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I'm So Confused
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Science + Politics January 20, 2008

Why James Watson could use a bit of training in ethical theory
   in Author: Hale, B. | Education | Science + Politics | Science + Politics October 18, 2007

University of Colorado Sustainability Initiatives
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Sustainability February 27, 2007

Hypocrisy Starts at Home
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Energy Policy January 20, 2007

You Just Can’t Say Such Things
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Science + Politics December 11, 2006

Class Copenhagen Consensus Exercise: Feedback Requested
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | International November 24, 2006

Earmarking at CU-Boulder
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | R&D Funding November 09, 2006

Another Policy-Related Faculty Position at CU-Boulder
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education October 26, 2006

Frank Laird on Teaching of Evolution
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science + Politics October 20, 2006

We Are Hiring! Two Faculty Positions!
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education October 12, 2006

Prometheus Class Assignment
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education September 22, 2006

Tenure, University of Colorado, and the Local Newspaper
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education April 25, 2006

University Responsibilities and Academic Earmarks
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | R&D Funding April 10, 2006

Making Sense of University (Re)Organization
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education July 20, 2005

Skewering Academia
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education August 26, 2004

Science Education
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General August 25, 2004

More on Science Literacy and Democracy
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General August 25, 2004

Democracy
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General August 25, 2004

Graduate Student Enrollment
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education July 09, 2004

Publish-and-Perish in Italy
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General June 24, 2004

Brain Drain
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General June 03, 2004

A Public Understanding of Science Paradox
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education May 06, 2004

So You Want to Be a Grad Student?
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education April 29, 2004

On the PhD and Adjunctification
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education April 28, 2004

Academic Orthodoxy
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education April 27, 2004

Grade Inflation
   in Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education April 26, 2004

I'm So Confused

Last week I received an email from our Chancellor, Bud Peterson, warning me and my CU colleagues of the perils of engaging in political advocacy activities as a university employee. Here is an excerpt:

TO: Boulder Campus Teaching & Research Faculty, Staff, Deans, Directors, Dept Chairs

FROM: Office of the Chancellor

SENDER: Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson

DATE: January 18, 2008

SUBJECT: Guidelines on Campaign-Related Activities by Members of the University Community

Dear Colleagues:

In light of the many political campaigns currently, or soon to be, underway at the national, state and local levels, I would like to provide you with a set of guidelines we, as members of the University community, should keep in mind as we consider our own activities and level of involvement. The guidelines were developed by the Office of the University Counsel, and if you have questions, I urge you to contact Counsel's office at 303-492-7481.

GUIDELINES ON CAMPAIGN-RELATED ACTIVITIES BY MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
COMMUNITY

IN GENERAL, UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEES MAY NOT:

* Engage in any activity during working hours designed to urge electors to vote for or against any campaign issues, which include campaigns for public office, state-wide campaign issues or referred measures, and local campaign issues or levies.

* Employees wishing to participate in a campaign activity should take personal leave.

* Use office supplies or equipment, including computers, telephones, printers or facsimile machines to create materials urging electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

* Use their University email accounts to urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue, or to forward materials that urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

* Use University-hosted websites to urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

At the same time Chancellor Peterson has endorsed faculty participation in a January 31 political advocacy effort called "Focus the Nation," which seeks to motivate action on climate change.

Here is how The Colorado Daily describes the activity:

There's also a hint of politics involved: the teach-in is scheduled for Jan. 31, shortly before statewide primaries and caucuses, and is timed to place pressure on political candidates. [Colorado's caucus is Feb. 5].

"We wanted to do it right in the height of the early primaries to ensure that climate change is at the forefront of the issues," [Garrett] Brennan [media director for Focus the Nation] said.

After all, raising awareness about climate change is one thing, he said. Actually solving it is another.

"The solutions are pretty cut and dry," Brennan said. "You're not going to create an art installation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Raising awareness - making it personal to people - is multidisciplinary. The solutions are policies that are going to get passed."

That could be one reason that voter-registration group New Era Colorado will be on campus that day, displaying poster-board profiles that detail each candidate's stance on environmental issues.

The website for Focus the Nation lists the policy actions that it wishes to focus our nation's attention on and for me to discuss in the classroom, and here are a few of the options that I am supposed to provide to my students:

To stabilize global warming at the low end of the possible range (3-4 degrees F) will require deep cuts in global warming pollution beginning in about 2020. In the US, reductions in emissions of roughly 15%-20% per decade will be needed.

Place a tax on each ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) embodied in fossil fuels. Set the tax high enough to initially stabilize nationwide emissions, and then have the tax rise over time, generating steady cuts in pollution. Use tax revenue to (1) compensate lower income Americans for higher energy prices, and (2) to assist impacted workers, especially in coal mining.

To the extent that coal use is unavoidable, only allow coal plants that capture and permanently sequester their emissions in geologic formations.

Cap total carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution emitted in the US through a system of a fixed number of permits; auction the permits to emitters; use auction revenue to (1) compensate lower income Americans for higher energy prices, and (2) to assist impacted workers, especially in coal mining.

By 2030, require by law that all new buildings in the US be "carbon neutral" (no net emissions of global warming pollution from fossil fuel combustion).

Set the emerging biofuels sector on a sustainable basis through: (1) A Low Carbon Fuel Standard that sets a goal for reducing carbon intensity in the total light and heavy duty vehicles fuels mix by10 percent by 2020, and (2) Mount a major effort to research, develop, demonstrate and deploy sustainable biofuels feedstocks and technologies.

Prevent CO2 emissions and remove atmospheric CO2 through forest conservation, management and restoration. Include forests in cap & auction system, allowing the trade of forest emissions reductions that are real, additional, verifiable, and permanent.

For the United States as a whole, adopt California’s standards requiring a 23% reduction in global warming pollution from new vehicles sold by 2012, and a 30% reduction in global warming pollution from new vehicles sold by 2016.

I am so confused.

Focus the Nation is unadulterated political advocacy. But my campus forbids me to use my official time, paid for by taxpayers, to advocate for particular campaign issues. But global warming is so important. But my Chancellor forbids me to engage in political advocacy as part of my job. But my Chancellor is the keynote speaker for our Focus the Nation activities. But my job is to teach not indoctrinate. But I actually agree with many of the proposed policies. But it is not my job to use my platform as a professor to tell students what to think; I am supposed to teach them how to think and come to their own conclusions. But if I don't go along I'll be castigated as one of those bad guys, like a Holocaust denier or slave owner. But doing the right thing is so obvious.

Thank goodness I am on sabbatical.

Why James Watson could use a bit of training in ethical theory

I'll make this short, but check this out:

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners

Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

Yep. You read that correctly. What James Watson doesn't understand is that "all of our social policies" are expressly not "based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours."

Almost none of our social policies are based on intelligence, and they would smack of absurdity if they were. Many of our social policies are based on the protection of individiually held and eventually satisfied or thwarted preferences, which are somehow interpreted as indications of individual welfare; or, and this is a big 'or', respect for persons; both of which have little to do with intelligence. Respect for persons applies to all people, regardless of intelligence -- precisely because intelligence, like height, eye color, hair length, gender, and so on, is irrelevant to the overarching moral concern of human dignity.

In some rare cases, as when one must operate heavy machinery like an automobile or a jumbo jet, or as when one holds another person's health in her hands, we require licensing; but even licensing requirements are not structured around intelligence so much as they are structured around a capacity to fulfill a given set of tasks, like driving a bulldozer.

University of Colorado Sustainability Initiatives

Not long ago we raised some questions about how well the University of Colorado's commitment to sustainability was actually being reflected in actions. Recent remarks by our Chancellor, G.P. "Bud" Peterson, at a conference on sustainability last week suggest that our campus leadership is in fact now taking this issue seriously. Here is an excerpt:

First, on behalf of CU-Boulder I have pledged to participate in the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (PCC), which will solidify our goal of reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. CU-Boulder will begin immediately, a detailed inventory of our current emissions; then, within two years, the campus will outline short and long-term strategies for emission reductions to reach the PCC goal of "climate neutrality" - zero net GHG.

This is a bold challenge, but CU-Boulder has an excellent record to build upon. Today, the University purchases 10 percent of the campus's electricity from renewable sources, and we have reduced our electrical consumption by 13 percent per square foot since 2001. In addition, CU-Boulder has helped to generate 3.2 million rides per year on RTD buses through participation in RTD's Ecopass program, created a recycling program that is diverting 1600 tons from landfills annually (and has saved the campus about $2.4 million in avoided costs over the past three years alone) and pioneered water conservation programs that save over 110 million gallons annually on campus.

Most of all, our students are to be credited for their leadership in helping to make the recently completed ATLAS building at CU-Boulder the first public building in the state of Colorado to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification - one of only seven buildings statewide to achieve such a designation.

With the need for a centralized heating and cooling facility to be built, we must take new and stronger measures to offset our purchase of electricity from sources that increase our carbon output. To assist in this process, I am pleased to announce that in the next fiscal year, we will begin investing $250,000 annually in projects to reduce campus energy consumption, particularly electrical consumption. At some point in the near future, we expect we may seek new funds or a reallocation of a portion of the $250,000 for renewable energy production systems on campus properties or close to the campus.

I am also asking that investments beyond the $250,000 per year be considered for future funding as a pressing campus priority in order to aggressively pursue options for greatly reducing CU-Boulder's GHG emissions. To offset our carbon output in the meantime, our campus has committed to spending an additional $50,000 per year for the purchase of renewable wind energy.

Finally, I am pleased to announce one more measure that I believe will lay the groundwork for even more progress toward sustainability. That is the establishment of the Chancellor's Committee on Energy, Environment and Sustainability (CCEES), a working group to be led by Vice Chancellor for Administration Paul Tabolt, charged with setting sustainability goals for the campus and advising the university on all environmental matters.

Hypocrisy Starts at Home

If you want a sense of how difficult it will be for 6.5 billion people to reduce, much less eliminate, their emissions of fossil fuels, consider this telling vignette from the University of Colorado, my home institution, here in Boulder.

The Daily Camera, our local paper, reports today that the University is going to build a new power plant:

The University of Colorado is making plans for a new plant to replace the aging power facility near the corner of 18th Street and Colorado Avenue.

Originally built in 1909, it's both inefficient and too small to keep up with the university's growth, CU officials say.

The new plant would cost $60 million to $75 million and be running in 2011 at the earliest, said Paul Tabolt, CU's vice chancellor for administration. It is tentatively planned for a spot northeast of the Coors Events Center.

One thing the new power plant wouldn't provide is electricity, which could affect Boulder's ability to adhere to the Climate Action Plan passed by voters in November. That plan involves spending more than $820,000 a year on energy efficiency and other measures to reduce the city's heat-trapping gases 24 percent by 2012 so that Boulder meets Kyoto Protocol goals.

According to the CU Power Plant home page, as recently as 2003 the current power plant, powered by natural gas, not only provided for all campus electricity needs, but it also produced a surplus of power which it provided to the grid.

But due to the high cost of natural gas CU decided to stop using its own natural gas-powered power plant in favor of purchasing power from Xcel Energy. According to a December, 2006 campus study (PDF) of options for providing power:

The recent increase in the price of natural gas along with increasing turbine maintenance costs has forced Utility Services to reconsider the balance of reliability and economics. These increasing costs have compelled Utility Services to shut down both generators except for forced or planned outages.

Why does this matter from the standpoint of the city of Boulder's environmental goals? Again according to the December, 2006 study:

Gross [greenhouse gas] emissions to the environment are increased when the University purchases electricity from Xcel Energy since the electricity comes primarily from coal fired plants instead of the University’s gas fired system. Approximately 80% of Xcel Energy’s electricity is produced by coal fired generating stations, although wind and other sustainable sources are included in their grid areas.Also, Xcel Energy’s new coal fired plant will utilize extensive emission reduction equipment and existing coal fired plants are being retrofitted for emission reduction. These measures will make the emission from coal fired plants nearby equal to the emissions from gas fired plants. Since two alternatives of this study provide for the shutdown of the University’s cogeneration system and the purchase of all electricity from Xcel Energy Utilities, emissions from coal fired plants into the environment may increase under these two alternatives. An alternative is for the University is to purchase all power from wind sources, or Green renewable energy credits (REC’s), which will reduce emissions.

An alternative to this proposal is to maintain the cogeneration system at the University. Maintaining cogeneration capability allows the University the option of offsetting any or all of the coal fired emissions that would be produced if the electricity was purchased from Xcel Energy. This option comes at a significant operational cost on an annual basis, since abandoning the cogeneration system has a cost reduction of nearly $2 million per year.

According to this U.S. EPA website electricity from natural natural gas produces about half of the greenhouse gases that electricity produced from coal. Given the energy needs of the Boulder campus, it is not unreasonable to think that a permanent doubling of its greenhouse gas emissions for electricity will make Boulder's goal of meeting the Kyoto Protocol a moot point.

Here is what The Daily Camera reported about my Environmental Studies compatriot Professor Jim White's description the trade-offs involved, and also the reaction of the Chancellor, Bud Peterson:

Jim White, a CU professor of environmental studies, said generation that doesn't involve renewable energy, such as wind, would take some sheen off CU's reputation as an environmental hotbed. He said CU's national leadership in environmental-science research should be reflected in the university's actions.

"In the end, money drives a lot of what we're talking about," White said. "But I think there's a moral imperative. You've got to balance the money issues with doing the right thing."

CU Chancellor Bud Peterson said the university could buy wind-energy credits for $250,000 a year.

"Given our budget, that's not a lot. We could be bragging about how we're carbon-neutral," Peterson said. "Quite frankly, I'd rather take $250,000 a year and invest it in a way that can make a meaningful difference."

So keep these facts in mind:

*The University will be spending $60-$75 million to build a new power plant for steam.

*The University prides itself on being environmentally conscious.

*The University is about to institutionalize for a decade or longer a doubling of its greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation.

*The city of Boulder has passed a law to meet the Kyoto targets.

*The Chancellor has balked at spending $250,000/year, or 0.3% of the cost of the new power plant on this issue.

Whatever one thinks about climate change or greenhouse gas emissions, this story from the University of Colorado tells you all you need to know about the difficulties of actually reducing emissions even in the context of strong political support, strong public support, and the existence of a law providing a (modest) emissions target and timetable. This is the situation that on a much larger scale Europe is now grappling with, and I suspect, the United States eventually will be as well.

You Just Can’t Say Such Things

Larry Summers learned the hard way that there are some things that you just don’t do in a university setting. Nancy Greene Raine, Chancellor of Thompson River University in Canada who also was a gold medalist skier in the 1960s, is learning the same lessons.

From the Kamloops Daily News last Saturday via a weblog:

University professors outraged by comments from TRU chancellor Nancy Greene Raine, who expressed doubt on climate change in a national media broadcast, met with her in a hastily called session Friday afternoon.

The meeting was arranged by senior administration at Thompson Rivers University following a cascade of e-mails among faculty concerned that her opinion reflects poorly on the university.

Penny Powers, a professor in the school of nursing confirmed earlier Friday she had been called to the meeting with Raine.

'One of the most important goals of a university is to instill in the students an ability to assess the evidence for and against claims of any kind,' she wrote in an e-mail to faculty.

'What kind of role model do we put in place when the chancellor herself gives poorly-considered credence to widely discredited extremist opinions such as these?' . . .

Charles Hays a professor of journalism at TRU, wrote in a message to colleagues that Greene Raine cannot be the symbolic head of the university and make statements that run counter to the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion.

'And as chancellor, she has accepted a role as the symbolic head of the university. In that role, she owes it to the university not to make statements of opinion and expect that they will be perceived as merely the words of a private citizen.'

The Daily News was unable to reach anyone for comment on what took place during the meeting between faculty and Greene Raine.

What was it that the Chancellor said that set off this firestorm?

. . . another big name in Canadian skiing cautioned that people shouldn't push the panic button.

"I am very suspicious now when I see people make blanket statements because there are two sides to every issue," said Nancy Greene Raine, an Olympic gold medallist in the 1960s who has helped develop some of the top skiing resorts in British Columbia since her retirement.

"And in science there's almost never black and white. We don't know what next week's weather going to be. To say in 50 or 100 years, the temperature is going to do this, is a bit of a stretch for me."

Class Copenhagen Consensus Exercise: Feedback Requested

This Post Will Stay at the Top through 24 Nov, New Posts Will Still Appear Below

This semester in my graduate seminar Policy, Science, and the Environment we have spent a good share of the semester replicating and critiquing the Copenhagen Consensus exercise. With this post we’d like to solicit some feedback on the class term projects reporting and justifying their results

For those of you unfamiliar with the Copenhagen Consensus, its homepage describes its efforts as follows:

The Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) is a center under the auspices of the Copenhagen Business School. Through the commissioning and conveying of research, we work to improve the foundation for prioritizing between various efforts to mitigate the consequences of the World's biggest challenges. In particular we focus on the international community's effort to solve the World's biggest challenges and how to do this in the most cost-efficient manner.

The idea is simple, yet often neglected. When financial resources are limited you need to prioritize your effort. Everyday, from policymakers to business leaders, at all levels, priorities are made between investing in one project and not another. However, many times, and particularly at the political level, decisions on priorities are made not based on facts, science or calculations but on which issue gets the most media coverage or is most politisized. The Copenhagen Consensus approach works to improve the foundation of knowledge, to get an overview of research and facts within a given problem, so that the prioritizing of efforts to solve this problem is based on evidence and is comparable with solutions across problems.

We are focusing on repeating the Copenhagen Consensus analysis in my class. This is the first time I’ve attempted this exercise, so this year I am very fortunate to have an extremely hard-working and thoughtful set of students in my class. Most importantly they have been extremely gracious in playing along as guinea pigs with a complete redesign of this course.

Here is what we’ve done. In our class we divided up into four groups – the Wolfpack, Troika, Great Danes, and the Savvy World Affairs Troubleshooters (SWAT). The first task for each group was to identify the two most important topics that were not on the Copenhagen Consensus list of 10 world problems. Each group presented two subjects and the students then voted among the recommendations to identify the two we would add to the list. We added Energy and Land Degradation.

The next task for the groups was to allocate $50 billion among the now 12 issue areas. Their assignment was to produce an allocation as well as a justification for their allocation. We have spent much of the semester focused on two tasks. One was learning from each other about the substantive issues involved with each problem area. The second was discussing the nature of cost-benefit analysis as a tool for producing information relevant to establishing priorities. We focused in particular on valuing human lives and discounting.

In producing their allocations and justifications, the groups were free to use whatever approach or method that they saw fit. We are posting the group reports here online to stimulate some feedback from our readers to the class on their reports. Note that the dictator professor disallowed efforts to spend the money over time or investing it in hopes of gaining a larger return, among other rules put in place to simplify and standardize the assignement. You will find a range of approaches to the allocation and a range of results.

Great Danes final report webpage
Troika final report webpage
SWAT final report webpage
Wolfpack final report webpage

Here is a spreadsheet summarizing the group allocations and comparing the class averages to three exercises run by the Copenhagen Consensus in 2004, 2006, and by the UN.

Whether or not you agree with their allocations, we would find useful any feedback on the group reports. How understandable are they? Are their arguments well supported and well justified? Are their reports credible?

It is a lot of work to read through the class projects, so we are grateful for whatever responses that our readers provide.

In closing, I wish to emphasize that in posting the reports the class is very interested in feedback but also wanted me to emphasize that many of the students are uncomfortable with the notion of cost-benefit analysis, and a few simply reject it as a legitimate basis for decision making altogether. We use the Copenhagen Consensus exercise as a pedagogical tool, not as an endorsement of the approach as a means of setting priorities. If I had $50 billion to spend, I certainly wouldn’t allocate it using the Copenhagen Consensus approach. Nonetheless, as an exercise for learning about global problems, the challenges of priority setting, and the difficulty of trade-offs, at least from the standpoint of the professor, the Copenhagen Consensus has some worthwhile qualities in the classroom. After the semester I’ll be happy to editorialize a bit more on the class and the Copenhagen Consensus, but for now I’d like the attention focused on the work of our students.

Earmarking at CU-Boulder

For about the past two years I have served on the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Federal Relations Advisory Committee (FRAC). One issue that occupies a lot of the time and attention of the FRAC is the pursuit of congressional earmarks. In the FRAC we have discussed earmarking priorities for the campus, heard from faculty who want to pursue an earmark, and heard status reports from our lobbyists on prospects for earmarks. It is safe to say that federal earmarks have been a pretty high priority of the FRAC, at least during my time on the committee.

Long-time readers of Prometheus may recall these two pieces (here and here) from the past 18 months in which I have discussed the issue of congressional earmarks and my sense that the issue needs some attention here at CU-Boulder. However, aside from these pieces that allude to our discussions in the FRAC, in general I have stayed away from publicizing my concerns with Colorado-Boulder’s approach to academic earmarks and sought to work within the system to create effective change. No more.

Last week I resigned from the FRAC not only because I have found the campus approach to dealing with earmarks far too ad hoc for a major university, but because I viewed the process within the FRAC for potentially improving the approach to earmarking to be ineffective. After two years my patience has run out for working within the system and I have decided to simply make my case in a more public manner. So just like a policy wonk I have written an op-ed for our campus paper, which I am certain will make some people on campus a bit unhappy with me. The op-ed appears in the 9 November 2006 issue of the Silver & Gold Record, the newspaper for faculty and staff at the University of Colorado.

I have reproduced the op-ed in full below, and I have also shared it in advance with various CU administrators and members of the faculty. The op-ed seeks to explain the issues involving earmarking and why I think they matter for our campus. I understand already that there will be a response to the op-ed, which we will be happy to post. As usual, reader comments welcomed!

Academic Earmarking at CU-Boulder

Roger Pielke, Jr.
Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
Professor, Environmental Studies
Fellow, CIRES

9 November 2006
Silver & Gold Record
University of Colorado

What separates a good university from a great university? According to Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, "The great universities are in charge of their own destinies and they know it. And they advance their ideas to everyone who will listen to them to acquire the resources necessary to implement their ideas." Here at the University of Colorado-Boulder we have many opportunities to serve as a national leader in creating the 21st century university. One such opportunity lies in how we handle academic earmarks. However, on academic earmarks CU-Boulder is a follower rather than a leader, which has the effects of wasting of limited campus resources and contributing to bad policies at the campus and national levels.

Academic earmarks refer to federal funding obtained outside the normal process of proposal and peer review that most researchers are familiar with. The late Congressman George Brown (D-CA), who was a tireless champion of scientific research, described them as follows, "earmarks are the result of an academic institution using its special access to an influential Member of Congress (with access often facilitated by a high-paid lobbyist) using this advantage to gain a cash award without having to compete for the money or bear public scrutiny. The public and the taxpayer are the real losers as a result of this practice."

Why do universities seek federal earmarks? Well, for one, there is big money available. In 2006 almost $2.5 billion dollars of earmarks were distributed to universities. With budgets tight everywhere, and overall federal research funding peaking after years of increases, it is understandable that universities around the country might try for the easy payoff of a congressional earmark. CU-Boulder is no different.

Last week I resigned from the campus' Federal Relations Advisory Committee (FRAC), chaired by Susan Avery, Vice Chancellor for Research, over the campus policy -- or lack thereof -- on academic earmarking. For much of the past year I, along with the support of several colleagues, have pressed the FRAC to develop and seek adoption of a formal policy on academic earmarking in order to clarify what is a murky, behind-the-scenes process that operates in far-too-ad hoc of a manner for a university seeking excellence. The draft policy that we developed does not forbid earmarking, but it does state that "it is the general practice of the University not to seek and/or accept Congressionally directed or "earmarked" funds, except under specific, well-defined circumstances." The "well-defined circumstances" are clearly described in the draft policy. In effect, the policy would change earmarking from a proactive to a reactive process which would occur only in rare instances when exemptions to the general practice are met.

But when I learned last week that the campus was going to ignore this draft policy in hot pursuit of federal earmarks again this year, I decided that it was in the best interests of all involved for me to simply resign and make my case to the university community outside of the FRAC. There are three reasons why I think that the current CU-Boulder approach to academic earmarks is deeply flawed.

First, the obsessive focus on earmarks is a waste of our collective time and resources. Over the past three years, earmark funding represents about 0.2% of externally-supported research on the Boulder campus. This is trivial. From a cost-benefit perspective alone, the focus on earmarks is inefficient. Consider that the campus would receive more additional research funding simply by winning 1-2 additional competitive grants each year. Given the admirable success rates of CU faculty in securing external funding this would only mean submitting a total of 5-10 more grants on an annual basis among its 1,000 faculty members (and 1,500 additional members of its research staff). Our federal relations efforts would be far better spent on activities like ensuring that each member of the Colorado congressional delegation is invited to campus each year and warmly received, on providing grant-writing support and training for faculty who prepare the grant proposals that provide 99.8% of campus sponsored research, and by facilitating the interaction of campus researchers with agency officials in Washington, among many other worthwhile activities.

A second issue is that the focus on earmarks contributes to pathological national science policies. In my short time spent in George Brown's office in 1991 I became convinced of the merit of his views that academic earmarking does far more for members of Congress than for the scientific enterprise. For more than 20 years the American Association of Universities has -- with little success -- sought to stem the tide of academic earmarking. Former Congressman David Minge (D-MN) wrote in 2001 that academic earmarks are "vicious prostitutions of the political process that are practiced on a bipartisan basis," a view widely shared among scholars and observers of science and technology policy. To the extent that CU-Boulder contributes to pathological academic earmarking, we are contributing to federal science policies that eat away at academia’s cherished principles of peer review and accountability. By taking a leadership role CU-Boulder can perhaps help in some small way to correct this policy failure. In any case, the economic benefits of taking a leadership role would far exceed any financial loss resulting from an earmarking policy that limited the ability of CU-Boulder to pursue earmarks. Consider that in 2006 99.98% of academic earmarks went to institutions other than CU-Boulder.

Third, even for the minority who might reject the argument that earmarking is bad science policy, our current on-campus approach is still left wanting. Who among us gets to pursue an earmark? By what criteria are earmark opportunities selected and scarce university resources and political capital devoted to pursuing them? How much time and money is spent on campus to pursue earmarks? If you don't know the answers to these questions, then you are not alone. I have spent the past two years on the FRAC and the answers to these questions still remain unclear to me. Absent transparent policy and procedures for earmarking CU leadership leaves itself open to perceptions of cronyism and favoritism, irrespective of the reality. At a minimum, the lack of a formal campus policy governing earmarking works against equity, accountability, and openness.

CU-Boulder strives for excellence. But excellence is unlikely to result if we are following rather than leading. Achieving greatness demands that we clearly define our values and what those values mean for our actions. On the issue of academic earmarking, CU-Boulder has an opportunity to lead the nation. Or we could follow the crowd simply because it is the easy thing to do. We are in charge of our own destiny, and we know it. But are we a good university or a great university?

-end-

Another Policy-Related Faculty Position at CU-Boulder

The Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder announces that it is recruiting a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Environmental Ethics. We are particularly interested in candidates with strong interdisciplinary interests and the ability to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental ethics and the role of values in environmental policy-making. Candidates specializing in any areas of research and disciplinary background are welcome to apply. An earned terminal degree in the field of research specialization is required. The ability to interact with other departments is desirable. The Program is described at http://www.colorado.edu/envirostudies/ . Applicants should send a dossier that includes a CV and a statement of research and teaching interests, and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent, to Environmental Ethics Search Chair, Environmental Studies Program, 397 UCB, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0397. Review of completed applications will begin December 1, 2006, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

Frank Laird on Teaching of Evolution

Frank Laird, of the University of Denver and a faculty affiliate of our Center, has a thought-provoking essay on the teaching of evolution over at the CSPO website titled, "Total Truth and the Ongoing Controversy Over the Teaching of Evolution." Here is how he starts:

The 2005 legal decision in Dover, PA, and the elections for the Kansas State Board of Education, are only the most visible recent skirmishes in the controversy over teaching alternatives to evolution in public schools. Discussions of this controversy mix and sometimes confuse three distinct and separate, though related, processes: what teachers teach, what students learn, and what citizens believe. In a recent Pew poll (2005, pp. 1-2), 42% of Americans said they believed “that life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.” Proponents of teaching evolution often point to such data as evidence that evolution needs stronger support in the classroom to ward off anti-science trends in society.

However, thinking that you can change what citizens believe by changing what teachers teach is too big a conceptual leap. While there is certainly a relationship between teaching, learning, and belief, it is by no means simple or linear. By separating those processes out we can better understand them. The study of what citizens believe is a huge social question. Scholars have compiled huge amounts of polling data on what citizens believe, though interpreting that data comes with problems, such as assuming that belief is measured by response to questions instead of processes that get citizens to reflect and deliberate on questions. But in any case we know more about what people believe that why they believe it. While formal high school education may have some influence, so will family background, religious affiliation, occupation, race, income, and a host of unquantifiable cultural beliefs and ways of sorting true from false claims, what Sheila Jasanoff has called civic epistemology (Jasanoff 2005).

The second process, what students learn in biology class is a pedagogical question, one that those who study science teaching and learning are most qualified to answer. Anyone who teaches knows that there is not a simple relationship between what teachers teach and what students learn. Does discussing intelligent design (ID) lead to students learning less or more about evolution?

This Perspective focuses on what teachers teach. This in fact is the nub of the evolution controversy and viewing it as an institutional question can help to clarify the issues surrounding it. Strengthening the institutions that govern what teachers teach is both politically more feasible and ethically more defensible than trying to change what citizens believe.

Read the whole thing here.

We Are Hiring! Two Faculty Positions!

Please share this far and wide!

Two Assistant/Associate Faculty Positions in Science and Technology Policy Research, CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder announces that it is recruiting for two faculty positions at the assistant/associate (with tenure) level in science and technology policy research with a focus on decision making under uncertainty. One position would be rostered in the Graduate School and within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), the parent Institute of the Policy Center. Departmental affiliation for this position is open. The second position will be rostered in the College of Arts & Sciences in its Environmental Studies Program with a formal affiliation with CIRES and the Policy Center. We are particularly interested in candidates with strong interdisciplinary interests and the ability to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in science and technology policy and/or science and technology studies. Area of research specialization and disciplinary background are open. Required qualifications are a PhD in a cognate field. A major commitment to and demonstrated excellence in research and the ability to secure external research funding are expected, as well as commitment to excellence in teaching at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

Applicants should send letter of interest, curriculum vitae, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and three names for letters of reference to Karen Dempsey, CIRES Human Resources via email: jobs@cires.colorado.edu. Questions can be sent to Prof. Roger Pielke Jr., Chair, Search Committee for Science and Technology Policy Research: pielke@cires.colorado.edu.
Review of completed applications will begin December 1, 2006 and continue until the position is filled. For more information about CIRES, see http://cires.colorado.edu, and the Science and Technology Policy Center /cires.colorado.edu/science/centers/policy/

The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

Prometheus Class Assignment

A university class with about 90 students has been assigned Prometheus, and several other weblogs, as part of its reading assignments this semester. Welcome! The course instructor has emailed me to ask if I would write up a short note about what purpose our weblog serves and to offer some pointers to a few key posts on various topics. This seems like a worthwhile exercise, so here goes.

Prometheus began as a term project of a student, Shep Ryen, who like many of our student since graduated has gone on to power and influence ;-) He named it, came up with the design, and got it off to a running start. We have always seen Prometheus as taking advantage of the blog format to create a place where we can discuss a wide range of issues of science and technology policy. In practice, the site focuses on the subjects on which its contributors write about. I’ve been the most active blogger and since a lot of my work focuses on climate policy (and climate science policy), many of my posts wind up on climate policy issues. A recurring interest of mine, and subject of a forthcoming book, is the role of scientists in policy and politics.

We never anticipated a wide readership, being a niche subject area that sometimes delves into the minutia of science-policy issues. But we do have what I have often characterized as the best commenters in the blogoshpere on any site on any subject. In the comments you’ll find leading academics, reporters, policy makers, and informed general readers. The comments are a tremendous asset and by themselves worth the effort to run the blog. Not everyone agrees with everything written here, and that is I think a compelling strength of the dialogue.

The blog serves many purposes. It obviously serves an outreach function, helping us to promote our Center’s research. It serves as a resource where we’d like to store ideas and references. It serves as a test drive facility for ideas and arguments. It serves as a salon where we can engage in meaningful conversations and learn from each other. It serves as a place where people who disagree on topics, like hockey sticks or hurricanes, have engaged one another directly or indirectly. It also serves as a resource where we can focus attention on issues of science in society, a topical area that does not have too many venues for such open discussion that the blog format is ideally suited for. In short it serves a lot of purposes, and we continue to do it because it has been rewarding for us.

Some specific links requested for the class:

My publications: Here.

About me: Here.

On the hockey stick debate

Is the “Hockey Stick” Debate Relevant to Policy? 17 May 2005

On The Hockey Stick 6 July 2005

Invitation to McIntyre and Mann - So What? 31 October 2005

Challenge Update 1 November 2005

Does the hockey stick "matter"? 14 November 2005 Post by Steve McIntyre

Why Does the Hockey Stick Debate Matter? 14 November 2005 Post by Ross McKitrick

Reflections on the Challenge 21 November 2005

For the full list of "hockey stick" posts, including more recent stuff on the congressional hearings, Wegman and NRC reports, please search the site for "hockey stick."

On the hurricane debate

The Other Hockey Stick 22 August 2005

Consensus Statement on Hurricanes and Global Warming 21 February 2006

Forbidden Fruit: Justifying Energy Policy via Hurricane Mitigation15 March 2006

Climate and Societal Factors in Future Tropical Cyclone Damages in the ABI Reports 24 April 2006

More Peer-Reviewed Discussion on Hurricanes and Climate Change 15 May 2006

Scientific Leadership on Hurricanes and Global Warming 25 July 2006

And there is a ton of stuff not linked here, just search the site for "hurricanes."

Tenure, University of Colorado, and the Local Newspaper

Many of my colleagues at the University of Colorado are convinced that our local Boulder newspaper, The Daily Camera, carries some grudge against the university. Today’s front page headline in the Camera on the release yesterday of a report on tenure here does not hurt their case:

CU tenure flawed: Independent study says it is too hard to fire tenured professors

Here is how the Chronicle of Higher Education headlined their coverage of the same report:

Outside Report Applauds Tenure System at U. of Colorado

Interesting difference in perspective. For those interested in the tenure report itself, you can find it here.

University Responsibilities and Academic Earmarks

In yesterday’s Daily Camera (our local newspaper here in Boulder) Todd Neff had a good article on a complicated subject – academic earmarks. Earmarks are directed spending by members of Congress to their district. Earmarks are typically not a large amount when compared to the discretionary budget, but they have been growing in recent years and have caught the attention of a number of members of Congress. Historically, earmarks have been an acceptable and important mechanism for members of Congress to “bring home the bacon” to their districts. Earmarks have to be taken out of existing programs, and thus represent a reshuffling of spending priorities from that originally authorized by Congress. For some programs, like those related to transportation, earmarking is expected and fairly typical (although there are exceptions).

“Academic” earmarks refer to directed spending on research and development programs. Many researchers oppose such earmarks because they circumvent most institutional mechanisms of peer review and thus place politics above merit. In addition, academic earmarks can materially affect the performance of government research programs if the money for the earmark comes from an existing research program. From the perspective of a government program manager, an academic earmark looks very much like an unexpected budget cut. None of this is to say that good work can’t be done under an earmark, only that it introduces a very different mechanism for resource allocation than a merit-based, strategic-focused approach that is difficult enough under ordinary circumstances.

Back to Boulder. It turns out that some of the budgets of NOAA labs here in Boulder are being earmarked, effectively resulting in cuts to programs core to the NOAA mission. In the Daily Camera article I am quoted suggesting that universities need to take a greater role in policing academic earmarks, or else they should not be surprised when in some situation scientific excellence is subsumed to jobs and money. Here is an excerpt:

A 50 percent budget cut is delaying upgrades for supercomputers for modeling hurricanes and improving storm prediction.

An effort to understand how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide the United States generates is limping along because of a 30 percent cut.

The sole U.S. civilian laboratory dedicated to monitoring and predicting solar storms, which can knock out communications satellites and trigger power blackouts, is running on 44 percent less money than in 2005.

With the war in Iraq costing more than $4.5 billion a month and entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security on the rise, times are tough for federal "discretionary" programs, which include everything from scientific research to the FBI.

But several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initiatives in Boulder are less victims of shrinking budgets than of political horse-trading that increasingly threatens the long-term health of strategic U.S. science programs, some scientists and policy-makers say.

Some of the nation's core climate-research efforts, based in Boulder, have seen their budgets cut an average of 15 percent this year, lab officials say. That's far more than the 8.2 percent drop in NOAA's overall research budget, which fell from about $414 million in 2005 to $380 million this year.

Earmarking science

Earmarking, known technically as "directed spending" and sometimes derisively as "pork," has been around since the earliest days of the republic. It involves legislators directing specific projects to their districts without giving the responsible federal agencies a say.

In its "2006 Congressional Pig Book," released last week, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste reported 9,964 earmarks it regards as pork, worth $29 billion this year. That's up from 958 such earmarks worth $12.5 billion in 1996.

"If you're generating earmarks for districts directed into projects and the investment is well-supported, that's the way Congress has operated for 200 years," said U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs.

Mark Udall represents Boulder as well. Here is another excerpt which describes the effects of earmarks on the NOAA labs in Boulder:

The Bush administration and both the House and Senate versions of spending bills requested $13 million for NOAA's High Performance Computing & Communications office. The budget ended up being halved compared to last year's.

The cut happened in a conference committee in November, where a cadre of senators and House members hashed out differences in the legislative bodies' separate bills. A 212-page conference report then went to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote. There was no explanation for the cut.

"It was killed in conference, which is very tough to deal with," said Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald, acting director of NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, which oversees six NOAA atmospheric research divisions.

The Boulder supercomputers are key tools in improving forecasters' ability to predict weather in general, and severe storms and hurricanes in particular. The cuts came less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.

MacDonald said NOAA has delayed an upgrade of the supercomputers for nine months and hopes the same cuts don't happen again in 2007.

The same conference report channeled $10.3 million in earmarks to nine programs, money that would otherwise go straight to NOAA.

The conference report offers little hint of what those nine earmarks mean and no mention of their legislative sponsors. One line item, for $1 million, says simply: "Univ of AL Huntsville Climate Research." Another, also for $1 million, reads: "Drought Research Study."

University of Alabama at Huntsville professor John Christy said the climate research involves installing weather stations that will report hourly weather information throughout Alabama.

They relate to the study of climate, generally a long-term affair, in that the stations will provide such information for decades, he said.

Christy said the drought study would assess how irrigation could boost corn production in a state that must import from the Midwest 95 percent of the grain consumed by its 1 billion chickens.

"My feeling is that we were provided with this funding because we were going to make a tremendous contribution to the state of Alabama with it," Christy said.

Such projects are a rounding error compared to earmarks at NASA, which totaled $271 million. But they had a big impact in Boulder. James Butler, deputy director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division here, said his division's budget is down an average of 15 percent this year.

Among its activities, the lab monitors carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists believe are causing global warming. The division's Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group, the world's foremost monitor of global carbon-dioxide levels for a half-century, saw its budget slashed 30 percent.

Butler said among the programs the group is paring back is a network of sensors on radio towers and in small aircraft to study how much carbon dioxide land and vegetation absorbs versus how much the nation's collective smokestacks and tailpipes emit.

"This is critical. If we're going to learn about how we're increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we need to know this," Butler said.

NOAA's Chemical Sciences Division in Boulder also faces a 15 percent budget cut, said scientist Richard Lataitis. He said a program focusing on California's torrential rains to connect weather and climate phenomena was cut from $450,000 to about $50,000.

NOAA's Space Environment Center saw its budget drop from $7.2 million to $4 million in the congressional conference report, said Ron Zwickl, the center's acting director. The center monitors and develops systems to forecast solar storms that can wreak havoc with satellite communications and electric utilities.

He said the center is coping without layoffs this year but that another year of such cuts would be "nearly fatal."

Given that earmarking is an established practice in Congress, is there really a problem here? And, if so, what might be done? The Daily Camera article offers some perspectives on these questions, starting with a frank admission from Congressman Udall about the political realities of earmarking.

Given the political realities of Congress, Udall said complaining about earmarks is a sensitive issue: "How do I do it in such a way that there's no retaliation in the next budget cycle?" Udall asked.

He said the earmarking process needs structural change to make the decisions less personal, more transparent in terms of their purpose and their congressional sponsor, and subject to an individual vote on their own merits.

The lobbying reform bill the Senate passed 90-8 on March 29 addresses earmarks. The bill does require that "the essential governmental purpose for the earmark" and the name of the legislator backing it be published at least 24 hours before a vote on conference reports.

"It's better than nothing," Udall said.

CU's Pielke said universities should also take action against certain earmarking. He cited the University of Michigan as an example of an institution with strict policies that limit earmarking.

"I don't see Congress necessarily making a distinction between a science project and a road project," Pielke said. "So it's up to the universities on this issue."

On a Web page explaining its policy, Michigan officials say scientific earmarking "wastes taxpayer money and slows the scientific progress that would be made if the same sums were allocated on a merit basis."

"It's something I've pushed at the University of Colorado," Pielke said. "It hasn't gotten legs so far."

From where I sit universities, and perhaps university associations like the American Association of Universities, should consider developing guidelines for earmarking. Specifically, under what circumstances will a university pursue an earmark? What federal programs are appropriate targets for an earmark? What projects should be pursued? What process goes on within the university to determine which faculty member’s project gets put forward for an earmark? From my experience, such questions are uncomfortable at best for universities to debate and discuss.

I sit on the Federal Relations Advisory Committee for the University of Colorado, where we discuss earmarks a lot, and it seems to me that most faculty members are nervous about earmarking, unless it is their pet project being earmarked. It also seems that university administrators have no problem with earmarking, typically arguing that “everyone else is doing it, so we don’t want to be left out.” Of course the reality is that earmarking is never a large amount of resources when compared to the institution’s overall research funding.

What might be done? One model might be the University of Michigan, which has adopted a policy on earmarking. It states:

The University of Michigan supports scientific peer review as the primary and best mechanism to allocate Federal research funds. Accordingly, it is the general practice of the University not to seek and/or accept Congressionally directed or "earmarked" funds.

The Michigan policy does allow for earmarking under certain situations:

In rare instances, the University may choose to undertake efforts to secure directed funding from Congress. Exceptions to the University anti-earmarking policy should be made only when agreed upon by the Vice President for Research, in consultation with the Vice President for Government Relations, the Provost, the University federal relations staff and other executive officers, as deemed appropriate, and with approval of the President. Such exceptions should be limited and made only when based on the considerations listed below and the proposed initiative is so meritorious that the responsible course is to proceed.

The whole policy can be found here.

It seems to me that a leading research university, like Michigan or Colorado, should eschew academic earmarks in general. These universities are so successful in raising research support through traditional means that earmarking smacks of a bit of greed. Further, the negative effects on the R&D enterprise, as illustrated by the effects on the NOAA budget, are far greater than whatever benefits result from the redirected funds. I’ve suggested to our Federal Relations Advisory Committee that we adopt a policy like the Michigan policy; so far, it hasn’t received much support, though I haven’t pushed on this nearly as hard as I could.

Making Sense of University (Re)Organization

John V. Lombardi, chancellor and a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has a great essay on making sense of the seeming nonsense of the bureaucratic structure of universities. He writes,

"How universities are organized can confuse not only the sympathetic, casual observer of higher education but students and staff members as well... Insiders know, however, that all of these organizational permutations reflect not only significant changes in the universe of knowledge but also internal structures of personality, politics, money and power as well as the external pressures of fad, fashion or funding. Academic reorganization is a frequent exercise on university campuses, and often generates tremendous controversy because each effort signifies a potential for gain or loss in academic positioning for money, power and prestige. Although, to outsiders, the warfare that these reorganizations frequently provoke can often appear out of proportion to the stakes involved, insiders know that organizational structure can influence internal distributions of resources. Even more importantly for many faculty and students, the organizational structure serves as a prestige map."

Read the whole essay.

Skewering Academia

In an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, James E. McWilliams, an assistant professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos, lays into the academic enterprise. He writes,

“The few history PhDs who manage to land full-time academic jobs quickly learn that the easiest way to become distinguished in the profession is through a lifetime of scholarly dedication to a single, defining and often very small idea -- one that usually has no bearing on contemporary events. That's precisely how to "make a contribution" -- the be-all and end-all for a serious academic. More often than not, though, that contribution is to our own job security and status within a small club rather than to a public debate badly in need of a broader historical perspective.”

Although I empathize with his frustrations, I don’t think that all of academia is as bleak an enterprise as McWilliams suggests. In particular, academia diverges from McWilliams' characterization with the growth of interdisciplinary, policy-focused graduate programs that are educating a new cadre of graduate students on how to be a specialist in the integration of knowledge as a contribution to real-world concerns. One such program is the University of Colorado’s now-3-year-old experiemnt in its interdisciplinary graduate Environmental Studies Program. But there many others as well.

Science Education

We often hear calls for society to become more informed about science. A letter in Nature this week turns this around and calls for scientists to become more informed about society. An excerpt:

“Recent calls by the United Nations (Nature 430, 5; 2004) for stronger science input to support aid policy, in particular for feeding the hungry, are welcome. In the United Kingdom, organizations such as the Department for International Development (DFID) need to improve their use of the science base. But there is also scope for the scientific community to improve its understanding of development issues surrounding agricultural policy, if scientists are to be productively engaged in fighting world hunger and poverty.”

Thanks to SciDev.net for the link.

More on Science Literacy and Democracy

In today’s New York Times, Nicolas Kristof has a column on gene therapies and its effects on people and humankind.

He closes his essay with this comment:

“Perhaps the most important and complex decision in the history of our species is approaching: in what ways should we improve our genetic endowment? Yet we are neither focused on this question nor adequately schooled to resolve it.

So we desperately need greater scientific literacy, and it's past time for a post-Sputnik style revitalization of science education, especially genetics, to help us figure out if we want our descendants to belong to the same species as we do.”

If we have $1.00 to spend on “the most important and complex decision in the history of our species” I wonder what fraction it would make sense to devote to spend on a massive campaign of public education, versus other possible investments.

Kristof provides no data, but I’d guess his call for public education is grounded in his underlying assumptions of democracy (see my post earlier today) rather than any empirical evidence that such campaigns actually led to better societal outcomes. But I’d welcome any evidence to the contrary.

Democracy

The New Yorker online has an excellent article by Louis Menand on voting and democracy, or at least how these issues look through the lens of political scientists.

Menand writes:

“Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government…”

Political scientists, at least, have given up on the notion that the public can come to well-informed judgments about political candidates, much less complicated issues of policy. The perspective of political scientists raises difficult questions about the viability of “public education” as a strategy for coming to grips with complicated issues like global climate change, genetic technologies, and international terrorism.

But if people aren’t the source of wisdom in a democracy, then where does it come from? Menad offers two alternatives in the form of three theories:

“All political systems make their claim to legitimacy by some theory, whether it’s the divine right of kings or the iron law of history. It’s not that people know nothing. It’s just that politics is not what they know. In the face of this evidence, three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as “the will of the people” is concerned, are essentially arbitrary… “

In other words, where the public is concerned, good luck.

Menand summarizes a second perspective in the form of two versions of a theoretical perspective I have called in my classes a “realist’s view of democracy,” using the concepts and ideas of political scientist E. E. Schattsschneider.

“A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information and beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is élite opinion… The third theory of democratic politics is the theory that the cues to which most voters respond are, in fact, adequate bases on which to form political preferences. People use shortcuts—the social-scientific term is “heuristics”—to reach judgments about political candidates, and, on the whole, these shortcuts are as good as the long and winding road of reading party platforms, listening to candidate debates, and all the other elements of civic duty.”

From this perspective, the public can and does play a critical role in a democracy, but that role is mediated by experts, who comprise one part of the elite. How we think about democracy shapes how we think about the role of science, and information more generally, in policy making. All claims about science and its significance in decision making reflect a deeper set of assumptions about democracy, namely that either the public can address complex issues (which has been dismissed by most political scientists), that the public is just ignorant and cannot effectively participate in decision making (a pure elitist perspective), or a more realistic perspective, that experts play a mediating role that allows the public to participate meaningfully in the making of important decisions. Statements related to science and technology policy that invoke public education, literacy, communication, or participation ultimately are grounded (explicitly or implicitly) in one of these views, and I would suggest, are sometimes simply a result of these underlying assumptions about how a democracy ought to work.

The Menand article is well worth reading.

Graduate Student Enrollment

Science magazine reports today:

“Graduate student enrollment in science and engineering (S&E) programs across the United States reached a record high in the fall of 2002, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The 6.1% increase, to 455,000, is driven by rising numbers of U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and foreign students already in the country and comes despite a 6% drop in the number of first-time foreign students.”

Surely this recond number of graduate students is related to record high funding for science and technology, and the corresponding availability of funded graduate student positions. Could it be that oft-expressed concern about a shortage of graduate students in science and engineering is just a euphemism for calling for larger S&T budgets?

Publish-and-Perish in Italy

The Scientist has an interesting opinion piece by a group of European researchers on how decisions are made about tenure in Italy. An excerpt:

“…internal politics, cronyism, and exchanges of favors among committee members are strongly facilitated in Italy by the very limited weight that the rules assign to scientific excellence. What would be the motivation for doing high-quality research when only 10 (in some Universities only five!) "publications" are sufficient, even for full professorship, and presentations to congresses (with no peer review) may carry almost the same weight as full papers? … All this helps explain why only 10.3% of the EU scientific publications come from Italy, compared to 15.2% from France, 20.3% from Germany, and 23.7% from the UK.”

Read the whole thing here.

Brain Drain

In last week’s Science magazine, Jeffrey Mervis evaluates recent claims of a crisis in the supply of scientists from overseas. The subtitle reads, “Fears that U.S. graduate programs in the sciences are no longer attracting their share of the world's brightest students don't square with the facts.”

A Public Understanding of Science Paradox

Concern about the low level of scientific literacy in the United States is a popular topic within the scientific community. While there are many reasons why scientific literacy might matter, one reason for concerns about scientific literacy is an expectation that increased public understanding will lead to greater public support for investments in research and development. As a 2002 NIST Workshop on public communication of science and technology suggested,

“A wide range of scientific institutions—from corporations to hospitals to government agencies—have initiated science communications programs for the public because they believe that increased knowledge of the organization’s role in advancing research will improve the institution’s reputation, making it easier to gain public support for other organizational goals.”

But here is the paradox: Public support for science is already extremely high, even as scientific literacy is low. There simply isn’t much room for the public to view science and technology any more favorably. For example, a 1999 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found, “Americans overwhelmingly say science and technology, medical advances and education will play major roles is creating a better future.” And the just-released NSF S&E Indicators report concludes, “The vast majority of Americans recognize and appreciate the benefits of science and technology (S&T). They are aware of the role new discoveries play in ensuring their health and safety and the health of the economy…The public is also highly supportive of the government's role in fostering and funding scientific research.”

And such support has been very consistent over recent decades:

“In 2001, 81 percent of NSF survey respondents agreed with the following statement: ‘Even if it brings no immediate benefits, scientific research that advances the frontiers of knowledge is necessary and should be supported by the Federal Government.’. The stability of this measure of public support for basic research is noteworthy. The level of agreement with this statement has consistently been around 80 percent since 1985. In addition, a consistently small percentage of respondents have held the opposite view. In 2001, 16 percent disagreed with the statement”

While there may be important reasons to support improving scientific literacy among the public, motivating grassroots support for increasing science budgets does not appear to be among them. In fact, if the public learned more about science and how science actually works, rather than the stereotypes and caricatures that are commonly believed, support for science might actually decrease. Think about that.

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.

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.

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.

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.