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the research grants; that is, our research grants are primarily for research, but many graduate students work on those programs and are in training while the research is being done.

Mr. CHENOWETH. We are now in the business of training scientists in a most substantial way and we are not neglecting this field. Is that a fair observation?

Dr. ROBERTSON. It is not being neglected, but there is lots more to be done if we are going to get on with it.

Mr. CHENOWETH. Much more is being done all the time, I observe this in the space program, Doctor.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Doctor.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Morris?

Mr. MORRIS. I must admit I am a little confused. My intention in introducing the bill was to provide a source of research scientists in research of water. Now, we seem to have gotten off into other fields which may be even more important than the water research, but first I would like to ask you, Doctor, How do you train a research scientists? Dr. ROBERTSON. A research scientists is trained primarily by doing research. He also has to take a great many courses in order that he will have an adequate background of knowledge.

Mr. MORRIS. I understand that he has to know how to read and write.

Dr. ROBERTSON. It is doing the research and writing his thesis that is the critical part of his training.

Mr. MORRIS. But the only real way you can train a research scientist is for him to do research, isn't that correct?

Dr. ROBERTSON. That is an absolutely essential part of his training, sir.

Mr. MORRIS. Now, you apparently do not agree with the language of this bill which gives the 50 States the opportunity to establish a research center or gives them funds to assist them in research in basic water research?

Dr. ROBERTSON. I think I would support the general outline of this bill, provided that the Secretary of Interior would have discretion in establishing these centers, to insure that they are properly manned and that the quality of the work to be done is high.

Mr. MORRIS. All right.

Under the Senate bill, S. 2, or under the House bill, H.R. 2683, do you think the Secretary has this authority in title 1?

Dr. ROBERTSON. As I read it this was slightly obscure to me, not being an expert on legislation. There were clauses in there which seemed to imply that rules and regulations would be established by the Secretary and that the funds would be made available after due consideration of some kind. Perhaps Mr. Ruttenberg

Mr. MORRIS. Would you have your counsel comment. What is your position on title 1? Does the Secretary or does he not have the authority to withhold grants from one State?

Mr. RUTTENBERG. Well, speaking as an attorney I think that it could be spelled out a little more clearly.

In looking at S. 2 which passed the Senate and is now in the House, section 104 says that the Secretary of the Interior shall ascertain whether the requirements of section 101 have been met as to each

State; section 101 is that portion of the bill which relates to the payment to the instituions for setting up the institutes, and the implication, even though I don't necessarily think it was intended, is that this would be more or less administrative action, checking vouchers and so on, I think that it could be made celar that the Secretary of the Interior shall have responsibility for determining whether the requirements of the whole bill have been met as to the quality of the research. I think it is a technical change, but in my view the point should be more clear.

Mr. MORRIS. Now, you testified that you feel there is a shortage of research scientists in the field of research on water? Did I understand your testimony correctly?

Dr. ROBERTSON. Yes, sir, the number of people

Mr. MORRIS. I don't mean that you said a shortage, but you did indicate that the supply of these particular people in this country is not as great as we would like to have a good national asset in this field.

Dr. ROBERTSON. The supply should be a limiting factor in strengthening or broadening programs in this field.

Mr. MORRIS. But the only way you can build up the supply is through the training of these people, and the only way you can train them, as you yourself testified, is by them doing the actual research themselves.

Dr. ROBERTSON. That is right, that is why I feel that we need to move ahead to strengthen programs in universities in order to train and attract the kind of people that we are going to need in the future.

Mr. MORRIS. Well, let us go over to the retrieval and coordination of scientific information that may result from not only this legislation but any research that is being done on water.

As I understand it now there is an office over in the Smithsonian Institute called the Science Information Exchange.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. MORRIS. Now, what is the purpose of this office?

Dr. ROBERTSON. The primary purpose of the SIE is to provide a list of ongoing research programs in all fields, it is a resource to which you can go and find out who is doing what and where they are.

Mr. MORRIS. Well, if we made the Office of Science and Technology responsible for the research in the water field, the coordination and cataloging, then we would have all our other scientific activities being cataloged and coordinated by the Science Information Exchange of the Smithsonian Institute, would we not?

Dr. ROBERTSON. I believe that the Office of Science and Technology does not handle any of the cataloging work in any field, even in fields in which they are carrying out coordination: their coordination is through committees of the Federal Council for Scientific Technology. The Science Information Exchange, when it is fully effective, will back up all of these efforts on a Government-wide basis.

Mr. MORRIS. I did not mean to imply that I thought the Office of Science and Technology did the cataloging now, but there have been various proposals put forth during this hearing of what office is the best to coordinate this information if this act passes, and I understood you to testify that you thought the Office of Science and Tech

nology was the proper place to do the coordinating and cataloging if this legislation should pass and become a statute.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Just the coordinating, sir; I felt that the interagency committee, which would have responsibility for coordination, should be set up under the Federal Council which operates in the Office of Science and Technology. Ultimately the cataloging, which might well be started in by Interior, should end up in the Science Information Exchange.

Mr. MORRIS. Now, do you have any comment to make on title 2 of the proposed legislation? This is the title which gives the Secretary of the Interior $10 million annually after 5 years to undertake any project which he may deem necessary and feasible in applied research. to administration of the Department of the Interior.

Dr. ROBERTSON. I think this would be an important program and can be managed by the Department of Interior. It will be related in many ways to the kind of programs that we carry out, but would be done more directly in support of their mission and would include applied research and exploratory development as well as basic research.

Mr. MORRIS. Is this not very similar to what the National Science Foundation does?

Dr. ROBERTSON. The Science Foundation does support basic research by research grants to universities. We do not go into applied research.

Mr. MORRIS. Do you not give out some grants for mission research? Dr. ROBERTSON. Not explicitly. We have a broad mission which is to make the country strong in science, so we support the best research that is proposed to us. Only in the field of weather modification do we support specific programs aimed at a particular goal. Mr. MORRIS. No more questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Burton?

Mr. BURTON. No, I have no questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Duncan?

Mr. DUNCAN. No questions.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Morton.

Mr. MORTON. Doctor, the part of this bill that worries me is title 1. This does seem to me to be somewhat of a grab bag approach because we are going to suddenly establish water resource research centers in all of the States, at least if they want them, and one of the concerns I have is that perhaps in some areas where this research is very much needed and there is a local application to the research we may not have the personnel trained or we may not have an inclination on the part of the university in that area to accept this grant and there establish a program.

Now, you made a statement a minute ago that you felt that this thing should be done on a regional basis and that we may run into some trouble, at least I gathered that from your remark, in just wholesale giving this opportunity to all the States. I wonder if you would amplify that regional idea you had a little bit.

Dr. ROBERTSON. I feel that it is important that the agency managing a program of this kind have some discretion in setting up such institutes. Where initially it might be impossible to establish an institute in each of two adjacent States, it might be possible to develop one which would be for those two States working together.

Mr. MORTON. I agree with that and I do not feel that that is spelled out sufficiently in this bill.

Now, we do have a limited manpower; we also obviously have limited facilities in some of these substitutions for this research, and if we approached it on a regional basis I would feel that we would get more for our dollar instead of just making this available to all the States, but I feel there should be some management in the selection of the areas. You do agree on this point?

Dr. ROBERTSON. I agree that there should be discretion in establishing these centers even though ultimately you end up with one in each State. I think this should only be done as it becomes clear that people are available and that a good program can be mounted.

Mr. MORTON. Do you feel that there has to be a central direction to this program with actual experiments or actual projects spelled out from a central management or that these institutes or centers would be creative to the point that they would bring up the problems as they saw them?

Dr. ROBERTSON. I think the initiative for new ideas should be dispersed to the various centers. There should, of course, be a central group with concern for the overall field and capable of bringing problems to the attention of the several groups, but I feel it would be a real mistake to try to mastermind the program from some central agency and assign jobs to the various centers.

Mr. MORTON. In your own organization among the many grants that you have there must be considerable duplication of effort and discovery of various new points of knowledge, is there not?

Dr. ROBERTSON. Many people are, of course, working on the same general scientific problem; usually, however, with a different approach. Scientists in a given field are usually in very good communication. No one wants to do exactly the same thing as someone else, they would rather take a different approach to the problem. Duplication among the basic scientists is pretty well eliminated by the maintenance of proper communication. Science is a self-disciplining activity in many ways, even though many may be attacking the same problem, the genetic problem in biology, for example.

Mr. MORTON. Would this communication, you think, exist in this area of water research so that we could feel fairly confident that there would not be a great deal of duplication of effort in a wide program such as this, or would there have to be a central agent responsible to generate this communication?

Dr. ROBERTSON. I think it would be useful for the central agency to encourage communication, especially across disciplinary lines where the normal interchange might not always take place. As you get more to the applied side and into development, it is extremely important that this be carefully watched for duplication. As I pointed out, duplication in basic research can be eliminated by proper communication among scientists.

Mr. MORTON. I think that is all I have, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, Doctor.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. White?

Mr. WHITE. I am disturbed by one thing that you said in answer to the chairman of the full committee.

Mr. Robertson, the chairman of the full committee asked you about the end point on space research and so forth, and you indicated that

you thought there was an end point. I am wondering if that is really what you feel.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Well, I explained in a subsequent remark that you can see a limit in current programs, but that science in the long run is limitless. Vannevar Bush referred to "science, the endless frontier." Our imaginations cannot always penetrate beyond what we can see before us, but we know that beyond the knowledge we get by going to the moon there will be further knowledge by visiting planets. Mr. WHITE. Well, he also referred to the nuclear research, too, that was included in his question.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Again, in nuclear science we are up against the fact that we do not understand the strange particles that have been discovered in recent years. The elementary particles, the forces between them, and their origin are not now explained by any satisfactory theory.

Mr. WHITE. What you are really saying is there is no end point? Dr. ROBERTSON. That is correct.

Mr. WHITE. I hope that is what you are saying because I would hate to have you in the position you are in feeling that there is an end point to research and scientific development.

Dr. ROBERTSON. The only end point I implied was what can be done now with available resources in a definite time.

Mr. WHITE. You have said here several times, strong in science. What do you mean by strong in science?

Dr. ROBERTSON. Well, if this country is to be strong in science, which is the context in which I used that phrase, we must have a large body of trained scientists doing important work and publishing that work. It is very difficult to judge scientific strength, but our normal method is to ask how a man stands among his colleagues on an international basis. American science has become recognized throughout the world in many fields as being in the lead on a worldwide basis.

Mr. WHITE. I hear things that are in opposition to what you have just said; I hear it a great many times here, coming out of countries behind the Iron Curtain that are exceeding us in many fields.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Well, they have made remarkable progress and in some limited engineering fields related to the space effort I would say they are ahead of us. On the whole our science is strong, we are dedicated to making it stronger.

Mr. WHITE. What is the difference between science and technology? You have used the two words with a separate meaning.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Science in general is our effort to understand the world about us; technology is the effort to put that knowledge to work in the production of useful systems and devices, things that people can use.

Mr. WHITE. One thing that I would like to have you comment on. You seem to indicate that the place to create all of this water resource information is at the graduate level. It would seem to me that the undergraduate curriculum could include many courses with respect to the problems of water resources, and emphasis could be given in this area as well as in the graduate area.

Dr. ROBERTSON. Yes; I think that is true. For research purposes the graduate area is most important. For the civil engineer, for

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