Secrecy in anti-terror war stifles science. (Security Beat).

The federal government's efforts to protect the United States against terrorist attacks are having "profound effects" on the climate for scientific research in this country, warned Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The war against terrorism is changing the research and development priorities of federal agencies, national laboratories, universities and private corporations, Teich said.

Even though the government is pushing science and technology as necessary ingredients to fight the anti-terrorism war, both at home and abroad, "it is developing policies that could cause serious, long-term damage to the science and technology enterprise," Teich charged. He spoke at a seminar sponsored recently by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, in Arlington, Va.

Resulting from those policies, Teich said, is "a growing atmosphere of secrecy and nationalism in this country that poses the most serious challenge to the traditional values of openness and free communication in science that we have seen in many years."

The large number of foreign students pursuing science and engineering degrees in U.S. universities--widely regarded as an asset to national research capabilities--is viewed as a threat in some quarters, Teich said.

He said that the notion of "sensitive but unclassified" information--a term used during the Cold War is resurfacing, and "it is being applied to some areas of basic research."