00:00:00 They help identify people for them, and we've also helped in sort of endorsing

00:00:10 some of their things. I know while I was president I wrote, you know, two or three

00:00:17 little blurbs for them that they were using.

00:00:30 Are we ready? How are your electrons doing? Mine have no particular signals at the moment.

00:00:48 All right, what do you want me to do, count or cite my address or what? 14 Asheville

00:00:55 Lane, South Alley, Massachusetts. 1500 Mass Avenue, D.C.

00:01:04 I'm not sure I could. I wouldn't get many letters in 20 seconds. Am I next? Yeah, sure. Okay, do we have to

00:01:26 raise our voices or do they have to do that there? Okay. So we just talk as if we

00:01:32 were normal. That's the attitude. Are you normal? As if. I'm trying very hard.

00:01:50 I hope you check that. Are we ready to go?

00:02:02 All right, Dr. Wilson, begin. Anna, you just got back from the AAAS meeting in Los Angeles, which is the end of your

00:02:15 current elective office. What have you been doing recently and what are your

00:02:18 plans now? Well, during the last year of the three-year sequence for the so-called

00:02:28 presidency for the AAAS, you're automatically chairman of the board. So

00:02:33 the past 12 months I've been in that position and as of June 1, my

00:02:43 responsibilities are completely closed out to AAAS, with the

00:02:49 exception of a few committees that I'm working with. And I'm here today. On Friday, I go to

00:03:01 Washington for a meeting of the advisory committee for a AAAS, sorry, American

00:03:07 Chemical Society program that goes under the title CHEMCOM, which is a

00:03:15 group that is developing under the directionship of Tom Lippincott a set

00:03:22 of eight modules, which taken together will constitute a one-year course, high

00:03:29 school course in chemistry, which is targeted at the general student. Those

00:03:37 students that are not professionally oriented towards the sciences and

00:03:41 without making any distinction or assumption about the academic ability

00:03:49 of the group. It's a program we're excited about. It will be a quite different

00:03:55 approach and the field testing that has gone on, preliminary field testing was

00:04:04 good. They're now getting ready to go into all-year formal testing this next

00:04:09 year. Now that continues your long-term interest, of course, in education, science

00:04:14 education. Have you done work at the high school level before? No. As a matter of

00:04:19 fact, when I went to college, my goal was to teach in high school. Matter of fact, I

00:04:26 qualified for high school teaching, but no one would ever hire me. So instead, I ended

00:04:31 up in college. But I've always, at the college level, been involved one way or

00:04:40 another with one of the courses for the freshmen. And in more recent years, I

00:04:47 knocked myself out of Mount Holyoke, developing a one-semester first course

00:04:52 for the student that I described as intellectually curious but not

00:04:56 professionally driven. A little in July, I'll go down to Washington again for our first

00:05:04 meeting of an NSF advisory panel or committee. I'm not sure what it's titled again.

00:05:11 Merit Review. Norm Hackerman will be chairing that. I don't really know too

00:05:24 much about the basis on which that issue is being raised again. It's not a new issue, of

00:05:33 course. Then in August, I'll be going to India as part of a conference on ethics and

00:05:43 human values and science education that's being sponsored by ICSU. And that's a

00:05:53 little different than most of these conferences. It's a fairly long one, and our

00:05:58 mandate is to come out with a report, a book, essentially, taking the conference as a

00:06:07 whole, that will be complete by the end of the conference. Now you've described three quite

00:06:17 disparate activities that you're in. How come a chemist gets involved in those various

00:06:24 aspects that could be considered somewhat apart? Research Merit Review is

00:06:29 basically research activity, science education, and the ethics. How come you can do all those

00:06:36 things? Well, I don't think it makes any really direct proof that I can do all of them.

00:06:43 Essentially, my interest is caught in all of these, namely the impact of science, engineering,

00:06:56 and technology and its relationship to society. And education, as far as I'm concerned, is not a

00:07:05 goal in itself, but is a mechanism of achieving other goals. Namely, inform public, a competent

00:07:17 scientific cohort to carry on scientific work in society. And also another aspect that is

00:07:27 less frequently mentioned, and that has to do with making it possible for the individual to

00:07:42 have the benefit of the perspective that is inherent in understanding of the scientific

00:07:51 approach and the manner in which an individual perceives themselves, perceives their relationship

00:08:01 to a technological society, and their participation in determining the manner in which a technological

00:08:11 society controls the use of science, engineering, and technology. So they're all one in the

00:08:20 same, as far as I'm concerned. And this also then is part of your interest in the regulatory

00:08:26 process? Oh yes, very much so. And the regulatory is simply one of the mechanisms that society uses

00:08:37 in order to control their other mechanisms. Of course, the funding mechanism for the National

00:08:42 Science Foundation is very much of a societal control on the direction and rate of development

00:08:50 of science, engineering, and to a lesser degree, technology. Funding of R&D and the mission

00:08:59 agencies frequently focus more towards engineering and the technological direction. You were always

00:09:08 very much interested in keeping the scientific advice and the social values quite separate in

00:09:16 responding to regulatory aspects. Do you think we can continue to separate those? That's a complex

00:09:30 question. I would be inclined to try to look at what the roles of scientists are in the resolution

00:09:45 of societal issues, and the role of the general public in the resolution of societal issues. And

00:09:52 I might say to begin with, I consider scientists and engineers to be a subset of the public. And

00:10:01 any time I use the word public, I don't mean to be balancing the scientific engineering community

00:10:11 against something else that is called the public. The public, our society, encompasses the subset

00:10:20 of science and engineers. Fundamentally, I suppose the pivot point is that I'm convinced

00:10:35 that scientists and engineers cannot solve societal problems. Only society can solve

00:10:44 societal problems. Scientists and engineers have a very significant role in that that is

00:10:54 particularly unique to scientists and engineers. Let me take an example of a societal problem which

00:11:02 the scientific and technological community cannot solve is the question of waste disposal. We can

00:11:12 assess the degree of pollution. We can monitor it. We can develop technological options for

00:11:24 containment, minimizing the amount of waste, the conversion of waste into other materials that

00:11:31 would be less damaging to the environment and to all of plant and animal life. But we cannot

00:11:45 implement. For instance, if you take an incinerator, we can design, test, monitor so that

00:11:59 we know, in fact, what is coming out of the stack. But we can't cite them. We can't cite the

00:12:07 incinerator. And only the public can make that decision. This state, Massachusetts, is one of

00:12:14 those in which there's been a considerable problem on that. And I assume you're familiar with the

00:12:23 term NIMBYs. No, I'm not. Not in my backyard. And the question of the resolution of the fundamental

00:12:39 societal issue, I think, invariably lies with the public. How much science does the public, the

00:12:49 general public, have to understand to make those societal decisions? That's a complex question. My

00:13:01 feeling would be that fundamentally the public needs to have some concept of what a science is,

00:13:13 including some concept of the certainty, uncertainty associated with scientific results,

00:13:25 some understanding of the process of assessing both the benefits and the burdens associated with

00:13:41 technological change. Fundamentally, it is in the domain of scientists and engineers to develop

00:13:56 technological options and to make technological assessments of the probable benefits and burdens

00:14:07 inherent in each option and to articulate those in such a way either to the public can understand

00:14:15 the nature of the burdens and benefits associated with each technological option, including the

00:14:24 option to do nothing, or to articulate that same information in such a way that those people that

00:14:31 are professional communicators can communicate that material. And I think it means that the

00:14:44 general public needs quite a different experience with science in the formal academic system than

00:14:55 the academic experience that has been considered essential for the production of professional

00:15:04 scientists. I have no quarrel with that. Our educational programs for the production of

00:15:10 professional scientists, I do think that we have neglected and that we have not put our creative

00:15:20 talents towards the development of science for the general individual.

00:15:28 That's the approach you took then in that one semester course for your students that were not

00:15:34 professionally driven, and was that the attempt there?

00:15:36 Yes. Now, I at one time would have said that a first course in chemistry that was a good course

00:15:47 for those people that are professionally oriented and also anyone else in that manner. And it came

00:15:54 as quite a blow to me when I began to realize that at Mount Holyoke, which is a liberal arts

00:16:00 college, that almost all the people that we had taking chemistry—this was not true when I first

00:16:08 went there, but it gradually—and that was a long time ago, in 1945—but gradually the clientele,

00:16:17 although it was increasing in numbers, was becoming more and more focused. And the people

00:16:24 electing the courses were people that needed it for professional goals, to attain professional

00:16:31 goals. And that was rather startling to me. And under some funds from Sloan, for about three years,

00:16:47 I tried working with a smaller group of students. I'd only take 15, and they had to be students that

00:16:55 had not had formal experience with chemistry at the pre-college level in order to see if I

00:17:02 could discover how much chemistry they knew by just having lived in a technological society,

00:17:07 and to the degree you could discover what it was that they wanted to learn and what they wanted

00:17:13 to learn next. Now, you can't ask someone who doesn't know what chemistry is what it is they

00:17:18 want to learn about chemistry, obviously. What you can do is, if you've taught for a period of

00:17:28 years, it doesn't really make much difference where you start to you as a teacher, because you

00:17:33 can start in a number of places. And so what I would do would give them a choice of about three

00:17:40 topics, and go with whichever one of those three they chose, and then keep repeating this through

00:17:50 the course. One of the interesting things that evolved in this was that I never did have a group

00:17:58 of students that voluntarily selected nuclear chemistry and nuclear reactions. And finally,

00:18:07 towards the end of the course, I'd say, well, come, you and me, maybe discuss nuclear reactions.

00:18:12 They found they were fascinated by the material. What is the basis of their reluctance to get

00:18:19 involved? I don't really know. I didn't ask because I wasn't sure that I was going to get

00:18:24 anything that was going to do me any good. Now, you were dealing with an academically select

00:18:29 group at Mount Holyoke. Would those techniques be generalizable to junior colleges and such?

00:18:36 I think pretty much so. If you once make the decision that you are going to structure a course

00:18:53 for students that do not have to meet professional goals, or have specific techniques and specific

00:19:02 knowledge to, quote, go on, you have a tremendous degree of freedom. And my impression is there are

00:19:11 an infinite number of ways, almost, that you could approach chemistry. I happened to choose one,

00:19:17 and in this, this is so frequently true in teaching, and I suspect in almost anything else,

00:19:23 there comes a moment when you've got to go with something, and it's wherever your imagination has

00:19:29 run out on you, and you go with the best that you have. The student that I was trying to reach

00:19:44 was a student that had avoided science, or the student who had been burned off by science. One

00:19:54 of the interesting things that I ran into about that time, maybe a little earlier, I was chairman

00:19:59 of the department at the time, I asked, or two of us made it known through the usual communication

00:20:13 system of the college, that in a particular afternoon, a particular room, we'd be available

00:20:19 to discuss with students changes that they'd like to see made in the science at Mount Holyoke.

00:20:27 Did the entire science curriculum? It was ambiguous, and about 15 students showed up.

00:20:36 Not one of them was a science major. Apparently the science majors were happy with what they

00:20:45 were getting, or too busy, or something. Anyway, this was a group that were not. They were really

00:20:51 quite wistful. They knew in the technological society to be an educated person. They should

00:21:00 know more about science. The thing that really shook us up was that they said that they had

00:21:08 made the effort. I'm sure that was probably true. They had not found it rewarding, and they found

00:21:16 the experience a violation of integrity. That we were pursued, obviously. Essentially, their point

00:21:28 of view was that this particular group of students were bright, and they knew they were bright. They

00:21:36 could in fact get very good grades in elementary science courses, but they also knew that they

00:21:45 didn't understand a thing about what they were doing. That they found demeaning. They also

00:21:53 recognized that the so-called laboratory experiments were in fact exercises, not experiments, and that

00:22:04 in order to get a good grade frequently in a science course, you had to, in the laboratory,

00:22:12 get numerical values, which neither the methodology or the equipment justified, or you were required

00:22:21 to draw broader conclusions than the data that they had justified. Never taught a class the same way

00:22:27 again. I think physics and chemistry are unique in the sciences, in that they deal with a type

00:22:44 of phenomenon that's ubiquitous. Most of the sciences deal with particular systems, geology,

00:22:52 biology, astronomy, but physics and chemistry deal with phenomena that can occur in any,

00:23:02 you know, just really ubiquitous in all systems. I wonder if this is not one of the problems with

00:23:14 the question of election of chemistry and physics in the high schools, also in college, is that

00:23:25 students don't know what physics and chemistry are. Their advisors frequently don't know,

00:23:31 their parents may not know, and I suspect that frequently we get them in courses and we don't

00:23:36 help them much to discover what fundamentally physics and chemistry are. Now you referred to

00:23:47 this high school course made up of modules. Is that addressed at some of the questions that you've

00:23:54 just been discussing? Yes, I think what it does is the high school course deals with specific

00:24:06 topics of really specific systems, not topics in the sense of principal topics. For instance,

00:24:17 the first module is on water, and then there are modules on petroleum, nutrition, and a number

00:24:30 of topics of this sort, and the approach is fundamentally through a societal need, the

00:24:44 initial approach, but then the specific factual information is introduced to the degree it's

00:24:55 needed to address that, and also the principles. Now there is a sort of master checklist that means

00:25:05 that the people that are developing that course know where the principles are, and that the ones

00:25:10 that one thinks of, equilibrium, reversible, non-reversible reactions, stoichiometry, all of

00:25:19 those things get in, but they come in as a means to an end rather than as the end in itself. All of

00:25:34 this gets mixed up with some other aspects of this cohort of people who are not professionally

00:25:43 driven, and that is that science develops so rapidly that there is no way on earth that,

00:25:57 I don't know, I don't care how many courses you care to require that students take, but there's

00:26:04 no way on earth that we could teach students what they will need to know in the resolution,

00:26:13 in participation resolution of societal issues, 10, 20, even 50 years after they're out of the

00:26:21 academic program, and so the goals for these courses are to me quite different. There is some

00:26:36 time span which I don't know and don't really care what the length of it is, it might be 15 years,

00:26:42 20 years, 25 years, but anyway there's some time span at the end of which what an individual knows

00:26:52 and understands about chemistry or any of the other sciences for that matter. Most of that will

00:27:02 have been learned since the departure from the formal academic system. The goals then are what

00:27:19 is it that we seek to enable students to acquire during the time they are part of the academic

00:27:26 system. In order to make it possible, they will continue to extend their knowledge throughout

00:27:33 their lifespan. This has tremendous implications about the mass media and what it will be doing

00:27:43 too in that continuing education. We sometimes argue strongly that a great need now is the

00:27:52 continuing education retreading of specialists. You're saying that perhaps even a greater need

00:27:57 is to continually upgrade the average person's knowledge. Well, I think the two are different.

00:28:04 The specialist has a need, a professional need, to upgrade continuously and there are mechanisms

00:28:15 for this, an increasing number of mechanisms. The American Chemical Society in their short

00:28:20 courses addressed this in one fashion years ago, but there are many other ways of doing it. Many

00:28:29 of the large industrial organizations, of course, have internal universities essentially for this

00:28:36 purpose of upgrading. You cannot expect, I think, the person who has another professional commitment

00:28:49 to attack a continual expansion of their knowledge in the same fashion. I think they're

00:29:00 going to achieve it in a more peripheral way. One of the key issues in this, as far as I'm

00:29:14 concerned, is that if the experience that an individual has had with science in the academic

00:29:26 system has not been rewarding to that individual, and particularly if it has been dramatic, then

00:29:32 that individual is very prone to tune out the mass media on topics related to science. I had

00:29:45 somewhat, I think, the same feeling about the Vietnam War. The whole thing was so dramatic as

00:29:53 far as I was concerned. I could read down a newspaper, come to an article about the Vietnam

00:29:58 politics related to the war, and just not read it. So one of the goals, I think very definitely,

00:30:10 has to be that the academic program should enable students to discover chemical phenomena or other

00:30:26 phenomena, scientific phenomena, and discover they enjoy learning, and also to discover that

00:30:37 they are capable of continuing their knowledge, at least at the level of the mass media. Now,

00:30:45 there are a number of things that are designed to help the public in this respect. One of the

00:30:54 publications that the AAAS now does is the Science 85, 86, changes its name every year, which is a

00:31:07 publication directed at the reading public, but not at the scientific community. A lot of scientists

00:31:15 take it and read it sort of for fun because it is a fun publication. The intent was to pitch it at

00:31:22 a level sort of halfway between Popular Mechanics, which apparently is still an ongoing publication

00:31:28 and read by a lot of people. I hadn't heard of it since I got out of high school, I think, and the

00:31:34 Scientific American, which requires a little bit more sustained effort on the part of the reader,

00:31:42 and that many people are in fact capable of doing. The response of the public to the Science 85 has

00:31:50 been excellent. The paid circulation now is over 700,000, and editorially it has been very well

00:32:01 accepted. Our readers of it are, for the most part, obviously you have to be able to read, and most of

00:32:18 the readers have had some college experience. Although I know of a number of individuals whose

00:32:30 highest academic degree is a diploma from high school who read it and enjoy it.

00:32:37 Do you see anything similar in television?

00:32:41 Oh yes, lots of things.

00:32:43 It's warm, did you notice?

00:32:51 They want us to shut the air conditioning off.

00:32:54 Anna, how do you see the role of television in educating the general public concerning science?

00:33:20 Well, I think it's extremely important. One thing that gets the attention of at least a segment of the

00:33:27 public, and particularly the younger segment. It's better, and I think it will progressively become

00:33:41 better if the public demands that it becomes better. The easiest thing to convey on television is phenomena.

00:33:53 The more abstract concepts of science I think are comparatively difficult to present. An example of this is

00:34:06 the 3-2-1 contact program, which was developed by Children's Television Workshop. I think the target age group was 8-12.

00:34:16 I should say is, because it's certainly an ongoing program. It was to do for science what Sesame Street does for

00:34:29 numbers, essentially, but for a slightly older group. In actual fact, what it does is I think provide magnificent

00:34:42 display of phenomena and methodologies in some senses. I would judge that it's great payoff is on the broadening of our awareness of young people.

00:35:02 Incidentally, though it was developed for young people, it is watched by a number of older people. The topics addressed are quite current topics.

00:35:18 In many cases, they pivot on having an expert. An expert may be, in fact, a scientist, an archaeologist, a chemist, a physicist, etc.

00:35:38 But the expert may also be the pilot of a lighter than aircraft. It may be a football player. It may be a young individual, early teens, maybe even younger, that is becoming quite proficient as a figure skater.

00:36:03 One of the problems, of course, with any television program is how uptight you get about whether the science is correct or not.

00:36:17 I thought the Children's Television Workshop handled that rather neatly. Their staff—and they have three professional young people that are actors that take the role of students—their script had to be impeccable as far as the science is concerned,

00:36:42 in as far as they and the advisory committee could ascertain. Quite frankly, that was the reason I went on their advisory group, because of being uptight about what the reaction of the scientific community would be to the science presented.

00:37:00 Peculiarly enough, they've never had a complaint, apparently, on the scientific content. Now, what the expert says, unless it's too off base, they simply let it go. If necessary, they cut that dialogue and then have a sound overlay to take care of it.

00:37:22 One rather charming example of this was one clearly nationally known football player, who I might say wasn't known to me, was addressing the question of how he got his force. He explained very carefully it was the spikes on his shoes, which has a certain degree of logic to it,

00:37:51 but not exactly the definition that physicists would be willing to accept. A young skater used the language that you would expect of an 11-year-old, which obviously conveyed information to her,

00:38:13 and I suspect would also convey information to any other young person that was skating about what she did and why she did it. The adult programs, I suppose, the ones that have been most noted are, of course, the NOVA programs and the National Geographic.

00:38:35 Some of those have done, it seems to me, very well in presenting the process of science, how one goes about investigations in a particular setting, and what one does with the results, and also an indication of the certainty and uncertainty associated with scientific knowledge.

00:39:00 Very, very little is done, as far as I know, in television in the presentation of technological innovation, which I think is something that television can project very well, and hopefully will.

00:39:26 It's one of the processes, it seems to me, that is extremely important that the public develop a kind of understanding of the process of innovation,

00:39:43 going the whole distance from the concept of science to the production and delivery of a viable product, which is much broader than just the physics and the chemistry, and now the biology.

00:40:03 It also involves very complex social, economic, and political questions. I suspect that most scientists, even, do not really understand the process of technological innovation, and certainly the public doesn't.

00:40:21 But if you're going to make decisions that are meaningful in reference to technological innovation, one has to have some concept of the investment in time, talent, and money that has to go into the technological innovation.

00:40:45 And that's an area in which I think, or at least I would expect, there to be tremendous advance.

00:40:56 The question of the quality of communication of science, engineering, and technology by whatever media—hard copy, radio, or television—is something that I think the scientific community is shied away from.

00:41:22 And the quality of the mass media can be no better than the quality and the education of the people that go into that.

00:41:43 And my impression is that many of the individuals who have chosen to become communicators of science have met a rather high level of derision on the part of their peers who are scientists and have gone the research route,

00:42:00 and that relatively few programs have been developed to assist individuals make the transition from the research orientation to science to the communication orientation.

00:42:23 One of the things that I've enjoyed very much is that the AAAS National Meeting draws a very large number of communicators.

00:42:33 And as a matter of fact, the National Organization of Science Writers also holds its annual meeting at the same time in the same place.

00:42:44 And I'm really tremendously impressed with the degree that that group of communicators do their homework and endeavoring to keep pace with the development of science, engineering, and technology.

00:43:08 And as a matter of fact, their competence sometimes sort of embarrasses me, and the degree to which they understand and question the underlying concepts, etc.

00:43:27 And I have lots of concerns about how narrowly scientists, in particular engineers and philosophers, define their own profession, and sometime I'd like to come back and talk about that.

00:43:46 Anna, you've mentioned many different facets of just what science is about, and I was wondering if you'd like to tell us a bit about your views on just what science is, what a science is.

00:44:02 Thank you. I became aware that it seemed to me that it might be that we've sort of lost track of what a science was, even the people in the scientific community.

00:44:16 And one of the episodes that particularly reinforced this was all of the hassle over creationism being considered as and being forced into the science curriculum.

00:44:34 And it seemed to me that, in fact, perhaps the scientific community, those of us who teach, had been doing what we ought to have been doing.

00:44:45 That the hassle wouldn't have arisen.

00:44:50 And you have a little bit of a problem on what a science is, and you have a problem with what you will find in a dictionary if you look up what a science is.

00:45:07 And I have found it extremely helpful to look at science as a process of investigation of phenomena.

00:45:18 And science will investigate any phenomena which it can find a methodology to investigate.

00:45:27 And in a sense, the physicists, as far as I'm concerned, walked away with the type of phenomena that was easiest to develop methodologies to investigate.

00:45:40 Chemists came along and took the next bite. The biologists and so on.

00:45:46 The behavioral, social, economic, and political scientists have really much more difficult phenomena to investigate and requires different methodologies.

00:46:00 What I would really like to do is to describe science as a process of investigation of physical, chemical, biological, behavioral, social, economic, and political phenomena.

00:46:21 They differ from each other only in the methodologies that are appropriate to the various type of phenomena being investigated.

00:46:30 And then the legacy of those investigations is a body of knowledge, which would be then, of course, the scientific knowledge.

00:46:42 Now, in our educational system, I think we have unduly placed emphasis on the transfer of a body of knowledge to students and have minimized or given less attention to the processes by which scientific knowledge is acquired.

00:47:13 One reason I'm attracted to trying to approach in this fashion is that it would remove all the kinds of barriers, which I consider now as artificial, as to the barriers between physical, biological, and the social sciences.

00:47:32 It's all a matter of question of investigating phenomena, and the phenomena is just different, but one breaks from one end to the other. There are no strict boundaries.

00:47:45 In the defense of not including creationism in science courses was based on the body of knowledge, and I think the significant argument would have been on the question of process.

00:48:03 The body of knowledge that is creationism is acquired in quite a different way than the body of knowledge that we consider as scientific knowledge.

00:48:17 In the word process of investigation, that's used in the complex sense and would include everything from the selection of the particular body of information that you would investigate,

00:48:37 the specific phenomena, all the way through to the assessment of the results, and invariably in the assessment of the reliability of the results,

00:48:56 and the correlation of these with other bodies of knowledge, also the development of models.

00:49:06 Now I keep eternally coming back to this assessment of the reliability of the scientific results, the uncertainty associated with scientific,

00:49:20 because these are issues that become extremely important when you come to using that body of scientific knowledge in the resolution of societal issues,

00:49:33 and unless one understands the uncertainty associated with science, one expects something that the science in fact cannot give.

00:49:42 You've written rather extensively on that topic in recent years, haven't you?

00:49:47 Well, one of the things I learned some years ago was that you can't just write something once and expect it makes any impact,

00:49:55 and so the final situation is you become like a broken record, you know, you go around saying the same thing over and over and over again.

00:50:09 The one thing different people may read or listen to you at different times, and another is that people may be willing to consider certain issues.

00:50:23 I stay away very much from the so-called scientific method.

00:50:29 I don't find it very helpful, and is an artifact, which seems to me, that is required that students almost memorize in early courses in science,

00:50:44 and I much prefer to throw the emphasis on process, what it is that people really do,

00:50:54 which would, of course, have to do with the selecting of methodology, the radiation of protocol, selection of instrumentation, collection of data, reduction of data, and all of the things that we're involved in.

00:51:11 Well, you've been very involved in both the ACS and the AAAS,

00:51:17 and I was wondering if your concern about the impact of science on society had anything to do with getting involved in both of these organizations.

00:51:27 Oh, it was a controlling factor in being willing to get involved.

00:51:33 I became extensively involved with the American Chemical Society before I got involved in any great detail with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

00:51:51 It's an interesting transition between the two, because with the American Chemical Society, the focus is, of course, on chemistry.

00:52:01 The great uniqueness of the AAAS is its multidisciplinary structure, and with the American Chemical Society, for instance, when we were discussing regulatory issues, etc.,

00:52:20 there were questions that we did not have expertise in reference to social, economic, and political aspects of regulation.

00:52:33 Also, biological questions, in many cases, we had to go outside of the American Chemical Society in order to address those issues.

00:52:45 It took me a long time before I could talk about science in general, rather than chemistry specifically,

00:52:57 and now I am so much fascinated by the generalities of all science that I find it difficult to talk about chemistry specifically.

00:53:10 Would you like to tell us something about your involvement with the ACSA and its committee structures and the way it operates?

00:53:19 Well, I'd rather talk a little bit about what I think the goals of the American Chemical Society are first.

00:53:34 The structure of almost all organizations is an artifact, essentially, of how an organization gets established and how it develops.

00:53:46 The American Chemical Society is sort of organized from the bottom up.

00:53:52 All of these local sections and their feed into the governance of the society.

00:53:59 The AAAS, on the other hand, is organized from the top down. It does not have this multiplicity of local sections.

00:54:06 It has four divisions, which are quite large.

00:54:09 One in the Rocky Mountain Southwest region and one on the Pacific Coast.

00:54:15 The Arctic Division, which is largely Alaska and Yukon.

00:54:20 And the Caribbean, which has its base in the impetus of Puerto Rico.

00:54:27 But as far as I could tell by watching the American Chemical Society, there are essentially four issues that the American Chemical Society addresses.

00:54:46 And these were the, regardless of what its charter may say, one has to do with science.

00:54:55 One has to do with people. One has to do with institutions.

00:54:58 And the other has to do with the public.

00:55:00 Namely, that the ACS endeavors to facilitate the extension of scientific knowledge and the distribution of chemical knowledge.

00:55:14 It endeavors to enhance the productivity and the professional well-being of chemists.

00:55:24 It endeavors to enhance the productivity and viability of organizations which chemists are involved.

00:55:36 And it endeavors to enhance the contribution to the public and the resolution of societal issues.

00:55:49 And to me, the four are symbiotic.

00:55:53 And that you cannot really pursue any one of those long, productively, without pursuing the other three.

00:56:04 And it really wouldn't make any difference to me what order you placed these in.

00:56:09 And one of the interesting phenomena that comes out of this is that education, which I have devoted my life to, essentially, is a mechanism of doing all four of those things.

00:56:28 But it's not an end in itself.

00:56:32 What were some of the things that you hoped that you would accomplish when you became president of the ACS?

00:56:38 Well, one was to focus on these four goals.

00:56:46 The need for this, I thought, arose from the fact that we had been through a period in which several of the elected leaders of the American Chemical Society

00:57:00 had placed a very high emphasis on professionalism, which is using the word a little differently than I would use the word,

00:57:09 and essentially had to do with the economic well-being of chemists.

00:57:14 And a question to what degree the activities of the American Chemical Society would have elements in common with a union.

00:57:29 And that, I thought, was extremely destructive and a narrow and destructive focus.

00:57:37 And consequently, one of the things that I endeavored to do was to break with that and to get the broader approach to the four types of endeavors.

00:57:54 And the wording in reference to the individuals was very carefully chosen to enhance their productivity and professional well-being.

00:58:08 And the professional well-being, one part of that would be economic returns, but by no means would all of it be economic returns.

00:58:17 It would have to do with recognition, prestige, and a number of other things.

00:58:24 While I was a candidate for office, I literally did not discuss at all that which I expected to devote most of my attention to,

00:58:40 namely in endeavoring to mobilize the American Chemical Society to be a responsible and active participant in the implementation of some of the regulatory acts.

00:59:01 I didn't want to raise that issue while I was a candidate because there are different reactions to that,

00:59:11 and as a matter of fact, I was advised by a number of very responsible, extremely well-recognized chemists

00:59:24 not to get involved with issues of regulation because it would be a very bloody and divisive issue within the organization.

00:59:35 But as a matter of fact, you did get involved.

00:59:38 Well, as soon as I was elected, I did get involved, but I didn't want the political hassle of it before we got involved.

00:59:47 Now, you can look at what it is that you accomplished, or what the American Chemical Society,

00:59:57 and judge it as being very little and inadequate compared to the need,

01:00:04 or you can look at it in terms of making initial steps and laying the groundwork on which the American Chemical Society would continue to be involved forever, really.

01:00:20 And I think our accomplishments during the years that I was in the presidential sequence would have been in the question of the things that we initiated,

01:00:32 rather than the magnitude of the contribution that we made.

01:00:37 Kent was one of the stalwarts that served on the regulatory subcommittee of the Committee on Chemistry and Public Affairs, and you're still involved, aren't you?

01:00:53 Yes.

01:00:55 And the people are probably—well, I think Kent's fairly discriminating about where he'll put his time and effort.

01:01:07 I'm sure he hasn't stayed there just by inertia, not getting involved.

01:01:11 So I think this is kind of an indication of that.

01:01:15 The other thing that I—I guess there were two other things that I also was anxious to devote attention to.

01:01:30 One of those was the manner in which chemists—