The Federal Government seeks to achieve a multitude of objectives that concern the academic and scientific community. Setting aside the issue of whether the government should be regulating everything from birth control to rat control, and whether the regulations should be improved or clarified, a major question is: why piggyback the government regulations onto the support of scientific research? When a university or other institution makes a scientific advance, all citizens benefit, but no individual or institution benefits exclusively. Without continued federal support for research, we will all enjoy fewer solutions to our major problems in health and energy, as well as in the social and economic domains. Thus, if funds were cut off from the top universities for failure to comply with social legislation, society would be the big loser. Removal of research support as a punishment for alleged noncompliance with statutes that are at times not even marginally related to scientific objectives is an irrelevant and undeservedly harmful punishment. In short, the current system subverts one national objective, advancement of science and technology, in an effort to achieve other national objectives. (Author/MSE)