Recovering Science Policy

An instrumentalist understanding of science has become dominant in American political discourse in recent decades, making science policy harder to distinguish from industrial policy. Yet crafting sound policies requires that policymakers be attentive to the particular contexts and goals of proposed interventions. From this perspective, the conflation of science and industrial policy is unfortunate, and the former ought to be reclaimed as its own distinctive area of public concern. Historically, the tension between reformers who sought to link science and the state and those who resisted such efforts played an important role in shaping the character of modern scientific institutions—and their diverse and sometimes conflicting self-understandings, constituencies, and aims. Before and after World War II, pioneers of science policy such as Vannevar Bush, Michael Polanyi, and Edward Shils developed the idea of scientific autonomy as an alternative to policies to “plan” science and a normative standpoint from which to defend a politically liberal conception of science and its place in society at a moment of growing extremism at home and abroad. This vision offers important insights for science policy today. We need the instrumental goods of science—to protect the environment and public health and for military preparedness, geopolitical competitiveness, and economic growth. But recovering science policy requires recognizing science as a tradition with its own distinctive norms, goals, and standards of excellence valuable in their own right. The cultivation and maintenance of this tradition is essential to not just scientific and technological progress but also the institutional pluralism at the heart of free society.