Pride by chemists in their myriad contributions is tempered by funding concerns and public misgivings

Chemistry is more than a science. It is more than even the "central" science chemists claim it to be. It is more than one of the most active, exciting, and productive sectors of the scientific and intellectual frontier. It is more than an important segment of the educational system.

Chemistry is more than a major player in the development of new products and services. It is more than a vital cog in the day-to-day functioning of society. It is more than the chemical industry that is its most direct tangible expression.

Chemistry is also a community. It is also a profession-a way of thinking, behaving, and making a living. Like other communities and professions, it is concerned about its own viability, welfare, and credibility; about its proper role in society; and about its public standing.

A cartoon in the Cincinnati Times-Star of Sept. 11, 1930, run at the time of an American Chemical Society meeting in that city and almost a year into the Great Depression, captures the idealized view of the place of chemistry in society. It is captioned "The New Seven League Boots." It depicts a Robin Hood-like figure in tunic and hose striding confidently across the globe, a sword on his hip and a drawstring bag marked "the earth's mysteries" in his right hand. The feather in his jaunty cap is marked "humanity." And his knee-high boots are dubbed" modern chemistry."

This is an image of chemistry that is unchanged to this day, at least in the minds of chemists. It is the image of a vibrant, unfettered science boldly seeking new knowledge while serving society.

However, the enormous pride that chemists have in what they are and what they do has always had a flip side. It is a variety of concerns suggestive of some underlying uncertainties and self-doubts.

These concerns are of two kinds. The first is for the welfare of chemists as individuals-primarily their ability to obtain reasonably secure and sufficiently well-paying positions from which to apply their chemical knowledge in useful, ethical, and professionally fulfilling ways.

The second set of concerns involves chemistry itself. These revolve primarily around a perceived misunderstanding of chemistry by a largely scientifically illiterate public. This is a matter of special concern because taxpayer dollars fund much basic chemical research.

This misunderstanding involves a number of factors, including undue public fear of chemicals stemming from the relatively few negative aspects of chemistry and a persistent distrust of the chemical industry. There is also public disregard for the overwhelmingly positive balance of chemistry's total contributions to society. All this results in chemists having a deep sense of being somewhat unloved and unappreciated, struggling in a pervasive antiscience environment.

Chemistry Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University "caricatured" (his word) this situation at a symposium at the 1989 International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies in Honolulu. As he put it: "We [chemists] ain't got no R-E-S-P-E-C-T, respect. We're typed by society, so the complaint goes, as producers of the unnatural, collectively labeled as polluters. We are surrounded by chemophobia, irrational fear of what we do. The media seem to be engaged in a conspiracy against us."

Overall growth
Be all that as it may, the profession of chemistry hasn't done at all badly overall since 1923. The statistics of the major parameters of the U.S. chemical community document enormous growth. But it has been far from a smooth ride. The signs are that the traditional chemical enterprise will remain indispensable and will retain the potential for continuing, solid growth. But its days of truly spectacular advance may be behind it.

However, the role of chemists and chemistry in endeavors with high potential for spectacular growth in the future-but that won't generally be identified as "chemical"-remains limitless. Such areas include the life, environmental, and materials sciences.

Many of the statistics of the traditional chemical enterprise show the classic S-shaped growth curve since 1923. They have an initial start-up phase. This is followed by a period of exponential growth. The third phase is a flattening of the growth curve, indicative of maturity- even if a healthy maturity.

For the chemical enterprise since 1923, these phases correspond with three roughly quarter-century eras. Each reflects societal factors that transcended chemistry itself.

The first, from 1923 to 1948, was defined largely by the Depression and World War II. These had the predictable deadening and stimulating effects, respectively, on all things chemical.

The second era, from 1948 until the late 1960s, was a time when the relatively unscathed U.S. prospered greatly by aggressively and skillfully exploiting its economic and technical strengths in a world recovering from the devastation of war and striving to avoid a renewal of global conflict.

The third era, since 1970, is characterized in the U.S. by increasingly tough economic competition from overseas, the downsizing of institutions and businesses as well as of government, and many changes in national priorities following the end of the Cold War. It has also brought greater attention to the environment, more government regulation of industry, and a more critical public attitude toward all government spending, including that for science.

One measure of a profession is the number of people entering it. For chemistry, that number has grown from about 3,300 new bachelor's graduates in 1923 to about 11,000 in 1996. After holding steady at just more than 4,000 per year during the Depression, the number of new graduates grew to more than 6,000 in 1942 before dropping back to the 4,000 level in 1945, reflecting the induction of young men into the military. But-this time reflecting the impact of the G.I. Bill of Rights that financed a college education for returning veterans- B.S. chemistry graduations then surged to about 11,000 in 1950.

The number of new graduates dropped back to the 6,000 level by 1955 as the wave of veterans graduated. Graduations then grew steadily to peak at 12,000 in 1969. This was followed by a drift down to a low of 8,000 in 1991. Since then, the trend has been solidly upward, to more than 11,000 in 1996. Master's and Ph.D. graduations show a similar profile, with major growth between 1955 and 1970 followed by a dip and then a recovery to about the 1970 level in 1996.

Another indicator of the well-being of the chemical profession is membership of its dominant society-the American Chemical Society. Again, the story is a strong one, with ACS claiming to be the world's largest scientific society since overtaking the American Association for the Advancement of Science in membership in the early 1990s.

From 14,300 members in 1923, ACS membership reached 19,000 by 1931 before falling back to 17,600 in 1933. It then enjoyed more than three decades of consistent growth to reach 116,800 in 1969. Then came a slight decline and a flat spot. It took 10 years to move to new higher ground. As a result, growth since 1969 has averaged only about 1% per year. This is a pattern ACS is trying to break out of with a newly launched campaign to boost membership from almost 156,000 today to 175,000 by 2000.

Chemical industry employment shows a similar pattern. It surged from 600,000 just after World War II to reach the 1 million mark in 1967. There has been no sustained growth since then, but it has held above 1 million.

Research and development
Other statistics of interest to the chemical community are those on R&D funding-especially for basic research. Again, the past 75 years reveal an S-shaped growth curve. After an initial buildup from small beginnings, total national R&D funding- both private and public-grew exponentially during and after World War II. Then came a pause in the 1970s.

Since then, the funding pattern has shifted, with a major drop in defense-related R&D in recent years and considerable gains in civilian-oriented research. There is now renewed growth in most sectors of R&D funding of importance to chemists.

According to National Science Foundation data, total national R&D spending is continuing to grow. The increase in industry spending has more than compensated for the lack of growth in federal funds, which have stagnated at more than $60 billion (in current-year dollars) in recent years. Until 1977, the federal government consistently funded more than 50% of all R&D in this country. This percentage has been dropping ever since-to 45% by 1986 and 34% by 1996.

Estimated total R&D spending-both public and private-of $184.3 billion in 1996 was 15% higher than it had been in 1991. This translates into a 2.9% average annual growth rate for the five years. In constant-dollar terms, the annual increase was 0.7%.

Funds from industry grew from $92.5 billion in 1991 to $113.5 billion in 1996, an average annual constant-dollar increase of 1.9%. C&EN data illustrate some major changes in the source of these industrial R&D dollars. Between 1991 and 1996, the combined R&D spending of 17 major chemical producers fell, in current dollars, from $2.90 billion to $2.68 billion. Over the same period, the combined R&D spending of six major pharmaceutical companies rose from $4.37 billion to $7.79 billion.

NSF estimates 1996 R&D spending at universities and colleges at $22.4 billion. This was up $4.6 billion, or 27%, over the 1991 level, a 2.7% average annual growth rate in constant-dollar terms.

NSF data also put total spending for basic research at $29.8 billion in 1996, with 51% of it going to universities. This is up by $3.3 billion, or 13%, from the 1991 level. It means no growth in constant-dollar terms for these five years. But the numbers also indicate basic research spending holding at a record level, 33% higher than it was in 1986.

Each year, NSF tallies chemical R&D spending at universities. In 1995, the latest year for which data are available, it totaled $773 million. This was up from $422 million 10 years earlier for an average annual growth of 6.2%. Of these amounts, the federal government provided $535 million, or 69%, in 1995, and $322 million, or 76%, in 1985.

Spending at universities on chemical engineering research has grown even faster, according to NSF. In 1995, it totaled $296 million, with the federal government contributing $161 million. In 1985, the total was $116 million, including $65 million in federal funds.

These indicators of still-high, and in many cases still-increasing, spending on research and development seemingly contrast with the image promoted by the science community of a U.S. potentially at peril in an increasingly competitive technological world due to inadequate science funding.

Such alarm-raising by chemists and other scientists has a long and checkered tradition. At times, it has played a preemptive role in helping to at least moderate periodic attempts to cut back on R&D funding. At other times, it has been conspicuous by its absence, such as in 1995 when Congress came very close to killing a major Department of Commerce R&D initiative. Known as the Advanced Technology Program, it funds applied research projects jointly with industrial firms.

The latest alarm is a petition to President Bill Clinton and members of Congress from the presidents of more than 100 scientific, mathematics, and engineering societies. Organized by the American Chemical Society last October, the petition asks for a doubling of the level of federal investment in research within the next 10 years, starting with fiscal 1999.

Then-ACS President Paul S. Anderson pointed out in a covering letter: "Our nation's technology-based economy has catapulted us to a position of world leadership. The competitive global marketplace, however, has little sympathy for a nation's historic triumphs. The mantle of leadership is not guaranteed by past reputation, rather it must be constantly earned." He continued, "It is for these reasons that we unite to assist and to lead our nation to even greater levels of economic prowess and societal health and well-being."

This initiative is unusual in that it eschews the traditional fighting over the same pot of money rivalries among scientific disciplines and between advocates of basic research and proponents of research of more immediate social relevance. The petition-which triggered a bill cosponsored by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.)-simply calls for an overall doubling of investment in the total federal research effort. It is not specific about what kind of research or who gets what.

Nor does the petition define if the called-for doubling is in current or constant dollars. But either way, as long as inflation remains moderate, it would be a huge boost.

Before World War II, funding for R&D was modest by today's standards. But the highly successful applications of science to warfare-especially the development of the atomic bomb and the successful radar, synthetic rubber, penicillin, and code-breaking programs-changed that forever.

Boosting the explosive power of ordnance 1,000-fold in one bound-and a few years later by another 1,000-fold- earned science very high standing in Washington and with what President Dwight Eisenhower dubbed in his farewell speech the military-industrial complex. It is said that while the atomic bomb ended World War II, radar won it.

This World War II experience firmly established science as something the federal government should continue to fund generously as an important element of economic and national security policy. It remains so today, even as science gropes for a new social contract in the aftermath of the Cold War.

The science/society contract
The great flowering of chemistry and the other sciences since the 1940s initially rode the upward wave of a successful working relationship-a contract-between the science community and society.

This wave was given an extra boost by the shock of the Soviet Union's successful launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 and the near panic that this generated over the prospect of a U.S. lagging its arch rival technologically in a perilous world. This was a time when scientists were not alone in sounding the alarm over the dangers of an inadequate national R&D effort.

Under this post-World War II science/ society contract, research scientists were well supported by federal and private funds, encouraged to explore areas of interest to them, and given a great deal of autonomy. In return, they added enormously to the pool of fundamental scientific knowledge with their curiosity-driven research. In addition, the science community helped exploit scientific knowledge in response to society's most immediate needs-at the time, primarily national defense.

This all led to a quite well defined national science and technology policy. It had the following elements:

• Strong and broad-based funding of basic research plus considerable basic research by industry.
• Strong motivation for industry to exploit scientific developments commercially.
• Establishment of a system of highly capable and well-funded national laboratories.
• Nurturing of a strong university system, especially in the physical sciences.
• Federal funding for scientific developments in areas deemed to be of vital national concern but beyond the means or outside the interests of individual companies-even the biggest. These areas included weapons; aircraft; space; nuclear power; electronics; agriculture; many aspects of public health, safety, and the environment; and-more recently-biotechnology.
• Establishment of administrative and advisory bodies to give science advice at the highest policy-making levels of government and to help handle federal R&D funding, especially for basic research.

It all worked splendidly, at least until the end of the 1960s. According to NSF data, between 1953 and 1968 total national spending on R&D grew, in constant-dollar terms, at an average annual rate of 8.4%-the equivalent of doubling every eight and a half years. The federal government's contribution grew at an even higher, 9.3%, rate. Industry's input, about 35% of the total, grew at a 7.0% annual rate.

Then the wheels came off-at least, for quite a while. Between 1968 and 1975, federal R&D spending dropped 21% in constant-dollar terms, and it would not regain the 1968 level until 1984 with the military buildup initiated in the later years of the Carter Administration and boosted enthusiastically by President Ronald Reagan.

Total R&D spending held up somewhat better, owing to continued growth in industry spending. By 1971, the total had dipped a more modest 7% in constant-dollar terms. It was back up to the 1968 level by 1978.

The impact on the scientific community of this brutally sudden and largely unexpected change from a consistent pattern of 8 or 9% real growth every year to an era of no growth, and even some decline, was profound.

The chemistry community experienced similar trauma during the Depression of the 1930s. The response then-as it was in the 1970s and again in the 1990s-was a variety of efforts to mitigate the downturn's impact on all aspects of chemistry.

These collective efforts were largely expressed through ACS. They reflected both an appreciation and a reminder of the idea that the chemical community must be concerned not only with the well-being of chemistry as a science, but also with the well-being and status of chemists as individuals.

According to a number of observers, the task for the chemical and scientific community today is to develop a new contract with society. With the end of the Cold War, the driving force of the old contract, the incessant demand for the ever more sophisticated weaponry that only science can develop has lost much of its urgency-although weapons development still continues at a historically quite high level in response to a procession of threat scenarios.

Another cornerstone of the old contract is also under scrutiny. This is the belief that there can be no development without fundamental research-that R&D has to proceed in a rigid progression, starting with fundamental research, then moving through applied research, development, engineering, and product development and testing. A growing realization today is that, in the large majority of cases, these activities behave much more like basketball players-all involved all the time and constantly passing the ball back and forth, each setting the pace at different times.

In addition to the complications such rethinking brings to decision-making about science funding, today's political Holy Grail of a balanced federal budget has made it much harder to sell Congress and the public on the premise that basic research is critically important to the nation because it eventually pays off in unspecified ways at some unspecified future date. With unresolved domestic issues now front and center and with the federal government still putting up more than $60 billion per year for R&D, the pressure is on for federally funded research to be more immediately relevant to the problems of the day.

Era of national trial
From today's perspective, things seem to have been simpler for the chemical community 75 years ago. In 1923, chemists were sitting pretty in this country. They were proud and confident. They had played the central role in the rapid buildup of the U.S. chemical industry triggered by the cut-off of European sources when World War I started in 1914. They had been involved in the effort to supply U.S. forces with the huge quantities of munitions, chemical arms, and other war materials needed after the U.S. entered the conflict in 1917. Many chemists had served in the Chemical Warfare Service and chemists in general took pride in their profession's role in what had become known as the "chemists' war."

The downturn in demand for chemicals immediately after the war was over by 1923. Chemicals, especially synthetic materials, were finding big new markets. The economic boom of the roaring twenties was getting well under way.

This confidence is reflected in a report by two British engineers on industrial methods and conditions in the U.S. (I&EC News Edition, Nov. 10, 1927). They wrote: "The industrial workers, the rank and file of [the U.S.] democracy, have attained standards of earnings and comfort and possession and rational enjoyment beyond anything that the ordinary man in this country [the U.K.] conceives. The U.S. presents a spectacle of relative power and confidence, accumulation and economic achievement without parallel in the world's history."

According to the report, the U.S. achieved all this with nine industrial management principles-a listing that, in general, still looks good today:

• Promotion on merit.
• Small profits, large volumes.
• Improvement of processes.
• Time-saving and trouble-saving appliances.
• No limit on possible earnings of any man.
• Exchange of ideas, even among competing companies.
• Elimination of waste.
• Welfare work-surrounding the worker with cleanliness and light, seeking to increase his conveniences and satisfaction.
• Utilization of research.

Another example of this kind of déjà vu in reverse is a letter published in the Dec. 20, 1927, I&EC News Edition. It is concerned with public misunderstanding of chemistry. It bewailed unwarranted use of chemical language.

The issue was an advertisement for a new shave cream made from a soap that was claimed to hydrolyze in aqueous solution to a lesser extent than did competitive soaps. The specific complaint was that the advertisement proclaimed, "Don't blame the razor; it's hydrolysis that makes your face smart," and that the nonchemist reader would conclude from this that hydrolysis was a disease. The letter writer goes on, "Lord knows the language of chemistry is not beautiful, but it has its uses and it hardly seems fair to mess the words up with itchings and other human distress."

The high public standing of scientists in the 1930s brought on a protest about their too frequent use in advertisements. A Printers' Ink editorial complained: "Can it be that the men who prepare advertising are so lacking in ingenuity, so devoid of originality that they are forced back upon scientists for what seem to them to be good selling ideas? Can it be they are so lacking in clear vision that they cannot see that they are bringing ridicule, not only on science, but also upon advertising itself?" The editorial ended with a proposal for a" Forget Scientists Week."

On a more serious note, 1927 brought an exchange of very blunt letters between Charles L. Parsons, secretary of ACS, and Frank B. Kellogg, the nation's secretary of state. They concerned then-pending U.S. Senate ratification of the Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical weapons in war.

According to Parsons, the U.S. should not give up the right to defend itself "by the use of these most effective and most humane instruments." He argued that ratifying the treaty would cause the U.S. to lower its defensive guard and he maintained that should the U.S. agree to a prohibition on the use of gas in warfare, it should insist on strict international policing of chemical industries, including its own.

Parsons concluded, "It is my personal opinion that even such supervision would be entirely ineffective and that there is no possible way to inhibit the use of asphyxiating gases in warfare." For the time, such arguments by Parsons and others prevailed. The U.S. did not ratify until 1975.

The extent of the economic decline during the years following the Wall Street collapse of 1929 is today hard to believe. By 1932, the gross national product had fallen 46% and it did not get back to the 1929 level until 1949. The production index for all manufacturing plunged 48% by 1932. Unemployment, 3.2% in 1929, ballooned to 25% in 1933.

Chemists and the chemical industry were carried along with the deluge. But the impact on them was slightly less severe than on other industries and professions. And the confidence of the chemical community in its role in a better society didn't waiver. An example was a display presented by ACS at the Exposition of Chemical Industries in New York City in 1933. Under the title "Children of the Depression," it showed materials and chemical products commercialized since 1929 as a result of continued R&D.

This faith in chemistry was paralleled by a distrust of government efforts to counter the Depression. At a 1935 meeting of the Manufacturing Chemists Association, as the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) was then known, Lewis Douglas, an American Cyanamid vice president and former director of the federal budget, proclaimed that "New Deal policies, proposed to promote recovery, are having an effect directly opposite to the intended and are driving the U.S. and Western civilization definitely toward communism and the destruction of private property."

At the 1936 Willard Gibbs Medal presentation, Robert E. Wilson of Pan American Petroleum & Transportation Co. stated that, "Probably the most subversive factor in our present situation in this country is the tendency to reduce the incentive for all classes to work hard-the poor man has the alternative of the dole, and the rich man the prospect of excessive taxation if he is able to eke out a profit."

Despite such distaste for collective action, the chemical community aggressively organized itself to help its members- especially those seeking employment- during the Depression years.

The changes that this brought to ACS largely survive to this day, if in slightly different guises in some cases. These 1930s initiatives included the following:

• Change of ACS membership requirements to exclude nonchemists.
• Establishment of a committee on unemployed recent chemistry graduates.
• Establishment of a committee on the professional status of chemists.
• Establishment of a committee to accredit academic chemistry departments.
• Establishment of a student affiliates program.
• Introduction of an employment clearinghouse for each national meeting.
• The first poll of the economic status of chemists.
• Establishment of recommended salary minimums for chemists-an experiment that was dropped when it became apparent employers were interpreting the minimums as maximums.
• Continuation of the active and well-regarded public relations program promoting chemistry that got under way with the ACS News Service in 1919.

These efforts at professionalism were apparently well received by chemists. By 1939, ACS membership was 35% higher than it had been in 1929.

ACS membership continued to surge throughout the 1940s. By 1949, at more than 62,000, it was 165% higher than it had been in 1939. This reflected the greatly increased demand for chemists engendered by the easing of the Depression and the demands of World War II.

An enduring concern of ACS throughout the war was the most appropriate use of chemists in the war effort. The government did not have a clear-cut policy on the induction of scientists into the armed forces. Deferment on the grounds of being involved in vital production work was on a regional, case-by-case basis. As the war progressed and the demand for armed forces spiraled, such deferments became less frequent.

This time, the conflict turned out to be a "physicists' war." But chemists were deeply involved. For example, among the many distinguished chemists working on development of the atomic bomb were Glenn T. Seaborg, George B. Kistiakowsky, and Donald F. Hornig. Later, Seaborg headed the Atomic Energy Commission for 10 years under Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. Kistiakowsky and Hornig became presidential science advisers.

Era of growth
The period from 1949 to the late 1960s presented a unique opportunity for the chemical community to do great chemistry under very favorable conditions and exploit it-as well as the backlog of basic chemical knowledge they had built up during the Depression and the war-to the public good. That's the way things worked out. The one word of career advice-plastics-to the graduate in the 1967 movie of that name, indeed, identified a burgeoning business opportunity.

The immediate postwar period was accompanied by a desire by the chemistry community to minimize anything that might have rocked the boat. The message to chemists was: Stay away from politics and stick to what you know best- chemistry.

Such thoughts were expressed at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston in 1954. Kirtley F. Mather of Harvard University said while there was great popular respect for scientists as technicians, there was great skepticism about their ability "in areas of economics, politics, and social organization."

According to Mather, industrial progress and military strength "depend so obviously on the technician that his comfortable niche in the social structure is indefinitely assured." In sharp contrast, Mather believed that continuing support of fundamental research was in a precarious position because it required two things that the climate of public opinion did not then favor-"sizable financial backing and an environment of freedom." This was the McCarthy era.

In 1953, the ACS Admissions Committee rejected an application for membership of the society from Irène Joliot-Curie, cowinner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frnneeédéric, on the grounds she was an neavowed Communist. In endorsing the action, the ACS Board of Directors stated the Admissions Committee had set no political standards for membership but had said "that those who belong to ACS must be free to think as they wish, to report scientific results as honestly obtained, and to base thereon such theories as can be soundly developed."

Another free-thinking chemistry Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling, then head of the chemistry department at California Institute of Technology, also ran into political troubles at about that time. As president of ACS in 1949, he had unsuccessfully called on the society to take an activist position on efforts to prevent war. In the 1950s, he campaigned actively for a ban on nuclear weapons testing-an effort that earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize for Peace.

He was branded as a Communist sympathizer by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and in 1952, the State Department denied him a passport because it said it was not in the U.S. interest for him to travel abroad. All of this led to estrangements between Pauling and some elements within the chemistry community. He left Caltech in 1963 to join the faculty of Stanford University.

Some of these rifts were partially healed many years later. In 1984, ACS bestowed its most prestigious award, the Priestley Medal, on Pauling. In his acceptance speech, he once again called for a campaign to ban nuclear weapons.

The incident that set the tone for much of what has happened since to the chemical community was the publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson in 1962. It appeared first as a series of three articles in the New Yorker and as a book soon after. It raised concerns about the impact of the widespread use of pesticides on the environment, wildlife, and human health.

"Silent Spring" hit an incredibly sensitive nerve for the chemical community, which reacted immediately. Within a few weeks of the third New Yorker installment, C&EN had published two editorials, some news items, many letters, and a review of the book.

The Manufacturing Chemists Association immediately formulated an expanded program to win popular understanding of chemicals. And the National Agricultural Chemicals Association (NACA) stood ready to dip into its emergency fund to widen its ongoing information program on the safety of pesticides as well as its" read the label campaign" to help increase proper use of pesticides.

Speaking at NACA's annual meeting just after publication of "Silent Spring," R. H. White-Stevens of American Cyanamid's agricultural division said, "Surely, she [Carson] cannot be so naive as to contemplate turning our clocks back to the years when man was indeed immersed in nature's balance and barely holding his own." He also urged industry to fire its "ammunition of fact, reality, and scientific truth at the gross misunderstanding of pesticides, which has all too often been punctuated by crises and synthesized sensationalism."

The C&EN review of "Silent Spring"- which was headlined "Silence, Miss Carson"-also had a harsh and dismissive tone. It was written by William J. Darby of Vanderbilt University Medical School, a member of the Food & Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Darby's bottom-line recommendation was that "this book should be ignored." But he also stated that "the responsible scientist should read this book to understand the ignorance of those writing on the subject and the educational task which lies ahead."

Darby's review was not universally applauded, and neither was C&EN's overall coverage. In the view of one letter writer," Instead of [a more] positive type of response to Miss Carson, C&EN and Dr. Darby have reacted like a cigarette company executive when somebody asks if smoking causes lung cancer."

Thirty-six years after her book was published, Rachel Carson, who died in 1964, is still a household name as the spiritual godmother of the movement, sparked by the first Earth Day in 1970, that over the past almost 30 years has permanently changed thinking about the relationships among people, what they do, and the environment.

Forced on the defensive by "Silent Spring," the chemical community is still trying to catch up. A recent biography of Carson prompted critics to renew their attacks; some are still picking through the book looking for flaws. And the tactics of denying problems, dismissing those that are raised, and discrediting those who raise them are being used on some issues relevant to chemistry to this day.

Era of challenge
The slump in R&D funding and the deterioration in the employment status and outlook for chemists during the 1970s brought a range of responses from ACS. Annual polls of ACS members to determine their employment status and salaries were started in 1972.

A code of employment practices was established. It was called the Professional Employment Guidelines (PEG). Among other things, the guidelines spelled out how a chemist should be treated-in terms of severance pay and the like- when fired. An ACS committee examined so-called mass terminations by industrial employers to determine how well they complied with PEG, and C&EN carried news stories on the findings. An effort also was made to help members with specific employment problems on an individual basis. And a program of employment aids was expanded.

The 1970s also brought a level of politicization of ACS that many members thought unseemly for a professional scientific society. This included overt and organized campaigning by candidates for national office and political maneuvering between what became a professionalism wing and a more traditional wing of the society's governance.

Both factions agreed that ACS had to maintain its journals, abstracting services, and other services to the science of chemistry at their traditionally high standards. They also agreed the society had to attend to the professional needs of the individual chemist. The contentions were over the appropriate balance between these two areas and the nature and extent of the professionalism activities.

The first professionalism president was Alan C. Nixon in 1973. Within the next decade he was followed by Bernard S. Friedman in 1974, William J. Bailey in 1975, Henry A. Hill in 1977, and Warren D. Niederhauser in 1984, who won in an election in which his opponent used particularly aggressive tactics that drew attention even outside ACS.

Hill was ACS's first, and so far only, black president. Anna J. Harrison, a political independent, became the society's first woman president in 1978. Only two other women have served as ACS president- Mary L. Good in 1987 and Helen M. Free in 1993.

This period of activism has left its marks on ACS. One is the salary and employment survey, which continues each year. A second is the Summer Education for the Economically Disadvantaged (SEED) program. Started in 1968, it gives high school students the opportunity to spend a summer working in a chemical laboratory. It was ACS's primary social action program until the ACS Board, in 1994, voted to initiate an undergraduate scholars program for minority chemistry students.

For the past several decades, the chemistry community itself has developed increasingly active relationships with government. This is in response to the persistent concern over federal funding, growing interactions between government and chemistry on many fronts, and the need for chemistry to keep telling its own story in the face of continuing assaults.

ACS's role in this effort has been handled by a steadily growing staff operation under direction of the society's governance. In recent years, in addition to funding, there has been much activity on education, patents, and environmental and regulatory matters, including those concerned with working conditions for chemists. In 1974, ACS established an annual fellowship program under which selected chemists can devote a year working with the legislative or executive branches of the federal government.

However, ACS has continued to keep a low profile on defense-related issues. The society finally came out in support of the Geneva Protocol in 1974. It took no part in the many years of negotiation of the complex chemical provisions of the more recent Chemical Weapons Convention and did not support it publicly until August 1996. The U.S. Senate ratified it in April 1997.

ACS got involved briefly in nuclear weapons issues in 1983 when C&EN published a letter from Glenn Seaborg-who was ACS president in 1976-proposing a total ban on nuclear weapons testing. The ACS Board voted against the proposal, but some society members wanted ACS to do something. The issue bounced around the society like a hot potato for some time until Ellis K. Fields, ACS president in 1985, made it a topic of his presidential symposium at the ACS national meeting in Chicago that year.

Reaching the public
Of much more concern to the chemical community over the past 20 or so years has been a constant parade of highly publicized environmental and health issues that have kept chemistry on the hot seat with an increasingly sensitized public.

These have included Love Canal, agent orange, acid rain, the Bhopal disaster, dioxins, global warming, chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone hole, chemically contaminated sites, toxic emissions from chemical and other manufacturing plants, and a long list of specific chemical products including Kepone, Alar, and even chlorine.

A firmly held belief of the chemical community has been that the negative responses these issues engender toward chemistry are due, in part, to the public's ignorance of chemistry. This ignorance is seen as including policymakers. This ignorance is also seen as the root cause of the public's antiscience persuasions.

All this has led to a host of outreach and education activities to present a balanced view of chemistry and to promote the overwhelming positive role of chemistry in society. The National Research Council published very authoritative studies of the central role of chemical research for both science and society in 1965, under the direction of Harvard University's Frank Westheimer, and in 1985, under the direction of George C. Pimentel of the University of California, Berkeley. A lay version of the later report was widely distributed.

ACS also has been very active. It published major reports on the role of chemistry in the environment in 1969, in the economy in 1973, and in medicine in 1977. Numerous other activities include National Chemistry Week. Started in 1987 as National Chemistry Day, it is an ongoing annual event involving all ACS local sections. The society also has developed many innovative and effective programs and products to aid in teaching chemistry and science at the elementary school through high school levels.

Another ACS initiative has been a permanent exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which opened at the National Museum of American History in April 1994. Entitled "Science in American Life," it has proven a disappointment to ACS. The society financed it but later disavowed it. Smithsonian personnel had total control of its content, as they do with all Smithsonian exhibitions. In ACS's view, the exhibit projects an unbalanced and inappropriate portrait of science. The Smithsonian claims that those who pass through the exhibit like it and leave with the same positive attitude toward science they had when they entered.

Other studies indicate the public has a reasonably positive view of scientists and realizes that science and technology are, in general, a good thing. This raises the possibility that what scientists interpret as antiscience sentiment also reflects public concern that it is used right.

Some observers are also thinking that, as essential as educating the public about chemistry is and will always be, the chemical community needs to be more than an instructor. As Roald Hoffmann outlined in Honolulu in 1989, what it also needs to do is to show compassion.

As the Cornell University chemist, who is also a poet, put it: "Friends, if someone comes before you verbalizing anxiety over a chemical in the environment, don't harden your hearts and assume a scientific, analytical stance. Open your hearts; think of one of your children waking at night from a nightmare of being run over by a locomotive. Would you tell her 'Don't worry, the risk of being shot by a crack addict is greater?' "

In commenting on the public furor in 1989 over Alar, a growth regulant then used on apples and since banned from use on food, Hoffmann pointed out that many chemists responded by tut-tutting the concerns raised, impugning the motives of the public interest group that raised the issue, and pointing to it as a typical, irrational example of chemophobia.

Hoffmann added that, when the issue came up, he did not know what Alar was or that it was used on apples. In his view, the Alar controversy was "humbling, educational, and instructive; an opportunity to learn rather than to blow off some steam against environmentalists."

There are some signs that a shift from the tut-tutting to a more compassionate approach could be under way. They are clearest in the chemical industry-and especially since the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, when leakage of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticides plant killed thousands of people.

This accident left chemical makers with a very tangible problem that clearly could not be handled just with public relations and public education programs. It was also obvious that the "deny, dismiss, and discredit" response would be inappropriate.

The industry responded first with an immediate review of all of its operations and the installation of appropriate improvements. The second step was establishment of an industrywide program of health, safety, and environmental standards. Started in Canada and known as the Responsible Care program, it first went into effect in the U.S. in 1988. All CMA member companies, which collectively account for more than 90% of U.S. chemical production, are committed. The program has since been adopted by many overseas chemical industries as well.

One key element of the program is real, continuous, and extensive dialogue between chemical makers and their many audiences-employees, stockholders, over-the-fence communities and organizations including fire and rescue departments, regulators, environmental and public interest activists, the press, and the public at large.

As C&EN wrote in 1995, the underlying motivation for Responsible Care was to "transform public perception of this diverse and competitively successful industry from that of an arrogant culture pursuing profits at any cost to one that could be trusted to protect public and worker health and the environment."

It is turning out to be a long process. Chemical makers have upgraded their operations-they know a Bhopal-like incident in the U.S. is unthinkable. They are certainly having more extensive dialogue. But CMA's own studies show that a greatly improved public image for the chemical industry is still in the future. Things are no longer getting worse, but there aren't any clear signs they are yet getting much better.

Despite some incipient wavering when public concerns about chlorine and chlorinated hydrocarbons in the environment first crystallized in 1993, chemical makers are sticking with Responsible Care. They see it as their right and only path, regardless of how long it takes.

Maybe it is time for other elements of the chemical enterprise to examine the chemical industry's shift toward a little more humility, to more fully analyze the public's attitude toward chemistry and science, and to ponder Hoffmann's admonition about compassion.

It is possible that the chemical community will make more progress toward the public respect it has so long craved once it starts to show more respect of the public. Respect flows more freely when the street is two-way.

Over the past 75 years, chemical professionals have worked highly productively to push back the frontiers of scientific understanding and to exploit the resulting new knowledge to benefit society enormously.

This, of course, is what they are paid for and expected to do. But they can argue that they have a particularly brilliant record of social contributions. They do. The cost-benefit ratio for chemistry has always been enormously positive. It will continue to be so in the future and should give the chemical profession great confidence in working toward a less ambiguous relationship with the public in an ever-changing world.