Professor of Physics John Huth says he wasalarmed by the postmodern views he encountered inCongress when he participated in the debate overfunding the Superconducting Supercollider, a giantparticlesmasher in Texas whose funding was cut inOctober 1993. "The post-modernist view had creptin around the edges in Washington," says Huth.

Huth says he e-mailed colleagues around theworld to express his concern over thepost-modernist movement, which led to contact withthe National Science Board of the Czech republic.

After reading an editorial in the New YorkTimes by Havel, Huth was encouraged to write aresponse which was recently completed and will beprinted in a Czech national science journal. "Icouldn't resist the opportunity to write aresponse that would be printed in the Czechrepublic," he says.

Subjectivity: Healthy For Science?

Some scientists say an understanding of thesubjectivity involved in science strengthens itsown system of checks and balances.

"There is and ought to be a thoroughly thoughtout and skeptical view of both science andnon-science at all times," says Holton.

He says that skepticism is the foundation forscience's validity.

"Practically all of basic science is insulatedbecause it passes through peer review," he says.

Holton says such review makes a misuse ofscience through politics unlikely, since everyapplication is judged by fellow scientists ratherthan bureaucrats or politicians.

Although the validity of scientific researchmay not be a question, politics and science canstill become intimately embroiled with each other,according to Pratt Public Service Professor LewisM. Branscomb, director of the science, technologyand public policy program at the Kennedy School.

"Once you get a [scientific] idea started,politics pretty swiftly takes over," Branscombsays.

Commenting on the support by Texasrepresentatives to fund the supercollider,Branscomb says, "The political approach didn'thave to do with finding top quarks, but had to dowith prestige and the value of high tech commerceto the local communities,"

Branscomb says there is an economic need forgovernment involvement in science. "Theutilitarian value of science is so important to ahigh wage society that you need a huge publicinvestment," he says.

And according to Branscomb, the governmentshould have no problem obtaining a fullunderstanding of the biases of science.

"The government is loaded with [scientific]people of first class talent who can make firstclass judgements," he says.