The Veterans Administration offered Becker the opportunity to do supported research as well as clinical medicine, and in 1956 he became the chief of orthopedics at the Veterans Administration hospital in Syracuse, NY. The job was generally regarded as unattractive for a physician, but he accepted it in exchange for the resources and freedom to do research. He also became an adjunct professor at the State University of New York, on the same campus as the hospital.

Becker was interested in the medically significant problem of how the body regulated growth and healing such that the processes started and stopped as appropriate for the host, and produced exactly the kind of tissue needed. He was influenced by the cybernetic concepts of Norbert Wiener, the biological theories of Rene Dubos, the ideas of Peter Medawar, the experimental observations of Harold Burr, and the theories of Albert Szent-Gyorgi; he adapted their work to his interest in how biological processes were controlled.

From the outset, Becker’s research was novel and controversial. His biocybernetic approach to the study of growth-related phenomena differed from the orthodox approach based on biochemistry. In each area where he pursued biocybernetic models he encountered criticism from established researchers who favored models based on reductionism. His critics included W. Ross Adey in the area of public health, Lionel Jaffe in limb regeneration, C. Andrew Bassett in side-effects of electrical stimulation, Philip Handler in interpretation of animal studies, Paul Weiss in the role of cellular dedifferentiation, and Morris Shamos in the biophysics of bone.

Becker’s initial research studies were well received as evidenced by a series of fourteen publications in experimental biology published in prestigious journals during a four-year period in the early 1960s. In 1964 he won the William A. Middleton Award, given by the Veterans Administration to the scientist who produced the most outstanding research. The same year he was appointed a Medical Investigator at the Veterans Administration, a distinction he held until 1976.

He believed that it was the duty of a taxpayer-funded researcher to speak directly to laypersons regarding his research results, and he did so frequently throughout his twenty-year research career. Especially noteworthy were articles in Saturday Review, Hutchings Journal, the Medical World News, and Technology Review, his interview on the national television show “60 Minutes,” his statements on public health made to the US House of Representatives in 1967, 1987, and 1990, and his testimony in hearings in New York concerning the health impacts of high-voltage powerlines.

The cumulative effect of the novelty of his research and his practice of speaking publicly about its implications was the loss of his research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration; Becker’s public activities brought unwanted controversy to both agencies. Following a public dispute with the president of the National Academy of Sciences regarding scientific bias in the evaluation of a public health issue,Becker was forced to retire.