But, merely because of the historical tradition of whether an agency gives grants or contracts--the only real difference being that contracts have no cost-sharing stipulations whereas grants do--scientists arbitrarily have to file effort reports. A man with a contract from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, for instance, is not involved with effort-reporting while a man with a NSF grant, with possibly very similar conditions, is.

Problems

To add to the problems raised by effort-reporting, an entirely different spectrum of problems has been raised by the war and the infamous Smale case. Complaints of political influences in the awarding of scientific grants and excessive defense spending causing a cutback in research allotments have been leveled in recent months at Harvard and elsewhere.

"The war in Vietnam is poisoning the atmosphere," Mendelsohn said. "It not only skews the directions in which government money goes, but, even more important, it also has created a tremendous distrust among scientists receiving grants from the government. They are now much more touchy about government supervision than they used to be."

Others at Harvard don't see the situation quite that politically. "Research budgets can be cut especially easily in Washington," Kistiakowsky said, "because science is not considered politically powerful. That is way,when we are in times of financial stringency such as we are now as a direct result of the war, research allocations are usually cut."

Emmanuel G. Mesthene, executive director of the University Program on Technology and Society, called the present situation a "lean" period. "The availability of scientific funds goes in waves," he said. "Sputnik, for instance, led to a fat period and the reins were loosened. The war in Vietnam, on the other hand, with its increased defense spending, has led to a lean period. I do not see an increasing trend of tightening reins in government support. We are simply in a lean period."

Actually, Harvard professors have not been significantly affected by this "lean" period. The tightening of government funds has primarily affected those colleges and universities where science professors actually receive part of their salaries from federal grants. At Harvard, no tenured professor receives any academic-year salary money from the government. But Harvard is an exception.

Leahy said that at most universities which receive government grants and contracts, some of the money is usually in the form of salary subsidies. Leahy explained that when a professor here files effort reports on his salary, as some math professors are required to do, his salary has not been paid, even in part, by the government. His salary payments are merely the University's share of the "cost-sharing" requirements.

Peripheral

Leahy sees Vietnam only as a peripheral issue in the problems of science's relations with Washington. "The only real tie-in with Vietnam," he said, "was when Stephen Smale stood up on the steps of Moscow University in the summer of 1966 and denounced the war." "Happily," he added, "Vietnam has played a very slight role in what has happened."

The Smale case deserves special attention. Smale, an internationally renowned topologist, traveled to Moscow in 1966 to deliver a major address at the 1966 International Congress of Mathematicians and to receive one of the Fields Medals, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.S In Moscow, Smale, pointing, as he put it, to "a real danger of a new McCarthyism in America," denounced both "American military intervention in Vietnam" as "horrible" as well as what he termed the "brutal intervening" of Russian troops in Hungary in 1956. 'Never," Smale said, "could I see justification for military intervention, 10 years ago in Hungary or now in the much more dangerous and brutal American intervention in Vietnam."

Smale was criticized in Congress and investigations were sought into government expenditures to scientists. Smale, who had traveled to Moscow on NSF money as well as private and personal funds, was accused of various infractions of NSF regulations. He was accused in various quarters of