The setting: A conference room at an annual meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAC]. One of the many conferences organized around various areas of current scientific research is in session. A panel of experts is holding forth on the composition of moon rocks brought back by astronauts from the latest moon expedition. Suddenly there is a commotion at the rear of the room. Enter three bizarrely attired "spacemen", who begin to make their way awkwardly to the front, their arms loaded down with plain, dirty earth rocks. Upon reaching the front of the hall they drop the rocks on the floor before the experts. There is a resounding crash. A shocked silence descends over the room as clouds of common earth dust rise into the air.

The "spacemen" in this incident, which occurred at an AAS meeting a few years ago, were members of a radical-activist group called Science for the People (SftP). The point they were trying to make was plain: for most working Americans the tangible results of the billions of dollars they paid out for the space program was nothing but a pile of rocks.

In recent years SftP has actively protested, although not always in such a theatrical manner, what the group sees as misplaced priorities in many fields of scientific research. This summer, for example, the Cambridge City Council voted a three month moratorium on recombinant DNA experiments within the city limits of Cambridge. The decision came after two public meetings involving pro and con testimony from prominent science-faculty members at Harvard and MIT.

Joining George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, in opposing the proposed research at Harvard's Biology Laboratories were several members of the Boston chapter of SftP: Jonathan R. Beckwith '57, professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Richard C. Lewontin '50, Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Steven Chorover, professor of Psychiatry at MIT, and Jonathan King, associate professor of Biology at MIT.

For scientists on both sides of the controversy the debate was historic: for the first time a local community was exerting control over scientific research. The impact of the decision was far-reaching, with newspapers in other countries calling for close scrutiny of similar research in their own academic communities.

Many scientists expressed concern that an unfortunate precedent had been set for local communities to interfere in scientific research they don't understand. But members of SftP were elated over the decision. Jonathan King and others say the council's decision was a milestone in a movement of people to gain more control over their own lives.

In any case, King claims the council's action was not a spontaneous event precipitated by the testimony of a few prominent scientists, as he says the media tended to portray it. According to King, it was at least partly the result of long term efforts of various organizations, including SftP, to build a movement forcing science to serve the people rather than what he perceives to be the present dominating interests of a scientific elite--motivated by the prospect of Nobel prizes--and a corporate-governmental complex geared toward profit, imperialism, and maintenance of the status quo.

King says it is not widely known that the SftP, cooperating with other groups, has agitated for several years for close monitoring of genetic engineering research and its relegation to a lower priority. He cites an SftP pamphlet published years ago that dealt with the hazards of genetic engineering long before the technology to accomplish it existed, and a barrage of letters and critiques sent out to scientific conferences, government agencies, and public interest groups.

Other members of SftP say that in presenting opposing views of controversial scientific research, newspapers and television reporters often rely heavily on information supplied by SftP, while rarely giving the organization credit. And they claim it was largely unrecognized efforts of SftP as an organization that were responsible for ending the controversial screening of male babies for the XYY chromosome pattern at the Boston Lying-in Hospital, which is associated with Harvard. Here too, they say, SftP's efforts may have had an effect far beyond the local level: Beckwith says that a recent survey by the Children's Defense Fund found that similar screening programs have been ended nationwide.

SftP, under its original name as Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), was organized at the height of the anti-war movement in the late '60s. Its founders were disgruntled members of the American Physical Society who left that organization when it refused to take a position against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

These first activists were soon joined by science workers in industry, and they allied themselves in turn with a group of MIT faculty and graduate students responsible for organizing the March 4, 1969 research stoppage at MIT in protest against defense research and the uses to which science and technology were being put in Vietnam.

SftP began to make itself known as a group opposed to what they call the American scientific establishment with protests at the annual AAAS meetings beginning in Boston in 1969. SftP members say they were denied space for a literature table and participation in the regular programs of the conference, which at that time did not include an agenda for the discussion of social issues in science. So the group resorted to leaf letting, guerilla theater, and sharp questioning during conference sessions to make its points. In subsequent AAAS meetings, attempts by SftP members to "restructure" conferences to allow for discussion of controversial issues resulted in scuffling and some arrests.

The international structure of SftP presently consists of a more or less informal communication among about 40 locations, mostly in the U.S., with active chapters in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Stony Brook, N.Y. The largest and most active chapter remains in Boston where the organization's bi-monthly magazine Science for the People is published. Local headquarters are at 897 Main Street in Cambridge, just off Mass Ave, halfway between Harvard and MIT.

The magazine, with a circulation of 4000, attempts to provide a radical analysis of science in U.S. society "to stimulate participation in concrete political activities." The September-October issue includes articles like "Sexism at the Cancer Lab", "Nuclear Power Hazards" and "Women and Health: A Review of the Literature".

The current number also features a debate on the development of alternative technology, dealing with questions such as whether making available innovative, inexpensive technology to the urban unemployed may actually ease the burden on the present capitalist system, which SftP views as inherently corrupt. In the issue, Fred Gordon '66, SftP staff man in charge of magazine production, asserts that high unemployment results partly because orthodox capitalist technology requires something like $100,000 in capital investments to create each new factory job.