As nanotechnology matures, providing more and more products with particles measured in nanometers, the risk of exposure to these particles needs to be assessed and regulated.  Being able to determine what size of particles can be expelled by the body and what sizes accumulate in the body helps shape the questions for the regulatory landscape.  But it doesn’t close off exploration into potential risks.

While other regulatory models can provide useful examples, it’s important to remember that the scale of these particles may provide unique concerns.  I would hope that the hard lessons of chemical regulation – where accumulated exposure flew under the regulatory radar for years (see Krimsky’s Hormonal Chaos for a good overview), could be used to good effect here.  It may not be enough that the small particles can be expelled.  Enough transitory exposures over time could have unfortunate effects, much like enough small doses of certain chemicals have had dramatic effects on endocrine systems.

“request the reversal of a policy now being applied by the UK Research Councils. This policy directs funds to projects whose outcomes are specified in advance.”

This reads – at least to this American – that the U.K. is essentially supporting busy work – research that is pointless to conduct since the results are known in advance.  Looking further at the petition, there is this text:

“Where a specific outcome can be predicted with confidence, then there is no research.”

…

“The UK taxpayer should not support investigations with foregone conclusions, however beguiling. UK research must not be guided by wishful thinking, nor relegated to producing footnotes for ground-breaking discoveries made elsewhere.”

There is a bit of a shift in perspective as the text proceeds.

Looking at the first sentence, it seems false to suggest that there is no research in confirming the predictive power of a model or other things that enable the prediction.  Going to the next passage, I’m not sure how foregone conclusions can be beguiling.  The second sentence suggests the real focus of this petition – that somehow the U.K. Research Councils are shifting their support away from groundbreaking discoveries.

In other words, the petitioner has done a lousy job of advancing the kind of argument Vannevar Bush did after World War II to help instill the combination of federal research support and limited management of scientific research that U.S. researchers enjoy.  Nowhere in this position is anything that even hints at Bush’s arguments about seed corn and the necessity of preserving and replenishing those stocks in order to support and benefit other research and development in support of society.

This argument can be reduced to two points: Only basic research matters in producing value and prosperity (something Bush did not even hint at in Science, the Endless Frontier), and groundbreaking discoveries can only be found in basic research.  It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the development of scientific and technological knowledge.  As the petitioner holds a faculty position and manages research in biology and chemistry, he’s more likely being disingenuous than stupid.

There is another petition on the site that better expresses what I think is the underlying concern.  This petition expresses concerns at the switch of U.K. universities to industry research centers, and feels it has restricted academic freedom to conduct basic research.  While it does succumb at the end to this same notion that only basic research can produce breakthroughs,

“that Britain can remain at the forefront of ‘revolutionary’ discoveries instead of dull ‘evolutionary’ science”

it avoids being completely dismissive of work where application is more in mind.  (Both petitioners ought to read Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions if they haven’t already).

Unfortunately, the saner petition has only 49 signatures.

Moving foward the Higher Education Funding Council will need to figure out how bibliometrics could be used in a meaningful way.  Otherwise there will be additional pressure to try and bump up citation counts and numbers of publications with little regard to the quality of either.  There are already ways to game the assessment in terms of who and what is selected by institutions to be assessed.  If bibliometric analysis isn’t crafted carefully, the ways to skew results will increase.

The New York Times article notes that

“The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush administration to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus, said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

“President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said.”

Aside from the stem cell decision made by President Bush early in his administration, there have been few, if any, policy judgments made that received recommendations from the council.  It has issued several reports on various biomedical issues, but they were often readers on the subject, essay collections, or other documents more suited for background information than policy advice.  This is, of course, the perogative of the President.

If we plan and manage well, this will not be a major factor. The president has plans for a big increase in NSF funding in 2012. By integrating our usual budget increases with the stimulus money we will make this work.

This suggests that the increase Bement mentions will be above and beyond the planned increases from President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the COMPETES Act.  I’ll believe it when I see the President’s FY 2012 request, which will probably come around the same time President Obama will be looking for Director Bement’s replacement (his 6 year term expires sometime in 2010).

UPDATE – 6/6/09 – Apparently Nature did neglect the comma, but given how it’s absent from the Department logo, but not the announcement, I can understand the confusion.

Original Post – I’d encourage any of our readers closer to this to provide additional details, but I found it interesting this speculation from Nature News that the troubles in the government of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown could affect the organization of science policy in that country.  The Prime Minister reshuffled his cabinet in light of recent resignations, promoting the current head of the Department on Universities, Innovation and Skills (DIUS) to a Cabinet position.  DIUS was created by PM Brown in 2007 to put universities and innovation issues in the same place.  Previously innovation concerns were handled in a department focused on business interests.  The Nature report reflects concerns that things will return to where they were before.

Couple this with the fallout of the scandal over misused expense money of Members of Parliament – one UK science advocate will not be able to run for re-election – and the squabbling over the recent research evaluation and I can see why science advocates may be concerned.  However, nothing definitive has happened yet with respect to DIUS, and it’s likely far down the list of concerns for the embattled Labour government, which looks to take losses in the current European Parliamentary elections.

A parallel with the upcoming debates over the U.S. health care system would be the current emphasis in the United States on treatment and prolonging the last years of life over prevention and other longevity measures.  While it may be an open question in either situation whether or not changing tactics would be more effective, there will be significant resistance to entertaining the idea in either case.

One small step to addressing the ignorance of failure is starting with the journal Restoration Ecology.  According to Nature, the editors of Restoration Ecology will host a regular section in their journal for reports on experiments and projects in the field that did not meet expectations.  Understanding the baggage attached to the work failure, the section is titled “Set-Backs and Surprises.”  Perhaps this will catch on with other journals, especially if the setback or surprise is couple with some kind of analysis or discussion of lessons learned.  While policymakers are often focused more on the successes than what didn’t work, they do respond to lessons learned.  In that way, they may have a healthier attitude toward failure than the researchers they support.

“In order to stay globally competitive, the federal government must invest in developing a sustainable and professional technical research workforce to supply research demands at both our nation’s institutes and universities. This could be undertaken by:

• Boosting job stability in this sector by increasing the number of state and federal positions for permanent university research staff
• Restructuring the grant process with an emphasis on personnel and service contracts in conjunction with new equipment
• Sponsoring the creation of university degree programs for technical training in the laboratory sciences.”

While I’m a fan of the science masters degrees mentioned in the piece, and think a comparable degree focused on technical equipment makes sense, there’s no discussion of another source of talent – Ph.D.s.  While it is probably too much time spent to go from a Ph.D. to managing lab equipment, I’d be suprised and disappointed if Ph.D.s could not perform the technical support functions needed (or weren’t doing them already as part of their training).  Perhaps after a transition period where the masters degree programs ramped up and started producing graduates this wouldn’t be needed.  However, this is an option that should be included in these discussions.