Technology and Culture

464 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE way clearly toward the future. The analysis remains wedded to Snow’s notion that the problem is one of lack of communication between scientists and nonscientists. The relationship between science advisers and policymakers is much more complex than is suggested by the simple image of the need for dialogue and better communication. Bruce L. R. Smith Dr. Smith is a senior staff member in the Center for Public Policy Education of the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process (1992) and American Science Policy since World War II (1990). The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process. By Bruce L. R. Smith. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992. Pp. xi + 238; notes, index. $36.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). Like the fate suffered by the prophet, the science adviser is a member of what has recently become something of a dishonored profession. At one time exalted above mere mortals—Eisenhower fondly referred to those who served on the Presidential Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) as his “wizards”—scientists today who wish to speak the truth to power often wind up having their competence as well as their motives called into question. Ironically, those who try to survive in the no-man’s-land between science and government find themselves under fire from both sides for consorting with the enemy. While the perplexing loss of status of science advisers is only a subplot in Bruce Smith’s well-researched new book, it is nonetheless at the heart of the problem with science advising: “The paradox of science advice,” writes Smith, “is that, though there is scarcely any national problem of consequence that lacks some technical compo­ nent or dimension, virtually none are wholly or even mainly deter­ mined by scientific or technical considerations alone” (p. 46). Rather than focusing on the president’s science adviser, Smith chooses to fix his attention on science advisers to the various agencies within the executive branch—the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State among them—whose influence has grown in part as a consequence of the demise of PSAC, which was abolished in 1973 by President Nixon after it failed to support him on the antiballistic missile and the supersonic transport. As the author convincingly argues, the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act, one of several pieces of the so-called sunshine laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s, while intended to make the actions of government more public, and hence more accountable, has actually had more the opposite effect. Thus, it has become increasingly difficult to attract good scientists to government service, because of the sunshine laws’ obsession with avoiding even the appearance of unethical behavior or conflict of TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 465 interest. This obsession has meant that an invitation from the State Department to one of its prospective advisers had to be accompanied by a twenty-page, single-spaced legal memorandum outlining finan­ cial disclosure requirements (not surprisingly, he declined the post). For a time at least, the State Department was even forbidden to reimburse its science advisers for travel expenses. On the other hand, science advisers picked by one president who become holdovers in a succeeding administration are viewed, sometimes rightly, as ideological rivals and even prospective saboteurs and are rou­ tinely shut out of the government’s business if they cannot be fired outright. This was the case, for example, with scientists originally hired by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Carter administra­ tion who became summary victims of the Reagan revolution. As a solution to reforming what has been called the “fifth branch” of the government, Smith does not call for any move as radical as repeal of the sunshine laws—whose intent ofopening up the government remains noble and even necessary. Instead, he calls for a commonsense rather than a stricdy legalistic interpretation of language in the sunshine laws that mandates things like “fair balance” in the makeup of advisory groups. Amendment of the sunshine laws to define such vague terms, and to simplify bureaucratic procedures that threaten to bury advisers and the advisory process itself in paperwork, is his preferred remedy. Perhaps...