Rep. George Brown Speaks on Big Science at AAAS Meeting
On February 20, Rep. George Brown (D-California), chairman of the House science committee, spoke at the San Francisco meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Brown provided his views on this country’s prospects for “Big Science and International Cooperation.” Selected excerpts from his speech follow. (Note: in the interest of space, some paragraphs have been combined, with combined paragraph breaks marked as //.)
“For over 50 years our S&T [science and technology] infrastructure, like most of our society and government, was organized against a common external enemy.... The justification for societal investment in science was often based on claims of national security. // Today capital-intensive science and technology enterprises are generally viewed by politicians in terms of their cost or the jobs they create. Perhaps because of this shifting rationale, the prognosis for the successful completion of the current group of projects is not bright.”
”...It is obvious that we can’t afford mega-projects by ourselves and that basic research `at the frontier’ is becoming increasingly costly. If the United States wishes to continue to be a major research force, we must re-evaluate our motivation and justification for supporting massive S&T missions. // The United States currently is in the midst of a post-Cold War evaluation of science and technology. The very notion of national interest itself is more amorphous and confused than at any time in this century. The appeal of big science projects has been reduced to tenuous claims of economic benefits through technological spin-offs and government-funded jobs.... The scientific community must develop a new justification for government support for its mega-projects. If not, in an atmosphere of fiscal constraint, research priorities will be set by politicians bent on extracting economic benefits for their various constituencies. It is obvious that if the United States wants to support big science in the post-Cold War world, we need to do it internationally.”
“It is necessary to reflect on what is essential for viable, sustained international scientific cooperation on big science projects.... Four underlying characteristics of the global scientific community may condition our approach to big science. // First, there is a free flow of information in the international research community. // Second, research tends to progress along the same trajectory within a particular field regardless of the nationality of the scientists.... National research agendas around the world have increasingly common goals. // Third, the results of basic research cannot be captured by any single nation so long as science is viewed as a public good open to all. // Fourth, the United States and Europe are no longer the sole repositories of scientific and technological excellence.”
“Obviously, any project should be based on scientific and technological merit. Notwithstanding this essential criterion, scientific merit is only a necessary but not sufficient condition to warrant government support. Big science projects must offer some concrete societal benefit, which could range from increasing the store of human knowledge to finding a cure for malaria. Congress and the American public no longer view science and technology as an enterprise which if liberally funded will act as a panacea for society’s ills.”
“Within this context, the government can begin to develop an initiative that is not an abdication of U.S. leadership in science and technology.... Our focus must shift from `America #1' to `America Second to None.’ // What I propose is a set of initiatives that will shift our focus from one limited to solely domestic opportunities and resources to one which is framed in terms of international opportunities and resources.... I believe we need short-term, medium-term, and long-term action plans.”
“Short Term: In order to ensure sustained Congressional commitment, all fundamental research projects in excess of $50 million should be required to have a full Congressional authorization.”
“Mid-Term: A forecast of the needs for big science projects through the year 2010. // The President’s Science Advisor should commission a report that spells out promising areas of science that require a major focused, sustained commitment in terms of projects (i.e. human genome, global climate change,...) and/or research machines (i.e. advanced neutron source, high-energy particle accelerator,...).”
“Long-Term: Establish an international panel among the G-7 to develop international priorities and international funding sources for big-science projects. // Big science projects outlive Administrations, politicians, and- in some instances- countries themselves. We need to begin to develop an international consensus on big-science priorities and a commitment of financial resources.... One of the failures of international cooperation on these projects in the past has been that the partners have insisted that benefits flow equally to all partners. In the context of an individual project, this is frequently impossible. We need to assess the benefits of all international projects together. Then we can begin to ensure that in the long-run benefits over a group of projects flow to all the participants or regions equally.”
“The benefits of international cooperation can be as intangible as those of basic research, but they are just as important to our future well-being and the well-being of our planet.... Today, we are faced with a number of problems that are global in scope and require cooperation among many nations; environmental research and action, efforts to clean-up nuclear wastes, the elimination of the AIDS pandemic-- all hold out the possibility of becoming international big science.”
