Keeping science accountable

The setting: A conference room at an annual meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAC]. One of the many conferences organized around various areas of current scientific research is in session. A panel of experts is holding forth on the composition of moon rocks brought back by astronauts from the latest moon expedition. Suddenly there is a commotion at the rear of the room. Enter three bizarrely attired "spacemen", who begin to make their way awkwardly to the front, their arms loaded down with plain, dirty earth rocks. Upon reaching the front of the hall they drop the rocks on the floor before the experts. There is a resounding crash. A shocked silence descends over the room as clouds of common earth dust rise into the air.

The "spacemen" in this incident, which occurred at an AAS meeting a few years ago, were members of a radical-activist group called Science for the People (SftP). The point they were trying to make was plain: for most working Americans the tangible results of the billions of dollars they paid out for the space program was nothing but a pile of rocks.

In recent years SftP has actively protested, although not always in such a theatrical manner, what the group sees as misplaced priorities in many fields of scientific research. This summer, for example, the Cambridge City Council voted a three month moratorium on recombinant DNA experiments within the city limits of Cambridge. The decision came after two public meetings involving pro and con testimony from prominent science-faculty members at Harvard and MIT.

Joining George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, in opposing the proposed research at Harvard's Biology Laboratories were several members of the Boston chapter of SftP: Jonathan R. Beckwith '57, professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Richard C. Lewontin '50, Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Steven Chorover, professor of Psychiatry at MIT, and Jonathan King, associate professor of Biology at MIT.

For scientists on both sides of the controversy the debate was historic: for the first time a local community was exerting control over scientific research. The impact of the decision was far-reaching, with newspapers in other countries calling for close scrutiny of similar research in their own academic communities.

Many scientists expressed concern that an unfortunate precedent had been set for local communities to interfere in scientific research they don't understand. But members of SftP were elated over the decision. Jonathan King and others say the council's decision was a milestone in a movement of people to gain more control over their own lives.

In any case, King claims the council's action was not a spontaneous event precipitated by the testimony of a few prominent scientists, as he says the media tended to portray it. According to King, it was at least partly the result of long term efforts of various organizations, including SftP, to build a movement forcing science to serve the people rather than what he perceives to be the present dominating interests of a scientific elite--motivated by the prospect of Nobel prizes--and a corporate-governmental complex geared toward profit, imperialism, and maintenance of the status quo.

King says it is not widely known that the SftP, cooperating with other groups, has agitated for several years for close monitoring of genetic engineering research and its relegation to a lower priority. He cites an SftP pamphlet published years ago that dealt with the hazards of genetic engineering long before the technology to accomplish it existed, and a barrage of letters and critiques sent out to scientific conferences, government agencies, and public interest groups.

Other members of SftP say that in presenting opposing views of controversial scientific research, newspapers and television reporters often rely heavily on information supplied by SftP, while rarely giving the organization credit. And they claim it was largely unrecognized efforts of SftP as an organization that were responsible for ending the controversial screening of male babies for the XYY chromosome pattern at the Boston Lying-in Hospital, which is associated with Harvard. Here too, they say, SftP's efforts may have had an effect far beyond the local level: Beckwith says that a recent survey by the Children's Defense Fund found that similar screening programs have been ended nationwide.

SftP, under its original name as Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), was organized at the height of the anti-war movement in the late '60s. Its founders were disgruntled members of the American Physical Society who left that organization when it refused to take a position against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

These first activists were soon joined by science workers in industry, and they allied themselves in turn with a group of MIT faculty and graduate students responsible for organizing the March 4, 1969 research stoppage at MIT in protest against defense research and the uses to which science and technology were being put in Vietnam.

SftP began to make itself known as a group opposed to what they call the American scientific establishment with protests at the annual AAAS meetings beginning in Boston in 1969. SftP members say they were denied space for a literature table and participation in the regular programs of the conference, which at that time did not include an agenda for the discussion of social issues in science. So the group resorted to leaf letting, guerilla theater, and sharp questioning during conference sessions to make its points. In subsequent AAAS meetings, attempts by SftP members to "restructure" conferences to allow for discussion of controversial issues resulted in scuffling and some arrests.

The international structure of SftP presently consists of a more or less informal communication among about 40 locations, mostly in the U.S., with active chapters in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Stony Brook, N.Y. The largest and most active chapter remains in Boston where the organization's bi-monthly magazine Science for the People is published. Local headquarters are at 897 Main Street in Cambridge, just off Mass Ave, halfway between Harvard and MIT.

The magazine, with a circulation of 4000, attempts to provide a radical analysis of science in U.S. society "to stimulate participation in concrete political activities." The September-October issue includes articles like "Sexism at the Cancer Lab", "Nuclear Power Hazards" and "Women and Health: A Review of the Literature".

The current number also features a debate on the development of alternative technology, dealing with questions such as whether making available innovative, inexpensive technology to the urban unemployed may actually ease the burden on the present capitalist system, which SftP views as inherently corrupt. In the issue, Fred Gordon '66, SftP staff man in charge of magazine production, asserts that high unemployment results partly because orthodox capitalist technology requires something like $100,000 in capital investments to create each new factory job.

For many members of SftP, science in China represents a possible alternative to the American system. In 1973, several SftP members visited China and wrote a book about their experiences called China. Science Walks on Two Legs. There is a China study group in the Boston chapter that is currently planning another trip.

The internal structure of the Boston chapter reflects SftP's anti-elitism. There are no officers; instead, a steering committee made up of the office staff person and representatives of the several activity groups arrive at all decisions collectively. Gordon says there are about 100 active members in the chapt defined as such by their attendance at weekly meetings in the various activity groups. About four times that number are active sporadically, he says.

Jon King says that membership is roughly one-third workers, secretaries, and draftsmen in scientific establishments; one-third high school science teachers, computer programmers, and technicians; and one-third academics and professionals, including industry scientists, professors and students. Within SftP, academic or professional credentials carry no status or privileges.

The activity groups are semi-autonomous, each pursuing its own investigations and research, publishing pamphlets and articles in the magazine, and organizing events. Active groups include a genetics and society group--responsible for a teach-in at MIT about recombinant DNA research, on September 22--a sociobiology group, a women's issues group (fighting sexism in science is a high priority, the organization says), and a food and nutrition group.

A science teaching group sends representatives to the National Science Teachers Association's meetings and holds workshops on issues for high school instructors. In addition the group develops and distributes materials dealing with the non-neutrality of science in society. They have special materials on issues like the XYY-criminality theory, which they say is widely and inaccurately reported as scientific fact in many high school science tests.

Members of the Boston chapter say an especially important activity group deals with occupational health and safety. Presently this group provides information and technical support to scientific workers in laboratories. Diana Echevarria, a member of SftP and a former research assistant at the Harvard Biology Laboratories, for example, has acted as a liason between SftP and the Harvard Employees Organizing Committee (HEOC), of which she is also a member. This relationship supports HEOC's drive to secure representation on the Branton Committee charged with setting safety standards for the recombinant DNA experiments at the Bio Labs.

Echevarria says SftP plans to expand its contracts and technical assistance to unions and workers in general. There is also an SftP backed organization of laboratory workers at MIT.

The activities of the China group, the teaching group, and the occupational health and safety group illustrate an important difference between SftP and other organizations of activist scientists, which are usually single issue lobbying groups. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, is essentially a public interest group limited to doing research and providing expert testimony at government hearings investigating hazards in the nuclear energy industry. In contrast, members of SftP say that their primary concern is to develop a mass consciousness, to convince people that the present system must undergo fundamental change.

Thus, SftP stresses its political analysis of scientific questions, which most often seems to be Marxist in character. King says they are interested in asking basic questions, such as the reason for the original development of nuclear energy as a priority instead of less dangerous alternative forms. On this and other issues, many members consider the best method for understanding social problems to be a recognition of monopoly corporations' dominance over public policy.

SftP says the capitalist system forces to focus on coercing the individual to fit the system, and that such a society places profit before people. Among the examples cited by SftP are: attempts to cure cancer through recombinant DNA research rather than by eliminating carcinogens from the environment; screening factory workers for genetic susceptibility to tungsten-caused cancer rather than eliminating the hazard; pinning the blame for deviant behavior and widespread social ills on the genes of individuals rather than on the structure of society.

Beckwith and others say SftP's political analyses of the issues are rarely reported adequately in the media, who also, according to some members of SftP, seem to have a "dangerous antagonism" toward reporting the SftP affiliation of prominent scientists in the organization, even though members often make it explicit that they are speaking for the collective and not as individuals.

Beckwith says the press finds it boring to report the theoretical context of the issues, and that it is just more interesting to write about what the "big names" are doing, rather than reporting the activities of an organization hard to understand. Another theory proffered is that capitalist society actively trains people to see things in terms of individuals rather than in social forces.

At any rate, the problem of individual vs. collective recognition is a persistant thorn in the side of SftP, one they hope to eliminate by strengthening the national structure of the group. A national organizing committee has been formed, and plans are underway to draw up eventual principles of unity.

SftP hopes to multiply its effectiveness by coordinating activities and protests on an international and national basis. With increased visibility, they say they hope to provide support to isolated but concerned individuals who might otherwise be intimidated from speaking out on the issues.

This year the AAAS returned to Boston for its annual meeting, and there seemed to be a change in its relationship to SftP. There were no disruptions. SftP was allowed to arrange and participate in sessions on the regular program, and members had their own meeting room and literature table.

SftP members are sensitive about interpretations that the calmer relationship with AAAS indicates a new moderation in SftP's view of the American scientific establishment. Beckwith says that it is really the AAAS that has changed. Many social issues that could not be discussed in previous years were even raised by the AAAS this time, he says.

Longtime SftP member Michael Teel, formerly an instructor in a course called "Science and Society" at U-Mass at Amherst and presently a labor organizer there, also insists that it is the AAAS that has changed. There is a new consciousness beginning to take root, he says, the result of Vietnam, Watergate, and the persistent efforts of groups like the SftP.

While it doesn't prove that a genuine mass movement has begun, a story Teel tells about his participation in the recent Boston meeting does seem to support the idea that scientists and others are beginning to take the analyses of SftP and similar groups more seriously:

"I was attending a talk given by the chief administrator of International Rice Research Institute in the Phillipines. The discussion concerned the new second-generation technology of the green revolution.

"I had heard previously a high official in related agricultural research state privately his impression that Lawrence Rockefeller was an enthusiastic backer of the green revolution primarily because it serves American interests by 'cooling down' discontent in Third World countries. So during the talk I asked the administrator why he thought Rockefeller was so interested in the green revolution. He paused for a moment, finally answering that Lawrence was a 'great man'--whereupon everyone laughed.

"Later he started to mention how there was resistance by local authorities in some areas to implementation of the new technology, which is good because it uses less chemical fertilizers and more labor intensive techniques. I asked how it was going in the liberated areas--Vietnam. Cambodia--and he said that actually it was going well, but, that people were being required to give up their freedom in exchange. Again the meeting broke up in laughter.

"When the talk ended some of the people who had attended gathered in the back and for a while we discussed some of the issues that had been raised. I ended up selling five copies of Science Walks on Two Legs."