likely that social research has helped shift the
agenda and change the formulation of issues in a wide array of fields: compensatory
education, punishment for alcohol and drug offenses, large-scale public housing,
institutionalization of the mentally retarded, welfare reform, prepaid health care, child
abuse, job training, court reform, and legislative reapportionment....
It is worth noting that the "long-term percolation of . . . concepts, theories,
and findings into the climate of informed opinion" is a major benefit of basic
research in all fields, entirely apart from direct practical applications. We
should not lose sight of the social value of a continuing, cumulative growth
of knowledge and understanding. Without regard for the practical payoffs
that may follow, our lives are enriched by new and basic discoveries of
unforeseen regularity or patterning.
(4) The federal government is an indispensable and appropriate source
of supportfor basic research. Basic research is, in the parlance of economists,
a public good. Since free exchange and wide dissemination are conditions
of its growth, its benefits must be freely available to all and cannot be
controlled by those who conduct or have financed the research. Given this
and especially given the necessary time lags and unpredictability of research
outcomes, there is no reason to expect that either the private sector or federal
agencies charged with other missions will serve as adequate sources of
support for basic research. The efficient allocation of resources for public
goods in general and for basic research in particular is through public funding.
While there is no doubt that important research will continue to be done
by researchers operating without funds or with the limited funds they can
obtain from their own institutions and from nonfederal sources, a large
fraction, perhaps the bulk, of basic research in the behavioral and social
sciences would no longer be possible without financial support at levels
beyond what these sources" most of them already under heavy pressure-
can make available. Adequate funding for basic research in the behavioral
and social sciences cannot be provided by dispersed institutional or market
forces. Instead, it must continue to be primarily entrusted, as at present, to
government agencies whose specific mission is the implementation of a long-
term investment strategy with regard to the maintenance and promotion of
basic research as a national resource.
The rationale for funding basic research is quite different from prevailing
rationales for funding mission-oriented research. Most of the latter, the
committee assumes, will continue to be carried on even in the face of severely
restricted budgetary conditions. Since mission-oriented research is designed
to meet specific needs or problems, largely on an ad hoc basis, funding for
it is provided by numerous government agencies, institutions, and private
firms as a necessary adjunct to their own ongoing programs. Such a funding
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The National Interest In the Support of Basic Research
99
patter, by itself, however, makes no provision for continuing replenishment
of the stock of insights, ideas, and conceptual as well as analytic tools that
grow from the findings of basic research.
Implicit in the foregoing remarks is the assumption that basic research in
the behavioral and social sciences must be understood as part of a broader
continuum of research activities. Diverse in themselves, the behavioral and
social sciences include some disciplines that at their margins merge almost
imperceptibly with some of the physical and biological sciences, and others
that similarly approach the humanities. Supplementing these continuities in
subject matter that cross formal, disciplinary frontiers are similarities in
method and outlook that extend across all fields of science. The special
complexities, uncertainties, and entanglements of the human subject matter
notwithstanding, the behavioral and social sciences are sciences like all
others. Hence the same arguments that lead to a judgment to invest public
funds in scientific research in general are equally valid for the behavioral
and social sciences.
ADDITIONAL CONCLUSIONS
(5) The committee is convinced that the maintenance of some degree of
balance among scientific disciplines is in the national interest and that this
consideration should enter substantially into the processes of decision making
about resources. Estimates of future significance and expectations of practical
payoffs are quite possibly as speculative between major scientific domains
as they are between alternative research opportunities within a single
discipline. Concentrating resources only in selected fields would therefore
introduce an unacceptable risk of failing to develop whole sectors of research,
the significance of whose findings can be appraised only with considerable
uncertainty until long after they are first reported. We wish to point out,
however, that an important argument for differential federal support would
favor precisely those fields in which the immediate payoffs are least obvious.
Where payoffs are obvious, other sources of support generally can be
expected. In that sense there may well be a particularly urgent case for the
kind of long-term investment strategy that only the federal government can
sustain in those fields of inquiry undergoing normal growth but not obviously
on the verge of important, publicly recognized breakthroughs that can attract
other forms of support.
(6) Irrespective of the gross level of national resources devoted to the
support of basic research in the behavioral and social sciences, the committee
believes that certain policies for the expenditure of these resources are clearly
superior to others. The preeminent principle is the maintenance of continuity
insofar as possible. Large, abrupt changes in funding levels, either by
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100 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
discipline or by problem area, interfere with the orderly planning of research
strategies and sharply reduce the effectiveness of whatever funds are available.
This is not an argument against making any alteration, but instead for
implementating changes slowly and consistently over a period of years.
Sudden moves leave little opportunity for consultation, mutual readjustment,
and consequent fine-tuning of the relationship between federal agencies and
those immediately affected by the introduction of new policies.
A second guiding principle involves the advisability of permanently
maintaining a mix or balance among activities receiving research support,
even if budgetary pressures become much more serious than we can now
foresee. We believe it would be a serious mistake, for example, to
accommodate to increasing uncertainties by entirely foreclosing projects that
presuppose long-term funding and from which quick payoffs cannot be
expected. Longitudinal studies of this kind often offer insights of great
potential significance both for basic knowledge and for policy purposes, and
they are difficult or impossible to resume once they have been discontinued.
Exactly similar arguments apply to the maintenance of large-scale national
data banks and research facilities. Ambitious interdisciplinary undertakings
are another case in point. Their potential payoff in many unexpected directions
is large, even though it may well be accompanied by an increased risk of
failure. In other words, to meet budgetary stringencies by concentrating
resources on short-term or small-scale or low-risk undertakings would be a
prescription not for the survival of the behavioral and social sciences but for
the piecemeal destruction of their promise and quality. At the same time, we
would not be prepared to argue that short-term or small-scale or low-risk
undertakings should be disproportionately sacrificed either. All of these modes
of research, singly and in combination, have contributed to the advance of
the behavioral and social sciences, and there is no basis for singling out
particular modes as most worthy of federal support.
A third guiding principle, pertaining particularly to the social sciences, is
that research on foreign cultures should not be cut back disproportionately
as a way of coping with budgetary stringencies. Entire disciplines, and
substantial parts of others, depend on international research opportunities:
anthropology, archaeology, history, comparative politics, development eco-
nomics, to name only a few. And still other social science disciplines would
be well served to expand, rather than contract, their comparative focus.
Perhaps because the United States has been the major locus of advancement
in most areas of the social and behavioral sciences, much of our knowledge
about the structure and functioning of social systems is relatively parochial,
restricted far too much to analysis of the United States. Both to understand
social patterning in general and to provide a comparative basis for assessing
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101
the uniqueness of social arrangements in our own society, social scientists
need to be able to do research in many different societies.
(7) A major danger facing the behavioral and social sciences as a result
of currently declining support of research is the deflection of talented people
into other fields and professions. This threat is exacerbated by simultaneous
contraction of opportunities for academic employment, but the latter is a
general condition, while the decline of research funding has been relatively
more severe in the behavioral and social sciences than in other fields. As
already noted, the problem is in one sense likely to be less critical in mission-
oriented agencies than in agencies that support basic research, since the
decline in their funding will probably be less precipitous. However, we have
also taken note previously of the close, synergistic relationship between basic
and mission-oriented research, and in particular of the importance to the
latter of the continuing enhancement of the stock of new findings and methods
derived from basic research. In a deeper sense, therefore, basic and mission-
oriented research share the same problem of professional training.
A further consideration makes this problem still more urgent. It is becoming
steadily more important not merely to maintain pools of talent at present
levels of training and capability but to improve the quality of those pools in
order to move in new, and especially interdisciplinary, directions. Among
the papers commissioned by the committee, for example, are ones arguing
persuasively for a convergence of currently semiautonomous lines of inves-
tigation around a new and promising life-course perspective, which may well
become a new discipline of its own (Featherman); outlining progress in an
area of marked overlap with the physical as well as biological sciences
(Braida et al.~; and illustrating important complementarities between medicine
and the behavioral sciences (Krantz et al.; Wilson). These and others point
to a growing need for individual researchers with broadened and enhanced
capabilities, even if the total number of researchers is gradually reduced as
a result of declining employment and research funding levels. The committee
suggests, therefore, that serious attention be given to programs that will
increase opportunities for advanced, probably postdoctoral, training.
SUMMARY
The essential themes developed in this report can be briefly summarized.
Basic research is carried on in order to create and husband a stock of
knowledge, with the confidence that such a stock will be drawn on-for
further advances in knowledge as well as for diverse and important practical
ends in ways that seldom can be accurately foreseen. Familiarization with
and participation in basic social and behavioral research also play a vital part
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102 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
in graduate professional training. Such training is needed to assess the
relevance of available or prospective findings for the design, implementation,
and evaluation of social programs. Hence even mission-oriented researchers
need to be thoroughly acquainted with the methods and the results of basic
research. Neither the creation of new knowledge nor the training of practi-
tioners is an objective that can be most profitably pursued in irregular spurts
and pauses or only in relation to narrowly targeted applications. The power
of basic research to improve and enrich our lives grows out of the mutual
reinforcement and synergism of many interlocking ideas, findings, and
practical outcomes. It cannot be understood and properly utilized if we
concentrate instead on isolated, product-centered outcomes.
These observations do not provide a prescription for what the sources and
level of support of basic research in the behavioral and social sciences should
be. But they do suggest that a disinterested, long-term program of support,
carried out as a broad, farsighted investment policy rather than to meet the
immediate policy objectives of particular agencies, is in the national interest.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
funding levels
