Yesterday I attended the official release of the 2008 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators, the biennial compendium of facts, figures, charts and graphs on the U.S. science and engineering enterprise (there is international data, but its typically presented for context). It’s produced by a subcommittee of the National Science Board, with the support of the NSF Statistics staff. You can read the press release and wade through the online version to see all the details.

As part of their effort to continually adjust (I don’t want to judge whether it’s improved or not) the message presented by the Indicators, this edition was accompanied by two additional documents. One of them is a Digest of charts and graphs that various science advocacy groups will flog over the next two years to argue how badly their disciplines are being screwed in the research budget. (They are, but that’s for another post – tune in Friday). There is also a policy document about R&D and international competitiveness. Those who have followed the discussions in this area won’t see a lot of new material, simply updated arguments with the perpetual sky is falling perspective. The policy document is a relatively new addition to Indicators. This follows a similar document with the 2006 edition that focused on STEM education.

While the document is presented as a policy-neutral object, there are always hidden assumptions and presumptions that are useful to tease out. Just ask some questions, like what’s missing? For example…

One of the charts in Chapter 7, Science and Engineering: Public Attitudes and Understanding, reports on the responses to a survey question. The bottom chart in Figure 7-11 (page 7-26 in Chapter 7)covers how well people think government is funding basic research. (Let’s put aside for the moment the problems with the idea of “basic research”).

The data indicate an upward trend in the percentage of people who think government is funding too little basic research and a downward trend in the percentage who think government is funding too much.

What’s missing is that the percentages over the timeframe reported never add up to more than 50-52 percentage points. So while more people are getting behind the idea of more government funding of basic research, nothing is said in the figure or the associated text about half the people either not knowing about government funding of basic research or not caring.

I’m sure this isn’t the only part of Indicators where what isn’t there can be as important (or at least as interesting) as what is included. In other places this could be attributed to selective research and criticized as such. But since this information is considered a significant resources in framing science and technology policy arguments, it is perhaps more important to review, critique, and provide feedback on the data and statistics found in Indicators.