During 1993-1994 I was doing research on my dissertation which was focused on the implementation of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), then a new program having been written into law in the fall of 1990. Part of my research involved interviewing people responsible for the creation of the program and its implementation. Many of these people were high-ranking agency officials and very difficult to schedule, so I was only able to interview several of them. In 1994 I wrote up a paper based on my analysis for presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) in Washington, DC. I sent copies of the paper to the agency officials that I did get to interview for their reaction, and this is when the fun began.

At the time I was sitting at NCAR courtesy of Mickey Glantz, who later hired me as a post-doc and then a staff scientist in his group. But in 1993-1994 I was an unpaid graduate student taking advantage of Mickey’s gracious offer of a desk and access to NCAR people as I finished up my dissertation. The paper I had drafted for APPAM was critical of the USGCRP arguing that it was structured to produce a lot of good science, but not necessarily well-structured to contribute useful information to decision makers. (For the argument see this 1995 paper – PDF — which is descendant of the 1994 APPAM analysis).

The reaction to the paper was swift and for a wet-behind-the-ears graduate student a lesson in the politics of science. (I have the email correspondence still from these events.) The few copies of the paper I had mailed to my interviewees had multiplied and had made their way around USGCRP circles, and people were not happy with the paper. There was concern among USGCRP officials that the paper could be damaging in the budget process, particularly since I had an affiliation with NCAR, which they felt gave me some credibility.

One person that I had sent the paper to was a top official in the National Science Foundation (NSF) in charge of the directorate that provided base funding for NCAR. Concern about my paper was expressed by this official to the director of NCAR and the President of UCAR, the body that oversees NCAR. There was quite a hullabaloo surrounding this as NCAR was encouraged to disallow me from conducting research there, and more than gently reminded where its funding came from. In short, USGCRP officials wanted me gone and my paper to disappear.

The good news is that the NCAR leadership stood up for my right to call things as I saw them and stood strong in the face of what must have been very uncomfortable pressure from NSF. After all I was just a nobody grad student and NCAR very easily could have brushed me off to please NSF. Here is an excerpt from an email from a top NCAR official to others in NCAR leadership on this from June, 1994:

Maybe this is a test – can a graduate student write his dissertation on a subject that may imply that a program of our government is not perfect? Is there any such thing as academic freedom or freedom of scientific inquiry, or must we all sing the party line? If a program can’t tolerate criticism – it probably NEEDS to be criticized. I’ve read some of Roger’s work, and I found his criticisms to be generally on point and constructive. I don’t feel we should in any way “distance ourselves” from Roger’s work. But what do I know?

Further good news that resulted from this was that part of the negotiations that resulted was an agreement that I would go to Washington, DC and interview a wide range of people associated with the USGCRP so that they could “set me straight.” Thus, I was able to get access to many people high up in the program who heretofore had been inaccessible to me. I interviewed them and much of what I learned appeared in the final version of my dissertation.

I learned a number of lessons from this experience. First, I learned the importance of some distance from government when doing policy research. Although NCAR works with government funds, its staff are not government employees. NSF could exert pressure through the budget, but did not have direct line authority over NCAR leadership or NCAR scientists. Second, I learned the importance of leadership. NCAR leadership from Mickey Glantz on up to the top was very supportive of research and erring on the side of openness rather than suppression. Third, I learned that incentives for suppressing unwelcome news are strong. I did not ascribe the actions of the NSF official to the politics of the newly elected Clinton Administration or any broader war on policy research, but a misguided effort to exert control over what information came out of NCAR in an effort to protect parochial political interests. Finally, I learned that efforts to suppress typically have the exact opposite effect. Had NSF ignored that paper, no one would have read it, I never would have had additional access to leading USGCRP officials, I probably wouldn’t have received an offer of a post-doc at NCAR, and today I’d be doing something completely different than giving scientists a hard time.

Postscript: More that ten years later a top official involved in the debacle expressed to me regret that it occurred and suggested that with hindsight my analysis at the time did prove to have merit. I appreciated this and remain on fairly good terms with this person, now retired.