The practice of pure science is far from pure, two controversial books argue

IT IS less fashionable than it was to ask what science is or who it is for. The theoretical debates of the 1980s and 1990s have died away in mutual exhaustion as other issues—the uses and abuses of technology, the education of a voting public that bothknows more about science and is less awestruck by its practitioners—have come to seem more pressing. Yet the two sorts of issue cannot really be disentangled. What scientists think they are up to affects the way they plead for public money, and how far government and the public understand the aims of science affects how well scientists succeed. Purists hold that pursuing scientific truth is necessary and valuable in its own right. And in one sense we are all purists. But as these two thoughtful books show, the actual conduct of that pursuit is highly contingent and political.

Daniel Greenberg's “Science, Money and Politics” is the culmination of 40 years of pounding the science-policy beat. It is a masterly overview of how big science and big government have operated together in post-war America. Over the years, Mr Greenberg has been an often lonely voice championing the public's right to know how wisely scientists were spending its hard-earned money. It is probably fair to say that, through the medium of his newsletter, Science and Government Report, Mr Greenberg pretty well invented a new way to cover big science—as a form of government spending no different, in budgetary terms, from defence procurement or agricultural support.

When his newsletter began in 1971, it was rare to hold the scientific establishment to the same standards of accountability as other special-interest groups. But Mr Greenberg showed time and again that in pursuit of money scientists were as grasping as any spending department. Far from being pure, research science involved money-grubbing politics, backroom deals, special pleading, inflated claims and scare-mongering. Too often in return the public got shoddy science and waste on a monumental scale. It was no surprise that many of science's great and good tried to drive Mr Greenberg from the temple.

He was in the thick of two of the bitterest reversals for science's more-is-better creed, and looks back on both in his latest book. One was the so-called shortfall campaign which the National Science Foundation (NSF) began to promote in 1986. Because of demographics, the NSF said, America faced a shortage of some 675,000 science and engineering graduates.

In fact, the NSF report was alarmist and ill-grounded. In particular, it woefully underplayed immigration by foreign scientists and engineers. Even so, an uncritical press quickly whipped a supposedly incontrovertible fact into a crisis—despite signals from the job market (often reported in the very same publications) indicating that there was no such shortage. When saner heads from the world of engineering finally exploded the shortage myth in 1990, the scientific research establishment responded as if the highest goals of science itself had been betrayed.

The demise of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in 1993 was an even bigger reversal. Billed as the world's largest atom-smashing machine, the SSC's 54-mile circular underground tunnel, with all its vacuum casing, instrumentation and thousands of superconducting magnets to steer and focus the beam of positively-charged particles, was to have cost more than $4 billion. But when the estimated costs had soared to $12 billion and showed no signs of slowing, even the top policy-makers in the scientific establishment had to admit that the project risked denuding not just the rest of particle physics, but quite possibly all sciences. Mr Greenberg, to be sure, does not take personal credit for these particular victories. But his muckraking opened a breach for others.

That the public voice is now being heard more in the ordering of research priorities is something Philip Kitcher can take heart from. In setting scientific agendas, Mr Kitcher, a philosopher at Columbia University, thinks we need to avoid both democratic faddishness and short-termism on the one hand and an elitist pursuit of truth without regard to practical consequences or human needs on the other. He criticises scientific eminences, however fine their intentions, for failing to take seriously enough a fundamental question: what is the collective good that we want scientific inquiry to promote?

Mr Kitcher has no time for what he treats as the theology of science: the exalted view that science transcends other callings and can best be guided from within. In his own scheme of things, a well-ordered science has the disinterested pursuit of truth at its centre, but set within a more democratic framework. Mr Kitcher cheerfully admits that he has not picked easy ground. Some criticise him for being too conservative in his challenge, others of flirting recklessly with the idea of truth by a show of hands. But, he answers, setting any scientific agenda involves fallible choices about priorities and money. Without going far into the detail, Mr Kitcher holds that the democratic way of doing this is better than any alternative.

Mr Greenberg agrees. But could it, he asks, serve us better? Does it ignore opportunities for the advancement of knowledge and the betterment of humankind? Yes, he suggests, on both counts. Thanks to authors like these, such questions are being asked again in a serious and responsible way. Science can only be richer and healthier for it.