PLENTIFUL ENERGY

it, I saw how a national laboratory fights to maintain its goals and ideals—its
integrity really.
It may strike the reader that ―integrity‖ is a strong word—too strong—and
perhaps overly dramatic. But remember, scientific integrity is natural, the norm in
national laboratories like Argonne, who in the main hire the most highly qualified
of scientists and engineers, Ph.D. level people—often brilliant, always competent.
The laboratories attract such people because of the scientific freedom they offer to
them. Advanced degrees are expected, generally, and many come out of the best
and most prestigious colleges and universities. People who have pursued scientific
knowledge this far have scientific goals themselves; they have scientific ideals and
they have scientific integrity. They do not regard their careers, their life in science,
as ―just a job.‖ A laboratory must fight to retain these qualities the scientists have
naturally, if it is to give the nation the kind of science and technology that the
nation deserves and that, after all, the taxpayer pays for. Integrity is foremost. The
science produced must stand up under the most detailed and careful of
examinations. Failure to demand these kinds of standards is deadly. It can result in
the kind of crises of skepticism currently faced in climate investigations. Once lost,
reputations based on scientific integrity are hard to regain.
To understand Argonne well, some history will help. The first thing to
understand is this: At any time in its history it could have been said quite truly that
Argonne faced a difficult situation. Through its history Argonne was always in
trouble, always in one battle or another—indeed, sometimes several at the same
time. Always the issue was the same; the Laboratory fought to establish and
maintain itself as a laboratory doing first-rate work for the nation, with all that that
implies. Always there was tension, sometimes over control of research with its
federal sponsor—in the first decades the Atomic Energy Commission; later its
successor agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration; and still
later, its successor agency, the Department of Energy. For decades, the lab was at
odds periodically with the various Argonne-related associations of Midwestern
universities, which changed over the years, but whose interests quite naturally lay in
more control of the lab than the laboratory was willing to relinquish. And
sometimes the laboratory had to defend itself in political infighting between the
parties in Congress, acting for their own purposes. But in spite of all that, it was
always a place where things could get done, initiatives taken, discoveries made. A
fine place to work, to accomplish something, where ―good work‖—new
knowledge—was given the highest respect and honors; it was a life to be proud of.
By the time I retired in 1998 I had been part of Argonne for two thirds of its history.
1.2 Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory spreads over a pleasantly pastoral site in a still
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