The Manhattan Project demonstrated the power of organized science, but it also distanced scientists from moral decisions. At the same time, agricultural knowledge from enslaved people was appropriated and erased, and the eugenics movement used the authority of science to justify forced sterilization and discrimination. These three stories reveal how knowledge and power have intertwined in American history.
America in Test Tube | Chapter 6 of 8
This article is part of the “America in Test Tube” series to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, which examines how the world’s greatest scientific power was built – and the social, moral, and political contradictions that accompanied its development.
Previous episode: The country that built Silicon Valley – and the entrepreneurs who preferred to forget it | for all episodes of the series
In the previous installment of the “America in Test Tube” series, we saw that Silicon Valley grew not only from private initiative, but also from government funding, military districts, universities, and immigration policy. This installment examines another side of that nexus between science and power.
American science has expanded the frontiers of knowledge, extended lives, and created technologies that have changed the world. But the system that gave scientists resources and influence also served destructive purposes, sometimes embracing racist perceptions and eliminating the contributions of people who were not allowed into scientific institutions.
Three articles in the special issue of Science Presenting different expressions of the same problem: The Manhattan Project, the agricultural knowledge of enslaved people, and the eugenics movement. At first glance, these are far-fetched topics. But all three raise similar questions: who is allowed to produce knowledge, who gets credit for it, who decides how to use it—and on whose bodies and lives is scientific power exercised?
The Manhattan Project: Science on a Scale Never Seen Before
The Manhattan Project was one of the largest and fastest-growing science and engineering projects in history. In just a few years, it transformed innovative theoretical research into an entire industry designed to produce nuclear weapon.
The first US government-funded studies began in late 1939, following warnings from scientists and refugees from Europe who feared that Nazi Germany was conducting a secret race to develop a bomb. In 1942, responsibility for the production of the weapon was transferred to the US Army Corps of Engineers, and by the summer of 1945 the first bombs were ready for testing and use.
The project combined massive federal funding, industrial capacity, energy infrastructure, military logistics, and the labor of more than half a million people. Tens of thousands of scientists and engineers participated in the effort, including many immigrants from Europe who brought with them scientific knowledge and experience.
It wasn't just the Los Alamos lab. Facilities for materials production, equipment development, and component manufacturing were being built or expanded across the United States. New Deal-era investments in electrical infrastructure helped make the project possible, as some of the manufacturing processes required enormous amounts of energy.
The Manhattan Project showed what a country can achieve when it connects science, engineering, industry, and public money and gives one goal almost absolute priority.
Why a “New Manhattan Project” Isn’t Always a Compliment
Since the end of the Cold War, the phrase “Manhattan Project” has become a positive metaphor. Politicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs repeatedly propose establishing a “Manhattan Project” to solve the climate crisis, develop fusion energy, combat disease, or advance artificial intelligence.
The intention is usually clear: concentrating resources, recruiting the best minds, setting an ambitious goal, and removing bureaucratic obstacles.
But historian Alex Wallerstein points out that the metaphor erases key parts of the original project. It was a secret military venture that was conducted with little public oversight, greatly exceeded initial budget estimates, and ended with the use of weapons of mass destruction against two cities.
Those who call it a new “Manhattan Project” usually mean speed and resources—not secrecy, lack of oversight, and destructive consequences. But these aspects cannot be completely separated. The structure that allowed the project to operate quickly was also the structure that reduced public and moral debate.
A system designed to keep criticism out
The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was not only a means of protection against espionage. According to Wallerstein, the system was also designed to avoid external criticism, especially congressional oversight, and to limit internal discussions about the use of research results.
In the early stages, scientists played important administrative roles. As military control became established, they were increasingly seen as technical experts. Their philosophical and moral views were given little weight when they clashed with the military's operational priorities.
Scientists were asked to solve problems: how to produce a material, how to build a mechanism, how to test that the system would work. The question of whether to use weapons, against whom, and under what conditions remained primarily in the hands of the political and military leadership.
Some scientists tried to exert influence. Leo Szilard, who was one of the key activists in persuading the administration to start the program, led a petition towards the end of the war calling for avoiding the immediate use of the bomb against Japanese cities. Other scientists supported an early demonstration or international arrangement. They were unable to change the decision.
The scientist is not just “the one who built the tool”
It could be argued that the use of technology is the responsibility of elected officials and the military, not researchers. Scientists are not necessarily experts in foreign policy, law, or morality, and granting a scientist a veto over the use of his discovery is not necessarily democratic.
But the opposite approach is also problematic. If scientists are seen only as providers of technical solutions, they can abdicate all responsibility for the results of their work. The government can benefit from their authority and skills, but silence them the moment they ask questions about the purpose of the project.
The Manhattan Project created a new model of American science in which “knowledge is power” took on real and existential meaning. The status of scientists was strengthened, but with it came increased public responsibility, suspicion, and debate about the limits of their role.
Secrecy, which seemed like a temporary measure of wartime, did not disappear entirely. It became part of the Cold War system of defense and nuclear research, influencing the relationship between scientists, the military, and the state for decades.
Scientific knowledge can be erased even without being secret
The second story is not about a classified laboratory, but rather about fields of rice, sugar cane, tobacco, indigo, and pecans.
The conventional history of American science tends to focus on universities, inventors, patent holders, and scientists whose names are on the books. But important knowledge was also created outside these institutions—and sometimes by people who were not even recognized as rights holders, let alone researchers.
Botanist Rhonda L. Montgomery notes that in 1776, a black woman could not generally obtain a formal education or become a professor. Many of her ancestors were considered by law to be the property of another person.
But disenfranchisement did not eliminate knowledge. Enslaved African Americans were farmers, growers, experimenters, and plant experts. They studied varieties, planting methods, soil conditions, and tree formations, but their work was not documented in the same way that the work of white scientists was.
Antoine and the commercial pecan tree
One example Montgomery gives is Antoine, an enslaved man in Louisiana who in 1846 created the first commercial hybrid pecan variety through cross-breeding.
The assembly requires a practical understanding of the properties of wood, the seasons, and the way in which tissues from two plants can be joined so that they continue to grow together. Antoine conducted an agricultural experiment that had a commercial impact, but his legal and social status prevented him from receiving the kind of recognition that would have been given to an inventor or a free researcher.
Knowledge of tobacco and sugarcane cultivation was also perfected by many enslaved people, whose names have not been preserved. When their expertise was recognized, it was often credited to the plantation owners.
This is a different mechanism from the secrecy of the Manhattan Project: the knowledge is not hidden from the public, but is separated from the people who created it.
West African women and the rice economy
Rice became a very profitable crop in the southeastern United States. For years, its success was largely attributed to the plantation owners. But women from regions of West Africa came with long traditions of planting, growing, harvesting, and processing rice.
This expertise was so important that people from rice-growing regions were a favorite target for slave traders. Plantation owners didn't just buy labor; they exploited agricultural knowledge accumulated over generations.
The cultivation of indigo, which was used to produce dye and brought large revenues to the colonies and the young United States, also relied on African knowledge brought by enslaved people.
These cases require a broadening of the definition of a scientist. Knowledge is not created only by someone who writes a paper, works at a university, or files a patent. It is also created through accumulated experience, systematic observations, trial and error, and the transmission of expertise between generations.
Why is credit still important hundreds of years later?
One could argue that it is impossible to reconstruct the names of people who have not been documented, so it is better to concentrate on the discoveries themselves. But erasing the credit is not just a symbolic injustice.
When history portrays science as the achievement of a small group, it affects who is now seen as scientifically competent. Young people who don’t see people like them in the science narrative may conclude that they have no place in it. Institutions may continue to look for excellence only in the places they looked in the past.
Recognizing the knowledge of enslaved people also changes our understanding of the American economy. The wealth of plantation owners was not only created by land ownership and forced labor, but also by the expropriation of intellectual property and expertise.
Montgomery emphasizes that there are now initiatives that seek to uncover the botanical heritage of black, indigenous, and other groups. The goal is not to add a few names to a celebratory list once a year, but to re-understand how science was created and who paid its price.
Eugenics was not an imported Nazi idea
The third story is about using the authority of science to decide who is worthy of reproduction.
Eugenics It relied on the argument that complex traits such as crime, intelligence, poverty, “deviance” or what was then called “mental retardation” were inherited in a relatively simple way. From this was derived the argument that a state could improve the population by encouraging the education of people who were considered “fit” and preventing the education of those who were classified as “unfit.”
The movement is currently primarily associated with Nazi Germany, but the Nazi regime was preceded by a strong eugenics movement in the United States.
In 1907, Indiana enacted a law that allowed Forced sterilization of people held in institutions. Osagi K. Obesugi notes that this was the first eugenics law of its kind in the world. Other countries adopted similar laws, and eugenics became part of American scientific, medical, and political discourse.
Scientists and public figures have legitimized the idea
Eugenics was not just a fringe belief of extremists. Biologists including Charles Davenport placed it at the center of their work. Eugenic ideas also influenced public figures and fields considered progressive, including conservation, public health, and population planning.
Scientific authority played a central role. When a doctor, biologist, or statistician presented poverty, disability, or social behavior as a hereditary trait, discriminatory policies took on the appearance of neutral fact.
The problem wasn't just "bad" science in the sense of measurement errors. Social values determined from the start which traits were considered desirable, who was considered a burden, and who was given the power to classify others.
Nazi Germany learned from American legislation and the segregationist regime in the Southern United States when developing its own racial laws. In some cases, Nazi jurists even found American policies too extreme for their needs at the time.
The fall of the Nazis did not end forced sterilization
After World War II, the word “eugenics” became deprecated due to its association with Nazi crimes. But many of the assumptions and practices continued under other names.
North Carolina ended its forced sterilization program only in 1974. California ended its sterilization program in state institutions and hospitals in 1979.
According to Obesogi, sterilizations of women incarcerated in California prisons were also carried out in much later decades, and the state only explicitly banned forced sterilization of female prisoners in 2014.
This continuity shows that it is not enough to change the term. The concept that social problems are the result of “defective blood,” and that professionals and the state are allowed to restrict the right of others to have children, can exist even without using the word eugenics.
Does gene editing bring back eugenics?
Technologies of medically assisted reproduction, genetic diagnosis, and gene editing are re-raising the question of who chooses which traits will be passed on to the next generation.
It is important to note: Fertility treatments, genetic diagnostics, and gene editing are not eugenics per se. They can be used to prevent serious diseases, help families, and expand people's freedom.
The danger arises when the decision shifts from treating a disease to selecting traits that confer social advantage; when access to technology is reserved for the wealthy; when people with disabilities are presented as lives that would have been better off prevented; or when the state, insurance companies, and medical institutions exert pressure on people's reproductive decisions.
Obesugi mentions that Robert Edwards, a pioneer of in vitro fertilization and Nobel Prize winner, himself held eugenic views. This does not make in vitro fertilization a eugenic technology, but it demonstrates how a useful technology can also be integrated into a problematic social vision.
The challenge is not to stop innovation, but to ensure that its use does not recreate old hierarchies in a new language.
Three ways power shapes knowledge
Manhattan Project, agriculture during theslavery and eugenics present three different relationships between science and power.
In the Manhattan Project, the state concentrated knowledge and resources, but limited discussion of the use of the result. In the case of the enslaved, society exploited knowledge and separated it from the people who created it. In eugenics, scientific institutions legitimized the exercise of direct power over people's bodies and freedom.
In all three cases, the question is not whether science is “good” or “bad.” Knowledge of nuclear fission can be used for research, energy, or weapons. Knowledge of genetics can help cure disease or be used to justify discrimination. Agricultural expertise can feed populations or enrich a system based on forced labor.
Science does not determine its goals alone. These are determined by institutions, budgets, law, power relations, and the values of the society in which it operates.
Don't erase the achievements – nor the price
Recognizing the dark side of American science does not require negating its achievements. On the contrary: precisely because the American scientific system was so powerful, it is important to understand how its power was exerted.
Historical criticism is not an attempt to judge the past solely by the values of the present. Already in real time there were scientists, activists, and citizens who opposed secrecy, forced sterilization, slavery, and discrimination. The existence of these controversies proves that alternatives were visible even then.
The test of a scientific system is not just how many discoveries it produces, but whether it allows for criticism, recognizes those who created the knowledge, and prevents the authority of science from being used to deny rights.
Studying history does not negate progress. It allows us to demand progress that does not repeat the same injustices.
For the scientific article: Opening the scientific article
More on the subject on the science website
- The Jews, the Nazis and the race for the atomic bomb — About the scientists who fled Europe, the warnings about a Nazi nuclear program, and the path that led to the Manhattan Project.
- Edward Teller: From Warning of a “Nazi Bomb” to Vision of the Hydrogen Bomb — About Teller's involvement in the Manhattan Project, the debates among scientists after the war, and the transition to the nuclear arms race.
- On eugenics and genetics - how genetic engineering will change the vision of the superior race — A discussion of the history of eugenics and the danger that genetic innovations will be used to deepen inequality and select traits.
- Science as a “Promethean passion” or as a tool for repairing the world? — On the connection between biological determinism, eugenics, sterilization, and the social responsibility of scientists.
- Katherine Johnson, the mathematician who calculated the trajectory for Apollo 11 – a necessary role model — About one of the African-American women whose vital work at NASA only gained public recognition years later.
- Rosalind Franklin - the scientist whose fame was stolen from her — Another case in which a vital scientific contribution did not receive its rightful place in the official story of the discovery for years.
