Research priorities, funding issue revisited David J. Hanson, C&EN Washington

The 16th annual colloquium on the federal research and development budget sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science was less an exercise in num­ber crunching and more a scientific soul searching. Great differences, it seems, exist in the perception of how well scientists are being edu­cated and funded. And it is not like­ly they will be resolved soon.

The colloquium, held in Washing­ton, D.C., of course presented its analysis of the budget figures for R&D proposed by the Bush Admin­istration for fiscal 1992. The AAAS report says nondefense R&D would rise 9.5% to $31.1 billion under the Bush proposal and defense R&D 12% to $44.5 billion. Colloquium participants said although such in­creases demonstrate that research is a fairly high priority, they come at the expense of other domestic pro­grams. And, participants warned, Congress is not expected to let such an imbalance exist. Another caveat is that much of the large increases at the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics & Space Ad­ministration go to the so-called huge-ticket items such as the Super­conducting Super Collider and the controversial space station, Freedom.

Yet many speakers at the collo­quium were less concerned with how much funding was proposed than with the support behind the funding and what it means to the future of research in the U.S. Two different, although hardly opposite, views of federal R&D support stood out in discussions and were referred to a number of times. One is the pas­sionate argument made by AAAS president Leon Lederman for enor­mously increased federal support for science (C&EN, Jan. 14, page 20). Another is a report, due in May from the Office of Technology As­sessment, that claims that at this time R&D priority-setting is much more important than increasing funding.

Dismay over the current level of federal support for research was voiced by Leon E. Rosenberg, dean of the Yale University School of Medicine. After pointing out areas of biomedical research where feder­al support has fallen in recent years, Rosenberg says, "The most compel­ling evidence for a budgetary short­fall is neither objective nor statisti­cally verifiable. It has to do with the mood of the young as well as estab­lished investigators in academic in­stitutions across the country. That mood can only be characterized as somber." As young scientists see

their meritorious proposals not getting funded, he says, they realize that within two to three years their academ­ic careers will be blighted. There is an implied social contract between the federal government and the aca­demic scientists that is not designed to reward so few and demoralize so many, he adds.

C o n s e q u e n c e s of t h e funding shortfall have al­ready been felt, Rosenberg continues. Strains between funding institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation are in­creasing. There is also a no­ticeable increase of dissen-

Carson: inexplicit prioritization criteria sion in the ranks of the sci-

Rosenberg: mood is somber

entific community and its support groups. He says advice given to Congress has become so full of bick­ering and sniping it resembles a modern tower of Babel. Rosenberg is equally concerned about the effect this is having on retaining innova­tive young people as scientists. "Without this lifeline of new talent, science will falter, then wither," he says.

Conversely, former NSF director Erich Bloch says funding for aca­demic research is not the cause of the crisis. "There is a sense of defeat­ism, a malaise in our community, a psychology of glorifying the past, beyond what it really was and a mis­placed romanticism that a quick fix is around the corner if we only per­sist." He says Lederman's efforts to show research funding is suffering don't show the whole picture.

In constant dollars "academic R&D has done significantly better than the country as a whole—some­thing that cannot continue forever," Bloch told the colloquium. He adds that in the past 15 years, the number of academic departments with feder­al support has increased 22% and the number of full-time academic scien­tists and engineers with primary support from the federal govern­ment has doubled. One side obser-

April 22, 1991 C&EN 25

Government

vation on this, Bloch notes, is a defi­nite shift away from teaching and toward research.

Bloch says the research communi­ty is going to have to get realistic. Affordability is going to have to be considered in the future just like ad­vancement of knowledge, enhanc­ing industry, or providing new cures for diseases have been the cri­teria for doing research in the past. "The assertion in the Lederberg re­port that any talented scientist should be able to obtain federal funding is unrealistic and bad pub­lic policy," Bloch contends. He says it is time to set better priorities and be more realistic about the growth science and engineering can expect.

That growth is likely to be more limited than most scientists want. According to Nancy Carson, pro­gram manager for science, educa­tion, and transportation at OTA, its report concludes scientists may be overstating their problems quite a bit. The OTA analysis is an attempt to be very objective about research funding and, therefore, has the po­tential for satisfying no one.

Given that science is a robust and creative part of our society, Carson says, "there will always be more op­portunities than can be funded, more researchers than can be sus­tained, and more institutions seek­ing to expand than the federal gov­ernment can fund." The only thing the government can do is set priori­ties. The problem, as OTA sees it, is that the criteria for setting priorities are not made explicit. Also there is no mechanism for evaluating the to­tal research portfolio for meeting national objectives. And there is the conflict between funding based solely on scientific merit or based on a concern for developing human and regional resources.

Another thing the OTA report has tried to do, Carson told the collo­quium, is measure scientific output versus cost. "Most research activities become cheaper to complete over time," she says, "as long as the scope of the problems and the standards of measurement do not change. But experiments are carried out in an environment driven by competition, and competition drives up the de­mand for funding. Thus competition in research does not drive down

costs, as it might in a more typical market."

OTA supports the idea that addi­tional federal spending on R&D would be a good investment, but be­lieves it would not solve the per­ceived problems, Carson says. It would only serve to enlarge the sys­tem, increasing further the numbers of those deserving support. In light of rising budget deficits, she doubts the growth of the 1980s will be re­peated this decade.

Other members of the govern­ment addressing the colloquium of­fered little encouragement for in­creased funding of R&D in the fu­ture. J. Thomas Ratchford, associate director for policy and international affairs for the Office of Science & Technology Policy, spoke of the Ad­ministration's support for research and its subsequent large increases to federal agencies that support aca­demic research. But he also says Congress plays an increasing role in R&D funding and notes "Congress' growing recognition that it is facing a zero-sum game" on budgets.

NSF's new director, Walter E. Massey, says, "There is a growing perception that the research commu­nity considers itself exempt from competition and 'entitled' to public funding. Front-page discussions of indirect costs, scientific misconduct, and ongoing debates over earmark­ing tend to fuel the image of a self-serving, socially irresponsible uni­versity research community." While

Bloch: R&D funding not cause of crisis

Massey avers the image is false, he says the impact is not lost in Con­gress.

Rep. Howard Wolpe (D.-Mich.) told colloquium participants that the federal budget situation in upcom­ing years will require a much closer scrutiny of federal science programs than has been exercised by Congress in the past. Wolpe encourages scien­tists as citizens to become more in­volved in the political process but cautions that "the scientific commu­nity should exercise a little humility in its advocacy in recognition of the fact that the science agenda is but one of many worthy agendas com­peting for scarce federal resourc­es."

Finally, one feature that is likely to have a major impact on future in­creases for research and develop­ment spending is the new budget process worked out last year. Ac­cording to Stanley Collender, direc­tor of federal budget policy for the accounting firm Price Waterhouse in Washington, D.C., the only way re­search budgets will be allowed to in­crease will be by taking funds away from other domestic programs. The 1990 Budget Enforcement Act has eliminated the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act from consideration, switching the government's empha­sis from reducing the deficit to cap­ping spending. Until at least 1993, spending will be limited and the ability to increase that spending very unlikely.

Collender says that in passing this budget law, Congress has sort of en­acted a truce on budgets that is ex­pected to hold until after the 1992 elections. He suspects some changes will come by then. But without any way to raise the proportion of funds received by R&D, the next two years will show little increase. Other speakers at the colloquium com­mented that the large increases for some agencies, including NIH and NASA, likely won't pass this year because of caps on domestic pro­grams. Future increases are even less likely, regardless of how worthy they may seem. About the only way to increase funding (and it may be widely used, Collender says) is by declaring the spending an "emer­gency" and bypassing the regular budget channels. D

26 April 22, 1991 C&EN