- Prometheus: R&D Funding Archives

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July 26, 2008

Budget Doubling Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

For some, this will be old news, as data like this has been available for a few years. For others, read and take heed as the physical sciences stagger toward a doubling of their federal research budgets.

In what might be described as the only success of the science and technology advocacy communities in the post-Cold War period, the budget of the National Institutes of Health was doubled during the last part of the Clinton Administration and ending during the first years of the current Bush Administration. What was greeting with huzzahs and kudos a few years ago has left a sour aftertaste in the mouth of many, in part because a doubling path was not sustainable, and nobody planned for it.

Some of the sobering details, taken from the latest Senate Appropriations Subcommittee report concerning the NIH. You can find the full report online. (Hat Tip, American Institute of Physics)

"Since the end of the 5-year doubling effort, in fiscal year 2003, funding for the National Institutes of Health [NIH] has declined, in real terms, by 12.3 percent. The average researcher now has a less than 1 in 5 chance of getting an NIH grant application approved, and the average age at which researchers receive their first RO1 grant has risen to 42."

Lessons?

Graduate students entering the field during times of flush federal funding will be disappointed. I'd rather have not enough Ph.D.s than a plethora of bitter ones infiltrating the ranks of post-docs and depressing wages across the board. I am concerned that the increasing ages of first R01 may lead to a situation where the best and brightest get out, leaving those in faculty positions who are less than capable of inspiring the next generations.

Unless you can guarantee a doubling will *not* be followed by essentially flat funding (which given inflation, is really a net decline), expectations will be unrealistically raised, and then dashed.

The physical sciences and engineering are really in trouble, if the fields that have seen the greatest increases in enrollment (and in participation from underrepresented groups) cannot convert significant percentages of its undergraduates into graduate students. Now, I'm one of the minority that thinks the focus on Ph.D. production is too narrow, but I don't control the rhetoric in play.

"The administration's budget ignores these warning signs and proposes to freeze NIH funding at the fiscal year 2008 level of $29,229,524,000. Under this plan, the success rate for research project grants would fall to 18 percent, the lowest level on record."

There is plenty to castigate the current administration about on science and technology, as well as research and development. However, neither a Gore Administration nor a Kerry Administration would have necessarily avoided this basic course. At best they would have kept funding up with inflation. After all, the agency's budget was just doubled. A reasonable expectation would have been that the agency would need some adjustment time to demonstrate that they were able to manage the additional resources effectively, and that even more new resources were necessary. Anything else comes off sounding like the NIH (and its advocates) are really just Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors.

The Committee rejects the administration's approach and instead recommends an overall NIH funding increase of $1,025,000,000, for a total of $30,254,524,000. That amount would allow NIH funding to keep up with the biomedical inflation rate (3.5 percent) for the first time in 6 years. It would also increase the estimated number of new, competing research project grants to 10,471- the most ever at NIH

Even when the Republicans were in the majority, Congress has been a pretty solid failure in its ability to see that science and technology funding requests survive to the final budget. This lack of will is likely part of the reason Congress enjoys a smaller approval rating than the President.

My personal preference would be for a funding strategy that better reflects investments than gorging. But I am afraid that would take a revision of federal budget laws and processes. And if there is anything that leads the government in dysfunction, it is the federal budget process.

Oddly enough, the stutter steps that the physical sciences doubling is taking may be a better struggle than what NIH and its communities are going through. Better that programs struggle now rather than they have full coffers that disappear after a few years. With any luck, smart program officers and division directors can try and prepare their communities to make effective long-term investments for the dry times that will follow this doubling. From a human resources perspective, professional science masters degrees are something I strongly encourage. Read more about them here.

Posted on July 26, 2008 08:48 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Bruggeman, D. | R&D Funding

July 15, 2008

Too Many Atmospheric Scientists . . . Surprise, Surprise

In the current issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society John Knox concludes (PDF):

. . . if the projections are accurate: the number of undergraduate meteorology degree recipients will increasingly exceed the number of meteorology employment opportunities into the next decade. Thus, given recent trends and future projections, the growth of the U.S. undergraduate meteorology population is potentially unsustainable in terms of bachelor’s degree–level employment within meteorology.

With respect to the job market for meteorologists he finds another solid indication of a glut:

Meteorology graduates’ salaries in this national database are much closer to those in the traditionally glutted and underpaid humanities fields than to salaries for graduates with computer science, physics, geology, or mathematics degrees.

Knox indicates that this situation has developed because the atmospheric sciences community has ignored the demand side of the equation when pressing for an ever increasing supply of students, and may foreshadow a similar glut at the graduate level:

the quantitative results of this article can be construed to indicate that we have entered a period of chronic oversupply of undergraduate meteorologists. This oversupply has arguably come about because the mechanisms that generate interest in our field (e.g., unprecedented media emphasis on weather) are mostly uncoupled to the mechanisms of demand. Media coverage of weather and climate topics can inspire throngs of students to pursue meteorology as a career; it is specifically cited by UNC Charlotte meteorologists as a reason for their program’s spectacular growth (www.charlotte. com/274/story/103334.html). But widespread media attention does not magically create future employment opportunities for these students within meteorology. If, in turn, this situation translates into a future boom in graduate school enrollments and Ph.D. production, the current parlous state of “grantsmanship” in our science as described by the critiques of Carlson (2006) and Roulston (2006) would seem tame by comparison.

In the same issue, Jeff Rosenfield, Editor-in-Chief of BAMS editorializes (not online, at p. 773) that he was “surprised” by the data. He should not have been. In 2002 I engaged in a series of exchanges on the pages of BAMS on exactly this question in response to a paper by Vali, Anthes, et al. warning of a shortage of PhD atmospheric scientists. They argued that one solution was to boost the undergraduate ranks in the atmospheric sciences:

we as a community should seek ways to increase the number of qualified applicants. Because the number of atmospheric scientists required under any reasonable scenario is small compared to the total number of students in undergraduate education, a modest increase in the effort to recruit students from other disciplines could have a major impact in a relatively short period of time.

In response, I argued that any discussion of a shortfall in supply of atmospheric sciences professionals needed also to be accompanied by some understanding of the market demand for people trained with this expertise, something that Vali , Anthes, et al. neglected to discuss, and Knox identifies as a root factor in the present mismatch of supply and demand. I argued that the atmospheric sciences were risking committing the exact same mistake made by the NSF when it proclaimed a looming shortage of scientists in the 1990s. I concluded:

The science and technology community generally experienced loss of credibility in the 1990s when a number of prominent figures claimed a looming shortage of scientists. Leaders in the atmospheric sciences are in a position to use experience to avoid such errors in future assessments of the labor market. In particular, considerable care must be taken in raising expectations of potential students and policymakers about the future prospects for employment.

In reply, Vali and Anthes dismissed the importance of any consideration of demand, raised the "idealistic" vision of the free pursuit of knowledge, and ended with a jingoistic appeal to the need for more native U.S. scientists. To this I rejoined that there was indeed data available that portended a potential oversupply of atmospheric scientists, and this data was ignored at some risk. No one should be surprised at the current labor market situation for atmospheric scientists.

Now it turns out that the community faces an oversupply of undergraduates, depressed salaries, and a potential loss of credibility. Of course, the entirely predictable next step in this situation will be for the atmospheric sciences community to bemoan the fact that research budgets have not kept pace with the supply of trained atmospheric scientists, and call for an increase in federal R&D to create new opportunities. And in this way, the politics of science funding go round and round.

May 12, 2008

NCAR Downsizes Social Science and Policy Research

I spent 8 years as a staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in their social science group, where I saw little support for this important area of research. So the news that NCAR has decided to downgrade and scatter its meager social science resources comes as no surprise. Though at a time that the world more than ever needs such research, the decision is clearly short sighted. Because NCAR is base-funded by the National Science Foundation, it certainly would be appropriate for NSF to investigate the decision to diminish the role of social science and policy research at NCAR, and why it has been deemphasized at a time when policy makers more than ever need such knowledge.

Here is how NCAR announced the news in an email last week, which one insider characterized to me as being "blindsided":

To All Staff,
NCAR is facing significant financial challenges. The NSF base budget has risen at a rate less than the cost of business in each of the past six years. Increasingly, this has put major stresses on the NCAR budget. In response to this prolonged budget stress, NCAR and UCAR management have been taking measures to allocate budgets based on NCAR strategic priorities and NSF mandates. We have also had to reduce direct and indirect costs. This included the reduction in staff of 36 NCAR positions over the past four years.

Even with these adjustments, we continue to face significant budget pressures. In response to immediate FY08 budget shortfalls and the outlook for FY09, additional actions are required to address the problem. One important move that we will be taking this week is to dissolve the Societal-Environmental Research and Education Laboratory (SERE) and administratively move the Advanced Study Program (ASP), Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment (ISSE), an Center for Capacity Building (CCB) into other parts of NCAR. This will save immediate and recurring direct and indirect costs, capitalize on economies of scale in other labs, and enhance synergy and collaboration through new partnerships. Unfortunately, this will result in reductions in staff in the SERE Director's Office.

Next steps include:

* ISSE will receive administrative and management support through the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL).
* ASP will become a stand-alone Program that reports to the NCAR Director's Office.
* CCB will also become a stand-alone Program that reports to the NCAR Director's Office

We want to emphasize that these changes in no way diminish UCAR's and NCAR's commitment to ASP, ISSE, and CCB. Despite the current budget challenges, we remain dedicated to our vision of developing leadership in the social science components of climate and weather research, creating societal and policy-relevant research and information products, and conducting research on human-environment interactions.

Rick Anthes and Tim Killeen

Posted on May 12, 2008 12:44 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

April 24, 2008

Germany's Energy Gap

Germany's Energy Gap.jpg

Der Spiegel has an excellent article on the future of Germany's energy supply. Even with projections of a falling population, Germany has a looming gap between the energy it needs and the energy it projects to be available. Why is this? According to the article:

Nuclear power is too dangerous. Coal is too dirty. Gas involves too much dependence on Russia. And renewables are insufficient. So just where is Germany going to get its power from?

How did Germany, with its forward-thinking renewable policies and ecologically sensitive populace, get into this situation?

The problem is that up until now the Germans have been too passive in working towards achieving an energy supply that satisfies all requirements; in other words, one that is environmentally friendly, safe and cost-efficient at the same time. They have chosen to fritter away the fruits of their prosperity on day-to-day problems instead of investing them in intelligent preparations for the future -- in other words, in energy research.
In fact, Germany actually offers the ideal conditions to achieve even more impressive technological advances than in the past. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with its 7,500 staff, is a perfect illustration of this potential.

Engineers on the campus of the KIT are testing, for example, a prototype system that converts straw into fuel. In another lab, engineers are developing a highly efficient geothermal power plant, and in yet another, physicists are building giant magnets for the experimental ITER fusion reactor to be based in France.

Everywhere at KIT, solutions are being developed which will not only help Germany, but also the rest of the world, to overcome the most serious energy problems. But the engineers and scientists at the Karlsruhe technology park sense -- precisely because they are so ambitious -- the limits of what they can do. Peter Fritz, the institute's head of research, says that the threat of an energy gap in Germany is not the only reason that "a great deal of know-how and money needs to be mobilized very quickly."

In comparison to the size of the problem, energy research in Germany has tended until now to be somewhat relegated to the sidelines. But it is also a decisive weak point, including in the debate over the expected power shortfall. This is because cutting-edge research offers the best way to limit the costs associated with a massive expansion of renewable energy.

From a global perspective, government research expenditures have hardly increased since the early 1970s, and the situation is especially bleak in Germany. After the 1973 oil crisis, annual expenditures for energy research, adjusted for inflation, were almost doubled to €1.5 billion ($2.37 billion). But then, as the pressure of high oil prices subsided, research budgets were gradually reduced before reaching a record low of just under €360 million ($569 million) in 2001.

Energy research budgets have gone up again since then, but far too slowly. Ironically, the grand coalition makes no secret of its pride in having brought the government's energy research budget back up to above €500 million ($790 million).

KIT research director Fritz isn't surprised that so many important questions still haven't been answered, including the issue of long-term storage of nuclear waste. "It is critical that we bring expenditures back up to €1.5 billion ($2.37 billion)," he says, and he even has a provocative idea to offer: "The government should sell extended operating periods for German nuclear power plants at auction and invest the proceeds in research."

It's a provocative idea: Use yesterday's dirty technology to make a clean future possible? Nuclear money for the great efficiency revolution?

Even Foreign Minister Steinmeier, the architect of Germany's nuclear phase-out, sometimes succumbs to temptation. "Longer operating lives for nuclear power plants would certainly be the easier approach," he says, but adds: "However, accelerated technology development is much better in the long run and provides us with new export markets."

There is a technology policy lesson for the U.S. to be learned in Germany's energy policies. Specifically, yes do everything that you can in the short-term to make energy more secure, more efficient, and more clean -- and above all, available. But don't forget that to invest in innovation, lest you find yourself in an impossible situation.

Posted on April 24, 2008 07:52 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy | R&D Funding | Technology Policy

April 22, 2008

The Central Question of Mitigation

[Updated: In the comments Skipper points out a units error (Thanks!). That would be 20,000 nuclear plants, not 2,000!]

The central question can be found at the bottom of this long, technical post. In 1998 Hoffert et al. published a seminal paper in Nature (PDF) which argued that:

Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 at twice pre-industrial levels while meeting the economic assumptions of "business as usual" implies a massive transition to carbon-free power, particular in developing nations. There are no energy systems technologically ready at present to produce the required amounts of carbon-free power.

Hoffert et al. provide a figure which illustrates the amount of carbon-free energy that will be needed assuming that concentrations of carbon dioxide are to be stabilized at 550 ppm, and the global economy grows at 2.9% per year to 2025 and 2.3% per year thereafter. I have updated this figure to 2008 (estimated) values as indicated below.

The figure shows carbon free energy required to achieve stabilization at 550 ppm carbon dioxide as a function of the rate of average energy intensity decline. The figure also shows 1990 total energy consumption (about 11 terawatts, TW) and the share of this valuefrom carbon-free sources (about 1.2 TW). I have updated both of these values to 2008 using data from the EIA, which I extrapolated to 2008 values, for which I arrive at 17.4 TW of total energy consumption of which 2.4 TW are carbon-free.

Hoffert et al. estimated that we'd need 10-30 TW of carbon free primary energy production by 2050, assuming energy intensity declines of 1.0-2.0% over the first 5 decades of the 21st century. So far at least, that assumption has proved optimistic, as actual energy intensity has increased, as indicated by the blue dot on the leftward-extended horizontal axis. If energy intensity does not improve beyond this value then the world will need 22 TW of carbon-free energy by 2025, and if this value works out to a net 0.5% decline through 2025, then this figure would be halved to 11 TW. For 2050 the values are 51 and 25 TW respectively.

The units of energy can be difficult to interpret. How much is 10 TW of energy? A run-of-the-mill nuclear power plant provides about 500 megawatts; so if you have 2,000 of these then you have 1 terawatt. So 20,000 nuclear plants -- or the equivalent -- by 2025 would do the trick of providing 10 TW.

In a subsequent paper in Science 2002 Hoffert et al. discuss the options available to meet technological challenge of providing 10 TW of carbon-free energy:

Combating global warming by radical restructuring of the global energy system could be the technology challenge of the century. We have identified a portfolio of promising technologies here--some radical departures from our present fossil fuel system. Many concepts will fail, and staying the course will require leadership. Stabilizing climate is not easy. At the very least, it requires political will, targeted research and development, and international cooperation. Most of all, it requires the recognition that, although regulation can play a role, the fossil fuel greenhouse effect is an energy problem that cannot be simply regulated away.

They responded to critiques of their 2002 paper with this (emphasis added):

Market penetration rates of new technologies are not physical constants. They can be strongly impacted by targeted research and development, by ideology, and by economic incentives. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon less than a decade after the program started. We are confident that the world's engineers and scientists can rise to the even greater challenge of stabilizing global warming. But it does not advance the mitigation cause to gloss over technical hurdles or to say that the technology problem is already solved.

Any discussion of the technologies needed to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations is incomplete without showing the arithmetic of energy production and consumption. This simple math is too often overlooked in the highly politicized to and fro over mitigation.

The central question of the mitigation challenge is thus the following: What technologies will provide the world's future power needs, and do so in a carbon-free manner? Show your work.

February 20, 2008

R&D Funding - An Investment that Looks Like an Entitlement

This post is prompted by the following quote from Raymond Orbach. Dr. Orbach is the head of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, one of the casualties of the government's inability (or unwillingness) to fully fund the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI). The ACI was announced in 2006, and, among other things, would double federal funding for the physical sciences at DOE, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The quote is taken from Dr. Orbach's January 30 remarks at the Universities Research Association. (Hat tip from the American Institute of Physics' FYI Bulletin. His remarks focused on the challenges facing the research community with the recent budget problems. I want to focus on the following quote for a particular idea.

"Compounding this danger is that we scientists tend to regard the proposed increases for the physical sciences under the American Competitiveness Initiative and the America COMPETES Act as an entitlement. That attitude has failed us."

Research funding as an entitlement? I'm guessing Orbach was hoping to get a rise out of people, but the idea is worth examining.

What are the other entitlements in American politics? Where the budget is concerned, there is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Before the welfare reform legislation of 1996, welfare would have made that list. There are no doubt other programs that are also considered entitlements - programs with set amounts assigned to it, which increase with the cost of inflation, or some other regular process.

Well, federal research and development funding has certainly not increased in regular increments, tied to inflation or any other measure. There have been attempts - successful and not - to double the budgets for the research agencies. But there's is no benefit formula attached to these considerations. Social Security and Medicare benefits are connected to specific formulas, but doubling the NIH budget wasn't connected to any particular scientific output or outcome (aside from presumed improvements in health). So on the face of it, research and development funding does not resemble federal entitlements.

But the science community (certainly the science advocacy community) can appear like it wants regular increases to the science budgets (and I suspect you can find statements to that effect on various organizations' web sites). Without an effective communication strategy for why the community wants these increases, it can appear that scientists are just another group with a hand out. Given the public perception that scientists are disconnected, part of the elite, out of touch; and combine that with the difficulty of effectively capturing the outputs and outcomes of that research funding, I certainly understand where people could get this idea. I would certainly understand that people would express disdain at current attempts to double NIH funding, because it was already doubled within the last few years.

So, let me put these questions out there - how can we make R&D funding - and the associated campaigns for it - look less like asking for an entitlement? If you don't think the requests for R&D funding *look like* asking for an entitlement, how would you defuse that criticism? Remember, in policy and politics it's often as much about how things look than how they are (just burrow into the current Presidential campaign for examples).

Posted on February 20, 2008 08:35 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Bruggeman, D. | R&D Funding | Science + Politics

January 18, 2008

Science Budget Trouble Is Becoming a Habit

While I completely agree with Dan Sarewitz's criticism that science policy is often reflexively treated as only science budget policy, sometimes you need to talk about the budget. Over the holidays, the Democratic-led Congress continued to demonstrate its strong leadership and forceful action by rolling over to the Administration's insistence final budget numbers for Fiscal Year 2008 (finally approved nearly three months into the year). While of a kind with other failures of Congressional leadership, the casualties of this compromise include the authorized doubling of research accounts at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (was there no hue and cry in Boulder?).

This doubling was constructed as a key part of the American Competitiveness Initiative, the COMPETES Act passed by Congress last year, and the continuing perception of the physical sciences as the mistreated younger sibling jealous of the doubling of NIH in the 1990s (and blissfully ignorant of the older sibling's hard fall to earth once the growth rate returned to earth). Details can be found in a few places, including the blog of my colleagues at the Computing Research Association, and the always thorough AAAS analysis.

This marks the second consecutive fiscal year where the proposed increases outlined in the American Competitiveness Initiative were not fully funded (FY 2007 was funded at FY 2006 levels for nearly everything when both parties opted to not pass most of the appropriations bills). The doubling is off track, and I'm kind of surprised at the relative lack of outrage. Perhaps the timing has something to do with it (I was on vacation at the time, or I'd have posted earlier), or there may be a sense of resignation that while the House Science and Technology Committee is very supportive, there are plenty of other goals that crowd research funding out.

So, what to do?

Realistically, this particular problem is not a science policy problem so much as a budget policy problem. There was a time when budgets were actually passed on time, but recent years have seen an acceleration of the trend to the point where the FY 2008 appropriations were finally signed into law about 6 weeks before the FY 2009 requests will be released.

But there is an additional concern, independent of budgetary dysfunction. Research funding just isn't considered important enough to sacrifice other things. While the comment writers are busy describing how irrational and out of touch the legislators are to not see research funding as important, let me suggest it's those who would raise such criticisms as being out of touch. Following the traditional special interest model of advocating for research funding has shown results that are mixed at best. Other interests are better organized, or represent issues and needs that are seen as more important and/or easier to justify to constituents (even districts with military bases and top research institutions will make sure the troops get the money before the bench scientists).

A serious re-thinking of funding models and advocacy models for that funding would be worthwhile, even if it only served to highlight common assumptions made by science and technology advocates. The current arguments about economic competitiveness lack a sense of connection that would make it easier to support this funding. The increase in Ph.D. production takes time, and how can we effectively show that those new Ph.Ds contributed specific amounts to the Gross National Product? It might be easier to demonstrate more immediately how science and technology can be tools for achieving other policy goals. I think it would be more persuasive to policy makers to demonstrate that new science and technology programs helped retrain 30,000 displaced workers than to say that 30,000 new scientists and engineers narrow the gap between American and Indian scientists and engineers. We need something like an interdisciplinary approach to these problems in a policy sense.

While it may serve the standing of scientists and engineers to hold themselves apart when presenting their knowledge and advice, perhaps it is that separateness that contributes to this persistent marginalization. By engaging the potential of scientific and technological knowledge to fulfill other policy objectives the value of that work (and of funding that research) might be easier to support. Take the NSF's broader impact criteria seriously. Sell the expert panel on the scientific merit, and sell the funders and the public on the broader impact. Collect the broader impact stories for your Congressional visit days, tailor them to the member's district, show that person how science and technology help their other goals and get them re-elected. Craven? Perhaps, but reflective of the motivations behind decisions in government.

Posted on January 18, 2008 10:45 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Bruggeman, D. | R&D Funding

November 15, 2007

The Technological Fix

On Monday we had Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus kindly give a lecture on their new book Break Through. It was great to have them stop by, and nice to have an opportunity to get answers to questions about their book. Turnout was in the 100 range, judging by the size of the room. If you haven't read the book yet, you can either buy it, camp out in Borders with a cup of joe, or check out a three minute overview given by Geoff McGhee and Andrew Revkin of the NY Times covering the "New Environmental Centrists."

I want to respond to at least one of their claims, as well as a claim that appears to be circulating in the blogo-ether as what Revkin is calling the "Centrist" position, regarding the thought that we should encourage technological fixes to our problems. The reason I want to respond to this claim is both because I think it's right; and because I think it's, well, not right.

So let's talk about technological fixes.

I'm something of a technology buff. I like gadgets. I like science. And I like what technology does for me and the world. I also like what came about as a result of the ramped up R&D funds during the nineties. Moreover, I've never been totally enthusiastic about some of the neo-luddite language that once passed as environmentalist, so I agree with Shellenberger and Nordhaus (S&N) that we should all be encouraging, funding, supporting, and promoting technologies that help our civilization and our country advance. In fact, I also agree that environmentalists should be considerably more aspirational than desperational.

S&N argue persuasively that the "politics of limits" -- which is, roughly, the idea that regulation can serve as a cure-all to the world's environmental problems -- ought to be replaced with a "politics of possibility" -- which is kind of hopeful thinking about new possible worlds. Their argument runs primarily along political strategy lines and is buttressed by many studies that show that Americans don't respond well to the pessimism and "scare tactics" of environmentalism. The book's central idea should be familiar to anyone who has read their earlier work, Death of Environmentalism. In the end, it hangs on this dichotomy of political orientations: limits versus possibility.

And in this dichotomy lies the problem. It's a false concretism, supported mainly by S&N's choices of what counts as an environmental issue. Much of their book is geared to address concerns that relate to climate change. That's fine and well, of course, because climate change is one of the major hurdles that has been motivating the environmental movement for the past ten years or so. But it is also true that environmentalists have been dealing with many more problems than climate change for quite some time now. To declare the death of environmentalism, or to suggest that the positive panacea to the chicken-little environmental frame of mind is through technological and economic fixes, and that these fixes run contrary to the politics of limits, is to undermine a critical ethical thread that runs through environmental thinking altogether.

The greatest real-world instance of this thread is the relatively wide range of environmental issues that don't fall under the category of climate change; that were, prior to Al Gore and the Prius, central environmental issues. Here I'm thinking of issues like deforestation, desertification, extinction, habitat encroachment, water depletion, and so on. Environmental issues span the gamut, and many of them deal with human activities in and around nature. These issues can never be handled by technological or economic fixes, precisely because they are not problems of technical or economic failure. Some issues, for instance, relate to the problem of urban sprawl or to overconsumption, which cannot possibly be solved by appeal to technological or economic fixes. The "over" in 'overconsumption' isn't determined by what other people don't have (though that, surely, is part of it); it's determined by how much a person is entitled to and how much a person can reasonably use. Even Locke recognizes prohibitions against spoilage. These are primarily ethical and philosophical notions.

A second problem is that many of the classic environmental issues, among which climate change is only one, are best characterized as conflicts of interest, not just between two actors, but also between one actor and the environment. I want a cherry dining set, you want a cherry dining set, and there ain't enough cherry growing fast enough to give us both what we want. Moreover, when I take that cherry for my cherry dining set, I deprive the world of that cherry tree. In this case, it's not just any cherry tree; it's that cherry tree; that cherry tree under which Harold kissed Maude, under which Abe told his truth, under which Erma held her bowl. So too for many environmental problems: I want a ski slope, so I take that mountain. I want a fountain, so I take that reservoir. I want a McMansion development, so I take that open space. Taking specific features of nature yields particularized conflicts of interest; but even more than this, particularized clashes over what is and what is not permissible. Again, permissibility is an ethical issue, only loosely and tangentially related to the so-called "politics of limits."

What I'm expressing here isn't at all pessimism about technology. Far from it. As I've said, I like and support technological innovation. I'd even root for a budget that included a lot of it. I'm hoping to point out that S&N's "politics of limits vs politics of possibility" dichotomy has many rough edges; inattention to which heralds a premature call for the death of environmentalism.

For more on this, my colleague Michael Zimmerman, Professor in the Philosophy Department and the Environmental Studies Program, as well as an outspoken advocate of an expansively multidisciplinary approach to environmental issues, Integral Ecology, has his own new blog and has further comments on S&N here: http://integralecology-michaelz.blogspot.com/

The Science Advisor at 50

I've got a Commentary in this week's Nature on the President's science advisor. Here is a link to the PDF.

Tomorrow I'll be appearing on NPR's Science Friday to discuss the piece and the past 50 years of presidential science advice. Please tune in at 3PM EST!

Posted on November 15, 2007 02:07 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General

July 04, 2007

To go from RAGS to legislation

[David Bruggeman is a frequent contributor so we finally gave him an author tag. Click on his name to see all his posts. -eds]

One of the less publicized legislative efforts this year is the second attempt to pass parts of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), introduced by President Bush in his 2006 State of the Union address. Many of the pieces of the ACI were recommended in the widely cited National Academies Report Rising Above the Gathering Storm. The parts of ACI that attracted the most attention of science and technology community were the goals of doubling the budgets for NSF, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the research accounts of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Those increases were part of the President's FY 2007 Budget Request, but failed due to the inability of Congress to pass most of the budget for that year. The FY 2008 request shows the Administration still committed to doubling those budgets over 10 years. But the Executive Branch cannot implement the full ACI without legislative action.

Efforts to enact other parts of the ACI have not been as forthcoming. Three bills introduced in 2006 (two in the House, one in the Senate) to strenghten and expand federal programs to encourage more students to major in Science, Technoogy, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, as well as expand early career awards for researchers, withered on the legislative vine (although the House legislation did make it out of committee). Very similar legislation was introduced again this year, and as the Democrats have made some noise about an innovation agenda, there has been some progress. Currently both the House and Senate have passed legislation which awaits a conference to hammer out the differences. Both bills can be examined in detail through the THOMAS website maintained by the Library of Congress.

The House legislation, HR2272, is an omnibus bill containing pieces of earlier legislation. HR2272 includes reauthorization legislation for both NSF and NIST, reauthorization of the High Performance Computing Act, and language to increase education programs encouraging more majors in STEM disciplines (and for more of those majors to teach at the K-12 level) and programs to support early career researchers in physical science disciplines. The early career research awards would be through both the NSF and the Department of Energy.

The Senate bill, S761, would include most of the same provisions. The differences, to the extent I can discern them, have to do with specific numbers - funding, number of grants/fellowships/etc. Both bills also mandate various studies on STEM education and innovation, as well as some kind of coordinating mechanism for the federal government with respect to improving innovation. Hopefully those efforts, if enacted, could be informed by (and help guide) the nascent federal research programs on the science of science policy and innovation. But I'm a dreamer.

Each bill contains a previously discontinued federal technology program administered by NIST. (If some readers find this sufficiently interesting, it may be worth a separate post). The Senate bill reinstates the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Technology, a kindred program to EPSCoR, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. In each case, the program aims to improve the competitiveness of states that have historically received fewer federal dollars. The House bill creates what they call the Technology Innovation Program (TIP), but this appears to be a renaming of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). ATP has been heavily criticized as ineffective, corporate welfare, or both. It is intended to help bridge a funding gap - the so-called 'valley of death' between initial development and commercialization. ATP would have been fully defunded by now, but the failure to enact the FY 2007 budget for NIST gave ATP another year of life - and forced NIST to continue a program it had prepared to dismantle. A surface comparison shows little difference betwen the TIP and ATP, and language allows for continuation of current ATP awards under the TIP.

While this legislation is much further along compared to this time last year, there is no guarantee that there will be a bill to sign by the end of the year. A conference has yet to be scheduled, while both bills have been ready since late May. As science and technology policy have rarely, if ever, been a high legislative priority, these bills may take a long time to get to the President's desk. While the Administration is generally supportive of the doubling, they have expressed dissatisfaction with the new programs and additional costs in the legislation. As President Bush rarely uses the veto pen, this may be an empty threat. But this is not yet a finished project.

Posted on July 4, 2007 06:49 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Bruggeman, D. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

May 10, 2007

Reorienting U.S. Climate Science Policies

Last week the House Committee on Science and Technology held an important hearing on the future direction of climate research in he United States (PDF).

The major scientific debate is settled. Climate change is occurring. It is impacting our nation and the rest of the world and will continue to impact us into the future. The USGCRP should move beyond an emphasis on addressing uncertainties and refining climate science. In addition the Program needs to provide information that supports action to reduce vulnerability to climate and other global changes and facilitates the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies that can be applied here in the U.S. and in other vulnerable locations throughout the world.

This refocusing of climate research is timely and worthwhile. Kudos to the S&T Committee.

For a number of years, Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO) has led efforts to make the nation's climate research enterprise more responsive to the needs of decision makers (joined by Bob Inglis (R-SC)). Mr. Udall explained the reasons for rethinking climate science as follows:

The evolution of global science and the global change issue sparked the need to make changes to the 1978 National Climate Program Act, and gave us the Global Change Research Act of 1990. It is now time for another adjustment to alter the focus of the program governed by this law.
The debate, about whether climate change is occurring and about whether human activity has contributed to it, is over. As our population, economy, and infrastructure have grown, we have put more pressure on the natural resources we all depend upon. Each year, fires, droughts, hurricanes, and other natural events remind us of our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate changes. The human and economic cost of these events is very high. With better planning and implementation of adaptation strategies these costs can be reduced.

For all of these reasons, we need the USGCRP to produce more information that is readily useable by decision makers and resource managers in government and in the private sector. People throughout this country and in the rest of the world need information they can use to develop response, adaptation, and mitigation strategies to make our communities, our businesses, and our nation more resilient and less vulnerable to the changes that are inevitable.

We must also move aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid future increases in surface temperature that will trigger severe impacts that we cannot overcome with adaptation strategies. We need economic and technical information as well as information about system responses and climate responses to different concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The USGCRP should be the vehicle for providing this information.

The hearing charter (PDF) is worth reading in full.

Posted on May 10, 2007 03:50 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | R&D Funding | Scientific Assessments

May 09, 2007

Should the Gates Foundation fund Policy Research?

Well, according Hannah Brown writing in BMJ the answer is "yes" (h/t SciDev.net). It turns out that simply investing money in scientific research or technology development is not sufficient to realize benefits on the ground. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already changed he world for the better, and has much future potential, so it is good that it is learning the limitations of the so-called "linear model" of science and society sooner rather than later. Here is an excerpt from Brown's commentary:

Ask anyone with a passing interest in global health what the Gates Foundation means to them and you'll likely get just one answer: money. In a field long fatigued by the perpetual struggle for cash, the foundation's eagerness to finance projects neglected by many other donors raised high hopes among campaigners that its impact on health would be swift and great. And with the commitment last June by America's second richest man, Warren Buffet, to effectively double the foundation's $30bn (£15bn; {euro}22bn) endowment,1 hopes of substantial health achievements grew higher still.
But despite Bill Gates's prediction at a press conference to mark Buffet's pledge that there was now "No reason why we can't cure the top 20 diseases"2 observers are starting to question whether all this money is reaping sufficient rewards. For although the foundation has given a huge boost to research and development into technologies against some of the world's most devastating and neglected diseases, critics suggest that its reluctance to embrace research, demonstration, and capacity building in health delivery systems is worsening the gap between what technology can do and what is actually happening to health in poor communities. This situation, critics charge, is preventing the Gates's grants from achieving their full potential.

Read the whole thing.

April 13, 2007

Baby Steps Toward a Science of Science Policy

Two events in February demonstrated an effort to revisit the assumptions behind the processes and study of innovation. The NSF announced aProgram Solicitation in their new program on the Science of Science and Innovation Policy. Submissions are due May 22. This has been in the works at NSF since 2006, and is at least in part a response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger's call for a 'science of science policy.' This idea was explored previously on Prometheus. Besides the NSF program, there is a Department of Commerce advisory committee I posted about earlier that is working on how to better measure innovation.

I think both programs are good steps toward a better understanding of science policy, but are at best preliminary steps. (Any judgments about a program that has yet to receive its first grant proposals are by their nature preliminary, so please bear with me). I'll address this in just a bit, but first some details on the two programs.

The Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century held their first meeting February 22 in Washington, D.C. The agenda, members, and other relevant documents can be found online. The group is focused on business and economic measures, as befits a Department of Commerce work. Much of the meeting was thinking out loud, working out what exactly the committee would develop. After discussion encompassing the different kinds of innovation, as well as the different ways companies measure that innovation, the group came to some preliminary points of consensus:

The committee will develop a group of metrics, the core of which will focus on productivity - total output per unit of total input, not the traditional output per hour measurement.

The committee will examine changes to the system of national accounts - the series of economic statistics gathered by several different agencies.

Measures will cover the different kinds of innovation: user centered, firm focused, incremental, radical, process, product, etc.

The NSF Program Solicitation for the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program anticipates granting 20-30 awards in this cycle. Located in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, "SciSIP will underwrite fundamental research that creates new explanatory models and analytic tools designed to inform the nation‚Äôs public and private sectors about the processes through which investments in science and engineering (S&E) research are transformed into social and economic outcomes. SciSIP‚Äôs goals are to understand the contexts, structures and processes of S&E research, to evaluate reliably the tangible and intangible returns from investments in research and development (R&D), and to predict the likely returns from future R&D investments within tolerable margins of error and with attention to the full spectrum of potential consequences."

A tall order, and this solicitation will hopefully be the first of many to really pull all of these pieces together (and support all those innovation scholars casting about for grant money). This iteration of the program focuses on Analytical Tools and Model Building, appropriate first steps for what could be an long-term exploration. There are also two special criteria for proposals: Fit to SciSIP (how the project will add to the fundamental knowledge base and Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity (encouraged but not required).

The NSF solicitation is, in my opinion, written as though they are trying to build a new body of scholarship. But such a body of knowledge and scholars is out there, and could use a solid aggregation and synthesis. But that's not breakthrough research, and by conventional wisdom not the Foundation's business. The NSF has also been burned (or is at the very least timid) when engaging with policy relevant research (see their workforce estimates from the early nineties). Because of those points, I am concerned that this program won't go as far as it needs to accomplish its ultimate goals: "developing usable knowledge and theories of creative processes and their transformation into social and economic outcomes as well as developing, improving and expanding models and analytical tools that can be applied in the science policy decision making process". (Boldface mine) Research without consideration of policy applications is one thing. But this solicitation states that policy considerations are relevant, and the NSF does not have a history of making those connections very well. How will this play out in grant applications, proposal review and awards? I'm skeptical the NSF, or the researchers applying to it, will be quick to adjust.

Both the NSF and Department of Commerce efforts are good programs that could change the way we consider innovation and policies meant to encourage it (although the implementation of the NSF program could fail to meet its intended goals - its early). But the effort to better understand investments in scientific and technological research goes beyond innovation, even beyond science and technology research. It also involves policy research, and without having that as part of the entire process, we will not have a science of science policy, but more science of innovation. It's unclear that this is being considered. I asked Dr. Marburger what the next steps were in developing the science of science policy, and he referred me to ongoing efforts in Europe. I hope that enterprising institutions and individuals can take the work done here and grow it into a true science of science policy.

Posted on April 13, 2007 07:49 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Bruggeman, D. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

February 26, 2007

Science and the Developing World

At SciDev.net, David Dickson has a thoughtful editorial on how the scientific community and others advocating increased investments in S&T in the developing world should temper expectations on what these investments in alone can achieve. Here is an excerpt:

The current danger lies in promoting policies that see S&T as drivers of social progress and economic development, rather than components of innovation programmes in which other factors — from regulatory policy to education and training — are just as important.
The scientific community is particularly prone to this one-dimensional approach. Arguing that heavy investment in research and development is enough to promote economic growth naturally appeals to those keen to see scientific laboratories flourish across the developing world.

But experience has shown that such investment is only part of the solution. The real challenge lies in embedding science in all spheres of government policy, and introducing educational, regulatory and fiscal measures to enable innovation to flourish across the economy.

Until this happens, demands for more money for science will inevitably be seen as little more than self-interested pleading from the scientific community. [emphasis in original]

Posted on February 26, 2007 05:47 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International | R&D Funding

January 07, 2007

The End of Research?

Also from today's NYT, William Broad covers angst in the research community over the year-long continuing resolution. Here is an excerpt:

The failure of Congress to pass new budgets for the current fiscal year has produced a crisis in science financing that threatens to close major facilities, delay new projects and leave thousands of government scientists out of work, federal and private officials say.
"The consequences for American science will be disastrous," said Michael S. Lubell, a senior official of the American Physical Society, the world’s largest group of physicists. "The message to young scientists and industry leaders, alike, will be, ‘Look outside the U.S. if you want to succeed.’ "

Last year, Congress passed just 2 of 11 spending bills — for the military and domestic security — and froze all other federal spending at 2006 levels. Factoring in inflation, the budgets translate into reductions of about 3 percent to 4 percent for most fields of science and engineering.

Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and a physicist, said that scientists, in most cases, were likely to see little or no relief. "It’s that bad," Mr. Holt said. "For this year, it’s going to be belt tightening all around."

Congressional Democrats said last month that they would not try to finish multiple spending bills left hanging by the departed Republican majority and would instead keep most government agencies operating under their current budgets until next fall. Except for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, the government is being financed under a stopgap resolution. It expires Feb. 15, and Democrats said they planned to extend a similar resolution through Sept. 30.

Some Republicans favored not finishing the bills because of automatic savings achieved by forgoing expected spending increases. Democrats and Republicans alike say that operating under current budgets, in some cases with less money, can strap federal agencies and lead to major disruptions in service.

Scientists say that is especially true for the physical sciences, which include physics, chemistry and astronomy. When it comes to federal financing, such fields in recent years have fared poorly compared with biology. The National Institutes of Health, for instance, spend more than $28 billion annually on biomedical programs, five times more than all federal spending for physical sciences.

For 2007, Congress and the Bush administration agreed that the federal budget for the physical sciences should get a major increase. A year ago, in his American Competitiveness Initiative, President Bush called for doubling the money for science over a decade. That prompted schools and federal laboratories to prepare for long-deferred repairs and expansions, plans that appear now to be in jeopardy.

Posted on January 7, 2007 11:21 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

December 14, 2006

New Bridges Article on 110th Congress

The December issue of Bridges is out, and it includes my column, this time on what we might expect on science and technology policy from the 110th Congress.

But do read the whole issue. Bridges is one of the top publications you'll find anywhere on science and technology policy.

Posted on December 14, 2006 11:12 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General

December 05, 2006

Fiscal Caution on NASA’s New Moon Plans

According to the New York Times NASA has announced that it wishes to return to the moon and set up a permanent base 50 years after its first landing. NASA’s proposal should raise an eyebrow among anyone who understands NASA’s past failures at successfully budgeting human spaceflight programs.

Here is an excerpt from the Times story by Warren E. Leary:

NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon, to be started soon after astronauts return there around 2020.
The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an "open architecture" design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

As more equipment was set up, human stays would eventually grow to 180 days, and become permanent by 2024. By 2027, officials said, a pressurized roving vehicle on the surface would take people on expeditions far from the base.

NASA gave no cost estimate for the program and no design details for the base. Ms. Dale said all plans assumed that the agency would continue operating from a fixed budget of about $17 billion a year.

The space shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010, and the United States plans to scale back its involvement in the International Space Station. The station is still under construction, with a mission by the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Thursday. Ms. Dale said money would be shifted to the lunar exploration program from the shuttle and the station.

It was this last part that caught my attention. Assuming that NASA spends half of its budget on human exploration, and that all of this will be devoted to the new Moon program, this would total about $75 billion by 2020 when NASA plans to return to the moon. This sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But let’s put the planned costs into historical perspective of other human spaceflight programs.

Costs of Human Exploration Programs in 2005 Dollars

Apollo $110-$125 billion (source in PDF)

Mercury, Gemini, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz $20 billion (source in PDF)

Space Shuttle $150 billion (updated from here)

Space Station $100 billion (cited in NYT article today by John Schwartz)

With its new program NASA is proposing to do far more than Apollo accomplished on a similar timescale, with far less resources, and an annual equivalent expenditure of much less than half of what was spent during the brief Apollo era. On its surface, this sounds like a great bargain. But is it too good to be true?

Consider that NASA in the past promised (in 1984) that the Space Station would be completed by 1994 at the cost of $8 billion ($13.3 in 2005). It missed this estimate by at least 16 years and $90 billion, without discussing the reduction in capabilities. NASA promised (in 1972) that the shuttle would fly 48 flights per year at a cost of $20 million (2005$) per flight. Reality has seen something more like 4 flights per year at a cost of over $1 billion per flight. Numbers like these suggest that NASA can indeed accomplish its moon base plans, perhaps at a cost of $1 trillion and by 2050. And I say this only partially tongue-in-cheek.

NASA’s political strategy in the past has been to win Congressional approval for its desired programs by underestimating costs and schedule, overpromising capabilities, and then complaining to Congress about being underfunded. When reality sets in NASA has reduced planned capabilities and cut other parts of its budget – like science. The entire suite of NASA programs are disrupted, leading to huge inefficiencies and a lack of progress. The NYT today has an article reporting that many experts are asking what the space station is for anyway. The promises made in 1984 no longer have meaning, so NASA wants a do-over.

NASA has purposely created long-term programs with few mid-term milestones, thereby making it difficult for Congress to wield a carrot or stick in the budget process. For instance, most debates about the space station in the 1990s were about termination or continuation. The distribution of lucrative NASA contracts around the country stacks the deck against a drastic approach like termination. One lesson from this should be that NASA must have annual milestones with consequences for budget overruns or cost delays.

Congress by now should be wise to these strategies. It is indeed exciting and visionary to think about human colonization of the solar system. Nonetheless, we should all hope that the next Congress will apply some rigorous oversight to NASA’s planning. The lack of such oversight is one reason why the U.S. human space flight program in only now discussing catching up to where it was 35 years ago.

Posted on December 5, 2006 06:23 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Space Policy

November 09, 2006

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-

Posted on November 9, 2006 01:53 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | R&D Funding

August 10, 2006

The Ever Increasing R&D Budget

It is budget time, and with it comes the annual ritual of members of the science and technology community complaining about their fortunes in the budget process. The relative fortunes of different research communities does wax and wane. For instance, biomedical research saw an unprecedented doubling in its budget in the late-1990s/early 2000s, and a ever-so-slight downturn since then (see PDF). NASA, NSF, and DOE's Office of Science are up dramatically this year, after years of small increases, declines, or static budgets.

But when viewed as a whole the R&D community has a track record of perhaps unprecedented success in arguing its case for federal funding. While it is true that aggregate R&D expenditures have tended to track overall trends in federal discretionary spending (see this essay), R&D has achieved a long-term growth in the portion of discretionary spending that it receives. This means that R&D is necessarily fairing better than some other parts of the federal budget.

Consider the following data (sources: here):

By President, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D:

Reagan 12.5%
Bush I 13.3%
Clinton 13.6%
Bush II 13.7%

By Control of the House, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D since 1982:

Democrats: 12.8%
Republicans: 13.7%

This data suggests to me first that the S&T lobby has been incredibly successful in increasing the portion of the federal deveoted to R&D. Second, there has been strong bipartisan support for R&D across presidents and congresses. the difference between Ds and Rs in the House I attrbute more to the long-term trend of increasing successes by the S&T lobby arguing for more funding, rather than any partisan signal. It just so happens that Rs have been in control more recently. Finally, for those wanting to discuss not simply the aggregate R&D budget, but what the R&D budget is meant for ... well, that would require asking "So what?" rather than "How much?" (on this point see Sarewitz PDF). And this is a question that the field of science and technology policy is uniquely suited to address.

Posted on August 10, 2006 01:57 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

June 07, 2006

A Marginal View on Science Policy

Jack Stilgoe at DEMOS has a good post up on their blog referring to Terrence Kealey’s latest call for government to get out of the science funding business. I agree with Jack’s take on this:

Kealey's view is pretty marginal, and doesn't deserve a huge amount of attention. But it's an interesting reminder of how some people view science as a homogenous factor of production. For Kealey, it's about making sure that "science" gets done, rather than wondering about what science should get done and how.

Have a look at Jack’s post for links to Kealy’s op-ed and very useful background information, including a relevant DEMOS report on the public value of science.

Posted on June 7, 2006 06:48 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

April 12, 2006

Prove It

MIT professor Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on the climate debate. He asserts:

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. . . And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift.

I will grant him several of these claims – including the mindless labeling of certain scientists as industry stooges or scientific hacks – but the rest of these very serious claims need to be backed up by more than just bald assertion.

As far as certain scientists who are disfavored in the grants process or in peer-reviewed publication because of their political views, I guess I’d say: prove it. I have no doubt that extra-scientific factors often play a role in the publication process and in proposal reviews. However, the nature of peer-reviewed publication and funding is so decentralized that if you can’t publish your work somewhere or get it supported, eventually, well, there must be a reason, and, hint, hint, it’s not an environmental conspiracy.

Make no mistake, funding for climate science is profoundly influenced by political considerations, just not in the way that Lindzen suggests. As Dan Sarewitz and I argued in 2003,

Our position, based on the experience of the past 13 years, is that although the current and proposed climate research agenda has little potential to meet the information needs of decision makers, it has a significant potential to reinforce a political situation characterized, above all, by continued lack of action. The situation persists not only because the current research-based approach supports those happy with the present political gridlock, but more uncomfortably, because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include scientists themselves.

Read that paper here in PDF.

Posted on April 12, 2006 08:45 PM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | R&D Funding

April 10, 2006

University Responsibilities and Academic Earmarks

In yesterday’s Daily Camera (our local newspaper here in Boulder) Todd Neff had a good

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