Science Budget Research Articles

Socialists Reverse Budget Decline

FRANCE PARIS— When France's new Socialist government unveiled its proposed 1998 budget last week, French scientists were eager to see whether education and research minister Claude Allegre had kept his pledge to give “new hope” to the nation's ailing research effort ( Science , 13 June, [p. 1638][1]). The verdict seems to be a guarded “yes.” Although overall the civilian research and development budget, at $8.8 billion, will remain flat when inflation is taken into account, a reorganization of priorities will give a small but welcome boost to basic research. And young scientists should benefit from a major new recruitment program for universities and public research agencies. “This is a better budget than we've had in the last few years,” says molecular biologist Edward Brody, director of the Center for Molecular Genetics in Gif-sur-Yvette. “It's going to give us a big psychological boost.” And developmental biologist Anne-Marie Duprat of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse calls the budget a “beginning” that “will give some fresh air” to French science. Researchers have especially welcomed the creation of new research jobs. The budget would add 400 posts to public agencies such as the basic research organization CNRS and INSERM, its biomedical counterpart, as well as hundreds of positions in the universities. But some scientists expressed disappointment that support for basic lab costs in the public agencies will increase by only 2.5%, not counting a projected inflation rate of 1.4%. “It's good news for creating new positions, but not good news for the lab budgets,” says Pierre Chambon, director of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology near Strasbourg. University labs, on the other hand, will do significantly better, with a 5.4% increase. Geophysicist Vincent Courtillot, Allegre's chief adviser, insists that the new budget should not be judged purely in financial terms. “Allegre's view is that money is not the main thing,” Courtillot told Science . “In both the education and research budgets, the number one priority is creating new jobs.” Indeed, given France's sluggish economy and the budget slashing required by the European Union for entry into a single European currency, few researchers expected that Allegre would be able to greatly increase the overall science budget. “I think he's doing as well as he can,” says Chambon. Chambon and others argue, however, that if the research budget cannot be expanded further, French science must ultimately undergo dramatic reforms. “If you hire young people but don't increase the lab budget, they can't do research,” Chambon says. One solution, he suggests, would be to turn organizations like the CNRS and INSERM into U.S.-style granting agencies and have researchers compete with each other for funds. That would mean a sharp break with France's researcher-for-life tradition. “We need a reform that adjusts the number of active scientists to the realities of the budget,” Chambon concludes. But while such sweeping reforms do not appear to be on Allegre's immediate agenda, most French researchers are taking heart at the modest gains they have made in the new budget. “It's not a major transfusion,” says Brody. “But at least it will stop the hemorrhaging.” [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.276.5319.1638

Science budget bills wind through U.S. Congress

With the U.S. economy booming and the science community pushing for across the board increases for federal research and development programs, science budgets are faring well in the House and Senate. When Congress returns to Washington in September following a summer recess, its priorities include finalizing four major, nondefense budget bills that affect science. These bills could provide significant funding increases for fiscal year 1998.How do these number compare to the new balanced budget agreement? According to analysts, the budget for the next fiscal year actually increases, with precipitous cuts delayed for several years. Although the outlook for long‐term funding may be grim, science budgets look good for this year.

Analyses conclude '98 science budget not great

How well does the nation's science and technology enterprise fare in President Bill Clinton's fiscal 1998 budget proposal? answer given by two major scientific organizations in separate assessments last week: It looks good on the surface, but don't probe too deeply. National Academy of Sciences weighed in with The Federal Science & Technology Budget Request, FY 1998, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued A Preview of AAAS Report XXII: Research and Development FY 1998. reports analyze the budget request (C&EN, Feb. 17, page 26) from different perspectives, so the numbers contained in them aren't strictly comparable, but their conclusions are remarkably similar. To provide a more precise measure of the federal investment in new knowledge and new technologies, NAS excludes from its analysis funding traditionally counted in the federal R&D budget for activities such as production engineering, testing, and evaluation, and upgrading of large weapons and related sys...

DEFENSE R&D CONTINUES TO FALL

The Defense Department proposes a science and technology budget for fiscal 1998 that totals $35.9 billion, down 1.8% from fiscal 1997. But for scientific and technological purists who look only for the new, fundamental knowledge aspects of the defense budget—that is, basic research, applied research, and advanced technology—the relevant figure is actually $7.4 billion, a 5% drop from the current fiscal year. The 1.8% decline in overall research and development funding reflects profound changes in priorities in the post-Cold War years that are reshaping defense doctrine. No longer led by the need to maintain a massive retaliatory nuclear structure, defense science and technology policy is now guided by the necessity to defend against small conflicts that could erupt anywhere in the world and affect U.S. interests. For example, the Defense Department now more than ever seeks technologies that will detect and engage missile launches by small countries and meet the complex challenges of intelligence ...

Citizen Scientists

A year ago, when many national science budgets were coming under intense scrutiny—particularly in the United States—many scientists began exhorting their colleagues to be more vocal in the public debate. Such outreach was touted as a matter of survival for scientists.Neal Lane, however, asserts that scientists must have a higher goal than self‐preservation. In several recent speeches, the director of the National Science Foundation has prodded scientists to assume a “new, additional role that scientists must play in society.” Lane has declared a need for “civic scientists,” researchers who are not just aware of but responsive to the needs of the society around them.

Funding Basic Research

Letters from: [ Louis Ianniello ][1] [ Monroe Burk ][1] [ Arthur Kornberg ][1] Rustum Roy's editorial [(19 July, p. 291)][2] about how to enter the fray of public debate in the political arena over science funding goes a long way toward injecting realism into the discussion. Both Science and Roy are to be commended for bringing to the attention of the readers an important, but unpopular, view. I want to reinforce the message and help focus the debate. Although overall federal funding levels are generally looked to as a measure of the nation's science health, it is critical to also consider the allocation of funds within a given total together with the management of whatever allocation is made to a particular field. Significant increases in productivity can be made even within a shrinking budget, if a more thoughtful approach is taken in preparing and managing the science budget after a vigorous discussion of the options. Most appeals are for more money across the board, and the average scientist is admonished to simply support the decisions made by the entrenched bureaucracy. As Roy points out, however, if you are tempted to speak out about the allocation of funding and the management, be prepared to hear from the contented scientists who want only to talk about the unrealistic need for ever-increasing budgets. # {#article-title-2} Roy decries the political, social, and budgetary ignorance of the scientific community and its selfishness in seeking public funding. Actually, the shoe is on the other foot. In comparison with other developed countries, the tax burden in the United States is very low and its public finance position is one of the best. If people go without food in this country, it is not because there is a shortage of food; if public schools are crowded, it is not because of lack of building materials. Roy's notion that investment in basic research ought to meet an economic cost-benefit test presents a conundrum: how does one evaluate the future flow of benefits from the investment? Indeed, how does one evaluate the dangers yet to befall us, but of which we remain ignorant? Roy seems to accept the “end-of-science” thesis: all basic science is already known, and it remains only to apply it. Nothing could be further from the truth. # {#article-title-3} I am dismayed by Roy's editorial, in which questions are raised about whether federal support of basic research should take an example from the abandonment of support from the corporate world and whether undirected research should be privatized and rely on the philanthropy of our billionaires. Finally, we are admonished that “when activist scientists have done their homework on questions such as these, they will be ready to enter the fray of public debate.” I have done my homework and have been in the fray. I can document that throughout the history of medical science the major advances in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease were based on the curiosity of biologists, chemists, and physicists unrelated to the ultimate applications of this basic knowledge to the development of drugs and devices. In such a way came the discoveries of x-rays, penicillin, the polio vaccine, and genetic engineering. No industrial organization or philanthropy had or would ever have the resources or disposition to sustain such costly, long-range, apparently impractical programs. In sharp contrast to the success of investments in basic research are the disappointments in narrowly directed programs, such as the assault on cancer, in which the complexity of the problem far exceeds the essential available knowledge. The current bipartisan support in Congress of the National Institutes of Health attests to the recognition that the federal support of basic research is a cost-effective investment in the nation's health and economy. I can make a similar case that truly pioneering inventions (for example, the airplane, xerography, the transistor) are the sources of industrial strength. It is an utter illusion to expect that philanthropy and industry will for the foreseeable future do more than catalyze the long-term support of basic science from federal sources. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.273.5277.857a [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.273.5273.291

House probes out-year science budgets

The House Committee on Science took the Clinton Administration to task last month during hearings, questioning the validity of Clinton's predictions for future research and development funding under the balanced budget plan. Chairman Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.) said he is trying to find out if the president is serious about his projected budgets, or if he has just submitted spurious numbers to placate a Republican Congress. While this would appear to be a reasonable objective for a congressional committee, Walker has been criticized for calling the hearings solely to disparage Clinton. I don't see how these hearings are going to assist us, said committee member Harold L. Volkmer (D-Mo.). It's just a political witch hunt to make the president look bad. You have brought this committee down to being a political arm of the Republican Party, he charged. Despite this rhetoric, some Democrats voiced concern about how the numbers were arrived at. Former committee chairman ...

Heading in the other direction

While the U.S. government is paring its budget for science, the Japanese cabinet recently announced a plan to spend $170 billion on science over the next 5 years. According to a report in Science, Japan's Council for Science and Technology recommended in June that the nation's investment in science should grow to nearly 1% of the gross national product (the United States currently spends about 1% of its GNP on science). The plan would effectively double the $21 billion the Japanese government spent on research in 1992; Japan will spend roughly $27 billion in 1996.

Almost Halfway into FY 1996, Many Science Budgets Still Uncertain as Next Budget Cycle Begins

Almost Halfway into FY 1996, Many Science Budgets Still Uncertain as Next Budget Cycle Begins

Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey by Hugh R. Slotten

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 183 help from the state. Still, the notion that France was backward be­ cause it did not measure up to England remains a theme of historical writing even today. Geiger’s study makes no claim to a powerful new methodology or startling new insight into the technology ofcanals, but the book makes a large contribution. It reminds us that the canal fever of the 1820s was an international phenomenon, explaining how culture influenced planning in the nation that pioneered scientific construction. In offer­ ing this useful perspective the book gives us a detailed look at a quasi-capitalistic state enterprise and one of the most ambitious canal programs of all times. Todd Shallat Dr. Shallat, a history professor at Boise State University, is the author of Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994). Patronage, Practice, and the Culture ofAmerican Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey. By Hugh R. Slotten. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 228; illustrations, notes, index. $44.95. No one in mid-19th-century America better meshed scientific au­ thority, political strategies, and professional commitment than Alex­ ander Dallas Bache. Nathan Reingold and other scholars who studied the formative years of the American scientific community suggested the exceptional influence of Bache, but this is the first account to demonstrate the dimensions of his patronage in detail and to link them to his cultural setting. Hugh Slotten’s thematic and meticulously researched biography emphasizes the pragmatic and intellectual as­ pects of the scientific entrepreneur whose leadership shaped the U.S. Coast Survey into a powerful federal patron, with the largest annual budget for science of any agency in the antebellum period. But the texture of Bache’s personality and personal life remain shaded be­ hind his careful public demeanor. Slotten is deliberate in his efforts to link his account to recent work on the history of American politics and culture and to social studies of science. Among the early influences on Bache in Philadelphia were extensive family connections, social and political, readily traced back to Benjamin Franklin. The eldest son of eight children, Dallas (as he was familiarly known) graduated first in his class at West Point and, deciding against a military career, returned to Philadelphia to take up significant responsibilities in such innovative educational enter­ prises as the Franklin Institute and Girard College. Well connected to economic and political elites, Bache soon demonstrated the patri­ cian-republican values associated with the Whig Party. Whig politi­ cians were optimistic about economic and industrial growth, but also 184 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE concerned about the social order; fundamentally, they stressed edu­ cation and disciplined reason as the basis for decision making. Bache himself inevitably spoke with a voice of aristocratic authority. As an articulate spokesperson for scientific and technological ideol­ ogy, he helped formulate and implement several of the remarkable institutional and scientific achievements of mid-19th-century Ameri­ can science. From his early research on boiler explosions on steam­ boats at the Franklin Institute to his coordination of geophysical re­ search at the Coast Survey, Bache demonstrated consummate political skills as promoter and organizer. His training at West Point proved useful as he turned the survey into a research organization whose generous annual budget provided instruments and staff for scientific observations, thus generating the data essential for analyzing and graphing larger phenomena. This contribution to Humboldtian sci­ ence—with its intention of determining the natural history and physi­ cal principles of the entire earth—required highly accurate data from carefully calibrated locations. Slotten clarifies the day-to-day opera­ tion of an enterprise that gathered continuous observations on the earth’s magnetic fields, the depth and temperature of channels and bays along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and the changing currents of the Gulf Stream. Like his friend Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, Bache shared results around the world through reports published at government expense. Many of the scientific observers were part-time or short-term staff hired for particular projects, while consultants in astronomy, geology, and other sciences...

NAS calls for comprehensive science budget

If the federal government is going to set the nation's science priorities by spending taxpayer dollars on research and technology, it ought to do so in a comprehensive and coherent manner. That was the message delivered on November 29 by a committee of 18 scientists from academia, the government, and industry, convened by the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. In a 97‐page report entitled “Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology,” the committee recommended that the President and Congress should consider the science programs and agencies paid for by the federal as a collective, prioritized whole, rather than current piecemeal line items. In short, the group told the government to look at the big picture.“By any measure, the federal government's investments in science and technology since World War II have been a spectacular success, producing enormous benefits for the nation,” Frank Press, retired president of the National Academy of Sciences and chairman of the NAS committee, wrote in the introduction to the report. “However, the question now facing the country is how best to continue this success when factors such as the severe budget deficit, the end of the Cold War, and the growth of global competition are bringing unprecedented changes to society and to science and technology.”

Science Policy: Panel Considers Radical Funding Cuts

The Congressional Research Service gave policy-makers a grim peek at possible future science budgets in a workshop last week that explored such scenarios as an end to U.S. government support for civilian research and a 50% cut in federal R&D spending.

Panel Considers Radical Funding Cuts

The Congressional Research Service gave policy-makers a grim peek at possible future science budgets in a workshop last week that explored such scenarios as an end to U.S. government support for civilian research and a 50% cut in federal R&D spending.

Press panel recommends a unified budget for science

Press panel recommends a unified budget for science

PCAST warns against slashing Federal science budget

With the congressional cost‐cutting dynamo rolling through the 1996 budget process, a group of academic and industry science advisors has assumed the role of traffic cop, cautioning legislators on both sides of the aisle to [slow down!] Invoking economic productivity, the quality of American life, and national security, the 19 members of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) have warned both political parties that a budget balanced through severe cuts in research funding will cost the country more than it saves.

Europeans Clash Over Space Station

On the eve of a key meeting of the European Space Agency's(ESA's) governing council, European governments are sharply divided over their contributions to the U.S.–led international space station. Unless a deal can be struck, Europe's contribution to the project may be in jeopardy—and ESA itself could be severely damaged. A sidebar examines similar disagreements over ESA's space science budget, with the United Kingdomand Germany pressing for cuts in the science budget

Promises kept?

As if scientists haven't heard enough bad news on the fiscal year 1996 budget, Senate and House Republicans led by Pete V. Domenici (R‐N.M.) and John Kasich (R‐Ohio), respectively, released their plans last week to balance the federal budget by the year 2002, as promised. To save about $960 billion from current spending levels, the Senate plan would eliminate, among other federal programs, the Commerce Department, trim $6.7 billion from the Science, Space and Technogology budget, which includes NASA, Department of Energy research programs, and National Science Foundation (NSF), reduce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expenditures, and get rid of the National Biological Service.

Stronger links between chemistry, math needed

A message heard repeatedly at the American Chemical Society meeting in Anaheim, Calif., was that, as federal support for chemistry (and other sciences) declines in the coming years, chemistry needs to forge productive links with other disciplines, In an era of pinched budgets—and no one seems to doubt that science budgets will be pinched, maybe tightly, over the next several years—multidisciplinary research proposals are likely to have an edge. It was fitting, then, that a new report advocating stronger ties between two disciplines—chemistry and mathematics—not usually linked with each other was unveiled at a session in Anaheim. Frank H. Stillinger, a theoretical chemist at AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, N.J., discussed the National Research Council's report, Mathematical Challenges from Theoretical/Computational Chemistry, at a session sponsored by the Division of Physical Chemistry. Stillinger chaired the committee of 10 chemists and four mathematicians who prepared the NRC report. In Anaheim, Stillinge...

From One Dependency to Another

The literature on the politics of science and on science policy is dominated by information about large and highly industrialized countries. For example, models of the different forms of science policy administration and management tend to derive from French, U.S., and British exemplars. Yet in the mid-1990s there is a growing number of small nations, all of which are seeking to harness research communities to the cause of socioeconomic development, while still extracting "value for money" from science budgets. This article uses the case study approach—focusing on the political economy of the politics of science in the Irish Republic, chiefly since the 1950s-to analyze the problems faced by science policy agencies and the scientific community in small nations. The study offers analogies and possible insights into the politics of research policy in other small nations (such as the smaller countries of the European Union and Scandinavia, and small countries in the East of Europe); it also aims to throw light on emerging research policy trends even in bigger countries as the "bargain" between the funders and the performers of research becomes more and more explicit and increasingly subject to economic justifications.

Science budget faces continuing squeeze in South Africa

Science budget faces continuing squeeze in South Africa