Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Ike isn’t often credited as one of our more thoughtful presidents, but it’s clear he had some wisdom to offer on the question of science. In his memoirs, he approvingly cites a letter he received from James Conant, the former president of Harvard—and a chemist by training—after the shock of Sputnik in 1957. Conant wrote: “Those now in college will before long be living in the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles. What will be then needed is not more engineers and scientists, but a people who will not panic and political leaders of wisdom, courage, and devotion… not more Einsteins but more Washingtons and Madisons.”

I’m not so sure that we need fewer engineers and scientists, but I do think better leaders with Madisonian genes would help. What we actually got since Eisenhower’s time was more lawyers.