There was a lengthy, captious review by reporter Hank Burchard in
the "Weekend" section of the May 6 Washington Post of the new "Science in
American Life" exhibit at the Smithsonian's American History Museum.  I
not seen the exhibit, but the review may be of interest, and I quote it
in its entirety.  The essay is entitled "Thinking Big About Science."
        WARNING: I told you it was lengthy.
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        "Big science is making a big splash at the National Museum of
American History, courtesy of a sprawling new exhibit underwritten by a
bigger-than-ever grant from the world's biggest chemical society.  Not
surprisingly, big science emerges from the exhibit standing fairly tall
and looking pretty good.
        `Every citizen is faced with issues that require at least some
scientific literacy,' says chief curator Arthur P. Molella, head of a
75-person team that spent four years on the project.  `This exhibit is
about science and technology and the making of modern America.  Every
aspect of our social, cultural and ethical life has ben affected.'
        `About 20 years ago we became concerned about public
misinformation,' says Ned Heindel, president of the American Chemical
Society, `and we began to invest heavily in public outreach.'
        The society is the continuing sponsor of the permanent exhibit,
to the tune so far of $5.3 million, the largest grant the Smithsonian has
ever received for a single exhibit.
        The show takes as its starting point 1876, the year America's
first university research laboratory was opened at Johns Hopkins
University, and in some ways the starting point is the high point.  The
scenario features ill-mannered mannequins representing chemistry
professor Ira Remsen (1846-1927), a high priest of pure science, and his
onetime pupil, Constantin Fahlberg (1850-1910), a practical guy with an
eye for a buck.
        Fahlberg discovered saccharin under Remsen's direction, and went
on to patent a process for making lots of it, cheap.  Fahlberg got rich,
and Remsen got snippy over his old pupil's crass commercialism and lack
of deference in the matter of scientific credit.  Their snide and bitter
repartee is both substantive and funny, and it's the very stuff of
science.  Similar exhanges echo to this day from many a laboratory and
symposium rostrum.
        From infighting and backbiting we pass to a section reminding us
how much potential has been wasted through denial of parity -- or often
even entry -- to women and minorities in whole broad fields of science.
Uplifting examples of outsiders who wouldn't take no for an answer and
shouldered their way into science anyway include pioneer Pawnee Indian
ethnographer James R. Murie (1862-1927) of Hampton Institute and Ellen
Swallow Richards (1842-1911), the first woman to win a science degree
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  At first Richards wasn't
allowed to attend classes with the men, but was, she said, `shut up in a
private laboratory much as a dangerous animal might have been.'  Richards
went on to become a trailblazer in environmental chemistry and public health.
        Big science -- large, well-financed laboratories owned by or
affiliated with powerful corporations -- began to come into its own late
in the 19th century.  The dream of the alchemists was achieved when
chemists found the molecular equivalent of the philosopher's stone: the
benzene ring, a stubbornly stable molecule upon which it is possible to
build literally no end of remarkable compounds.
        The wonders and benefits of applied science made demigods of
scientists by the early 20th century.  That era of good feeling is
effectively evoked by a reprise of the 1939 World's Fair, whose trylon
and perisphere symbolized the bright future toward which science would
lead us.  Former junior scientists of a certain age may be overcome with
nostalgia by the sight of vintage Gilbert and Lionel kiddie science sets
(and will happily note that the Smithsonian now sells such sets under its
own rubric.)
        But when they unlocked the benzene ring scientists also opened
Pandora's box, because byproducts of dye production were easily converted
into TNT, head of a whole new family of explosives that vastly increased
the lethality of bombs and artillery.  Other fallout from the
petrochemical industry continues to rain down on us, including pesticides
and seemingly harmless compounds that have turned out to be personal
and/or planetary poisons.
        This phenomenon of good science making bad things happen recurs
repeatedly in the latter half of the exhibit.  The bad news comes so fast
that the exhibit has had to be repeatedly revised on the fly.  Space had
to be made in the atomic energy section for Albuquerque Tribune reporter
Eileen Welsome's Pulitzer Prize-winning revelations about government
doctors pumping radiation into unwitting patients.  The section already
had been a downer, what with nuclear refinery pollution, slipshod bomb
testing and the collapse of the commercial nuclear power industry.  One
happy note is a 1960s bomb shelter that had been installed in the front
yard of a Fort Wayne, Ind., family; the present owner decided he had no
use for it.
        There also was the verdict of Congress on the Superconducting
Super Collider, the biggest single science experiment in history and
prospective centerpiece of the exhibit.  Priced at $11 billion and
counting, the collider was shot down on the Hill and died before opening
night.  A cross-section of the collider remains in the exhibit, but the
text has been rewritten to address the question, `Has Big Science become
too big?'
        Another question is whether the exhibit itself is too big.  At
12,000 square feet it's quite a trek, and by trying to touch on just
about everything, it doesn't get a solid grip on much of anything.
        And while the extended consideration of the risks as well as the
benefits of science is admirable, one wonders whether big chemistry gets
its fair share of the lumps.  Rachel Carson, the quiet, clear-eyed,
won't-quit woman who forever altered our perception of mankind's place in
the chain of life, and taught us to fear our Promethian powers (and,
especially, the chemical industry), doesn't command that much more space
than Ellen Swallow Richards.  One comes away from the section with the
vague impression that the vast and continuing problems of chemical
pollution, pesticide poisioning of the environment and toxic waste
generated by the chemical industry have largely been solved.
        The intimacy of the influence of that industry upon the shape and
content of the exhibit may be indicated by the language used by chemical
society president Heindel during the exhibit preview as he commented to
colleagues on a section devoted to the birth-control pill:
        `This is our fifth or sixth iteration of "The Pill" exhibit," he
told them.  `We had to continually redo it to get across the idea that
progesterone [the active ingredient] is a natural substance.'
        That doesn't sound like a sponsor talking, it sounds like a boss.
        The final section of the exhibit is devoted to genetic
engineering, perhaps the biggest question big science has ever raised for
mankind, promising godlike power to produce (and patent!) new life forms,
and possibly to re-create ourselves.
        Visitors get beautifully conceived explanations of how gene
manipulation works, including a droll video take in which film critics
Siskel & Ebert use the Marx Brothers movie `A Night at the Opera' to
explain how spliced genes are expressed.  Visitors are invited to do some
gene-shuffling of their own, using interactive video, and to register
their opinions about the role and future of science.
        But the `experiments' are not truly interactive because there are
no real choices.  All you get to do is touch the video screen to make a
program keep on doing what it was going to do anyway.  The choices on the
opinion survey are similarly unsatisfying.  We're asked to agree or
disagree with such vapid statements as `Scientific discoveries have had
more harmful than beneficial effects' and `Science can effectively
solve most of our problems.'
        That's begging the big science questions big time."
                                END
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        Those questions don't seem vapid to me, but I haven't had the
benefit of seeing the exhibit.  Perhaps others have.
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        Glenn Porter                        *
        Hagley Museum & Library             * Self-knowledge is always
        Box 3630                            *        bad news.
        Wilmington, DE 19807                *
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