Basic research and technology transfer

Federal support of research and development is more promising now than it looked a year or two ago. But it still is not drawing much applause. Philip Handler in his annual presidential report to the National Academy of Sciences commented that the President's fiscal 1975 R&D budget could be considered "heartening," but that would not relieve all of the internal pressure sensed in the scientific community (C&EN, May 13, page 13). He is disturbed over the paucity of graduate and postdoctoral fellowships in scientific disciplines in the face of "no abnormal unemployment of Ph.D.-bearing scientists." Criticism from another angle comes from the National Academy of Engineering, whose committee found poor "spin-offs" from the technology developed by federally funded programs since World War II (C&EN, April 29, page 16). Nearly $1 billion of the $17 billion federal R&D budget in fiscal 1973 went into the collection, processing, and dissemination of information about resulting technology. But the ...