Separated Scientists

Battles are often lost because divisions lose contact with each other in the smoke of combat. Though less publicized, a lack of communication at home is often as disastrous as any on the battlefield. In the cold war of world armaments, a leading scientist made a statement a few weeks ago that went almost unnoticed by the press, but is fully as disquieting as the announcement of the Russian hydrogen bomb. Said the director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory: "there exists a complete lack of communication between the scientific community and out top military and political leaders."

This lack of contact breeds hasty decisions based on insufficient information. It shows up in the duplication that characterizes government-sponsored research and in the reams of red tape that must be cut every day. Last year, for example, the publication of a vital physics report was delayed for weeks while the Navy decided whether the paper was to be punched with three holes or with two.

These defects will continue until key decisions are taken out of military hands and given to civilian scientists. at the present time, all weapons research is directed by officers of the three services. These men are neither stupid nor incompetent; they simply lack the scientific background to make decisions for themselves. The services actually object to giving high rank to their scientific personnel. It nearly took an act of Congress to promote naval engineering expert Hyman Rickover from captain to admiral last year. Rickover is a specialist, and the Navy, as well as the Army and Air Force, insists that its brass be trained in the line, not the laboratory.

Because of low Civil Service salaries, most of the government's scientific personnel are not far above mediocrity. so the military leaders must rely on the advice of expert consultants who are scattered among the nation's universities. When a decision must be made, the general is in a quandary; either he can act quickly-and take the risk of being wrong, or he can ask for opinions from his consultants. But urgency seldom grants the policy-maker the luxury of time. The duplication, waste, and wrong decisions will continue unit civilians replace the military men at the top of the government's scientific hierarchy.

Britain shoved this problem at the beginning of World War II, when she put all research and development for the services under the direction of civilian scientists. The great universities donated many of their department, chairmen to fill these posts. Military leaders till merely file requests with the chiefs of the scientific bureaus; they have little or no voice in the resulting research.

Such a program would be possible in the United States only if material reward were substituted for the sense of moral satisfaction the Briton gets from service to the Crown. British scientists leave the ivory tower because they feel a personal obligation. But in the country, too few top scientists are willing to exchange faculty salaries and fat industrial consultation fees for a chance to buck Washington's frustrating bureaucracy. More money spent to lure top-notch civilians into scientific administration would mean fewer costly errors and a much-strengthened system of national defense.