April 2004 »

Policy Relevant Science in the Media

Last week Nature published a letter titled “Dangers of crying wolf over risk of extinctions” by scholars at Oxford University. The letter warns, “simplifications of research findings may expose conservationists to accusations of crying wolf, and play directly into the hands of anti-environmentalists… many of the errors could be traced back to the press releases and agency newswires… [Then] Politicians and conservationists repeated these statements.”

For a range of participants in this process there are a number of reinforcing incentives for either emphasizing the dramatic or cherry picking convenient findings. For the university press office sensational and simple cause-effect press releases may increase the odds of news organizations covering the story. For reporters selective reporting may help to advance whatever personal agenda they may wish to advance. For scientists, accentuation of the extreme may provide access to or influence in political debates. For politicians, the “facts” suggest an authoritative basis for arguing their preferred outcomes. Of course, these reenforcing incentives exist across the political spectrum.

This is another form of the consequences of the “excess of objectivity” that I have written about on this blog.

Ann Henderson-Sellers has an excellent article about this process:

Henderson-Seller, A., 1998. Climate whispers: Media communication about climate change. Climatic Change 40:421-456.

What to do? Here is an article with a suggestion that the scientific community take some responsibility for going beyond presenting “just the facts” and assessing the significance of science:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2003: The Significance of Science, chapter in P. Dongi (ed.) The Governance of Science, Laterza, Rome, Italy, pp. 85-105. (Also available in Italian.)

Science Policy and Fiction

Science policy is hot stuff these days. Herman Wouk has a new book out, A Hole in Texas, that focuses on the politis surrounding the shutting down of the superconducting super collider in the early 1990s. Dan Brown has a series of novels focused on encryption, NASA, science and religion. Two new movies portray threats associated with cloning, Godsend and global warming, The Day after Tomorrow.

Why this attention to such a wonky topic? As Herman Wouk tells NPR, there are not too many topics more important that science and technology in modern society.

Singing from the Same Sheet

Does the debate over global warming and energy policy miss an important area of apparent bipartisan consensus on reasons to improve U.S. energy policy?

George W. Bush said on Wednesday,

“You can't be an innovative society if you're stuck on foreign sources of oil. You may be short-term, but long-term, I don't see how we can be the world leader if we're constantly dependent of foreign sources of oil.”

John Kerry’s campaign WWW site says,

“Americans spend more than $20 billion each year on oil from the Persian Gulf -- often from nations that are unstable and hostile to our interests and our values. [John] Kerry believes that we must end this dangerous dependence because it leaves American security and the American economy vulnerable.”

So You Want to Be a Grad Student?

From the Village Voice, an interesting article.

“Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read.”

Is there an overproduction of PhDs? Here are two differing perspectives on that question in the atmospheric sciences.

Beyond the Dustbowl: BT in Africa

With southern Africa facing its fourth consecutive growing season of low crop yields and food insecurity, genetically modified crops and food aid are sure to be front-burner issues for yet another year.

For the past three years, southern Africa has faced debilitating drought and a resultant demand for both food aid and drought-resistant crops. Consequently, the EU-US led debate over genetic modification (GM) has spread to Africa, thereby engaging African leaders and diverting attention from other severe agricultural problems like poor soil, a failing transportation infrastructure, and unwelcoming markets for crops from subsistence farmers.

At its core, this is a technology policy debate about willingness to accept risk. Yet as both sides politicize the issue within Africa, they drag African leaders into what the New York Times called "an undeclared trade dispute between the EU with its powerful environmental activists and the US and its influential biotechnology industry."

The result is an African GM debate as politically charged as ours. On one side lie leaders calling for agricultural biotechnology as a means to end hunger altogether. And on the other lie leaders who see agricultural biotechnology as "poison" sent to exploit the third world, even in the form of
food aid.

As this politicization continues, African agricultural development lies in limbo, waiting for an unlikely solution to the bickering. And yet, it cannot wait. African soils are severely nutrient depleted such that they can barely provide the crops necessary for a single season, let alone a surplus for seasons of drought.

As population increases rapidly, farmers try to meet increasing food needs by intensifying land use without properly managing the land, which results in soil stripped of nutrients. In 1998 the UN Food and Agricultural Organization released a report stating that "sub-Saharan Africa risks being marginalized from the mainstream world economy because of failure of many countries in the region to adopt environmentally sustainable
agricultural practices to improve productivity and counter the process of natural resource degradation."

These problems are severe but they have solutions. Evidence lies in the American Great Plains. Poor African agricultural practices are reminiscent of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's where the land, having been through decades of excessive plowing, dried and turned to dust. Dust, which was blown into the air and dumped in tons onto farms, homes, and towns. As a result, the US government intervened to teach farmers techniques that would slow rainwater runoff and improve absorption into the soil. Agriculture recovered. And last year, a drought 30% more intense than the 1930's drought plagued the same area, but without the dust bowl results.

A similar change in African agricultural practices could greatly enhance both food security and economic stability in Africa. But to get there, we must not wait for a solution to the GM debate. We must seek opportunities to decrease vulnerability to the cycle of drought now in the face of debate. Only this form of aid will last beyond this year.

The Day after Tomorrow

For the next month or so you can expect public discussions over climate change to be closely linked to the forthcoming movie The Day after Tomorrow. Reactions to the movie already have shown more than a little comedy and absurdity. For example,

*NASA reportedly asked its staff not to present themselves in discussions with the media as promoting the movie,

*a climate scientist commented with envy about how well the movie’s budget would fund his personal research,

*a long-time opponent of action on energy policy warning that the movie might, like The China Syndrome, lead to bad policies, and

*a prominent supporter of action on energy policy suggested that the movie’s scenario is real and worth investigating.

Meanwhile as the media seeks out comments scientists have been scrambling to position themselves politically and scientifically with respect to the movie, using various strategies. These various strategies will be worth closer examination in a future post.

In coming weeks I’ll have more to say about the movie – or more accurately, like everyone else I’ll use the movie to popularize our particular views on climate science and policy. I’ve got an article coming out soon and I’ll link it here.

For now, from Variety.com here is the most honest and accurate comment (registration required) on the movie I’ve seen yet:

“Mark Gordon, producer on the $125 million pic, said no one involved in the picture planned to participate in the [environmental] campaign, and he didn't think the sudden attention would affect "Day's" box office potential.

‘If they want to use our picture to make people aware of their concerns about the environment, it's not anything I have control over,’ Gordon said. ‘My biggest issue is that the movie opens to the biggest number we can. The fact that there is enthusiasm, controversy and discussion is only good for our business.’”

On the PhD and Adjunctification

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting story about the Invisible Adjunct closing down her popular blog which discussed the role of adjunct faculty in the modern academy.

An excerpt from the Chronicle article on the Invisible Adjunct’s views:

“Can't professors see that a system producing so many people who can't get jobs is not an indictment of the aspiring faculty members, but of the system itself? Or if you really think that these adjuncts aren't of high enough caliber to hire, then the graduate schools are failures, not the students.”

If you are interested in the role of the modern university in today’s science and technology enterprise check it out.

UK Foresight on Floods

The United Kingdom’s Office of Science and Technology has a fascinating project called Foresight. According to its website, “The Foresight programme either identifies potential opportunities for the economy or society from new science and technologies, or it considers how future science and technologies could address key future challenges for society.”

The project is part technology assessment, part science and technology policy, and part delineation of policy alternatives.

Foresight came to my attention because of its recent report on Flood and Coastal Defence, but it also has projects in Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs, Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention, Exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum, and Cognitive Systems.

The recently released flood report (in PDF) is exceedingly well done. It considers both climate and socioeconomic factors as drivers of future flood risk, it discusses significant and irreducible uncertainties, it considers mitigation and adaptation responses as complements, and it presents a wide range of policy responses without seeking to advocate a favored few. In short, it is perhaps the best example of a climate assessment that I’ve seen.

A few excerpts from the flood report’s executive summary:

"Ultimately it is our decisions that will determine whether we are successful." P. 38

"The extreme uncertainty of the future is a major challenge in devising effective long-term flood-management policies. It is important to decide how much flexibility is required to cope with an evolving future, and to choose a portfolio of responses to achieve that. In this respect, reversible and adaptable measures would be the most robust against future uncertainties." (p. 43)

And from its Key Messages for Researchers,

"Reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions would reduce the risks substantially, however, this is unlikely to be sufficient in itself. Hard decisions need to be taken – we must either invest more in sustainable approaches to flood and coastal management or learn to live with increased flooding."

All assessments of climate science and policy should be as well done as this one.

NAS President's Address

Bruce Alberts, President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), gave a speech on April 19, 2004 that covered a wide range of science policy issues. He reminds us of the overarching goals of the NAS:

“First, to work tirelessly to strengthen the U.S. scientific enterprise in the national interest, and second, to spread science and its values vigorously throughout our nation and the world.”

He observes that, “most of the reports that the National Academies produce each year for our government address "science for policy." Each of these presents a consensus view of the science and technology that underlie a particular set of decisions confronting policy-makers.”

One standard of success he highlights is that NAS reports do not always serve one particular interest: “Our aim has always been to bring the truth concerning science and technology to Washington. This truth must be free of any partisan considerations. Evidence that we are succeeding comes from a sense that we often seem to make both sides of a debate somewhat uncomfortable with our reports: each side will generally like some of our conclusions, but not all of what we say.” And he provides an example of this by joining those of all political persuasions who claim to be “serving the nation through an insistence on sound science.”

He concludes by identifying three challenges for the scientific community:

“As I see it, there are a number of clear challenges for those of us in the United States who would like to see science – and a science culture – spread much more widely around the world.

First, we must come to respect and support a wider range of sciences than is traditional for our typical university science departments.

Second, we must work to bring many more of our scientists and our students into close contact with the potential ways in which their expertise can make a difference for the 85 percent of the world's people who live in developing nations.

Third, we must work to enact the vision in the InterAcademy Council report Inventing a Better Future. This will require that we focus much more intensively than we have in the past on helping our colleagues in developing nations build and maintain institutions of excellence in science and technology.”

The NAS is extraordinarily influential in United States science policy. As such, I am absolutely amazed by the paucity of studies by policy scholars looking at the role of the NAS in science and technology policy. Two that I am aware of are

Boffey, Philip. The Brain Bank of America. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.
and

Hilgartner, Stephen. Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama. Stanford: 2000.

Are you aware of any others?

Alberts’ speech is worth reading. It raises a number of points worth thinking about and responding to.

Academic Orthodoxy

Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, has an interesting essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The essay is undoubtedly motivated by the efforts of David Horowitz to highlight an apparent lack of ideological diversity in the ranks of university professors. But Balch’s essay is much broader than this debate and worth a read. An excerpt:

“Although interesting and useful work continues to be done in the humanities and social sciences, advancing, in limited areas, knowledge of a typically descriptive character, broad theoretic syntheses commanding anything like a consensus have generally not emerged. Also unlike the natural sciences, sweeping applications of new knowledge have failed to flow from these fields into the larger world. Most disappointing, many have been shown to be highly susceptible to penetration by fads and sects, at times out of a desire to mimic the hard sciences in method and jargon, at times to replace a waning passion for inquiry with a zeal for causes. One crucial result has been a substantial contraction of serious academic discourse about the human condition, and the range of philosophical, cultural, and public-policy issues to which that condition gives rise.”

Balch raises some serious questions about the roles of universities, disciplines, and expertise in contributing knowledge to the broader society. Read the whole thing.

Science Feels Threatened by Bush Space Policy

A New York Times article suggests scientists and some politicians are nervous about science funding at NASA. Chairman of the House Science Committee Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) asks of President Bush's space exploration initiative, "Will funding this initiative rather than other programs move science forward or hold it back?" The article quotes a number of physicists and astronomers worried about exploration trumping 'good' science at the agency.

The decision to cancel Servicing Mission 4 to Hubble has stirred up a hornets nest of criticism of NASA in the science community. Yet NASA budgets for space science continue to show healthly growth. (See our category on R&D fudning.) The science camp worries that exploration will short change their research goals, while the human flight camp strives to regain the lost luster of the early manned flight program.

President Bush's focus on exploration has exacerbated the tension between these tribes, and the cancellation of SM4 has sent the science community into a panic. However, US space policy, and NASA in particular, would benefit if these two tribes could focus more on cooperation than turf battles. Science and exploration can go hand in hand, but by crying foul the scientific community may forgo an opportunity to garner real scientific gains from a growing, robust program of exploration.

More Devil in the Details: Climate Change

A discussion paper from the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research at the University of Oslo, Norway examines the consequences for climate science and policy of different definitions of “vulnerability.” The paper observes the term “vulnerability serves as a flexible and somewhat malleable concept that can engage both research and policy communities. Yet the extensive use of vulnerability in the climate change literature hides two very different interpretations of the word, and two very different purposes for using it.”

The paper presents two different definitions of the term vulnerability, “On the one hand, vulnerability is sometimes viewed as an end point – that is, as a residual of climate change impacts minus adaptation… On the other hand, it is sometimes viewed as a starting point, where vulnerability is a characteristic or state generated by multiple environmental and social processes, but exacerbated by climate change.”

The authors argue, “We make the case in this paper that the two interpretations of vulnerability – as an end point or as a starting point – confound the issue of climate change… the two definitions not only result in two different diagnoses of the climate change problem, but also two different kinds of cures.”

The paper concludes, “the end-point interpretation [of vulnerability] focuses on technology and transfer of technology, rather than on development… When vulnerability is taken as the starting point of the analysis, the focus of the assessment is quite different. Vulnerability to climate change is recognized as a state, generated not just by climate change, but by multiple processes and stressors. Consequently, there are multiple points for intervention. Technological adaptations to climate change represent only one of many options – albeit a problematized one due to existing social, economic and political structures that may increase inequality in a community and exacerbate vulnerability for some. Addressing climate change means enhancing the ability to cope with present-day climate variability and long-term climate uncertainty.”

This paper is worth reading. It is consistent with our own work focused both on vulnerability as well as the different definitions of climate change held by the IPCC and FCCC. There are signs that the pathologies resulting from the dominant framing of the climate issue are no longer flying under the radar.

Grade Inflation

It’s that time of the semester. Students take tests and turn in term projects, and professors hunker down to provide evaluations in the form of grades. I have strongly mixed feelings about the grading process. Some days I’d like to do away with grades altogether, particularly for graduate students. On other days, I can’t imagine doing my job without grades.

My apparent grading schizophrenia results from an awareness that, on the one hand, it is entirely reasonable for students, universities, and prospective employers to receive some metric of performance associated with an undergraduate or graduate degree. But on the other hand, as we in academia go through the annual ritual of evaluating faculty and admitting students based on their grades and standardized test scores, it is abundantly clear to me that performance measures can introduce some serious pathologies into the educational system. And of course there are the profoundly absurd moments following almost every semester when the student receiving an A- or B+ comes in to complain about their grade.

The incentives for grade inflation are not hard to figure out. They are in fact an elephant-in-the-living-room. In many universities, including my own, there is an apparent quid pro quo because student evaluations of their professors are (surprise!) highly correlated with the course grades that the professor gives the student. If student evaluations of a professor’s performance factor into decisions about raises and career advancement it is not too difficult to understand what results: grade inflation.

As Duke University’s Stuart Rojstaczer wrote in the Washington Post in 2003,

“A's are common as dirt in universities nowadays because it's almost impossible for a professor to grade honestly. If I sprinkle my classroom with the C's some students deserve, my class will suffer from declining enrollments in future years. In the marketplace mentality of higher education, low enrollments are taken as a sign of poor-quality instruction. I don't have any interest in being known as a failure.”

Professor Rojstaczer also developed a WWW site – www.gradeinflation.com – where he has documented trends in grade inflation across the nation. While grade inflation is real, some, like Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield think that it is a problem while others, like Princeton’s Jordan Eleenberg, think that it is not a problem.

Most universities must believe that grade inflation is not a serious problem, because thus far they have avoided implementing various, simple solutions. For instance, Steven Landsburg suggested a few in Slate in 1999,

“First, college transcripts could show each professor's overall grade distribution, allowing employers to interpret each individual grade in context. Then, instead of damaging his colleagues' credibility, the easy grader would damage only his own. Second, the dean's office could assign each professor a "grade budget" consisting of a certain number of A's, B's, etc. Once you've awarded, say, 10 A's, you can't award any more till next year.”

Of course, other incentives at work here militate against these solutions, most notably the tendency to identify student as “customers” of the university, rather than as “products” of the university. Consider this comment in 1995 letter to the New York Times from an instructor at Boston University,

“Professors award high grades most often, I believe, to avoid having to deal with angry and self-righteous students and their parents. Over my strong objections one semester, the chairman of my department changed a student's F (32 out of a possible 105 points) to a passing grade. The justification? Both of his parents are lawyers.”

We can argue back and forth about grade inflation, but it seems to me that debate is fairly meaningless until we confront an even more fundamental question, why do we even offer grades at all? On this point Princeton’s Jordan Eleenberg is right on:

“Why do we grade? Is the point to give students information? To reward, punish, or encourage them? Or just to hand them over to law-school admissions committees in accurate rank order? Until we answer this question, there's little hope of making sense of grade inflation. It's as if we were bankers trying to formulate a monetary policy, but we hadn't quite decided whether dollar bills were a means of economic transaction or a collection of ritual fetish objects.”

I’d say more, but I need to get back to grading.

Science Academies in Africa

The Gates Foundation is giving $20 million “over the next ten years to promote better decision-making on science-related issues in Africa, particularly those concerning human health.” The Gates Foundation has partnered with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to develop similar academies in Africa.

David Dickson writes, “The grant is a welcome one.” But he also observes, “If there is a concern about the role of academies, however, it relates not so much to what they do, as to how they do it. An academy is, by its nature, an elite; individuals are elected solely on the judgement that their competence places them at the top of their profession. And this gives them, almost by definition, a power and influence in the political sphere that is denied to many of their colleagues… But elites can also become self-serving, and in the process lose contact with the wider societies in which they are embedded. Some may end up defending the privileges of their members; this has, for example, frequently been one of the criticisms aimed at Soviet-style academies that dominated Eastern Europe for the second half of the 20th century. Others can fall prey to overstating the case for s!
cience as the basis of social policy, rather than as merely one component, however essential.”

Bruce Alberts the President of the U.S. notes of the grant, “Understanding the critical importance of basing decisions on sound science and incorporating it into the policy-making process could be an important step forward for many African nations.”

This initiative will be worth following, evaluating, and learning from. Anyone need a dissertation topic?

Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) on Science Policy

Yesterday, Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) gave a speech at the AAAS 29th Annual Forum on Science and Technology Policy. It is a wide-ranging speech with elements of both policy and politics. Below is an excerpt focused on Senator Daschle's endorsement of "Jeffersonian" science," which refers to research that is inspired both by usefulness and advancing knowledge. This is what the late histroian Donald Stokes called "use-inspired basic research" in his book Pasteur's Quadrant. Anytime a major national politician sees fit to speak thoughtfully on science and technology policy it is worth our attention. Download speech.

An excerpt ...

"The challenge to the American scientific community is to rebuild the link not only between science and government, but between science and society. I believe we can do so, if we return to the model established by Thomas Jefferson. There is an implicit ongoing debate within the government regarding what kind of research is most important to support. Some suggest that we should put no limits on the kind on research we support and have faith that advances in theoretical science, regardless of the field, will inevitably translate into practical applications that improve human life.

For others, that approach is too abstract. There are real problems, and to spend taxpayer dollars on anything but the most pragmatic search for solutions seems high-minded, but naive. There is merit to each approach. Both kinds of research are critical.

But Jefferson offered a third way, and, I believe, the right way to make the best use of government's resources, and gain the full support of the American people for the efforts of science. Merriwether Lewis's expedition represented a basic attempt to enlarge the scope of America's understanding of the world around it. It was the stuff of doctoral dissertations. At the same time, because the mission was targeted at the urgent needs of an expanding nation, the voyage captured the support of Washington and the imagination of our young country."

R&D Budgets Redux

In the New York Times today William J. Broad reports (registration required) on Kei Koizumi’s presentation at AAAS on R&D budgets that we referred to yesterday. The Times summarizes the implications of Koizumi’s analysis as follows,

“Federal support for research and development stands at $126.5 billion this year, and the administration has proposed increasing it over five years to $141.6 billion. But Mr. Koizumi found that large projected increases for research at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration masked steep declines at all other nondefense agencies.

For instance, he said, federal budgets would decline 15.9 percent for earth science over the next five years, 16.2 percent for aeronautics, 11.8 percent for biological and physics research, 21 percent for energy-supply research, and 11.3 percent for agriculture research. Research budgets would drop 15 percent at the Environmental Projection Agency, 10.5 percent at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and 4.7 percent at the National Science Foundation.”

Koizumi’s analysis can be found here.

Budgets are slippery things to get a grasp on, so some perspective is worth providing about the AAAS analysis and Times report.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that Koizumi’s projections turn out to be on target (about which I should note Koizumi observes, “It's only one idea of the future. But I show these because it's an important consequence of the deficit. The president's budget proposed tough choices.”)

It turns out that because 2005 happens to the all-time high water mark for overall federal funding for R&D, as well as for most agencies, any future reduction in budgets will look large as a percentage. But an accurate understanding of budget reductions requires placing them into the context of projections in the overall federal budget. Current projections have non-defense discretionary budgets returning to 2002 levels in 2009 (in constant dollars). Under the AAAS analysis in 2009 the budgets for the major science agencies would return to the following historical levels (again using constant dollars):

DOD all time high
DHS all time high
NASA highest since Apollo
NIH return to 2005 levels
NSF all time high
USDA return to 2004 levels
Interior return to 2002 levels
USDA return to 2002 levels
DOT return to 2001 levels
EPA return to 2003 levels
DOC return to 2001 levels

The bottom line: If overall non-defense discretionary funding is reduced in real terms from 2005-2009 to about the equivalent of 2002 levels, while the falling tide would lower all boats, it appears that with the exceptions of DOT and DOC, federal research and development agencies do no worse than the average decline, and in some case do significantly better.

Perhaps this is one factor underlying an observation made by Senator Tom Daschle’s (D-SD) in his AAAS speech yesterday, “But we should be honest with ourselves. Outside the scientific community, there is no hue and cry for more government funding of R&D.”

More generally, if the scientific community really wants to justify that it should receive a disproportionate share of federal funding as compared with the multitude other demands for public resources, shouldn’t the discussion about science and technology expand beyond discussing only the size of budgets? Again Senator Daschle, “We have not done enough to show the American people the connection between the work underway in your laboratories and the problems that affect their lives… The challenge to the American scientific community is to rebuild the link not only between science and government, but between science and society.”

The Paradox of Choice and Policy Alternatives

The Paradox of Choice (Ecco, 2004) is the title of a new book by Swarthmore’s Barry Schwartz who argues too much choice can be a bad thing. While Schwartz focuses on the scope of consumer choice, a colleague asked me if his argument can be applied to the scope of policy alternatives. Can there be too many policy alternatives? Some of my more extended thoughts on this appear below, but short answer is -- Perhaps. But in many cases, policy making clearly suffers from a dearth, not an excess, of choice.

Some subtle qualifications are important here. First, to say more choice is a bad thing overstates Schwartz’s argument. While he may believe this, his own research indicates greater scope of choice has the largest negative affect on people who seek to maximize their decision outcomes, people who simply seek to make a good enough decision (called satisficers) are less affected by plentiful options.

Second, other research suggests economic benefits result from greater choice. For example, in yesterday’s New York Times, Virginia Postrel asserts (registration required), “More and more economic value seems to be coming from giving consumers greater choice, off-line as well as online. Yet these intangible benefits, which represent real increases in the standard of living, are not picked up in most economic measures.”

Postrel bases this assertion on a recent study in Management Science by MITs Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues that concludes:

“While efficiency gains from increased competition significantly enhance consumer surplus, for instance, by leading to lower average selling prices, our present research shows that increased product variety made available through electronic markets can be a significantly larger source of consumer surplus gains.”

So, it seems that the value of scope of choice is a function of the decision context, specifically the nature of the decision maker and the metric used to evaluate value.

I am not aware of any scholarship in policy that seeks to evaluate the role of scope of choice in terms of decision context or outcomes. However, from my own work in science and technology policies, I can cite at least two areas where decision making has suffered due to a lack of choice: space policy and climate policy.

As my colleague Rad Byerly has observed in his work, space policies have suffered from a lack of diversity in discussions of policy alternatives. Over the past three decades, a lack of options may be one reason why NASA finds where it is today.

And if climate policy is on a road to somewhere, then right now it is trapped in a cul-de-sac, because the options that will in the long run make the most difference are not presently playing much role in public and scientific debate.

Often we take policy alternatives as given. But they do come from somewhere, and some are better than others. Arguably, in many cases more effective options are not part of policy debate, which suggests that an expansion of the scope of choice might contribute to better outcomes. Unlike in consumer decision making, evaluations of appropriate scope of choice in policy decision making do not appear to have occupied the attention of policy scholars, even as they have devoted considerable attention to ”agenda setting”. But perhaps they should.

References:

Brynjolfsson, Erik, Michael D. Smith, and Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, November 2003. "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers" Management Science, 49:1580-1596.

Schwartz, B. 2002. Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83:1178–1197.

Schwartz, B. 2000. Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. American
Psychologist, 55:79-88.

Why Prometheus?

In creating this site I sought a name that would convey its basic purpose: addressing and commenting on the complex nature of science and technology decision-making. The name should, of course, also be catchy and maybe even fun. Hence, Prometheus became a weblog in addition to Greek god.

In Greek mythology Prometheus, which may be translated to "forethought", is closely linked with the cultural and technological development of mankind. The Library of Apollodoros states that Prometheus created man from water and earth (1.7.1). Furthermore, at the feast at Mekone, Prometheus tricks Zeus into taking the lesser share of sacrifice, leaving the best portion to man. As punishment for this subterfuge Zeus withholds fire from mankind, only to have Prometheus steal it and present it to mankind. I suggest that this widely known act represents a very early example of science and technology policy.

Prometheus, then, conjures the ideas of intellectual growth and progress that this site hopes to reflect. Yet, Hesiod's Theogony introduces Prometheus, the embodyment of science and technology, as "subtle and devious" (511)... for, like science and technology, Prometheus carries some negative consequences for mankind when, in retaliation for the theft of fire, Zeus unleashes evil on mankind through the creation of Pandora.

The Prometheus weblog, then, will tackle the benefits, risks, successes and failures of science and technology. Our pages will reflect the good and bad, and suggest science and technology policy for a modern day Prometheus.

The weblog will also steadfastly avoid eagles...

Space Shuttle: An Uncomfortable Question

Leonard David asks on Space.com What if the Shuttle Never Flew Again?. He observes, in what is decidedly an understatement, "Permanently grounding the shuttle, according to space experts contacted by SPACE.com, is sure to stir up a hornet’s nest of sticky issues." But these are exactly the issues that NASA needs help thinking through.

R&D Budgets

The AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program is the best source I know of for up-to-date information on the federal budget for science and technology. The Program’s Director is giving a presentation (in PDF) today on the FY 2005 budget. There is also considerable information on budgetary trends. The growth in life sciences funding recent years (Slide 10) is simply amazing.

A Perspective on Science and Policy in India

Sunita Narain, editor of the Indian magazine Down to Earth, writes a provocative editorial on challenges of science in politics and policy in India.

“In the West, scientific issues are at least publicly debated and even George Bush and his ‘sound science’ caucus will get a run for their money as more and more citizens (including) scientists engage with and put public pressure on policy systems to deliver. But not in India, where scientists have taken silence to be their best insurance. And worse, arrogance, as their best cover….

But in all this we must also realise that science is not the ultimate truth. Scientific uncertainty can never really be eliminated, even in the best of sound science. All conclusions involve some uncertainty and are creatures of the nuances of interpretation. Therefore, science must guide policy, but ultimately, societal values and ethics must underwrite that policy code. That is what we could call ‘sound science’.”

It’s titled “Sounds of Self-Interested Science” and worth a read.

Tough Questions on Space Policy

In a speech today Chairman of the House Science Committee Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) raises some tough and important questions about the future of human space exploration and NASA. An excerpt from his speech:

“I should note that many of the tough questions that need answers relate to the current human space flight programs, which account for about half of NASA's budget…. I think it's fair to say that most Members of Congress have not begun to wrestle with these questions, or even to take the space initiative seriously, or to ponder what alternatives there are to the President's proposal - and in broad terms there aren't a lot of palatable alternatives if you want to continue the human space flight program.”

Beyond Kyoto: Yes or No

Robert Mueller, in an essay in Technology Review, presents a perspective on climate policy refreshingly outside of the Manichean “Kyoto: Yes or No?” framing of the climate debate.

“… scientific discussion on this issue has become rude and nasty. Ad hominem accusations abound. Is global warming real? Are humans responsible? One side says, ‘Yes, and if you don’t believe that, you are not a non-scientific troglodyte.’ The other side says, ‘It isn’t proven, and if you act prematurely you’ll kill our economy, you liberal communist tree-hugger.’ A symbolic word in this argument is ‘Kyoto.’ … People are categorized by their stand on this treaty—for it or against it—even though the issue is subtle and complex. I hold an unusual position. I believe carbon dioxide emissions should be brought under control—not because they are the scientifically proven cause of global warming, but because they could be responsible. Yet I dislike the Kyoto approach, since I believe it does not address the real issue. In fact, complying with the Kyoto treaty might lull us into thinking we had taken a valuable step, when in fact a substantially different direction is needed.”

Of course, I highlight this article because for a while now we’ve also been “unusual” in making a case for a third way on climate policy. But perhaps the realities of the climate debate are turning the unusual third (and fourth, etc. ..) ways into options at least worth discussing.

A FCCC Perspective on Climate Policy

Joke Waller-Hunter, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change writes in the OECD observer, “I must admit to being surprised at some experts and leaders – including at the OECD – who argue that we should focus more on adaptation, because the Kyoto Protocol would not solve the climate change problem. Yet, no one has ever claimed that the Kyoto Protocol would achieve that.” But isn’t this exactly why adaptation is needed to complement mitigation policies on climate change? Waller-Hunter even notes, “Helping countries to adapt to climate change has become a key component of overall climate change policy, but much remains to be done to implement it, in such areas as infrastructure development and land management.” As economist William Nordhaus once said, “mitigate we might, adapt we must.”

Federal Research Funds and Universities

A new Rand report
relates that Univeristies, and their medical schools in particular, have been doing quite well in recent years in raising research funds:

" ... between FY 1996 and FY 2002, total federal R&D funds going to universities and colleges grew from $12.8 billion to $21.4 billion, for an overall increase of 45.7 percent in constant 1996 dollars. The level of increase in federal R&D funds going to universities and colleges between FY 1996 and FY 2002 was more than double the overall increase in total federal R&D funds during the same period in constant 1996 dollars (i.e., 45.7 percent versus 20.9 percent).

Much of this growth was attributable to sizable increases in R&D funding at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), most especially the National Institutes of Health. The main recipients of HHS’s funds were nonfederal entities, primarily universities and colleges. By far the most striking finding of this analysis was the discovery that, in FY 2002, 45 percent of all federal R&D funds provided to universities and colleges by HHS and all other federal agencies went directly to medical schools."

Country of Origin Labels for Gasoline

Imagine this -- you pull up to a gas station and you see labels on each pump identifying where the gasoline originated: “100% Saudi Arabian” or “50% Venezuelan, 50% Gulf of Mexico” or “100% Alaskan.” Such labels would allow consumers to express their preferences with their wallets and would allow different oil companies to differentiate their products by country-of-origin.

It is not too farfetched to imagine that all of those cars with American flags on them might have drivers who would pay more for non-Middle Eastern gasoline. Why would non-Middle Eastern oil cost more? Simple, there is much less of it. And greater demand for such oil would increase prices even further. Country of origin labels on gasoline would allow environmentalists, those concerned about U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil, and the “Buy USA” crowd to express their preferences through the market, and in the process, help to further national goals. It also would seem to appeal to an unlikely coalition of groups not traditionally aligned with one another.

Implementing such labels would not be easy. But we do have a precendent to learn from. In September, 2003 the U.S. General Accounting office released a report on challenges posed to certain agricultural markets by the 2002 Farm Bill, which required country-of-origin labels for certain foods that had previous been exempted from such requirements under the 1930 Tariff Act. A 1999 GAO report discussed some of the practical challenges of implementing country-of-origin labels.

If knowing country-of-origin makes sense for consumers of food, why not also for consumers of gasoline?

Job Opportuity in Climate Change Communication

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program Coordination Office in Washington, DC, seeks an individual to work directly with senior Federal officials to plan and implement program communications efforts and to promote and staff a Communications Interagency Working Group (CIWG). Via CIWG, the candidate will set and define both short- and long-term communications and outreach goals and objectives by framing, drafting, and executing a Communications Implementation Plan. The individual will have significant editorial license to maintain and improve the Global Change Research and Information Office web site (gcrio.org) content and services. Expertise with both digital and print media required. Professional writing sample to be requested of interviewees.

Requires Master's degree in relevant disciplines(s) and at least 6 years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. Requires at least 2 years of experience in climate and global change and environmental policy issues. Must have ability to communicate effectively with both technical and lay audiences. Requires ability and willingness to travel occasionally.

View detailed job description here.

Initial consideration will be given to applications received prior to 5/21/2004. Thereafter, applications will be reviewed on an as-needed basis. Apply online or send a scannable resume to 3065 Center Green Drive, Boulder, CO 80301. (Reference job #4134). We value diversity.

A Devil in the Details: Climate Change

From a forthcoming essay of mine in Issues in Science and Technology:

“Believe it or not, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), focused on international policy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focused on scientific assessments in support of the FCCC, use different definitions of climate change. The two definitions are not compatible, certainly not politically and perhaps not even scientifically. This lack of coherence has contributed to the current international stalemate on climate policy, a stalemate that matters because climate change is real and actions are needed to improve energy policies and to reduce the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate effects.”

Read the whole thing.

Mercury Regulation and the Excess of Objectivity

In 2000, a colleague of ours, Dan Sarewitz, wrote an essay titled “Science and Environmental Policy: An Excess of Objectivity” in which he argued,

“Science is sufficiently rich, diverse, and Balkanized to provide comfort and support for a range of subjective, political positions on complex issues such as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, acid rain, or endangered species.”

Lets add to that list mercury emissions from power plants. On April 3, 2004 a news article in the New York Times took the Bush Administration to task for taking advantage of the “excess of objectivity” present on this issue. The story observed,

“While working with Environmental Protection Agency officials to write regulations for coal-fired power plants over several recent months, White House staff members played down the toxic effects of mercury …While the panel members said the changes did not introduce outright errors, they said they were concerned because the White House almost uniformly minimized the health risks in instances where there could be disagreement.”

In an editorial today, April 15, 2005, the New York Times raises “allegations that the White House manipulated a National Academy of Sciences study in order to minimize mercury's health risks.”

Unless these allegations refer to some yet-to-be released bombshell about the White House interfering with the internal activities of the National Academy of Sciences, we are simply seeing the New York Times expressing dissatisfaction with how the White House has decided to use “facts” (or the diversity in available facts) in support of its ideological agenda. This is called politics.

Sarewitz writes that it is not

“productive to blame politicians for manipulating or distorting objective science to support partisan positions. Of course politicians will look for any information or argument that they can find to advance their agendas -- that is their job. While politicians may not be above playing loose with scientific truth, more often they can and will simply search out -- and find -- a legitimate expert or two who can marshal a technical argument sympathetic to the desired political outcome. It is the job of politicians to play politics, and this -- like the second law of thermodynamics -- is not something to be regretted, but something to be lived with.”

The ironic, and troubling, outcomes that result from placing upon the scientific community the onus for responsibility for policy making related to mercury (or any other complex issue) is that it both reinforces the misleading perspective that science dictates certain political outcomes and strengthens the hand of ideologues in their efforts to take full advantage of the “excess of objectivity.” Countering these efforts will require greater sophistication about science in policy and politics.

Climate Change Prediction and Uncertainty

An interesting article about the limitations to regional climate predictions and corresponding irreducible uncertainty:

Nature 428, 593 (08 April 2004); doi:10.1038/428593a
Modellers deplore 'short-termism' on climate
By QUIRIN SCHIERMEIER

"Projections of climate change in, say, Florida or the Alps carry more political weight than vague warnings about global warming. And for almost two decades, specialists in regional climate assessment have sought to make such projections.

But their success has been limited, a meeting of regional-climate modellers in Lund, Sweden, acknowledged last week. Our understanding of regional climate change will remain uncertain, the modellers said. And, some speakers suggested, policy-makers' expectations of precise local projections need to be dampened down."

Full story:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/Dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v428/n6983/full/428593a_fs.html

Climate Change Prediction and Uncertainty

An interesting article about the limitations to regional climate predictions and corresponding irreducible uncertainty:

Nature 428, 593 (08 April 2004); doi:10.1038/428593a
Modellers deplore 'short-termism' on climate
By QUIRIN SCHIERMEIER

"Projections of climate change in, say, Florida or the Alps carry more political weight than vague warnings about global warming. And for almost two decades, specialists in regional climate assessment have sought to make such projections.

But their success has been limited, a meeting of regional-climate modellers in Lund, Sweden, acknowledged last week. Our understanding of regional climate change will remain uncertain, the modellers said. And, some speakers suggested, policy-makers' expectations of precise local projections need to be dampened down."

Full story:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/Dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v428/n6983/full/428593a_fs.html

S&T Policy Jobs

Science and technology policy jobs can be hard to find. Here is a great one at the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University:

http://www.hr.asu.edu/vacancy_notice/vacancy_posting.asp?id=114276

Nanotechnology: Paving the Way for the Little Guy

by T.S. Ryen

The U.S. government must nurture and oversee the burgeoning field on nanotechnology.

Occasionally, scientific and technical discoveries open up vast new disciplines, and herald new inventions that fundamentally change our way of life. For instance, engines, planes, and computers have drastically changed our society in just the last few centuries and even decades. Now, scientists and engineers around the world work feverishly in a field that promises even greater transformations; nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology describes a range of products and procedures that utilize properties at miniscule sizes, less than 1/10th the diameter of a human hair or 100 nanometers. Working at this tiny scale, researchers can take advantage of unique and sometimes entirely unexpected properties to produce tremendous new products. Nanotechnology will produce materials built atom by atom that are vastly stronger and lighter than any in existence today. Doctors may create new drugs that seek out diseased cells. Nanotechnology has already arrived, in fact, in stain resistant Docker’s pants and new systems to purify water.

Much work remains however, and most nanotech products lie many years away, yet a nanotech future is imminent and we had better prepare. For along with the potential for economic gain and furthering U.S. prominence in science and engineering, nanotechnology brings risk as well. Just as cars have brought tremendous personal freedom to travel, yet kill over 40,000 people a year in the U.S.; nanotechnology will have costs as well. The novel properties that make nanotechnology so exciting are not benign, nature’s laws do not play favorites. As pointed out in a recent New York Times article by Barneby Feder, toxicology studies of nanomaterials lag far behind the creation of new ones. Yet even materials like carbon, that seem innocuous, have proven exceptionally toxic in the form of tiny ‘nanotubes’ through the risk of inhalation and suffocation. The health, environmental, and social effects of nanotechnology products are not known, and current practice will not discover harms before it is too late.

The federal government actively funds nanotechnology research. The National Nanotechnology Initiative was begun by President Clinton in 2000, and has funding billions of dollars in research and development efforts. Last week, Congress approved the 21st Century Nanotechnology Development Act, creating a permanent place for nanotechnology within federal science funding, and beginning to address the broader needs of nanotechnology through the National Nanotechnology Program. The bill provides for public input and monies for research into the ethical, legal, and environmental concerns, but does not go far enough.

Research alone will not help nanotechnology mature into a responsible industry. Through this act, the government will continue to fund research based on identifying and containing harms well below research and development activities. Even if this investment were greatly enhanced, there remains no mechanism for action if and when problems are found. Current efforts amount to watching what the kids are doing, but having no authority to act when you catch them misbehaving.

The industry needs a clear statement from the public and government on what precautions are needed while developing nanotechnology products. Lack of clarity has left companies and researchers guessing what measures they should take, creating a system ripe for abuse. The FDA, EPA, and other regulatory agencies should cooperate to take substantial steps to blaze a path to market for nanotechnology products. Straightforward guidelines will ensure that all nanotechnology research contains safeguards that appropriately contain risk, provide efficiency to new product production, and give the public confidence in this emerging market.

Nanotechnology includes real risks and great awards, but a single-minded obsession with either will only result in failure. Simple steps now can have profoundly positive effects on the long-term viability and success of nanotechnology. It’s time to give the little guy a hand.

Opening May 1st

Thanks for dropping by the Science Policy Weblog. The site's under construction now, but we'll be up and running at full speed by the end of April. The site will feature contributions from a wide range of science policy experts and students. If you're interested in policy news, opinion and debate, you've come to the right place!

This site is being created by Tind Shepper Ryen, Mark Lohaus, and Roger Pielke, Jr. at the University of Colorado Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Anyone wishing more information may contact Shep at tind.ryen@colorado.edu.