The mission of SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) is to encourage Chicano/Latino and Native American students to pursue graduate education and obtain the advanced degrees necessary for research careers and science teaching professions at all levels.

2004 SACNAS National Conference
Science and Science Policy: Constructing an Inclusive Paradigm
Austin, TX
October 21-24, 2004

SACNAS provides unparalleled conference activities for students, educators, administrators and researchers in science. This year’s conference theme, Science and Science Policy: Constructing and Inclusive Paradigm, explores the link between current science policy issues and those communities most affected by them. It is vital that the Chicano/Latino and Native American scientific communities have a substantive voice in the creation of science policy which dictates the funding and direction of scientific research and inquiry. Continuing a third year tradition of working to increase Native American and Chicano/Latino presence in the scientific community, SACNAS offers a forum for investigation of questions related to the theme and the development of a new generation of leaders who will be instrumental in shaping equitable and inclusive science policy.

A just-released NIH report observes, “Recently, concerns have been raised in the media and Congress that some employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have engaged in paid consulting arrangements with, or held shares in, biotechnology companies or other entities that could influence their work as government employees, thereby creating real or perceived conflicts of interest.”

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing on this issue Wednesday and the chair of the NIH committee testified, “We believe the existing conflict of interest policies affecting NIH do not sufficiently discriminate among groups of employees who have widely differing responsibilities and therefore widely differing susceptibility to conflicts of interest. In particular, we conclude that the policies affecting senior officials of NIH should, as a matter of policy, be tightened-that is, made more restrictive.”

The NIH report suggests 18 recommendations for how COI policies in NIH might be revised.

Science magazine’s article (registration required) on the NIH report began like this, “For the past 5 months, critics in Congress and elsewhere have battered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for allowing its scientists to accept hefty consulting payments from companies. Last week, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni offered a plan to restore public confidence: It recommends that top NIH officials and grant decision- makers be barred from industry consulting. But the panel “walked a fine line,” said co-chair Norman Augustine, by saying that in-house NIH scientists may continue to interact with industry, although within new limits.”

The issue was brought to light by a well-researched LA Times article from December 2003.

From Nature, pretty sobering:

“The assassination of several of Iraq’s former weapons scientists has hit US plans to employ them to help rebuild the war-torn country. The killings, together with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, have led some non-proliferation experts to call for the researchers to be evacuated from the country.”

Here is the link.

Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Chairman of the House Science Committee, gave a speech this week in which he discussed some of the current issues of science and technology policy. Some excerpts:

On Budget Priorities:

“The budget does include a health increase – in the neighborhood of 20 percent – for the laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which, quite frankly, the Congress seriously mishandled in the appropriations for this fiscal year… My highest budget priority is restoring funding for NIST.”

“I hope we will also be able to find funds to restore the Manufacturing Extension Program …”

On NASA:

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Our Western Water Assessment project has a new homepage and improved content. Check it out.

Imagine if the United States adopted as its space policy a set of rewards or prizes. For example, $10 billion to the first group to send a human to the moon and back. Or $150 billion for the first mission to Mars and back. Far fetched? Perhaps. Effective? Who knows. However, one private group is trying such a strategy at a relatively small scale. The X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million to the first group to send a reusable vehicle into space twice within two weeks (exact details here). The U.S. government is using prizes as well. DARPA has a contest that will award $2 million to a group that develops a driverless vehicle that can first complete a specified course. And there are other examples of contests and prizes as well, such as Robocup.

I am unaware of any systematic evaluation of prizes or contests as an approach to science and technology policy. But perhaps they might be an option worth considering for the public financing of particular areas of science and technology.

The NRC Committee convened to evaluate options for extending (or not) the life of the Hubble Space Telescope holds its first meeting later this week. The Committee is expected to issue a report by fall, but NASA may make a decision on Hubble by next month.

In 2001 we held a NASA-sponsored workshop to consider and evaluate alternative for extending (or not) the life of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). The Workshop was organized to address the following issue:

“In the near future NASA faces an important decision about the termination of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). There are at least two alternatives, each with potentially significant consequences for science and society. One alternative is for NASA to de-orbit TRMM in a controlled fashion, virtually eliminating any risks to human life and property associated with an uncontrolled reentry. However, this would reduce TRMM’s potential scientific data-gathering lifetime, which would reduce the benefits of that data to meteorological research and operations, particularly related to tropical cyclone forecasts. Another alternative is for NASA to extend TRMM’s orbital lifetime, preserving the availability of the unique data collected by TRMM for research and operational meteorological forecasting, but increasing to an unknown extent the risks associated with TRMM’s eventual reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. There are possibly other alternatives that involve similar trade-offs.

What course of action should NASA take?”

The issues, at least conceptually and politically, are very similar to those faced in the Hubble situation, if at a much lower level of saliency. How we grappled with these issues can be found here.

A group of European research centers has been work on a project called Blueprint to consider how science and technology policies might be harmonized with environmental policies in Europe.

The project describes its purpose as,

“Various kinds of environmental innovation, i.e. improved knowledge and technological options, can be induced by science and technology policy. Capacity building in the field of environmental innovation can be stimulated by S&T policies and can be extremely helpful for environmental policy. And a new kind of environmental policy, taking the impacts of environmental regulation on innovation, competitiveness and employment into account, would be extremely helpful to stimulate scientific and technological progress… Against this background, we plan to implement the thematic network BLUEPRINT which is the short name for “Blueprints for an Integration of Science, Technology and Environmental Policy”. The network is designed to examine the relationship between S&T and environmental policies considering the complexity of factors influencing innovation and environmental decisions in firms. The objective of the network is to promote dialogue between the socio-economic research communi!
ty, policy makers, industry and intermediate organisations in Europe in order to enhance policy coherence in addressing sustainable development issues.”

David Dickson writes an interesting essay about why issues of scientific workforce should concern U.S. policy makers. He writes:

“Even more damaging [than any harm to U.S. scientific leadership] from a global point of view, however, is the danger that the United States will no longer be seen as a bastion of openness and pluralism, as it has in the past. Both of these values are essential for the health of science; that is why US science has prospered so well in the past 50 years, certainly compared to societies — such as the Soviet Union — in which such values have not been respected, however much political lip-service is paid to the importance of science.

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Last week the National Science Foundation published a report titled, “An Emerging and Critical Problem of the Science and Engineering Labor Force. The report makes the case for “a troubling decline in the number of U.S. citizens who are training to become scientists and engineers, whereas the number of jobs requiring science and engineering (S&E) training continues to grow.” The report may stoke up debate over the supply of scientists in the U.S., and what, if any, sort of problem might be associated with recent trends.

Debate over the supply of scientists in the U.S. was a big deal in the early 1990s, with congressional hearings and a at times nasty public debate (for a quick review see this.)

In an essay in Science (in PDF and subscription required) that should be required reading for anyone thinking about this issue, Donald Kennedy, Jim Austin, Kirstie Urquhart, and Crispin Taylor decry considering the supply of scientists without also considering demand. A few lengthy excerpts:

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