With a tight budget on research dollars in the late 1980s, large and small science projects had to compete for government funds in a zero-sum game. "Science in the United States is dying of giantism" argued Noble Prize-winning physicist Phillip Anderson in 1988. "Big projects are the worst way to arrive at basic discoveries."

In December 1980, after a five-year study of the mathematical ability of some ten thousand students, psychologists Camilla Persons Benbow and Julian C. Stanley conclude that "Sex differences in achievement in and attitude toward mathematics result from superior male mathematical ability." Critics charge the finding is flawed since environmental factors were not properly screened.

In an experiment in deep-sea diving conducted by physiologist Peter Bennett at Duke University in April 1980, three volunteers, Delmar Shelton, William Bell, and Stephen Porter, worked under pressures equivalent to 2,132 feet underwater — more than 100 feet beyond...