MORE CLOUT FOR SCIENCE BOARD?

Abstract

News Analysis Things are happening at the usually quiescent National Science Board (NSB)—the body of overseers for the National Science Foundation. The board, 24 industrialists and academics appointed by the President, sanctions every major decision NSF makes. These sanctions are not trivial because most of them ultimately affect the funding and professional well-being of researchers at the laboratory bench. Over the past few months, NSB has been steeped in the most important sanctioning effort in its 48-year history: itself. NSB wants to be a bigger gear in the wheels of national policy. In the arcane world of science policy where turf and budget size matter a lot, that is a high and risky pretension. Some at the White House level have even seen it as mutiny. But NSB is serious. Leading NSB's charge toward relevance has been its chairman, Richard N. Zare, a Stanford University chemistry professor. Relentless and determined to plant NSB's flag on ...