Chapter Four
Seizing the Means of Studying Reproduction
The NRC Committee on Problems of Sex

Between 1921 and 1941, American reproductive scientists led by Frank R. Lillie successfully seized the means of studying reproduction by redirecting the mission of the National Research Council Committee for Research in Problems of Sex (NRC/CRPS). In short, they captured the sponsor. They did so through strategic use of arguments for basic research, and they redirected the mission from what we would now term sexology to basic reproductive science with a major emphasis on the enterprise's emergent core activity of reproductive endocrinology. By 1931, this redirection of research effort was recognized by a shift of ultimate sponsor funding from a social action agency (the Bureau of Social Hygiene) to a biomedical research agency (the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation). Scientists were seeking funding, legitimacy, and autonomy for the reproductive sciences during their vulnerable years of formation and coalescence as a scientific enterprise. They were stunningly successful, simultaneously achieving several goals: broad legitimation for reproductive research through association with the National Research Council (NRC); significant funding; direct relationships between major centers of the reproductive sciences enterprise and a major biomedical research sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation; and a "basic" research identity for the reproductive sciences.

The coup of achieving major sponsorship for two decades fundamentally shaped the organizational context and infrastructure of the reproductive sciences in ways that are manifest even today. It was here, in the NRC/CRPS, that the American version of the division of labor between sexology and the reproductive sciences was forged. It was here that key aspects of the research agendas of each discipline were articulated. And it is here that I challenge Foucault's (1978:54–55) assertion that sexology and the repro-

ductive sciences were not mutually constitutive. I argue instead that many aspects of what would count as sexology and as reproductive science, at least in the American context, were hashed out in the committee between 1921 and 1941. Ongoing negotiations among a heterogeneous cast of characters with divergent commitments to knowledge production yielded competing agendas for funding. The basic reproductive sciences seized the day.

In forming their enterprise, reproductive scientists frequently confronted powerful demands from various audiences, including funding sources. These scientists felt they were being asked to engage in work they saw as either unscientific, beyond the scope of their envisioned enterprise, and/or threatening to their autonomy over their work. This conflict arose in part because actual and potential clinical and applied uses of the reproductive sciences were manifold and comparatively transparent even to lay audiences, and because the boundaries of the reproductive sciences were permeable at this time, especially but not only with sexology. To retain their autonomy and control, the main strategy reproductive scientists developed to manage such "external" audience demands was the making of arguments for basic research. They would assert that "basic" research should have priority over clinical and applied efforts—that it should be done first and foremost. Such research could, of course, safely take place under biological, medical, or agricultural institutional auspices—far removed from the taint of human sexual interaction. Reproductive scientists further argued that through basic research all of the diverse, conflicting clinical and applied needs and desires of their various audiences, sponsors, and consumers could ultimately be met.

In constructing "basic" reproductive sciences in the 1920s, these investigators quickly became embroiled yet again in the problematics of boundaries. In the last chapter we saw how scientists pursuing reproductive problems benefited from new boundaries constructed around other disciplines (e.g., genetics and developmental embryology), which also served to demarcate their own. In this chapter we examine the construction of a boundary between the emergent reproductive sciences and the discipline that has come to be called sexology —studies of sexuality mostly in humans. Here it was reproductive scientists themselves who crafted many of the boundary markers, since many individuals and groups seeking scientific studies of sexuality would have been more than pleased to have their work included under the rubric "the problems of sex" supported by the Committee. Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Richard Krafft-Ebbing, Sigmund Freud, and many others were constructing new conceptualizations of sexuality and seeking scientific legitimacy for their endeavors as well.^[1] Among other research, they sought a biology of erotics, an anatomy and physiology of sexuality, pursued as the "scientific study of sex." Gradually they and others began to frame human sexuality as falling within an emergent social sci-

ence of "sexology." In this chapter we see how reproductive scientists constructed such work as separate from the natural sciences' biological studies of mammalian reproductive system phenomena, or even from most animal sexual behavior. What would ultimately distinguish sexology was its (almost) exclusive focus on humans as objects of study. This emphasis allowed such research to be framed as social science and hence beyond the scope of NRC sponsorship.

The strategic arguments for basic research made vociferously and effectively by reproductive scientists were part of their broader effort to construct a legitimate, autonomous, authoritative, and well-funded reproductive sciences enterprise. Such arguments were used both within and by the NRC/CRPS to educate, persuade, trade off, manipulate, and coerce (Strauss 1991) support of basic reproductive science. While such arguments are now considered classic rhetoric for the legitimation of scientific research, between 1920 and 1940 they were relatively new. They were also being used in innovative science planning and policy development schemes, especially within and by the NRC (Kargon and Hodes 1985:305; Bugos 1989).

Given the chronic problem of social and scientific illegitimacy confronted by reproductive scientists, arguments for basic research were especially apt. The aura of supposed neutrality and objectivity associated with basic research was invoked, providing scientists with the proverbial ten-foot pole with which they could touch reproductive organs with propriety. Basic biological research arguments also deleted sexuality from the research agenda. Such arguments were used successfully to develop long-term institutional arrangements to benefit the larger enterprise. Analytically, they were arguments regarding the core activity of the enterprise—basic research first and foremost, and largely in reproductive endocrinology. Such activities may be particularly characteristic of the early stages of construction of a scientific enterprise (Coleman 1985).

Reproductive scientists used arguments for basic research in a variety of settings and with a variety of other significant social worlds within the larger arena of human reproduction. In this chapter, I examine one particular interactive setting that included a research-sponsoring agency (the NRC/CRPS) and its funding sources (the Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Rockefeller Foundation). The chapter is thus an analysis of the interactions between an emergent scientific discipline (the reproductive sciences) and key related social worlds (sponsors and funding sources).^[2] In chapter 6, I examine strategic arguments for basic research as they were used in relation to a much more amorphous and diverse set of social worlds, those of birth control, eugenics, and neo-Malthusian population control advocates.

The story I tell here of the NRC/CRPS is only one among many that have been and will be narrated. One of the key topics that engaged the Committee for decades was the (largely) biological construction of gender,

especially via reproductive endocrinology. The work of a number of other scholars analyzes these and related issues.^[3] The struggles within the Committee, at least those preserved in its records, obviously conflate sex and gender but also seek to rationalize and naturalize gender. Hall (1974, 1978) has argued that in fact the language of psychobiology was aimed at bridging the natural sciences/social sciences divide to create what we might now call a hybrid or transdisciplinary scientific approach to sex. Haraway (1989:22) echoes this in discussing the "tying of technical and mythic strands that weave the scientific objects of knowledge we call race and sex." In contrast to these approaches, my analysis emphasizes the seizing of the means of studying reproduction through the natural science lenses of biology and medicine. Of course this is not the only work the Committee supported (see Aberle and Corner 1953). However, it is the story most important to reproductive scientists, for whom separating sexuality from reproduction became paramount to the formation of the reproductive sciences as a discipline—for disciplining reproduction.

I begin with a brief account of the initial funding of the NRC/CRPS by the Bureau of Social Hygiene, its founding, and its initial mission.^[4] I then offer an analysis of specific uses of strategic arguments for basic research by reproductive scientists within the NRC/CRPS. Next I turn to a major consequence of the success of these arguments—the shift of sponsorship from the Bureau of Social Hygiene to the Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Medical Research. One of the ironies or contradictions in the development of the NRC/CRPS program between 1921 and 1940 is that toward the end of this period, after sponsorship had shifted to the Rockefeller Foundation, there was a serious shift of research support back toward human sexuality research. This culminated in the 1940s with the NRC/CRPS providing extensive sponsorship for Alfred Kinsey's pathbreaking research on human sexuality (Aberle and Corner 1953; Pomeroy 1982). The chapter concludes with an analysis of this shift in its wider contexts of the development of alternative funding sources for "basic" reproductive science and its enhanced social and scientific legitimacy. The linkages of the Committtee to Warren Weaver's vision of "a new science of man," including molecular biology, are also examined. Throughout I discuss proposals for Committee action that did not succeed as well as those that did in order to better track the full range of choices and opportunities, fleshing out what might have been as well as what was.^[5]

The Bureau Of Social Hygiene And The NRC/CRPS

The Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH), located in New York City, derived from the commitments of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and others to creating an

organization for "the study, amelioration and prevention of social conditions, crimes and diseases which adversely affect the well-being of society."^[6] Rockefeller's initial interest was triggered through his appointment in 1910 to a grand jury to investigate white slavery in New York City. He took his membership considerably more seriously than expected and founded the BSH to continue these activities.^[7] The BSH was incorporated in 1913 and terminated in 1940. Its goals were amelioration of the practices of prostitution, vice, venereal diseases, and narcotics addiction, and support of criminal rehabilitation, criminology, eugenics, birth control, and sexuality research. The work was undertaken through grants to a wide variety of individuals and organizations. While the BSH was essentially a Rockefeller funding agency, funds were also channeled through the BSH from other philanthropies, including Paul Warberg, the New York Foundation, and the Spelman Fund.^[8] John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was, however, the primary donor, contributing $5.8 million during the bureau's existence (Aberle and Corner 1953:4). Precisely because of the controversial nature of many of its activities, the BSH was established and maintained separately from other such agencies, including the Rockefeller Foundation.^[9] In the BSH as well as the foundation, concern with the application and use of science was a strong tradition rather than fundamental academic research for its own sake (Kohler 1978:490).

One organization supported through grants from the BSH was the American Social Hygiene Association, whose primary concern was sex education.^[10] Earl F. Zinn, a graduate student in psychology, was in charge of research promotion for this group (Zinn 1923). Sophie Aberle and George Corner (1953:9–13)'s biography of this committee, on which both served as members, takes up this point. They attribute the initial idea for NRC sponsorship of a program of sex research to Zinn in a 1920 meeting with a human sexuality scientist and educator from the YMCA. The BSH was then under the leadership of Katherine Bement Davis, who was its general secretary until 1928 and was herself an early human sexuality researcher.^[11] Davis had come to the BSH after a long career in social work and penology focused on the rehabilitation of prostitutes. She held a doctorate in political economy from Chicago, where she had studied with Thorstein Veblen, taking a minor in sociology with such faculty as George Vincent, later president of the Rockefeller Foundation (Lewis 1971:439).

Through the actions of Davis, Earl Zinn was able to present the idea for a sex research group directly to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who gave his approval. Zinn then became an employee of the BSH, focusing on sex research development plans (Aberle and Corner 1953:9–13). Zinn next sought the assistance of Robert M. Yerkes, chairman of the Research Information Bureau of the NRC, to develop and present the proposal for sex research to the NRC.^[12] After its organization, Zinn was appointed executive

secretary of the committee, while Yerkes served as chairman.^[13] It was thus the BSH that initiated and sponsored the proposal for a committee for research in problems of sex to the NRC.

There are varied accounts of the initiation of the CRPS within the NRC. Most of these "origin stories" are "insider histories" and as such must be viewed as political reconstructions of events for varied purposes, especially legitimacy (e.g., Strauss 1982). My analysis in this chapter draws on the tensions and contradictions in these insider histories, both published and unpublished. The account offered in the First Annual Report of the NRC/CRPS, written by Zinn, stated:

On July 1st 1921 the Bureau of Social Hygiene made an appropriation of $10,000 for one year for the promotion of a plan for systematic research on sex problems designed to provide a better scientific foundation for an understanding of sex in man . According to this plan it was proposed to secure the endorsement of an accredited scientific agency, preferably the NRC, and to have the agency in question assume the responsibility for the development and administration of the plan. In November 1921 the NRC endorsed the proposal. ... It was proposed that a special committee composed of representatives of the related biological sciences attached to the Division of Medical Sciences ... be appointed to administer this project.^[14]

An account by Rockefeller Foundation administrator Max Mason, written after interviews with two committee members, notes that in 1920, when the "palliative" work of the BSH "was not getting anywhere," Zinn formally presented a plan to the NRC for the scientific study of sex.^[15] The proposal for a committee was initially brought to the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the NRC, which decided to turn it over to the Division of Medical Sciences. Aberle and Corner (1953:10) attribute the Anthropology and Psychology Division's "unresponsiveness" to the fact that it was itself a new division, "and there seems to have been a feeling that these subjects [anthropology and psychology] still had to win justification as natural sciences." Sponsorship of a program of research on sex promoted by an outside group was not viewed as likely to be particularly helpful toward that end. Aberle and Corner (1953:11) stress that the social illegitimacy of sexuality and sexology explained this division's avoidance of association with sex research: "Even the scientific profession [was] very sensitive."

Nor was the initial response of the Division of Medical Sciences positive. Aberle and Corner (1953:11) noted unease at the NRC from the outset regarding whether the potential social science aspects of the research fell within the more natural sciences–oriented mission of the NRC. Only when Victor Vaughn, a physician and hygienist familiar with venereal disease, succeeded to the chairmanship of this division did the proposal receive positive review. Vaughn, lending clinical legitimacy to social aspects

of sex research, called a conference of investigators and physicians considered qualified to pass upon the merits of the project.^[16] The BSH gave the NRC $10,000 to cover the costs of the conference and, anticipating approval, for research to be subsequently generated by it.^[17] The conference adopted the following resolution:

The impulses and activities associated with sex behavior and reproduction are fundamentally important for the welfare of the individual, the family, the community and the race. Nevertheless, the reports of personal experience are lacking and the relatively few data of observation have not been collected in serviceable form. Under circumstances where we should have knowledge and intelligence, we are ignorant. To a large degree our ignorance is due to the enshrouding of sex relations in a fog of mystery, reticence and shame. Attitudes toward the subject have been fixed by moral teaching, religious instruction, and social propaganda, all based on only a slight foundation of well-established fact. In the presence of this secrecy and prejudice, scientific investigation would be difficult. The committee is convinced, however, that with the use of methods employed in physiology, psychology, anthropology, and related sciences, problems of sex behavior can be subjected to scientific examination. In order to eliminate any suggestion that such inquiry is undertaken for purposes of propaganda, it should be sponsored by a body of investigators whose disinterested devotion to science is well recognized. For these various reasons the committee recommends that the National Research Council be advised to organize and foster an investigation into the problems of sex.^[18]

Significantly, both Zinn's account and this resolution of the NRC conference explicitly discuss the problems of sex to be studied as human problems and the research work as falling within what would now be called sexology.

The NRC then proceeded to establish the CRPS. Its initial members were Walter B. Cannon (professor of physiology, Harvard Medical School), Edwin G. Conklin (professor of biology at Princeton), and Yerkes. Conklin served only a few months and was replaced by Frank R. Lillie (professor of zoology at Chicago). Two more members were soon added: Thomas W. Salmon (professor of psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a former member of the Rockefeller Foundation staff) and Katherine B. Davis (executive secretary of the BSH).^[19]

The multidisciplinary composition of the committee reflected its initial mission: "More rapid progress toward an understanding of sex in its many phases will result if, in addition to the work now being done, a systematic attack from the angles of all related sciences is made , with knowledge of sex as the central objective. This is the main purpose of the Committee" (Aberle and Corner 1953:15, emphasis added). The multidisciplinary nature of the initial mission of the NRC/CRPS is clear. Its own founding statement was also well publicized, as in this account in the Journal of the American Medical

Association: "This committee was organized in November 1921, for the purpose of promoting, coordinating and systematizing research on sex problems to the end that conclusions now held might be evaluated and a better understanding of human sexuality obtained" (Zinn 1923).

Redirecting The Mission: Arguing For Basic Research

The mission of the NRC/CRPS was redirected from its initial broad multidisciplinary focus on problems of human sexuality through reproductive scientists' arguments and their agenda for basic biological research on reproduction. This capture was accomplished through the following:

avoidance of developing the BSH-required overall plan for multidisciplinary research;

full articulation of a plan for basic biological research;

designation of research on humans as inadequately scientific;

token funding of research on humans;

major funding of "fundamental" biological research.

The initial project of the committee, as specified by the first BSH grant, was to be a survey of extant research and a plan for future work.^[20] Despite multiple meetings and efforts, no plan was ever formulated. Further, the committee's deliberations on this plan were not formally recorded: "Many of these orientation surveys and discussions were placed on file, so to speak, only in the heads of the committeemen" (Aberle and Corner (1953:15–17). Zinn compiled some bibliographies, but no survey was put to paper (that has been archived). Sociologically speaking, in the absence of a general multidisciplinary plan, any plans put forward would have considerable weight. Committee members were then invited to prepare or procure outlines from their own fields of competence. Two were prepared at this time:^[21] a program for research on sex neurobiology and psychobiology commissioned by Chairman Yerkes from K. S. Lashley, then at the University of Minnesota, and Frank Lillie's plan arguing for basic research on the biology of sex. Lillie's agenda succeeded in capturing and redirecting the mission of the NRC/CRPS.^[22]

Thus while at its outset the committee did what might be termed "outreach work" toward the development of multidisciplinary research on "the problems of sex," systematic organization of such research was not undertaken, despite superficial bureaucratic statements of such commitments.^[23] Aberle and Corner's (1953:15–17) comment on the absence of such a plan reads like an apologia: "In retrospect it is clear that the body of knowledge upon which plans for research had to be based was so diffuse and inchoate that it could not readily be reduced to form suitable for publication." The

First Annual Report of the NRC/CRPS, prepared by Zinn, similarly lamented:

The condition specified by the Bureau of Social Hygiene in making the original grant for the promotion of this project included the formulation of a comprehensive and detailed research program. The scope and complexity of the problem, the uncertain outcome of research together with the obvious necessity of considering in relation to a research program such factors as presence and availability of interested investigators, adequate research facilities and a carefully considered administrative plan, indicated clearly the impracticability of attempting to fulfill this condition within the time specified. Such a program as was originally contemplated should develop gradually and in the directions indicated by the results of the researches.^[24]

Chairman Yerkes summed up these deliberations more candidly: "Our committee was appointed primarily to prepare a program of research on problems of sex and to formulate plans and recommendations for the conduct of fruitful investigations in this field. Thus far it has seemed wiser to proceed somewhat opportunistically with special lines of investigation than to attempt the formulation and support of a general plan."^[25]

In sharp contrast to the absent general plan, Frank Lillie's proposed agenda for basic biological research was most ambitious. It classified a very rich set of subjects in the biology of sex (see Appendix 2). This agenda became the heart of the committee's program between 1921 and 1940, and served as the basic problem structure of the American reproductive sciences for decades.^[26] Fundamental to my argument, it specifically excluded humans as research materials for biological research.

In explaining the redirection of the committee's mission, Aberle and Corner (1953:18) assert that Lillie, as an involved scientist, was in a better position than other committee members to propose a plan and that "biological questions were fundamental to the other problems; furthermore, the biology of reproduction was much more advanced in 1922 than the physiology and psychology of sex behavior." This analysis ignores the fact that other members were also scientists in salient areas, and that the explicitly avowed purpose of the committee was to stimulate underdeveloped research areas. Aberle and Corner's (1953:18) description of the committee at its outset is not only apologetic but lacks any analysis of power: "The reader must remember the situation in which the Committee found itself in 1922. A little group of earnest people was facing a vast realm of ignorance and half-knowledge, scarcely knowing even where or how to begin. By planning of the sort Lillie had done so well something could be done to pick out feasible problems with which to begin investigation" (emphasis added).

Another decision of the NRC/CRPS at this time, to fund only a limited

number of reproductive sciences centers each led by a major investigator rather than broader funding of individual investigators (Aberle and Corner 1953:22–23), even further curtailed support for the "human side" of sex research. In his study of the formation of sexology, Bullough (1994:121) talks of an "old boy network" of biological researchers; he and other have commented on the fact that actual members of the committee were among the major recipients of its funding for the first twenty years, including Yerkes, Lillie, and Lashley. Such a pattern would be frowned upon today as a serious conflict of interest, if not expressly prohibited in funding policy. Lillie and his plan for "fundamental" research unequivocally succeeded in "seizing the day."

As the NRC/CRPS developed as a working committee, it created its own vocabulary for the categories of research it sponsored. Some was to be considered on the "biological side," while other projects that had greater application to people or that used human subjects were to be considered on the "human side."^[27] As research on the biological side came to predominate, various rationales for this approach were expressed. First, research using human subjects was deemed less scientific than investigations using laboratory animal materials:

In the more fundamental biological, physiological and psycho-biological investigations where lower organisms are used, experimental conditions can be maintained. Fortunately many of the underlying problems can be worked out initially here. Unfortunately the results are not always directly applicable to human needs. If a contribution to the alleviation of human sex problems is not to await the slow progress of fundamental research it is necessary to study directly the higher forms including man, even though the accuracy of the experimentalist must be sacrificed in some instances for the less acceptable methods, scientifically considered, of the clinician. When this is done, however, the results should be accepted but tentatively and every effort made to check and supplement them by specific investigations under experimental conditions.^[28]

Ironically, these comments were supposedly prepared by Earl Zinn, a psychologist, though I suspect Yerkes's pen was involved.

Second, those who studied human sexuality were portrayed as quacks or cranks by Yerkes, as he ceremoniously and contradictorily tipped his hat to the ultimate value of sexuality research: "Is there any species of social situation in which biological research can flounder more helplessly, hopelessly, and uselessly than in that of sex? It is at once curiosity breeding and satisfying. Our committee has not yet been bombarded by those hundreds of curious and more or less ill-balanced persons who, if they could obtain financial support, would like to study one or other seemingly interesting and perhaps important aspect of sex life."^[29]

Third, clinicians and others were specifically portrayed as unscientific:

"With reference to the study of human problems the situation is not so favorable. Therapeutic, educational and social considerations insistently demand a better understanding of sex phenomena. But because of the complexity of the problems, trained investigators have for the most part turned to problems where complicating factors can be eliminated, leaving the field to the clinician, the educator and the social worker. This has resulted in a large amount of sporadic research, much of it of doubtful value."^[30]

An NRC/CRPS report then gets to the heart of the matter—a critique of social science methodologies: "As a further step in defining the nature and scope of the project it [the NRC/CRPS] determined to promote and support important investigations in which human subjects are used; but that these investigations would be selected on the basis of the degree to which methods employed conformed to the requirements of science. It further determined to encourage and support at every opportunity methodological research applicable to the study of human sex problems."^[31] This First Annual Report explicitly stated that while the committee would fund "human investigations," these would be "primarily investigations in method. ... The introduction of better methods and the coordination of research in this field offer a splendid opportunity for Committee initiative." Scorn on the part of natural scientists toward the social sciences on methodological grounds was particularly strong during this period (Vesey 1965:135). After all, "the new biology" was introducing new rigor to the life sciences. Ultimately, very little research using human subjects was undertaken during the first two decades of NRC/CRPS research support despite committee membership representing psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, and sexology.

Reflecting the redirection, the committee quickly reframed and restated its own mission. In his statement in the First Annual Report, Yerkes first tipped his hat to the importance of keeping "close to human needs" and then proposed a strongly basic research–oriented agenda to avoid wasting energy and scattering resources:

I am convinced that we should not ignore the practical social need which brought our committee into existence. Instead, we should, I believe, recognize the need of knowledge for the wise conduct of sex education and should formulate our program and plans with a view to supplementing existing knowledge and of this providing an adequate scientific basis for individual and social direction of sex life. ... [This] does not necessarily mean narrowness of view, the search for the immediately practical, or the neglect of problems whose educational or other sociological bearings are difficult to foresee. ... [Research in this field] will gain greatly if we wisely take account of the logic of events and keep close to human needs.

[T]he well-nigh endless extent and variety of research on problems of sex makes imperative an order of preference with respect to materials and methods of work. Whatever our general program, we should ... concentrate endeavor in a certain few carefully selected special fields. Although it is bound to seem invidious, I beg to suggest the following order of preference for the principal pertinent divisions of scientific method.

That as objects of research, organisms be preferred in general as follows:

Yerkes outlined a nonhuman primate research plan in the same report. Nonhuman primate research development was one of his lifelong foci, and by 1923 he had already initiated his own primate researches at Yale.^[32]

The same pattern of hat tipping to human needs while clearly framing a strongly biological research agenda appeared in an article by Zinn (1923:1811–12) announcing the NRC/CRPS to the American Medical Association:

Though this project was motivated originally by the need for a better understanding of sex in its human aspect, this was not interpreted by the National Research Council or the committee to mean that investigations were to be limited to those of a technological nature determined by the needs of medicine, education and hygiene. The pressing need for useful knowledge was realized; and while it was agreed that these problems should be given all possible consideration, it was the opinion of those responsible for the project that its objective should be more inclusive; that in addition to contributing to the alleviation of current individual and social sex problems, it should aim at a better understanding of the underlying factors—biologic, physiologic and psychologic—which are basic to any real understanding of human sexuality. This conception markedly extended the scope of the project and brought the realization that its systematic development would be a matter of years. ...

[M]ajor lines of investigation must be marked out if the project were not to flounder hopelessly in this complex field. The following subdivisions were selected ...

Sexology was ranked lowest in priority. In the First Annual Report of the NRC/CRPS in 1923, Zinn again performed the hat-tipping ritual, noting that research in biology and physiology was quite well organized: "motivated primarily however, by the desire to contribute to the systematic development of the respective sciences rather than by consideration of human need. ... As a first step, therefor,e in the organization of this field the Committee has set up as a guiding principle the following: That it shall promote and support those researches which give the most promise of contributing to an understanding of the human aspects of sex ."^[33] Yet at this time the committee chose to narrow its agenda still further, explicitly eliminating studies of sex pathology and venereal disease from its purview.^[34]

In sum, these "mission" documents reflect considerable distancing from the BSH's initial goals in funding the committee. "Human aspects of sex" were very broadly conceived, sexuality or sexology studies per se were all but eliminated from investigation, and few studies using human subjects or materials were sponsored. In 1932, a decade after the committee's inception, Yerkes offered an apt and succinct reconstruction of its history: "Historical statement. Instigated by Mr. Earl F. Zinn, representative of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, in the autumn of 1921, the Division of Medical Sciences, National Research Council, organized a conference to consider the practicability of attempts to further study of fundamental biological problems of sex."^[35] Apparently accepting Yerkes's reconstruction at face value, Aberle and Corner (1953:15) noted: "It should be emphasized that the Committee never aimed at a limited study of human social problems of a sexual nature, but rather at the scientific study of sex as a biological phenomenon." The committee's funding source, Rockefeller's BSH, certainly had.

Lost Arguments And Failed Strategies For The "Human Side"

The redirection of the mission of the NRC/CRPS was resisted by some members, and the issue of funding the "human side" of sex research became a thorn in the side of the committee. After the initial redirection and

reframing of its mission to the "biological side," "human side" advocates on the committee pushed their alternative positions quite strongly several times between 1924 and 1931. There were several quite heterogeneous "human side" positions. The first included (relatively) simple advocacy of social science approaches to "the problem of sex," human sex psychology and behavior. Ironically, the founding of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in 1923 added to the committee's difficulties in sponsoring both natural and social science research.^[36] That is, the existence of the SSRC allowed the NRC to make its focus on the natural sciences more exclusionary, demarcating, policing, and enforcing even more profoundly the border between "the social" and "the natural" in classic Enlightenment fashion.

During the first decade of the committee's work, psychiatrically and anthropologically oriented members and fundees apparently failed to mount and publish more than a few social science studies using speaking humans as research subjects (Clarke forthcoming). One failed attempt provides a useful exemplar. In 1924, the committee wanted to fund an investigation by George V. Hamilton, a psychiatrist, on marriage, including sexuality within marriage. Hamilton, a physician who had also done extensive studies on primates, had strong sponsorship from Yerkes, who had worked with him. However, the NRC, which had to authorize the actions of the CRPS, refused to approve Hamilton's research. Vernon Kellogg, chairman of the Division of Medical Sciences of the NRC, later stated they had refused "because they considered it primarily sociological, and because quite frankly they were not sure that it was a scientific undertaking, although Yerkes ... felt it was."^[37] The NRC/CRPS then went to the BSH with the matter (likely via committee member Katherine Davis, who was also directing the BSH). The BSH agreed to act as sponsor of the project if the NRC/CRPS would serve in an advisory capacity. NRC/CRPS member Adolph Meyer, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who had also had a grant but failed to publish, acted as primary adviser.^[38] Here the committee, likely led by Yerkes, persisted, successfully arranging funding for research on the "human side" despite a serious challenge by the NRC.^[39] Hamilton conducted in-depth survey interviews of couples about what we would now call their sexual practices, which led to a controversial publication. Later his findings were generally confirmed by Kinsey's research. The public controversy over his research was such, however, that many who had wanted the committee to sponsor the work were relieved that it had not.^[40]

A second position, or complex of "human side" positions, seems to have constellated around what Hall (1978) has termed "hybrids," research areas and topics that seemed to stand at the intersection of the natural and social sciences and/or necessitate both social and natural science approaches to be fully understood. According to Aberle and Corner (1953:93–97), one classic hybrid area was called "sex psychology and behavior" prior to 1932

and "the psychobiology of sex" afterward, reflecting the outcome of certain negotiations. While elusive, the term psychobiology has been understood to mean "attempts to find the model of human behavior and social organization in animal studies" (Hall 1978:3). It has roots in both Edwin Embree's program of human biology at the Rockefeller Foundation and Yerkes's developing program for psychobiology more broadly. The "psychobiology of sex" is a subfield focused on topics in both sexuality and reproduction.

Another possible reading of the committee's negotiations here concerns the NRC/CRPS as one site among many where what would count as natural and social sciences was being constructed along with the boundaries between them (Hall 1978; Haraway 1989). In this reading, a form of "legitimate Western science" was being constructed, amid considerable contestation. What kinds of natural science could be done using humans? To whom would social science count? For what purposes? What kinds of natural science could be done using nonhumans while successfully transposing the results onto humans? This final question became the guiding one for the committee (Clarke forthcoming).

Struggles over work such as the Hamilton study and the uncertainty of future support for the kinds of social science research it wanted to fund led the committee to develop a proposal for its own future as an independent agency. This proposal included terminating its affiliation with the NRC, sponsoring research on both the "human and biological sides," and planning for a new national institute, with smaller local institutes at various university centers of reproductive sciences.^[41] This proposal was then approved by the Executive Committee of the Division of Medical Sciences of the NRC, which perhaps hoped to rid itself of this embarrassing millstone. However, the proposal was not received favorably by the Rockefeller funding source, the BSH, which provided the committee's support. Forcing the matter, the board of the BSH (likely with input from Rockefeller Foundation staff) preferred to have the work continue under the auspices of the NRC. The board then voted a major appropriation to the committee of $325,000 over the five years 1928–1933, "for the support of those phases of the work which lie within the scope of the [National Research] Council."^[42]

This plan for an independent and hybrid sex research agency seems to have been the primary response of "human side" advocates within the committee to the redirection of its mission toward the "biological side" over the first five years.^[43] However, the timing of this proposal (1927–28) was unfortunate. Because the foundation was in the midst of upheaval and reorganization, major new endeavors received short shrift.^[44] Moreover, their proposal for a new institute was presented in the same year that Executive Secretary Zinn told L. B. Dunham (the new director of the BSH) that the committee wanted a renewable grant of $750,000 over five years, which Dunham and others thought exorbitant.^[45] Further, the issue of whether to

fund individuals, universities, or institutes was under hot debate in the Rockefeller Foundation itself (Kohler 1991). Finally, Young Turk "philanthropoids" who had their own agendas for the management of science were conducting a palace revolution inside the foundation (Wheatley 1989).

Thus the committee's proposal for autonomy trod on tender toes in terms of both its fiscal scope and its quasi-autonomous organizational framework, and had multiple negative consequences. President Fosdick of the Rockefeller Foundation wrote to Dunham: "I frankly think the Committee on Sex Research has gone stark mad. To talk in terms of $750,000 is just sheer idiocy, and if I were you I would call Vernon Kellogg on the telephone and tell him frankly that the project as developed is far too scopy and comprehensive for serious consideration. ... [T]his sounds like the work of a lot of college professors who have assumed that millions are at their disposal."^[46] Further, these events seem to have led directly to the ouster of Earl Zinn as executive secretary,^[47] which in turn led to the termination of the committee's "promotional work," defined as educational outreach work on sex research for the lay public, which had essentially been left to Zinn to do.^[48] Yerkes, at least, was disturbed by its termination.^[49] Zinn went on with his career in psychology, finished his doctorate at Columbia, and was hired by the Yale University Institute of Human Relations in 1936, shortly after it had hired Erik Erikson. Ironically, this institute then received $4.5 million from the Rockefeller Foundation for its first decade of efforts, (1929–1939), at integrating scientific knowledge of human behavior, with rational control of behavior as the ultimate goal (Morawski 1986:237, 219).

The NRC Division of Medical Sciences itself then noted its own success in limiting the committee to natural science research: "In regard to the general policy of the committee, it may be said that owing to the administrative change [Zinn's departure?] but mainly to the growth of agencies for the promotion of research in the social sciences, it seems evident that henceforth the main attention of the committee will be concentrated on the support of the main projects now in hand rather than on expansion by the development of new projects."^[50] Thus the initial redirection of the mission of the NRC/CRPS had extensive long-term consequences.

Committee members were not willing to give up easily. The obvious alternative of pursuit of the "human side" of sex research through the SSRC was raised, and Zinn had taken some initiatives in 1928 before his ouster.^[51] These initiatives appear to have lapsed on his departure and were not invoked again until 1929, when Lillie suggested a division of sponsorship of research on "the problems of sex" between the NRC and the SSRC to Max Mason of the foundation. Mason noted: "Lillie feels that the committee, while willing to try to combine the whole range of sex research in one undertaking, has found great difficulties in the psychiatric end and does not feel it has succeeded at all well there. The suggestion has been made that

a separate grant be made to the SSRC to administer on the human side."^[52] However, no such move was made. Lillie's conceptual limitation of the social sciences to psychiatry may illustrate the difficulties social scientists may have confronted when serving on the committee or making proposals to it. It certainly clarifies the position of this key reproductive scientist on the study of sexuality: it belonged elsewhere, far from the work of reproductive scientists.

The failure of the NRC/CRPS to seriously address the "human side" and the successful redirection of its mission to the "biological side" during its first decade were summed up by Yerkes in 1932, again with clear notation of the proper types of research materials and subjects:

It was planned and hoped at the outset to advance knowledge of general biological, physiological and psychological aspects of sex with equal effectiveness. It now appears that things have happened quite differently. Review of the titles of the five hundred and more publications which give credit to this body for assistance reveals some interesting facts. Of morphological papers there are only a few; of studies in the psychobiology and psychopathology of sex in man barely more; of contributions to the psychobiology of sex in animals other than man there are several, while the titles classifiable under the general biology and physiology of sex in other organisms than man overwhelmingly predominate. Probably no member of the group would have predicted the degree of this disproportionality. The inference is obvious that scientific progress cannot be forced. The committee far from fretting over its mistakes of prediction, has rejoiced in progress, wherever achieved, and sought for the reasons for backwardness in certain fields of inquiry.^[53]

Yerkes's interesting use of the passive voice here denies the actions and agency of both "human side" and "biological side" advocates.

The Shift To Rockefeller Foundation Sponsorship

In 1931, sponsorship of the NRC/CRPS was transferred from the BSH, a private social action agency, to the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, a basic research funding agency. In my analysis, this move powerfully acknowledged the redirected mission of the Committee, as the events preceding it also confirm.

How far the committee had departed from its original mission became clear when L. B. Dunham became director of the BSH after Katherine B. Davis's retirement in 1928. Dunham reviewed all BSH-supported programs, including the NRC/CRPS, and reported to the Rockefeller Foundation: "There can be no doubt as to the outstanding eminence of this committee. ... I find myself totally unable to estimate the value and significance of this work, nor is there anyone on my staff of the Bureau of Social Hygiene who is competent to do so. Dr. Pierce of the Rockefeller Foundation in his

report on this matter says in part, 'I do not see the immediate practical application of the results of this work, though practical application may emerge in the course of time.' He [Pierce] then goes on to say, 'I can recommend most strongly that aid for this work be continued as research of the highest type.'"^[54]

Dunham concluded that the committee was not an appropriate program for the BSH to administer. He believed that since the committee fell within the field of medical research, and since the research was basic and "may not be of great public benefit," it should be sponsored directly by a Rockefeller program specializing in basic research while remaining under the auspices of the NRC or those of a medical center.^[55] Dunham also discussed alternative Rockefeller agency sponsorship with Dr. Kellogg of the NRC, who said the NRC had no objections to continuing to sponsor the committee "if it led over into the field of what he termed human biology. On the other hand, if it seems to be turning primarily into the field of social sciences, it is not within their jurisdiction."^[56] Alternatively, Dunham wrote, the committee could be refocused by having the BSH push for more research on the human side and selectively funding projects the NRC/CRPS proposed.^[57] However, both Woods and Fosdick of the Rockefeller Foundation eschewed such an interventionist stance.^[58] Instead, feelers were sent out to the Board of Directors of the BSH regarding the possible transfer of the NRC/CRPS to another Rockefeller agency.^[59]

Behind the scenes several other possible scenarios for the future of the committee were constructed and scrutinized. One possibility, articulated between about 1924 and 1928, was for the NRC/CRPS to join the Human Biology Program administered by Edwin Embree of the Rockefeller Foundation. "Human biology," as described by Kohler (1991:126), is "probably best understood as one of many attempts, in the wake of the medical reform movement, to capture the biological and behavioral side of medicine for university science departments." Embree was attempting to build a coherent program in "human evolution" out of scattered elements from human heredity and eugenics to the remnants of a mental hygiene agenda (Abrams 1993; Jonas 1989:130–31). One possibility for development through Embree's program lay in a dream of Frank Lillie's to establish an ambitious interdisciplinary "Institute of Racial Biology" at the University of Chicago (discussed below). But this did not cohere at the time, and neither did Embree's program. He left the foundation in 1928.

Instead, by 1931 a modus vivendi between the BSH and the foundation had been worked out regarding the transfer of the NRC/CRPS. Dunham found the foundation staff quite responsive to his suggestion that where the scientific work in biology indicated the desirability of having supplementary work carried on in other fields, such as sociology, the Rockefeller Foundation would bring these matters to the attention of the BSH. Dun-

ham further noted that the BSH would happily act as a liaison between the committee and those in the birth control field who sought advice from scientists doing basic research in the biology of sex.^[60] In 1931, the transfer of the committee to the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation was completed. The foundation's resolution stated that the transfer was undertaken because the work of the NRC/CRPS was "more clearly in the field of the present research programs of the Rockefeller Foundation than in the program of the Bureau of Social Hygiene."^[61] The "biological side" had been validated by one of the most prestigious scientific funding sources in the Western world.

Renaissance Of The Human Side Of NRC/CRPS Research

In one more surprising turn of events, shortly after the transfer of the committee to the foundation, a gradual shift toward the inclusion of research on the "human side" began. This shift, of course, runs against the grain in that the committee was now fiscally sponsored by a basic science research agency (the Rockefeller Foundation) rather than one specializing in social science and social action (the BSH), and was also still under the auspices of a natural science research agency (the NRC). A number of factors contributed to this second redirection of the mission of the Committee which had multiple repercussions for the reproductive sciences:

the desire of the NRC/CRPS to sponsor new lines of work;

the emergence of alternative funding sources for "basic" research in the biology and endocrinology/biochemistry of reproduction;

changes in Rockefeller Foundation funding priorities and organization;

the shift of the NRC/CRPS from the Natural Sciences Division to the Medical Sciences; and

the fading glamour of reproductive endocrinological research

I discuss each of these issues in the remainder of this chapter.

In the annual report of the committee submitted in 1932, the gentle push for funding in new directions including the "human side" began: "Survey of situation and forecast. The foregoing indicates gratifying progress in extension of knowledge of the general biology and physiology of sex in infrahuman animals, much of which probably is applicable to man, coupled with relatively slight and slow advance in knowledge by the study of man himself. ... Without thought of ceasing to promote lines of research which have proved their importance, it is pertinent to inquire whether conditions are now sufficiently favorable to developments in some of the more backward fields of inquiry to justify renewed effort by the committee to promote research in new directions."^[62]

To allow development in new directions, especially psychobiology, which was Yerkes's pet area, the committee urged the foundation to fund directly some of the major reproductive research centers it had helped to develop.^[63] By the end of 1932, such a program had been articulated with the foundation: "The Committee judges that one period of its activity is now drawing to a close, and recommends that the future interest of the Committee be directed more particularly towards the biology and physiology of sex in man, and to the psycho-biology, including psychopathology, of sex."^[64]

The committee anticipated three new lines of research: the neural basis of sexual behavior; the comparative study of psychobiology of sex in man and lower animals; and the comparative physiology and psychobiology of sex in primates.^[65] Over the decade, this list expanded to include primate and human psychosexual development and sexuality. It culminated in the 1940s with extensive support of Alfred Kinsey's research.^[66] The thrust of much of this work was the construction of systematic sex/gender and race differences.^[67] The continuance of research in sex and race differences, in reproductive sciences as elsewhere, has sustained particular constructions of difference that are invidious to many. The emphasis on group difference also distracts attention from the range of variation within particular groups.

"Human side" research sponsored by the committee continued to emphasize the methodological development of means of studying sex behavior experimentally and quantitatively.^[68] Adolph Meyer, a committee member, was given grants totaling $14,000 for human sex behavior studies, ultimately unpublished. According to Aberle and Corner (1953:46), this was due to his aversion to quantification of human action. In sharp contrast, Alfred Kinsey, a biologist trained by William Morton Wheeler, formerly had specialized in the study of gall wasps (Evans and Evans 1970; Pomeroy 1982:35). Certainly his training in the natural sciences rather than the social sciences and his systematic efforts at quantification fit well with the preferences of the committee, despite his choice of humans as research materials (Aberle and Corner 1953:49–50). Kinsey's biological background was also appreciated by the foundation.^[69] I discovered no objections to his research as "social science" by the NRC.^[70] The challenges subsequently posed by some social scientists to Kinsey's statistical work (e.g., Geddes 1954) are thus especially ironic.

A second condition contributing to the shift to the "human side" of sex research by the NRC/CRPS was the fact that by the early 1930s a number of new external funding sources for "basic" reproductive research were emerging as alternatives to funding by the committee. Some programs formerly supported by the committee were now funded directly by the Rockefeller Foundation, including Evans's center at the University of California at Berkeley; the Biological Sciences Division of the University of Chicago, including Lillie's reproductive research center; Smith and Engle's center

at Columbia; and Stockard's and Papanicolaou's at Cornell Medical Center.^[71] The foundation also provided direct funding to other reproductive scientists.

Additional new external funding sources by the 1930s included the National Committee on Maternal Health (f. 1923), the NRC Committee on Endocrinology (f. 1936), the USDA (for support of animal husbandry research, including reproductive endocrinology), and pharmaceutical companies (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:370–74).^[72] The NRC Committee on Endocrinology was funded primarily by the Markle Foundation; after 1940, Rockefeller Foundation support of the NRC/CRPS was reduced explicitly because of the availability of these other funds for aspects of reproductive endocrinological research.^[73] (A more elaborate discussion of this funding is offered in chapter 7.)

The strong association of reproductive research or sex research (to use the committee's terminology) with endocrinology was extremely helpful in gaining external funds during the formation and coalescence eras of the reproductive sciences. Endocrinology and biochemistry were both viewed as at the "cutting edge" of research—basic, clinical, and applied—at this time (Abir-Am 1982; Allen 1975; Kohler 1976). Research related to the development of contraception was also attractive for sponsorship by select organizations.

Third, changes at the Rockefeller Foundation between 1928 and 1937 also made a shift toward the "human side" of the committee's mission more feasible. In fact, there seems to have been a strong push from within the foundation toward such a shift. In brief, while the direction of the foundation shifted from health and social problems to the support of basic research in 1928, the long-established Rockefeller tradition of concern with concrete applications and uses of science was sustained (Kohler 1978:490). The stated mission of the Rockefeller Foundation, after all, was "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world" (Howe 1982:34). According to Kohler (1976:289), the foundation's perspective was that all science should ultimately be applied, and a distinction was made only between science that was already applicable and that which was not yet so. The goal was to obtain high "social returns" on its scientific investments (Abir-Am 1982:342). In terms of the NRC/CRPS and the reproductive sciences, applicability was judged to be close at hand. The recommendation of the foundation for NRC/CRPS funding in 1932 stated: "A large proportion of the work thus far done is classifiable as general biology and physiology of sex in organisms other than man. In this field, the activity of the Committee has been highly significant. It was essential that this fundamental work on infra-man anticipate and pave the way for that on man."^[74]

The foundation itself was also reorganized in 1928. Biology became

part of the basic research–oriented Natural Sciences Division, while Medical Sciences and Medical Education became two separate divisions (Kohler 1978:511). Initially the committee was placed in the Natural Sciences Division during this period of reorganizational and economic uncertainty. The Natural Sciences Division had four different directors between 1928 and 1932, at which time Warren Weaver, with whom I began this book, was hired (Kohler 1976:286). At the same time, Alan Gregg became director of the Medical Research Division and began an intensive new program in neurology and psychiatry (Pressman 1997). Initially, Weaver's and Gregg's programs were closely affiliated and their boundaries blurred; they included psychobiology (psychiatry, neurophysiology), internal secretions (hormones and enzymes), nutrition (vitamins), radiation effects, sex biology, experimental and chemical embryology, genetics, biophysics, and biochemistry (Kohler 1976:289).

By 1938, however, Weaver's position had shifted dramatically, and his program both substantively changed and was renamed "molecular biology" (Abir-Am 1982:347). The trajectory of his decisions is instructive. In the past, comparatively little attention had been paid by the foundation itself to the committee, since the funds were administered by the NRC, which had its own boards (Abir-Am 1982:348).^[75] Weaver changed this as it was his policy to take a firm hand in the "management of science" under his division, and he did not hesitate to express his opinion. Research to be funded by the Rockefeller Foundation was increasingly subjected to careful scrutiny and analysis in relation to the foundation's own goals.^[76]

Weaver, who thought biological truth relevant to individual conduct, statecraft, and social policy (Abir-Am 1982:349), was juggling several possible directions as he assumed the directorship in 1932. Initially he embraced the NRC/CRPS as part of his own independent program, which he first called "psychobiology" or "vital processes." The quote from Weaver to the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation about "the new sciences of man," with which I began this book, gives the flavor of this moment. Further, in 1933, Weaver had met with Lillie to discuss the advisability of a considerable shift in emphasis in the work of the committee away from the underlying biological problems to the behavior problems. Weaver said he was frankly enthusiastic about the older program, which produced quantitative factual evidence basic to the later applied problems. And he questioned whether those "human side" fields now warranted development.^[77]

Another possible direction Weaver was also considering centered on the importation of the methods of physics and chemistry into biology—what ultimately became his molecular biology program. In fact, two analysts assert that the "psychobiology" program served initially to buy Weaver time and protect his plans for molecular biology while he prepared the ground

for such a major shift in direction (Fuerst 1982:255; Kohler 1976:289). But Weaver was juggling yet a third possible commitment: Lillie's proposal for an "Institute of Race Biology" at Chicago. While it ultimately failed, the saga of this proposal illuminates the situation at the Rockefeller Foundation at this time.

At the University of Chicago, eugenic concerns had been widely reflected both in the curriculum and in faculty activities. In 1920, faculty member H. H. Newman (1948:235) began teaching a course called "Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics"; he published a book of readings with the same title in 1921. The 1922 budget recommendation for zoology prepared by Lillie sought a geneticist capable of teaching eugenics and social development.^[78] As a member of the executive committee of the NRC's Division of Biology and Agriculture, Lillie had approved in 1920 the establishment of a Eugenics Committee within the division. Members, who included Robert M. Yerkes (Yale) and Lewellys F. Barker, Adolf Meyer, and Raymond Pearl (all of Johns Hopkins), organized the Second International Eugenics Congress in 1921.^[79] Pushing toward a more scientific eugenics, Lillie presented a paper on sex hormones at the congress.^[80] In 1922, Lillie agreed to serve on the Advisory Council of the Eugenics Committee of the U.S.A. of the International Committee on Eugenics, which had specialty subcommittees on research, eugenic birth control, mental and physical measurements, and cooperation with physicians.^[81] Thus Lillie was more than familiar with the eugenics movement.

Responding in part to his dean's suggestion that interdisciplinary projects be organized in institutes, in 1924 Lillie began formal development of a plan for an "Institute of Racial Biology" at the University of Chicago.^[82] This was likely discussed in the NRC/CRPS context as one of the possible centers to be sponsored by the (proposed and failed) independent (non-NRC) sex research agency discussed earlier (Hall 1978). Lillie had already written to Wycliffe Rose of the Rockefeller General Education Board about his proposal: "The future of human society depends on the preservation of the individual and its extension into the field of public health; but it depends no less on social health, that is the biological composition of the population. ... The era of universal [racial] contact and amalgamation has come. Moreover, the populations press on their borders everywhere, and also, unfortunately, the best stock biologically is not everywhere the most rapidly breeding stock. The political and social problems involved are fundamentally problems of genetic biology."^[83]

Lillie saw eugenics and genetics as extending the study of development (his lifelong research interest) from the individual to the population level. Lillie was far from alone in his shift of rhetoric from race to population at this time, a shift reflected in the life sciences more broadly (Haraway

1995) and in the social sciences, including demography (Gordon 1976/1990; Greenhalgh 1995, 1996). Subjects included by Lillie in his framework for the institute were genetics, cytology, embryology, biology of sex, ecology, and the environment. Interdisciplinary research programs would include racial biology, psychology, sociology, and what might be called social medicine.^[84] Lillie later addressed the nomenclature problem, noting that in a discussion he had with foundation staff, the name "Institute of Racial Biology" was viewed as misleading: "(Parenthetically I may say that I borrowed it from the German 'Rassenbiologie'.) I believe, however, that the term 'Institute of Genetic Biology (and Evolution?)' would not be open to misunderstanding."^[85] Lillie then further noted the practical applications potential of such an institute "in animal and plant breeding, improvement of inborn qualities of human stock, the congenital basis of disease, population problems, etc."^[86]

An entry in Weaver's diary from early 1934 reflects very positively on the proposal. It even appears that race biology could have been a banner program of Weaver's tenure, integrated with molecular biology: "If the plans for development come up to WW's [Weaver's] expectations, it would seem to offer a major if not the major opportunity for advancing the new [Foundation] program."^[87] In 1934, Lillie submitted a formal proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation, carefully noting the institute's scientific merit:

Nor on the side of current human evolution would it have any direct connection with eugenic or birth control propaganda, but would be concerned exclusively with the scientific foundations. There is no gainsaying the conviction that social improvement represents a political ideal of the future. If we are to avoid hasty and socially dangerous political action scientific foundations must be securely laid. ... Responsibility for scientifically sound genetic prophylaxis rests on the biological sciences. ... [T]here is an almost total lack of organization for genetic social therapy, except for non-professional propaganda. ... Indications multiply in this country and abroad, especially in Germany, in England and in Russia, that people are wide awake as to the necessity of a better planned society if our civilization is to endure and develop. They are thinking ... of control of composition of their populations.^[88]

Lillie argued that "human betterment" could be served scientifically through an Institute of Genetic Biology at Chicago.^[89] The cover letter from president Hutchins of the University of Chicago asked for a gift of $3 million from the foundation in several stages.^[90] Lillie saw the institute as strongly interdisciplinary, with work to be done on a "project" basis, drawing on physical and medical sciences, as well as social sciences (in terms of child development, education, social service, and population problems), and new interdisciplinary foci (such as psychogenetics and psychophysiol-

ogy of sex and experimental population genetics).^[91] Negotiations continued throughout 1934, as Lillie himself planned his retirement.^[92]

In a sense, Lillie's proposed institute was an attempt to create a new population biology of genetics that included the "biology of sex," as the reproductive sciences or reproductive biology at Chicago (and elsewhere) by then were known. Simultaneously, there was a well-articulated fit with the recent shift in the eugenics movement to a more population-based, neo-Malthusian ideology that eventually would be termed "population control," reflecting its new inclusion of birth control as a legitimate strategy in the struggle to control both quality and quantity of reproduction. This shift was led in part by Raymond Pearl, with whom Lillie had worked on the eugenics conference noted earlier (Allen 1991). Perhaps Lillie's proposal most cogently frames what Hall (1978) called hybrids, combining both social and natural sciences, with the latter designated to lead the explanatory dance.

In 1935, however, Lillie's proposal dropped out of sight, to be replaced by discussions of a Rockefeller endowment of the Biological Sciences Division at Chicago, which, along with several other established committee centers, was eventually funded directly by the foundation.^[93] Had Lillie's proposal been pursued more ardently ten years earlier, when he first framed it, it might have become a reality. There were likely several factors that contributed to its demise in 1934. Certainly the rise of Nazism and its association with extreme eugenic actions thrust all eugenics into disrepute.^[94] The Nazi Eugenical Sterilization Law had been passed in 1933, based directly on the "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" formulated by Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office based at Cold Spring Harbor.^[95] The American Neurological Association was about to publish a scientific repudiation of eugenic sterilization, raising serious scientific questions about eugenics.^[96] Geneticists and other scientists had also become disgruntled and impatient with the lack of incorporation of modern genetic knowledge into eugenics.^[97] At Chicago, Lillie was retiring, and without him such an institute probably was considerably less attractive to the foundation, if not viewed as a de facto loose cannon. Further, the biological sciences at Chicago conceived more broadly were eminently (and more controllably) supportable and in need of stabilized assistance (Clarke 1993).

and, of course, Weaver had his own ambitious plans for new Rockefeller Foundation research investments. By 1935, he was breaking away from psychobiology and moving strongly and explicitly toward the integration of physical science approaches and skills into biology (Abri-Am 1982:352, 1988; Kohler 1976:291). His revised "molecular biology" agenda clearly did not include the research areas of the NRC/CRPS.^[98] In fact, the committee was almost terminated by the foundation in 1935.^[99] Instead, Weaver

dumped the committee elsewhere in the foundation: in 1937, both the endocrinology and the sex biology/psychobiology programs (including the NRC/CRPS) were shifted to Alan Gregg's Medical Sciences Division. "The assignment of 'psychobiology' to Gregg clarified the internal division of labor within the Foundation between applied and basic programmes" (Kohler 1976:298–300). This spoke more of the future of the reproductive sciences than any other move.

While Weaver's Natural Sciences Division would sponsor basic research more exclusively, Gregg's Medical Sciences Division supposedly required a judicious combination of basic research and application. The latter now better suited the shifting program of the NRC/CRPS. Gregg would also clearly see and be receptive to the implications of the reproductive sciences for addressing human fertility. Gregg wrote in Science in 1955, "I suggest, as a way of looking at the population problem, that there are some interesting analogies between the growth of the human population of the world and the increase of cells observable in neoplasms. To say that the world has cancer, and that the cancer cell is man, has neither experimental proof nor the validation of predictive accuracy; but I see no reason that instantly forbids such a speculation." Gregg's argument would have fit well with those of Frank Lillie in terms of the population-level goals of biological understanding and the ability to manipulate individuals (e.g., Mitman 1992:96–109). Social control, here of population, could be achieved through Rockefeller-sponsored biomedicine (Kay 1993a).

A key question, of course, is why Weaver was prepared to abandon the reproductive sciences at this time. Fashion in research funding is not a recent phenomenon.^[100] By the mid-1930s, in a number of ways the reproductive sciences had become old hat. Many of the social taboos around sex had eased, and the legitimacy of the reproductive sciences was more established, especially in elite circles. It may well be that Warren Weaver both pushed for a shift to the "human side" and a shift of the committee to the Medical Sciences Division because he preferred to manage only basic research at the cutting edge. Kohler (1976:299) states: "Weaver was relieved of endocrinology, nutrition and sex biology, rather to his relief, for they had lost their fashionable appeal." In 1941, when the foundation trimmed its funding of the committee, its resolution noted that continued funding "at the previous level would ... give an undue emphasis to an area of research that in any case is no longer in a pioneer or entirely dependent stage."^[101]

This loss of appeal may also have been the result of false hopes and promises for clinical applications. The isolation of sex hormones in the early 1930s had engendered enthusiasm for hormone therapies, and the pharmaceutical industry rushed to develop them commercially. After an initial wave of publicity and claims of miraculous cures,^[102] by the mid-1930s

skepticism had begun to set in.^[103] The "odor of quackery" that had wafted over reproductive endocrinology from Brown-Séquard's rejuvenation work in the 1890s persisted, and persists to this day (Borell 1976a; Rechter 1997).

While the "human side" of "the problems of sex" had received greater emphasis by the committee after its transfer to the foundation in 1931, it was not until after 1940 that the balance of support fully shifted to it. Correspondence and documentation concerning the future of the NRC/CRPS from around 1940 strongly suggest that if this shift had not occurred, the committee would have been terminated by the end of World War II. Rockefeller Foundation staff articulated several times that support for the committee had gone on too long.^[104] In response to these threats, the NRC/CRPS itself promoted a strong "new" program on the "human side," emphasizing psychological aspects of sex.^[105] And by 1944, the NRC/CRPS had won the foundation over to its new program. The foundation then gave the committee $135,000 over three years, stating that as long as standards remained high, "the nature of the field, i.e., problems of sex in human beings, would clearly justify renewal of research grants."^[106] The Rockefeller Foundation clearly desired that a more ambitious program of human sexuality research be undertaken, and it called upon the NRC/CRPS to lend its now high stature and legitimacy to this endeavor.

The major funding recipient under the new "human side" program was Alfred Kinsey's scientific approach to human sexuality at his Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. "The cultural idealization of science in American society was Kinsey's inspiration as well as his validation" (Irvine 1990:36). In 1937 George W. Corner, the new chairman of the committee, strongly supported the "human side" of the work and Kinsey's scientific approach. By 1947, Kinsey was receiving about half the committee's annual allocation, and this level of support continued until the heart of the McCarthy era. Then, in 1954, a federal congressional investigating committee targeted the Rockefeller Foundation for investigation as a dangerous liberal organization. Among the casualties was foundation support for Kinsey's research, which completely ceased.

Meanwhile, sexology gleaned at least a few benefits from the NRC/CRPS. George Corner not only served as a research subject for Kinsey (Corner 1981) but also was a major supporter of William Masters, whom he had trained in gynecology. "As Corner had advised, Masters waited until he was thirty-eight and an established gynecologist before beginning sex research at Washington University." Ironically, the organizational entity he and Virginia Johnson created there was named the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation (Irvine 1990:79–80). Thus in some bizarrely transgressive moves, sexology was pursued under the name of reproductive biology, while reproductive biology was done as "research on problems of sex." Struggles for legitimacy can take many turns.

Conclusions

My thesis in this chapter has been that basic reproductive scientists and their supporters redirected the initial mission of the NRC/CRPS toward basic reproductive research within natural science approaches. They did so through arguments asserting the value and necessity of fundamental research in providing building blocks toward clinical and applied uses. They thereby succeeded in capturing the bulk of the committee's funds between 1921 and 1940, the vulnerable period of formation and coalescence for the reproductive sciences enterprise. During this period, a total of $1,227,000 was provided to the NRC/CRPS by the BSH and the Rockefeller Foundation.^[107]

The major effort of "human side" advocates—to create an independent agency to handle both human and biological aspects of sex research—failed dismally. In 1931, the "basic" research orientation of the NRC/CRPS was confirmed by its transfer from the BSH to the Rockefeller Foundation. The power to fund is the power to direct research, and foundation officers became de facto makers of national science policy (Kohler 1976:284). By the mid-1930s, even Lillie's proposal for an Institute of Race Biology did not gleam as seductively as molecular biology, although the Rockefeller Foundation then directly funded a number of reproductive research centers.

The redirection of the mission of the NRC/CRPS gave both the committee and the reproductive sciences a "basic" research identity, distinguishing them vividly from sexology and from applied contraceptive research. Most of all, the NRC/CRPS gave momentum to the reproductive sciences enterprise itself, sponsoring three editions of Sex and Internal Secretions (Allen, ed., 1932, 1939; Young 1961), which served as the bibles of the reproductive sciences for over forty years. The committee was finally completely discontinued in 1962 (National Academy of Sciences 1979:v).

Yoxen (1982:125–34) has argued that one of the reasons British science lagged behind after World War I was the lack of interest of British elites in science and technology development, certainly compared to Carnegie and Rockefeller efforts in the United States, with their "managed biology" based on "a kind of corporatist rationalism." Morawski (1986:220) views the goal of related Rockefeller projects in psychobiology and psychology as aiming at "the rational control of human behavior." Clearly there were also very deep Rockefeller commitments to sex research at historical moments when it was highly controversial and understudied. The capacities to control the biology of sex and human sex behavior were both pursued assiduously through Rockefeller sponsorship.

Sexology or sexuality studies and reproductive biology were also "disentangled" qua disciplines through the work—some might argue the poli-

tics—of the committee. The distinctive problematics of human sexuality began to be framed as falling within an emergent discipline of "sexology" with very strong social science elements along with the biomedical. This framing was especially strong among reproductive scientists, who sought to relegate such studies to "the human side" and alienate them from committee funding. However, the boundary between sexology and reproductive sciences moves, depending on who is drawing it and under what conditions. For example, animal behavior studies that take up sexuality were often viewed as closer to reproductive science by biologists (e.g., Beach 1981; Mitman and Burkhardt 1991), but are also claimed by some sexologists (Porter and Hall 1995). It was also no accident that, when committee funding reverted to its initial focus, the individual funded was Alfred Kinsey, a biologist who had studied the gall wasp. His status on the boundary line between the natural and social sciences, with a foot in both worlds, certainly served him well.

The strategic arguments for basic research that were used to redirect the mission of the NRC/CRPS away from sexological research were part of the effort to construct a legitimate and autonomous reproductive sciences enterprise. The redirection succeeded in cloaking that enterprise in a mantle of unquestionable scientific legitimacy. That basic reproductive scientists had their own scientific agenda and followed it with clear and sustaining NRC/CRPS support gave them considerable autonomy in relation to the multiple audiences and sponsors of their work, including other scientists. Such legitimacy and autonomy are in a sense cumulative. They adhere to an enterprise over time. In the next chapter I turn to what reproductive scientists actually did with all this carefully negotiated funding between 1925 and 1940. Then, in chapter 6, I analyze how the legitimacy and autonomy gained by the reproductive sciences enterprise through association with the NRC/CRPS served them well in relation to their other major audiences between and after the world wars—birth control advocates.