Topping off a strong public week for American science and technology policy, last week the AAAS Forum presented addresses by both Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Holdren and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.  Usually the Forum does well to get one political appointee at that level, to have two should prompt a little bit of P.R. bragging.  What it apparently doesn’t include is full text of their respective remarks.  Sure, you can find excerpts of those remarks at the AAAS website, with video clops.  Good luck finding any amount of those remarks on the OSTP or Energy Department websites.

I think I understand what’s going on (for the record, I did not attend the Forum, so I don’t know the full content of the addresses).  AAAS typically provides (and sells to those who didn’t attend) copies of their Yearbooks, which are essentially conference proceedings of their Forums.  So they may be holding onto the good stuff until the next Yearbook is ready.  If this is accurate, I think it’s unfortunate.  Why not use the big addresses to sell the rest of the content from the Forum?  AAAS already puts up a lot of Forum content online (look here for last year’s material, including an address from then OSTP Director John Marburger), why not prime the pump by pushing the Chu and Holdren addresses in their entirety?  It sounds like AAAS could take a couple more steps toward embracing new media strategies.

Last Monday’s address by the President at the National Academies goosed many in the scientific community – in a positive sense.  It’s been true that many scientists expressed optimism at having someone in the White House who supported science, not paying heed to the significant financial support enjoyed by research agencies over the post-World War II period.  That President Obama took the rare step of addressing the Academies while in office was taken as additional evidence that he would be such a President.

A closer look at the transcript of the address suggests that it is not the clean break from the past as some might think, but a continuation or expansion of efforts begun during the last Administration.  For instance, the promises to make the research and experimentation tax credit permanent, as well as doubling the budgets of the NSF, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Deparmtent of Energy’s Office of Science, are all part of the American Competitiveness Initiative, introduced by President Bush in his 2006 State of the Union Address.  The doubling of these budgets started after the passage of the America COMPETES Act, so the only new part of this promise is the tax credit.  Even the creation of ARPA-E reflects part of the COMPETES Act.  These are good policies, just not new policies, and not anything unique to the current President.

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I make note of this particular grant opportunity because it’s supported by the National Institutes of Health.  When thinking about research on modeling the scientific workforce, the NIH would not necessarily be the first agency that comes to mind.  But the NIH has significantly more resources than most other federal research agencies – at one point its budget for physical sciences research was larger than the physical sciences research budget of the National Science Foundation.

You can read the Request For Applications for detailed information, but here are some important points.

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In what may become tradition of burying the interesting policy stuff on the same day as a politically savvy move, the Obama Administration announced on Monday who the remaining members of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) will be.  It had already been announced that Eric Lander and Harold Varmus will join Presidential Science Adviser Holdren as co-chairs of PCAST.  Dr. Landren directs the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and holds appointments in biology faculties at both schools.  Dr. Varmus is a fomer NIH Director and currently heads the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

I’ll list the other members after the jump, and you can look at more complete bios on the PCAST website (which, sadly, is woefully thin for the launch of the new Council).  Two points worth noting: a higher percentage of PCAST members have backgrounds in life science fields than in the past; and a few PCAST members have served in government S&T positions before.

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Co-Chair of the new President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), Dr. Harold Varmus, has a new interview at American Scientist’s website.  The interview covers his work in science and science policy.  Those readers not familiar with biomedical research or the NIH will learn more about how the NIH may not be as disease-centered as coventionally thought.  You will also find some suggestion that PCAST will be a more vital and active advisory body than it’s been before.

Unfortunately, the interviewer asks a question that somehow completely confuses the problem of politicization in science.

Do you think controversial scientific questions, such as the use of human embryonic stem cells, can ever be removed from politics in the United States?

While Varmus appears to accept the premise and say that they can, a careful reading of his response demonstrates how questions involving ethics choices – like the use of human embryonic stem cells – always involve some level of politics.  He speaks of how the U.K. and the U.S. used different forms of regulation to control the use of human embryonic stem cells, and how an effective incorporation of scientific expertise in the political process would allow for effective rules on research to be established and used.

As part of its annual meeting, President Obama will address the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, April 27.  The address will take place at 9 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, and there will be an audio webcast.  Link to the Academies’ home page starting at 8:55 to follow the address live, and check back after the address for audio and video recordings.  As only three other sitting presidents have addressed the Academy of Sciences (much less the Academy of Engineering or Institute of Medicine), this is noteworthy.  Perhaps the President will give further detail to the oft-repeated phrase from his inaugural address – “restore science to its rightful place” – or give some better idea of what he means by scientific integrity.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy released today a Request for Public Comment in the Federal Register (H/T ScienceInsider).  The comments would inform the drafting of recommendations to the President for action to preserve scientific integrity in the executive branch.  These recommendations were required by a Presidential Memorandum* issued by President Obama in early March.  As noted here when it was released, the memo seems to be better as a political statement than as effective policy.  Hopefully the comments process can nudge it towards the latter.

The comment period is brief – it ends at 5 p.m. Eastern time on May 13.  You can submit comments via email (scientificintegrity@ostp.gov), online (though I’d make sure they fixed the link on that page), or by mail (address is listed in the Federal Register notice).  Comments can also be made on the new OSTP Blog, with blog posts for each of the principles outlined below.  You will need to register in order to comment on the blog.

There is some guidance for the comments, which are after the jump:

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As part of his weekly internet and radio address, President Obama announced the appointment of Aneesh Chopra as his Chief Technology Officer.  This position is brand new (but often promised on the campaign), although there is a bill in Congress to establish the position on a more permanent basis.

Mr. Chopra is currently the Secretary of Technology for the State of Virginia.  The new Chief Information Offcier for the federal government, Mr. Vivek Kundra, worked in the same department earlier in his career.  The CTO position, as described in the address, would focus on promoting technological innovation in the support of government priorities.  In conjunction with the CIO, and newly appointed Chief Performance Officer, the CTO would also assist in the administration’s open government efforts, increasing the transparency and availability of data.

Aside from this being a brand new position, an interesting part of the job could be the responsibilities in the promotion of technological innovation.  This is a bit more targeted responsibility than what the Office of Science and Technology Policy has typically had with respect to technology.  There is the potential for a turf war here over technology, given an issue that would prompt interest from both parts of the Executive Office of the President.

President Obama nominated Princeton physicist William Brinkman to head the Department’s Office of Science.  The Office of Science is the home for most of the non-weapons research conducted by the Department, and is one of the agencies targeted in the recent America COMPETES Act for a doubling of the research budget.  Dr. Brinkman is currently a Senior Research Physicist at Princeton, and has a long research career including research and managerial experience at Bell Labs and Sandia National Labs.  You can click here for a more complete biography.

This makes for a pretty complete team appointed at the Department of Energy.  Compare this to other parts of the federal science and technology portfolio, where we still wait for nominees for National Institutes of Health Director, head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and three of the four associate directors for the Office of Science and Technology Policy.  With these leadership vaccuums, it would not surprise me to see the Department of Energy to be the de facto lead science and technology agency in the government.  In an effort to sweeten these sour grapes, it’s worth noting that science and technology appointments are still, on the whole, a lot further along at 3 months into a new presidency.

Former Presidential Science Adviser John Marburger will give this year’s Bromley Lecture at George Washington University in Washington on April 29th.  The title is “Policy as Science” and this is the abstract:

Politics is a necessary ingredient of policy-making, but political acceptance does not assure policy success. Thinking of policy as science emphasizes features of policy-making and implementation needed for long term policy effectiveness. Identifying and strengthening these features in the processes of American science policy warrants a long term campaign that challenges the current advocacy-based approach. An emerging consensus on the need for a ’science of science policy’ suggests that such a campaign may be feasible.

This should be a good opportunity to see a more detailed description of what Dr. Marburger has in mind when he talks about science of science policy and how it matches up (or doesn’t match up) with what the National Science Foundation and the interagency working group have in mind.  For instance, it’s not immediately clear to me how the government hopes to take the research on innovation funded by the Science of Science Policy program at NSF and use it to improve “features of policy-making and implementation needed for long term policy effectiveness.”  In other words, while it’s nice to have a better understanding of how to measure innovative activity, it doesn’t necessarily connect to a better understanding of what policies would be effective in this area.

The Lecture will take place in the Linder Family Commons (1957 E Street NW, 6th Floor) on the George Washington University campus in Washington, D.C.  It will run from 5:30-7 pm