Science, Money and Politics

Each year, Congress appropriates billions of dollars for scientific research. Each year, scientists complain of insufficient funding and lobby (usually unsuccessfully) for more money. This book explores who recieves the money, and the tactics they use to get it. From the end of World War II to 2001, and from medical research to particle physics, Daniel S. Greenberg reveals the little-known but all-pervasive links among science, money, and politics in the United States. He draws on archival research and interviews with presidential science advisers, congressional and White House staffers, and elected officials. The book reveals: the exaggerated claims of disease cures; how politicians supportive of medical research are rewarded with buildings named for them at the National Institutes of Health; why Ronald Reagan's science advisers remained silent, even though they knew that false claims were being made for a scientific breakthrough in the Star Wars missile-defence programme; and how, even as research lagged in the expiring USSR, leading American scientists warned Congress of Soviet scientific superiority - and the need for increased US funding to counter it. This work aims to blow the whistle on the scientists, politicians, and government officials who sacrifice ethics - and science itself - for money.