The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the advanced research wing of the Pentagon — is in the process of severing its links with the JASONs, an esteemed élite group of scientific advisers that has independently reviewed classified research for decades (see page 353).

The news of this breach, as the United States stands at the brink of unknown military actions in its proclaimed war against terrorism, could hardly come at a more inauspicious time. So why has the break occurred? And why has it happened so publicly? According to DARPA officials, the agency has been involved in protracted and ultimately unsuccessful contract negotiations with the Miter Corporation, which administers the JASONs.

At the same time, however, a spokeswoman for the research agency has been ruthlessly shredding the JASON group's considerable reputation. The allegation is that the group, whose unpublished list of members includes around 50 of the most distinguished US scientists from all disciplines, is unfashionably weighted towards physicists and other physical scientists. Modern warfare, according to this improbable spin, requires a greater infusion of an entirely new generation of skills in information technology, biowarfare, and so forth, that the JASONs don't possess.

The facts are rather different. The group's membership reflects a wide range of technical expertise and experience. But they are academics, not business people or consultants. The director of DARPA, Tony Tether, appears to have lost patience with the JASONs after they resisted his attempt to foist three new members of his own choosing onto the group. Relations between DARPA and the JASONs appear to have deteriorated when they refused to accept what they regarded as a downgrading of their status to that of many other panels of government-appointed yes-persons. The self-appointed group has never exactly been a model of democracy — but it has possessed a genuine independence that too many advisory groups in other spheres conspicuously lack.

Why the disagreement has surfaced in the media is another matter. The JASONs have little apparent interest in making it public. They already have ample — some would say excessive — connections with people in power in both the administration and the Congress, and must have fancied their chances of fighting and winning the argument behind closed doors. It is possible, instead, that news of the dispute came to National Public Radio, which broke the story, by way of someone, perhaps not a million miles from the office of the DARPA director, who is seeking to discredit Tether.

At a time when emotion and money are flowing freely through the Pentagon, it seems especially important to have a group of objective scientists who owe their appointments to no one and who can assess the most technically challenging problems. The JASONs may be somewhat old-fashioned in their approach, and they may indeed be in need of new blood. But they have a strong track record in providing the unflinching advice that government officials don't always want to hear, and their work should be allowed to continue.