Number 32, February 2002

Editorial

Science, Sea Grant and the Slippery Slope

The President’s 2003 Budget proposes to transfer several science programs from their present homes in mission agencies to the National Science Foundation (NSF). These programs include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Sea Grant Program, U.S. Geological Survey’s toxic substances hydrology research program, and the Smithsonian Institution’s astrophysics and environment programs. With respect to Sea Grant, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported (2-1-02) that in response to this proposal “college lobbyists and scientists … worry that a move would change the program’s mission” and thus opposed the move. While this editorial focuses on Sea Grant, the White House proposal is worth paying attention to because it potentially has broad implications for research in NOAA and other federal mission agencies in which science is supported. (Note: The WeatherZine and the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research receive support from NOAA, NSF, and other federal agencies discussed in this editorial.)

According to news reports, the justification for the proposed transfer of Sea Grant is that the NSF could better manage the program. Mitchell Daniels, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, noted in a speech late last year that NSF was one of the “true centers of excellence in this government … where more than 95 percent of the funds you provide as taxpayers go out on a competitive basis directly to researchers pursuing the frontiers of science, a very low overhead cost… Programs like this, and there are many, many others, that perform well, that are accountable to you as taxpayers for reaching for real results and measuring and attaining those results, deserve to be singled out, deserve to be fortified and strengthened.”

Programmatic efficiency was a key element of the President’s Management Plan, released last August, which observed of federal research and development:

• The federal government will spend approximately $90 billion in 2001 on R&D, an investment representing 14 percent of all discretionary spending. The ultimate goals of this research need to be clear. For instance, the objective of NASA’s space science program is to “chart our destiny in the solar system,” and the goal of the U.S. Geological Survey is to “provide science for a changing world.” Vague goals lead to perpetual programs achieving poor results.
  
• The federal government needs to measure whether its R&D investments are effective. We can rarely show what our R&D investments have produced, and we do not link information about performance to our decisions about funding. Without this information, decisions about programs tend to be made on the basis of anecdotes, last year’s funding level, and the political clout of local interest groups.

And last year OMB gave NSF the government’s highest marks for its administration of federal resources. Further, a 1994 National Research Council report found that, within NOAA, Sea Grant was improperly located in the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and was inefficient in grants administration as compared to other agencies. Given the oft-mentioned fact that Sea Grant began its programmatic life 35 years ago in NSF, the proposed move seems like a no-brainer, or does it?

Not all agree that moving Sea Grant makes good policy sense. For example, C. Peter McGrath, President of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC), wrote to Daniels at OMB in opposition to the proposed move, “The National Science Foundation has no stronger supporters than NASULGC, and we are aware that in its initial years Sea Grant was housed in NSF. But we are unconvinced that it would be a good fit to now relocate Sea Grant today.” And Carolyn Thoroughgood, President of The Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Exploration (CORE), wrote to Daniels in opposition as well, “CORE urges that you to [sic] reconsider the proposal to remove Sea Grant from NOAA and support its further growth and development as an integral component of NOAA.”

One reason for such opposition is that the proposed move has broad implications for government-sponsored research and its connections to the needs of the so-called “mission agencies.” The present debate is evocative of that over the periodic proposal for the creation of a “Department of Science” – within which virtually all government-funded science would be administered. This proposal has surfaced in various forms, in the words of Daniel Greenberg, “about 100 times” over the past century, most recently in the House led by Congressman Robert Walker. Central to this debate is the question how research is best conducted and connected to national needs.

According to public law, only two agencies -- NSF and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – have a legal mandate to conduct “basic research,” that is, research designed to advance knowledge for knowledge’s sake. All other agencies that support science do so to further an agency mission. Such research serves the needs of the agency mission and is not supported only to create new knowledge. Critics of the notion of a “Department of Science” emphasize the distinction between the role of research in NSF and NASA and its role in the mission agencies. Similarly, a concern that Sea Grant would lose its practical focus at NSF underlies the positions of NASULGC, CORE, and others. Effective management of the science grants process is not the same as getting useful science done and into the hands of decision makers. Resolving this issue is difficult because administration and usability are both clearly important.

As Congress now debates whether Sea Grant is indeed to be transferred to NSF, an opportunity exists to raise some issues worth considering:

• What would a transfer of Sea Grant imply for other NOAA research efforts (and similarly for USGS, DOE, EPA, NIH ….)? NOAA supports a great deal of research related to oceans and the atmosphere; is Sea Grant just the first of many programs that might be transferred to NSF?
  
• In making such institutional decisions, there is a need to better understand the relationship of government institutional structure and the performance of research conducted in support of national needs. Is science more readily made useful under some structures than others? Can we learn from NOAA’s vast experience in this area?
  
• For NSF, would a transfer of Sea Grant imply a need to enhance the agency’s ability to connect NSF-sponsored research with managers in NOAA, and the mission agencies more generally? What mechanisms would be used to make such connections? How would they be evaluated?

These are difficult questions of science policy with the answers neither straightforward nor obvious. And it is not clear if anyone, other than government budget analysts and affected advocacy groups, is even considering these issues. The bottom line of this editorial is that it is uncertain whether the proposed transfer of Sea Grant from NOAA to NSF is good for science or the nation, and this uncertainty is a problem for policy makers. The proposed Sea Grant transfer is yet another example in a growing list of how national science policy suffers due to a lack of independent analysis of alternative policy choices. So consider this an early warning of the need for such independent analysis, as in the future a research program near you may find itself in the situation now faced by Sea Grant.

Roger Pielke Jr.
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
University of Colorado
pielke@cires.colorado.edu