FEB 9 1968

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
BUREAU OF THE BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503

OFFICE OF

THE DIRECTOR February 5, 1968

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Editorial Offices
Washington Post

1515 L Street, N. W.
Washington, D. C. 20005

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

I want to make a couple of observations concerning your article
in the Post on Budget Bureau decisions.

I agree with you on the need for better exposure for the role of
the Budget Bureau, and I've tried to do what I could along this
line.

The Industrial Research affair illustrates the problem I have.
When the people at APL asked me to lead a colloquium on the
relations of science to public policy, I thought I should. I
tried to make it a lively afternoon. [I led the discussion around
to the dilemmas of criteria for scientific choice, taking off
from Weinberg's work, and speculated aloud about his third
criterion--social merit.

Now I find that I am stuck with something called the "Carey Social
Merit Matrix" and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I own up
to it, but something seems to have got lost in translation. The
very last thing I want is to let it be supposed that this con-
stitutes my state of mind about social values, or that I give low
marks to population research. What I was really doing was stabbing
clumsily at a very fragile and hemophilic subject, in order to
stimulate my listeners to think and argue in terms of relative
social priorities. Scientists, in particular, ought to engage in
this sort of enterprise more than they do. So I grabbed a piece
of chalk and spun this fantasy out for them, and they bit into it
and began to get a little better grasp of the uncertainties and
ambiguities that pepper the social system and slow our efforts to
reach higher ground in ordering public choices.

I couldn't agree with you more that "my" matrix isn't ideal for
making science policy. But if it exasperates enough people
sufficiently to take hold of the problem of relating public
choices to social merit, perhaps my afternoon in the countryside

was worthwhile.

Sincerely,

[Bia

William D. Carey
Assistant Director