The answer to the question of how the U.S. manages its great scientific resources and potential is that it doesn’t. There’s no explicit science policy to guide the government’s major role, and as for industry, which outspends government 2-1 on R&D — it’s pretty much free to do and spend as it pleases, within safety and environmental laws and regulations.
In the federal sector, the result is a hodgepodge of policies and practices, with priorities influenced by a variety of factors, sensible and otherwise. There are pork-barrel considerations — just try to close a federal laboratory. Then there’s the simplicity of carrying on existing activities, even if they’re ruinously expensive and of scant value by any reasonable measure — such as the International Space Station, which in all its requirements, consumes about half of NASA’s budget. And sometimes, there’s good scientific sense at work, as with the Hubble Space Telescope, and many projects supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Amidst all this activity, however, are big areas of scientific neglect. The fat years of low oil prices did not inspire a government-supported boom in energy research. Though vitally important, agricultural research gets crumbs, maybe justifiably so. Every effort to raise its quality by putting it on a competitive basis runs into resistance from the historic practice of routinely sending checks to labs at land-grant universities.
Though a majority of serious health problems are at least in part related to personal behavior — such as smoking, alcohol consumption, unsafe driving, and overeating — the behavioral sciences remain a poor relation at NIH, which holds the world’s biggest bankroll for health research.
NIH says it’s doing right by the psychologists and other behavioral and social scientists seeking its research money. NIH says those scientists get about $3 billion a year, roughly 10 percent of the NIH budget. The scientists say that’s a big exaggeration resting on flimsy definitions. There’s no right answer to how much is the right amount for any field of science, but glamour works, too, in allocating money for science. And the glamour today is in studies at the gene level. Improved counseling techniques for unhealthy practices could save many lives, but scientifically, that’s dull stuff.
The executive branch is well equipped with scientific advisory organizations. At the very top, there’s the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, whose director serves as the president’s science adviser. There’s also the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, whose members are mainly drawn from academe and industry. Neither of these organizations is remotely close to the White House inner circle. And the president’s science adviser, John Marburger, though one of the longest-serving Bush appointees, is a barely visible presence in Washington.
On Capitol Hill, science jurisdictions are scattered among many committees, with no effort at coordination. The fragmentation began long ago, when science budgets were small, and now that they’re big, no committee wants to lose its share. In the House, there’s the Science and Technology Committee, which sounds grand — except that it does not have jurisdiction over medical or defense research, which account for some 75 percent of federal R&D. Energy research exists in a gray zone between that committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.
What is the science policy of the U.S. government? Basically, it’s to stumble along in the expectation that good luck, smart people, and big spending will more or less take care of things, and when they don’t, we’ll somehow or other get along.
