PCAST Briefed on National Science Policy, State Department Reports
When it met on September 17, the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was presented with overviews of two reports. Rep. Vern Ehler’s (R-MI) National Science Policy Study is an attempt to articulate a coherent science policy for the nation, while the National Research Council’s preliminary report on science and technology in the State Department provides advice on how to improve scientific input to the making and implementation of foreign policy.
Ehlers announced that his study might be released at a press conference as soon as Thursday of this week. The study, he said, is a bipartisan attempt to propose a national - not just federal - science policy, and to unite Congress behind support of research. He hopes the full House will pass a resolution approving the report before Congress adjourns for the year. He thought the Senate was unlikely to act on it this year, due to time constraints, but hoped for Senate approval at a later date.
At approximately 80 pages, the report, according to Ehlers, is “concise, comprehensive, and coherent.” It incorporates not only science but engineering, technology, education, mathematics, and the role of science in the policy-making, legislative, and judicial processes, painting a “very broad-brush picture” of issues Congress needs to address. Ehlers said he was convinced that math and science education was one particularly essential area for future emphasis.
The study calls for future science funding to be “stable and substantial.” It also recommends that the federal emphasis should continue to be on basic science, because of the federal government’s unique role in that area. It discusses varied forms of partnerships, and encourages states to take an active role in partnering with the federal government. It warns against concentrating science funding only on popular fields, and addresses the allocation of resources across disciplines and types of research. The study also looks at science journalism and communicating science to the public.
Ehlers commented that much more inquiry was needed into issues such as intellectual property. He also noted that some discussion of information infrastructure had been removed from the final report, because that issue treads on the jurisdiction of other House committees. Ehlers acknowledged that the report tried to avoid crossing jurisdictional boundaries to make it more acceptable to Members of Congress.
Rep. George Brown (D-CA), a longtime proponent of science in the House, recited a litany of his own attempts over many years to bring coherence to the federal science enterprise, and remarked that “the greatest problem we probably have...is the way Congress is organized.” Brown called for connecting scientific goals to larger societal concerns, and developing metrics to measure progress. “The processes of science are amenable to measuring in any number of ways,” he stated, “if you know what your goals are.”
There was very little discussion among the members of PCAST over Ehlers’ presentation. The committee then heard from Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who discussed their bill, S. 2217, to double federal civilian R&D funding over 12 years. Frist characterized the science education of his colleagues as “spotty,” and said while they can understand the importance of funding NIH, it was harder to educate them to the value of all science, and particularly the importance of the overlap between fields. Rockefeller explained that Members felt intimidated when questioning witnesses with greater knowledge than they had, and therefore, to avoid embarrassment, they did not attend science- or technology-related hearings. He praised the Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a way to inform Members and provide technical expertise (read about AIP’s participation in this program at http://www.aip.org/pubinfo/flwshp.html ).
Robert Frosch, Senior Research Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, spoke to PCAST about a National Research Council effort, now in progress, to provide advice to the State Department on its need for expertise in science, technology, and health (STH.) An interim report had been delivered to the State Department the previous day.
There are two major issues with respect to STH in the State Department, Frosch said: the contribution of scientific knowledge and information to formulation of foreign policy, and the contribution of foreign policy to U.S. international efforts in science. The NRC committee placed its initial emphasis on the first issue, looking at where the Department could benefit from stronger STH input to foreign policy. A great difficulty, Frosch pointed out, was recognition by policymakers of what issues had scientific or technological dimensions not apparent on the surface. The report urges the Secretary of State and senior officials to be aware of STH dimensions, and recommends that one Under Secretary take on the responsibility of drawing attention to this aspect.
Frosch said that STH ought to be incorporated more fully into the Department’s strategic planning process, and the Department should enunciate a clear policy with respect to science issues. The report recommends that the Department have an internal base of STH expertise with sufficient personnel resources, and recommends personnel exchanges with other science and technology agencies. Frosch noted that currently most scientific competence resides in the Department’s civil servants, while among foreign service officers, an STH assignment is seen as a career-ending “kiss of death.” He recommended more science-related training opportunities for those in the foreign service, and career incentives for them to become more science literate. U.S embassies in countries where STH is of particular importance were urged to enhance the stature of their science personnel. The report also found that the State Department needs a pool of external STH experts, and recommends several approaches for establishing such capability.
Frosch announced that he expected the full NRC report to be completed about a year from now. Topics to be investigated next include clusters of expertise within the Department, personnel practices, and departmental coordination with other federal agencies on STH issues with international aspects.
Also on the PCAST agenda was a review of efforts to promote state-federal technology partnerships. Dick Thornburgh, co-chair of the State Science and Technology Institute, Acting Under Secretary Gary Bachula of the Commerce Department, and state officials spoke about the status and successes of the U.S. Innovation Partnership, a mechanism for state-federal cooperative efforts.
FYI plans to cover both the Ehlers National Science Policy Study and the NRC report on science in the State Department in greater detail in future issues.
