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About the Author
Dan Greenberg is a longtime observer of science policy and politics. He is the author of "Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism" (University of Chicago Press), as well as other books, and has published widely in newspapers and popular and professional magazines.
About Brainstorm
Mark Bauerlein
Marc Bousquet
Laurie Fendrich
Dan Greenberg
John L. Jackson Jr.
Stan Katz
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
Bob Zemsky
Recent Posts
The Humanities' D.C. Money Chase -- Part II | Comment
Where Are Arts and Humanities in the D.C. Money Chase? | Comment [7]
Rockefeller's Gift to Harvard | Comment [10]
Scientists on the Sidelines | Comment [2]
Science and the Tin Cup: Some Further Discussion | Comment [3]
Featured Articles By the Author
May 15, 2008
The Humanities' D.C. Money Chase -- Part II
While the sciences feast at the federal trough — looking up only to complain of deprivation — the humanities are allotted skimpy federal assistance. The budget tells the sad story: $30-billion annually dispensed to academic science and engineering by a flock of federal agencies; $144-million for the sole agency focused on supporting the humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
As described in my post of May 12, “Where Are the Arts and Humanities in the D.C. Money Chase?,” science is politically an easier “sell” than the humanities. But in addition to that natural advantage, universities maintain a host of Washington-based organizations to keep up and expand the flow of government money into their laboratories. Nothing comparable exists for the humanities, I noted — which brought rejoinders from several organizations that claim dedication and diligence in promoting the humanities in the nation’s capital.
A spokesman for the Association of American Universities — comprising 62 research universities — acknowledged that “AAU’s first priority is the partnership between the federal government and universities which produce much of the nation’s basic research.” “But,” he added, “support for the humanities, and specifically for the NEH, is also an important priority for AAU.”
The concession of subordinate status for the humanities is unavoidable, given its minuscule share of attention in the AAU’s numerous activities. The AAU’s Web site (www.aau.edu) reveals reams of reports, congressional testimony, budget analyses, and other efforts on behalf of science — usually in behalf of more money and less federal regulation for science. In March, the AAU produced a report, “Science As a Solution: An Innovation Agenda for the Next President,” which offers “presidential candidates and the next administration a vision for science, technology, and education that can help ensure that the nation remains strong and capable of answering the daunting challenges we face.” Increased funding for science and technology is strongly endorsed.
There’s no comparable AAU report on the value of history, philosophy, and literary understanding in presidential leadership. Nonetheless, as the AAU spokesman points out, AAU has not ignored the humanities. In 2004, an AAU Task Force on the Role and Status of the Humanities urged universities to put more emphasis on the humanities and to seek “greater outside funding,” from the NEH and other sources. Ten specific recommendations were presented for enhancing the humanities, mostly in the high-vacuum prose typical of collective academic output , such as: “University presidents, provosts, and humanities deans should seek out, enlist, and support faculty leadership in building strong humanities programs, and should provide mechanisms for evaluating and selectively funding faculty-driven initiatives.” Nothing was said about buttonholing a Senator and making a pitch for a bigger NEH budget.
Apart from that long-ago report, the AAU reports few other activities related to the humanities, but many, many concerning the sciences.
The National Humanities Alliance (NHA) acknowledges that “funding for the humanities is not what it should be,” and that “we are fighting an uphill battle — especially with the relatively rare resources available to the humanities for all activities, including advocacy — but there are those who are working hard to ascend the Hill.”
Good. And I in no way wish to slight or impede those efforts, but rather to assist them, because the humanities are shamefully neglected in the disposition of money for educational and scholarly purposes. Also of concern is the absence of power niches for humanistic learning in high places in Washington. A science adviser, backed by an ample staff, is on hand to assist the president; there’s nothing comparable to shed light from the humanities. But we’re used to that.
The difficulty with the NHA is that its existence is barely noticeable, if at all, in our clamorous capital city. I may suffer from a blinkered journalistic existence, but despite decades of reporting in Washington, I never heard of the NHA until it commented on my post on the humanities and federal support. The archives of The Washington Post, which provides blanket coverage of money politics, contains only a handful of entries for the NHA. The fact that the NHA gets up to Capitol Hill now and then and puts on a presentation for friendly legislators ought not be equated with influence that leads to treasury. The humanities must make more noise to gain political attention.
The measure of reality in this matter can be simply stated: $30-billion for science; $144-million for the humanities.
CommentMay 12, 2008
Where Are Arts and Humanities in the D.C. Money Chase?
“When I find myself in the company of scientists,” W.H. Auden wrote some 50 years ago, “I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.”
Auden might have written the same today. The scientists, for all their complaints of financial neglect and political bashing, continue to do relatively well in pay, facilities, and status, outdistanced only by the law faculty, medical-faculty superstars, and football coaches.
Lamenting the disparities between scientific and humanities-and-arts faculties, two seasoned academic observers wrote in The Chronicle (March 17, 2006) that “never before has there been such inequality among the disciplines and schools that make up a university. … Disciplines like history, sociology, philosophy, the visual arts, and literature were once seen as the heart of the university. … But over the last 10 years, faculty members in those disciplines have become the poor relations of the hard-science powerhouses.”
Some obvious factors partially explain the difference. Science requires expensive instruments and machines. Science is visibly useful for military, economic, and medical purposes. The arts and humanities get along with far less support, and their value to society is not easily documented in material terms. Reflecting those differences, the federal government provides $30-billion a year for science and engineering research in universities while the National Endowment for the Humanities is budgeted for $144-million a year, not all of it for universities.
But that’s not the whole story. With well-supported outposts in Washington, the sciences ceaselessly pursue government money, while the arts and humanities are virtually absent from the game. Money for medical research is the focus of the Association of American Medical Colleges, which represents the 126 allopathic medical schools in the U.S. Keyed to the interests of medical-school management, the AAMC keeps a close watch on the National Institutes of Health and its $29-billion budget, without which medical research and education would collapse. Meanwhile, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Research
looks after the interests of the rank and file of scientists.
Under a tacit division of labor, the Association of American Universities, representing 62 major research institutions, keeps an eye on the National Science Foundation. The American Association for the Advancement of Science diligently monitors all federal spending for the sciences, and annually publishes a detailed accounting of the ups and downs. These organizations are well-staffed with experienced Washington hands who know their way around Capitol Hill and the research agencies. Other organizations concerned with particular scientific disciplines also maintain offices in Washington.
A sympathetic gathering place for their interests is the House Science and Technology Committee, which frequently holds hearings at which witnesses from the sciences hold forth on their needs and anxieties. The S&T Committee has no control over money, and ranks low in the pecking order of House committees, but the steady drip, drip, drip of lamentation from the science establishment helps reinforce the claim that Washington is failing the sciences, and, by extension, the American people.
The arts and humanities lack the faintest resemblance of this formidable enterprise for monitoring and expanding government support of science. The Modern Language Association, which embraces these fields, does not maintain a Washington office. If there’s an arts and humanities counterpart to the science operation, it is well concealed.
If Auden came back, he’d find that nothing has changed.
Comment [7]May 6, 2008
Rockefeller's Gift to Harvard
I’ve checked my spam mail, e-mail, caller ID, and even the overflowing wastepaper basket. As I expected, David Rockefeller hadn’t attempted to consult with me before he recently chose to give Harvard $100-million from his personal fortune. The purpose of the donation, according to the official Harvard University Gazette, is “to increase learning opportunities dramatically for Harvard undergraduates through international experiences and participation in the arts.”
Now, none but a churl would want to deprive Harvard undergraduates of an increase in international experiences and participation in the arts. There can be no doubt that the gift, the “largest from an alumnus in Harvard’s history,” reports the Gazette, will be as well spent as such lodes ever are. Also, a nostalgic element in the gift merits notice: Rockefeller, class of 1936, values foreign experience from having witnessed the rise of Nazism in 1933 in Germany; he was awakened to the joys of art through study of art history at Harvard. Moreover, Mr. Rockefeller is free to dispose of his wealth as he pleases.
Nonetheless, it should be noted that giving $100-million to Harvard is akin to pouring precious water into the ocean while parched drought victims look on enviously. At last report, Harvard’s endowment — top of the heap worldwide — stood close to $35-billion. In recent years, with astute management, it’s been growing at 15 to 20 percent annually. Added to that, Harvard takes in $500-million or so per year in gifts, plus some $400-million in federal research grants, and millions more in tuition.
It is dismaying even to consider the possibility that but for Mr. Rockefeller’s philanthropy, Harvard undergraduates would not be getting all the international experiences and participation in the arts that might benefit them. But the implication is there.
A scroll down the latest compilation of endowments in the top 785 colleges and universities (The Chronicle, February 1) shows that we’re down to $100-million by number 373 and just a few million or less in the final 10 on the list. After that, there are thousands of postsecondary institutions, of one sort or another, that possess little or no endowment. By numerous accounts, many of them and their students are having a difficult time financially.
Philanthropy does occasionally come to their assistance — perhaps even Rockefeller philanthropy. But $100-million divided among, say, 20 struggling community colleges, particularly for student financial aid, would make a difference in the lives and prospects of thousands of students.
Another $100-million for Harvard is just a bookkeeping entry.
Comment [10]Scientists on the Sidelines
“There are over five million working scientists and engineers in the U.S., under three million farm workers. The U.S. government spends about $70-billion per year on R&D, only about $17-billion in government payment to farms. So, by objective measures the R&D community is bigger and the federal government has a bigger stake in it than in agriculture. But by any measure, the farm community is orders of magnitude more influential politically.”
It was nearly 20 years ago that one of the wise men of research policy and politics, Roland Schmitt, then president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, made that astute observation. Update the numbers — more money, more scientists and engineers, but even fewer farmers — and it remains true. As ever, ag is a formidable force on Capitol Hill, and science isn’t. With hard lobbying and campaign cash, agriculture overrides economic and scientific sense in promoting expanded ethanol production and other wayward practices. Under the guise of helping mom-and-pop farming, corporate agriculture reaps the benefits. On the primary campaign trail, pandering to the farm vote is de rigueur.
But what about science, largely dependent on federal support in its academic settings, and also heavily involved in government regulatory activities that span the national economy? Here we have a sad saga with a leitmotif of disappointment, timid protest, and political naivete.
The Bush administration has earned a reputation for bashing some of the most sensitive areas of science. With very few exceptions, financial stagnation has settled upon the government research enterprise. Thousands of scientists, including batches of Nobel laureates, have petitioned against the Bush administration’s attempts to suppress politically inconvenient scientific findings in regulatory agencies. Professional scientific judgment, once a valued contributor to policy making, has often been overridden or ignored by Bush’s political appointees. (After seven years of freewheeling denigration of expertise, the practice may be catching on. Challenged that no economists support her call for temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax, Hillary Clinton responded, “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”)
The leadership of the scientific community feels neglected and abused by the Bush administration, and the same feeling has spread to the rank and file of science. So, fair question: Besides petitions, which rarely ever stir Washington, what’s being done by our scientists to alleviate their unhappy lot? Answer: Scarcely anything.
Several major institutions of science, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, joined by nearly 200 universities, called upon the presidential primary candidates to hold ScienceDebate 2008 in Philadelphia a few days before the April Pennsylvania primary. With half a dozen universities, academic medical centers, and major pharmaceutical firms, the Philadelphia area is well-populated with scientists and their families, and would seem to be fertile territory for politicking on a scientific theme. But the remaining candidates — Clinton, Obama, and McCain — saw no profit in committing precious campaign time to courting the science vote. First of all, it tends to be Democratic anyway. But more important, it’s not politically organized along professional lines, a la physicians, lawyers, real estate brokers, etc. The wizards are able complainers about politics and public policy, but don’t team up to raise money and ring doorbells in behalf of supportive candidates.
Shunning organized political involvement as indecorous and inappropriate for their profession, scientists in recent time have refrained from presidential politicking, except for a few half-hearted forays that amounted to nothing. The only substantial effort was mounted in 1964, inspired by fears of Republican Barry Goldwater’s loose talk about using nuclear weapons. That long-ago mobilization on behalf of a presidential candidate remains a pertinent model for scientific engagement in politics. Under the banner of Scientists and Engineers for Johnson-Humphrey, thousands of scientists organized local chapters, raised money for the campaign, published advertisements, and set up speakers bureaus. A counterpart Republican organization failed to achieve a comparable scale.
There’s talk of political activism in the scientific community, and there’s ample time to get it organized. But the tradition of remaining on the sidelines comports with the delusional faith that science is above the fray, and needed and honored on a bipartisan basis. Even after seven years of bashing by Bush, that faith remains strong.
Comment [2]April 30, 2008
Science and the Tin Cup: Some Further Discussion
My April 14 post, “Science Rattles the Tin Cup in Washington,” argued that wealthy universities should spend more of their own money on academic research in these hard times; that industry, too, should increase its academic spending. The post also noted that claims of inadequate reimbursement of indirect costs in universities have evoked some skepticism.
A mixed bag of comments ensued. Particularly strong disagreement was expressed by officers of two major academic outposts in Washington: Anthony DeCrappeo, president of the Council on Government Relations, which focuses on federal financial and administrative regulations for research universities, and David Korn, chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, the medical school lobby.
Posted by me on Brainstorm April 24 (“Science Rattles the Tin Cup Draws More Fire”), their response argued that universities already spend significant sums on research, and that my reckoning of indirect costs was cockeyed. They agreed, however, more money for academic research from industry is a good idea.
The fact is that many universities, including some of the wealthiest, spend relatively minor amounts of their own money on research, preferring to rely on the hard-pressed U.S. Treasury, while mourning the decline of American science. Harvard, with $35-billion in its endowment, Yale with over $20-billion, and the dozen others with over $5-billion could provide some relief for the stretched budgets of NIH and other federal agencies. Of the $46-billion spent on academic research in 2006, $9-billion was provided by universities themselves. Not all universities could increase their contribution, but the wealthy could easily do so. Some endowment is indeed restricted, but substantial amounts are not.
Indirect-cost accounting is an arcane subject over which bitter arguments have raged for decades. In 1982, when James B. Wyngaarden, chair of the department of medicine at Duke University, became director of NIH, he expressed concern about the share of the budget going into indirect costs and wanted to reduce the payments and redirect the money into research. The medical school lobby declared war — and Wyngaarden retreated. The same thing happened in 1993 when the Clinton administration took office and questioned the big slice of research money spent on indirect costs. These costs, arising from sponsored research, are real, but anyone who doubts there’s skepticism about current levels of payment should note that Congress recently set a ceiling of 35 percent on research sponsored by the Defense Department.
Congress, reflecting public disenchantment with university tuition regularly rising above the rate of inflation, is showing long-overdue curiosity toward the colossal endowments accumulating in some universities. While foundations are required to spend 5 percent of their holdings annually, universities are free of any spending requirement — and few spend as much as 5 percent. Congressional grumbling about rising tuition and skimpy spending from mounting endowments recently helped propel many elite universities to increase financial aid for needy students — though the need for assistance was plainly evident all the time.
The encouraging message is that university management is educable, though often only under duress.
Comment [3]April 29, 2008
As Usual, Few Women Elected to NAS
You have to understand the place of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in American science and science politics to grasp the sexist effrontery of the venerable institution.
With a Congressional charter signed by Abe Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is both a prestigious hall of fame and a scientific think tank, all rolled into one snooty organization, headquartered in a marble palace near the Washington Mall. In a profession that doles out honors like a nursery-school graduation, membership in the Academy is the greatest honor for an American scientist, second only to the Nobel Prize.
Each year, the current membership votes in a new crop of members. Universities boast of the number of academicians on their faculties. Scientists scheme and plot to get elected and to elect their allies. Conspiracy rumors are plentiful. Many aspirants are hopeful, but few make it. The U.S. pool of Ph.D. scientists — from which virtually all academicians are drawn — numbers about 625,000. Academy membership currently totals 2,041.
But in addition to bestowing recognition and honor, the Academy also serves as an adviser to the federal government — and to any one else who wants to sign up for its costly but influential ruminations. Business is good, bringing in over $100-million a year for studies of all kinds. Some members actively participate in NAS studies and other academy activities, serving gratis, as a service to the country. But since most members are too busy or too far over the hill to cogitate on contract, the real work is done by hired staff, which numbers over 1,000.
For scientists who are ambitious and who crave recognition — they are one and the same — Academy membership is extremely beneficial for getting to the top. In its role as adviser to the government, the Academy is often influential in promoting spending priorities for research. In conjunction with the honor that accompanies membership, it’s a power site for science politics. Which brings us to the share of membership possessed by women. It is minuscule.
Of the current 2,041 members, 220 are women. In the latest election of members, announced this week, 16 women were among the 72 electees. That’s an improvement over 2007, when nine women were elected, and 2006, which brought in 12 women. The peak election year for women was 2005, when 19 were elected.
The standard explanation for the paucity of female members is that women only recently entered the ranks of science in large numbers, and many have not been there long enough to establish the professional reputations that lead to Academy membership.
That was true 35 years ago, when women accounted for 9 percent of all doctoral-level employment on university science and engineering faculties, according to the National Science Foundation. Today, the comparable figure for female Ph.D. academic employment is 33 percent.
The American scientific community is blessed with large numbers of outstanding women scientists—in numbers far beyond the slight recognition accorded them by the National Academy of Sciences.
But even in science, despite its boasts of meritocracy, the old boys look out for their buddies.
Comment [2]Part Two: Q&A With John H. Marburger
John H. Marburger III, President Bush’s science adviser, invited me to come by his office for a conversation, which we held on April 23. Marburger, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is one of the administration’s longest-serving officials, having arrived in October 2001. A physicist, and nominally a Democrat, he formerly was president of SUNY Stony Brook and came to Washington from the directorship of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Following is Part Two of edited excerpts of the conversation. Part I is here.
Q. Do you feel the media distorted the significance of the various controversies between scientists and the administration?
A. Of course. All that most people know about science is what’s reported in the papers and what’s talked about in the marketplace of ideas. And that environment, that media environment, is dominated by a very small number of issues, often of the sort floating on top of a very much larger body of things that are happening in science and technology, and much of which is invisible to the public.
Q. What are the accomplishments of this administration in the science and technology area?
A. Science marches on. I think one of the important things that happened under this administration is that the vast amount of research that was taking place when the administration took office continued to take place in very high-quality agencies. The science agencies in this administration have been led by outstanding scientists. The quality has been good.
I think the quality of planning for just the general conduct of operations of the science enterprise of the United States has been good. That’s the first obligation — let’s keep it working properly. We began with the dot.com bubble burst and a difficult economic period at the beginning of the administration, and for whatever reasons, associated with war and the economy and other decisions that were made, the domestic discretionary budget has been constrained. The president has made a commitment to keep the growth of the domestic discretionary budget to less than the inflation rate. And even in those conditions, the science budget has grown at a rate greater than the discretionary budget. Even when you take out the development part in the research and development budget, it’s grown. Even when you take out the NIH budget, which doubled in the first three years of the administration, this administration continued three of the five-year doubling period for the NIH budget.
In other areas, there’s been pretty good support for the parts of the science-and-technology enterprise that you would expect important for future energy. The NASA budget — people may complain about it, but it’s still grown. It’s still a very substantial fraction of everything else. The administration’s been trying to repair the imbalance between life science and physical science, which is a problem. I think one of the unfortunate things about this second term of the administration is that we did not succeed in getting Congress to appropriate funds for the American Competitiveness Initiative, but I think the president’s attitude on this has been very much on the right side. And not only on funding for the physical sciences, but also immigration policies, tax incentives for research and experimentation, and trying to keep bright people in the U.S. and open our doors to highly trained people. All of those issues have been supported by this president and, I hope, possibly will bear fruit in the next administration.
Q. About the NIH budget, you once said that the python should digest the pig before it’s fed anything more. The NIH people are complaining that since the doubling [1998-2003], their purchasing power is down, by their estimate, 12 percent.
A. No question. It’s not good to have this kind of fluctuation, lack of predictability, in any science budget. And it is unfortunate. But the NIH budget is 50 percent of the civilian science budget, and if you think there are imbalances, it’s awfully hard to repair them without constraining that big piece. That’s an unfortunate situation. It’s also true that the purchasing power in the physical sciences has been going down for an even longer period of time.
Almost as soon as I came to Washington, I began hearing a lot of complaints, not only from the university scientists and the people in the national labs, but practically from every industry related to telecommunications and electronics and semi-conductors, materials, and software and computing. They all were concerned about the decline in basic research, the difficulty of finding people; there were many references to the decline of Bell Labs and how we need them. Certainly in the early years, I didn’t hear complaints from the pharmaceutical industry. Even now I don’t hear complaints from the pharmaceutical industry about the lack of basic research, although I do think there is a need for more basic research in biological sciences than we’re doing now.
So, there are balance issues everywhere. When I look back at the entire budget for science in the U.S. and I compare it with what other countries are doing, we seem to have enough money on the table. So the real problems are how we manage where it isn’t well distributed. It’s not ideally distributed, and the way we spend it is not ideal. The fact that we have so many different science agencies, with different policies and different ways of dealing with their investigators, both in-house and out-of-house — that’s part of the business of this office.
Q. Have you been able to introduce any correctives?
A. Yes. We haven’t been able to make huge differences but I think we’ve begun, and in a spirit that’s very much one of the leading principles of this administration, which is better management. We’ve established what we call a “business models interagency group” that has worked to identify where these different ways of doing business among the agencies have had a negative impact.
There are things that you can do that don’t cost money that can make life better for people. How you spend the money, whether you require investigators to fill out the same set of forms every time — those kinds of things.
Q. But a 12-percent reduction in purchasing power is not easily going to be made up through managerial improvements.
A. That’s true. But that is a different issue, and I’m not suggesting that it can or should be. In my view, the biomedical research community is funded much closer — even with the 12-percent reduction in purchasing power — to what it needs to satisfy its missions than some of these other areas are. You’ve got 50 percent of the budget in biomedical research. And you have 10 to 12 percent in NSF, maybe 10 percent in the Department of Energy, 15 percent for NASA. That doesn’t leave much for everything else, all the social and behavioral sciences, geology, oceanography, environmental science, particle physics, nuclear physics, material science. They’re not all falling behind. Some are better funded than others. But the point is there needs to be a balance among these things, otherwise they lose capabilities even in their own fields. If you’ve got all the money in one pot, and other supporting fields are underfunded, then even the wealthy will have trouble getting their work done. Under a constraint budget — the overall budget has been constrained — what you have to do is establish priorities and fund them until you fix it, and then you can bring up everybody at the same rate, even if that rate is causing us to fall behind in some things.
By the way, the 12-percent purchasing power is subject to some interpretation. For example, we have enormously increased the productivity of science through information technology. The capabilities of laboratories today are immensely greater. The ability of science to communicate, to find things out, to disseminate their work, to write proposals — all of this is much, much better than it was. So, our productivity has increased.
Secondly, the lifestyles of different areas of science are very different. It’s difficult to gauge the relative impact of any given amount of money. The CPI [Consumer Price Index] itself is not a very good measure. Certainly the market basket for any kind of research today is going to be more expensive than a market basket used to be, and it’s very different in different fields. But there’s a quality aspect to the market basket as well. What are we paying for and what are we getting in the different areas of science support? A typical way that a National Science Foundation grant is spent is very different from the typical way an NIH grant is spent. A lot of NIH money is spent in medical schools. A lot of NSF money is spent in chemistry departments. There’s a great difference in the fields of science and how much can be done. Mathematics and computer science research are relatively modest. So small amounts of money on an absolute scale make a huge difference in some of those areas which turn out to be very important.
Q. There have been some efforts in the past to rein in indirect costs. These set off a storm in the academic community, and they come to naught.
A. When I was president of a university, I actually came up and testified during the 80s to express my concern about limitations on indirect costs. I think indirect costs are real costs. On the other hand, I also think there’s a tendency — and since I was a university president I’m aware of it — for bureaucracies to grow. Although I don’t much like it, I can understand why the Office of Management and Budget has a cap on administrative costs. Indirect costs are real, and I think they should be paid by the federal government, and where there are continual complaints or frictions, we need to look into them and fix them. Because it isn’t good to have universities lose money when they do work for the federal government.
Q. The administration has been accused of a slow response to energy problems.
A. There are important things that were done in the energy areas that we shouldn’t ignore. One of them is a whole set of energy-related initiatives, many of them having to do with an impact on the climate-change issues — the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative. And a lot of other things that happened in the Department of Energy that wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been pretty strongly endorsed from the top. We rejoined the ITER [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] collaboration. There’s work on the hydrogen economy. There are other important initiatives. There was a revision of the space-exploration policies, and initiatives that came out of agencies but resonated with the administration and received a lot of support. Great progress in nanotechnology — well-managed interagency programs there. I think we supported the IPCC process this time very well, and most people internationally felt this was an important milestone in getting consensus on climate change.
Q. Your office has pushed for more attention for the social and behavioral sciences.
A. The same kinds of productivity enhancements that all of us are getting from information technology have particular importance for the social and behavioral sciences — the ability to handle large databases; the ability to identify huge populations that have something in common; the ability to get data, to analyze data in huge databases with many, many variables. The geographers pretty quickly figured out that they have new technology to make maps and observations, global positioning systems. And the field of geography has pretty clearly been transformed by technology. Library science, sort of an orphan in the social sciences, has been completely transformed. And some small areas, many of which are in medical schools, possibly because the largest funder of social science is NIH. There are important parts of psychology and neuroscience, which is sort of on the fringes of social science. These have been transformed.
At the same time, my impression has been that the social sciences, like sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science, have not yet fully exploited the opportunities that are now available in information technology and applications. So, almost ever since I came to Washington, I’ve been urging those communities to pay attention. And since I came to Washington, within days after 9/11, in 2001, one of the first things that I asked was what could social science do for anti-terrorism, homeland security writ large? Not necessarily finding but also in dealing with heightened concerns about security. There’s a lot that was coming together to give the social and behavioral sciences opportunities that they rarely had in the past for getting new government funding. I think it’s very important for the Department of Defense to be asking the same questions. What can we do? Take interrogation. We really ought to perhaps have an idea of what we’re doing and what we’re likely to be able to get out of a rational approach to getting information from people.
Q. Has that been neglected?
A. Certainly, absolutely.
Q. It’s been pointed out that unlike your predecessors you do not have title of assistant to the president.
A. All this other stuff about titles and where I’m located. To my mind, that’s totally trivial. When you’re the president’s science adviser, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, people return your phone calls. I’m able to talk with anybody in the White House or outside. And I do, and our staff is well treated, and we get our work done. As far as I can tell, we do as well or better than any previous Office of Science and Technology Policy. I find that
whole thing more of a sign of lack of understanding.
Q. The end of this administration is months off.
A. It’s a little premature for me to talk about things at the end of the administration. We aren’t at the end yet. I do think that science and technology have progressed remarkably during this administration. And the administration should get some credit for that. It’s not a foregone conclusion that in another administration, the science budget overall would have fared as well as it has in this administration. I think the management of our science enterprise in general has been very good. The quality of the people that I’ve been working with in all of these agencies is really quite good. The quality of the advisory committees has been good. I think science itself in its business has been functioning very well. I think we will continue to do well because the American people are generally pretty darn supportive. It’s just a shame that more people aren’t aware of exactly what it takes to get these results.
Comment [1]April 28, 2008
A Talk With Bush's Science Adviser
(Image from APS Physics site)
John H. Marburger III, President Bush’s science adviser, invited me to come by his office for a conversation, which we held on April 23. Marburger, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is one of the administration’s longest-serving officials, having arrived in October 2001. A physicist, and nominally a Democrat, he formerly was president of SUNY Stony Brook and came to Washington from the directorship of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Following is Part One of edited excerpts of the conversation.
Q. There’s more hostility between the scientific community and this administration than has ever occurred before. I gather you share that perception.
A. Yes, yes.
Q. What is the origin of this hostility?
A. We have an unpopular administration in general. I came in immediately after probably one of the most, if not the most, bitterly divided elections, 2000, there ever was in our country. And the person who lost that battle was identified not only with science but a particular piece of science. And so it was inevitable that there would be tension at least over the issue of climate change. And of course the issue of reproductive technology was already contentious and the previous president avoided it as much as he could, as far as I could tell. So we had some ready-made conditions for contentiousness, and finally the impact of the Internet was accelerating pretty rapidly just about the time this administration came into existence. I sense that the bitterness and the political polarization that was already very apparent during the last years of the previous administration, and the election itself, was a very important factor in the perception of increased hostility between the science community and the administration. The media played an important role here. There was a tendency to politicize things in a particular way in the media, especially those media covering science. And scientists tend to be more on the liberal side anyway. So I think there was a natural tendency to blame things on the administration if they didn’t go well. So there were probably pre-environmental aspects of the culture coming into this administration that led to a heightened tension.
Q. There were specific issues in which scientists clashed with the administration or were highly critical. A large number of Nobel laureates petitioning about this or that. Stem cells. The administration’s many assertions, never always the same, but generally supporting the position that intelligent design deserved some —
A. I think that’s a bogus issue. I think that this administration has never been very visible on that issue. The president himself said as little as he could possibly say on it.
A. If you go back and look at the circumstances of the way he made a statement, it was hardly a statement. It was a little press roundtable and someone asked him what I would regard as a gotcha question, and he answered it about as innocuously as I think he felt he could. And I think the media was prepared to sort of — a community of watchful observers on this issue jumped on it and built it into something much more than it could be. I’ve never had any problem in responding to questions.
Q. Did you feel comfortable? Essentially, you became, if not the apologist then at least the explainer for the administration.
A. I should be. Yeah, I feel comfortable doing that. In my experience, this president is actually quite positive about science. And he’s curious, he believes that science and technology are important. And more than most presidents, he believes that basic research is important. It’s important for the long-term health of the country and that it has intellectual value. And furthermore, neither the president nor anyone else has ever told me what to say or suggested that I should take a certain line on a certain issue.
Q. So, you voluntarily stepped forward to offer an explanation for this little remark that he made that was over-interpreted?
A. My statements about intelligent design are pretty straightforward. It’s not science and in no way should it be compared with science or discussed as a science topic. And as far as evolution is concerned, it’s inconceivable that we could be where we are in our understanding of biology if we didn’t have evolution as a guiding intellectual tool. So, I have no problems speaking about those things. I’m not trying to defend something — anyone’s belief on this or to attack it. But I don’t think the president needs very much defending. This is not an issue that he has tried to make anything of.
Q. It becomes an issue in the minds of many scientists, and I would say appropriately so, when you have school boards —
A. Oh, absolutely —
Q. And the administration has not, apart from your remarks, come forward to say that evolution is the bedrock of modern biology and there is no competition, no competing theory that should be equated with it.
A. Is that surprising?
Q. I would say, given the lay of the political land, it’s not surprising that the administration says the less said the better about this. But if it is as pro-scientific as we hope it would be, it seems to me that that would be an opportunity to come out in support of science.
A. Well, that’s a topic that I’ve never — I have always felt that it’s a mistake to use that issue as an attack on religious belief. It is regrettable that there are school districts and people of good faith that are out there who press this issue to the detriment of the education of young Americans in their neighborhoods. And that’s a mistake. On the other hand, I think that like many issues, it has become polarized to an extent that it’s difficult to talk about it rationally. Should a biology teacher in high school or middle school today talk about evolution, making no reference whatsoever to the controversy or whatever it is? I think that would be a mistake. I think that these issues should be confronted. And that there should be a frank discussion about it. That doesn’t mean that you teach it then as if they were equal. It means that you talk about why are people so upset about this.
Q. So you would address it as a social or cultural phenomenon, rather than as a competing theory.
A. You would teach them appropriately, which means —
Q. You’re not suggesting equal time?
A. I don’t think the president has ever suggested that either.
Q. Some extraordinarily hostile remarks have come from the scientific community regarding this administration and science, and even you. I think, in particular, of a remark by Professor Howard Gardner at Harvard [who referred to Marburger on NPR as a “prostitute”].
A. I think those remarks speak for themselves.
Q. I guess you have to develop a thick skin.
A. I didn’t develop my think skin in public office. I developed it when I was the president of a university. And so I’m used to dealing with faculty and the scientists. I don’t think I’ve been burned in effigy, but I’ve been hung in effigy and called all sorts of names by student newspapers and excoriated by faculty committees or movements and so forth. But they’re my faculty, and they were good, and they were important and I loved them. Those things happen. I really take no offense at those things.
Q. A frequent complaint about the administration concerns the so-called litmus tests for appointments, particularly to advisory committees. Numerous cases have been cited, and people of reputation have said they were questioned inappropriately when they were prospective appointees. You have said these are extremely isolated instances, that it’s not systemic. But there have been many, many of these episodes.
A. Yeah. First of all it’s a terrible idea to ask anybody about these litmus-test questions. It’s embarrassing to the administration and it’s just dumb. And I have never been able to find out or to discover any directive or orchestrated approach to that sort of thing. So, it’s a mistake to do that. Since I’ve been in office, I’ve tried to make it clear to people in agencies that that was not a practice that helps anybody. So, yes, I’ve talked to some of those people.
Q. And they’re credible?
A. Yeah, sure. I know those things happen. Foolish things happen all the time in governments The bigger the government is, the more foolish things happen. One of the reasons you don’t want to do those things is it does give ammunition to people who are critical of the administration, and they just grab all of these incidents into one big ball and say the whole thing is bad. That’s not the case.
Q. The tone of these episodes suggests that it wasn’t just simply isolated foolishness, but that these selective approaches to appointees were ideologically driven: We want people who agree with us and we don’t want people who disagree.
A. I would just as soon not get deeply into that, because there are — each one of these has its own story, and some of them involve personalities that I’m not interested in discussing. But in general, whenever I have talked to an administrator or an official who’s in a position to do something about this, they have responded, and said, yes, we need to fix that.
Q. Has this tactic been driven out of the administration now?
A. I don’t know, because new people come in all the time, and I don’t think it’s only this administration. I think that others have had also some prejudice about what kind of people they like having on committees, but that kind of criteria is inappropriate for science advisory committees.
Q. Everybody agrees about that, that it’s inappropriate. The question is, is it enduring or has this tactic been eliminated?
A. I heard a flurry of complaints at a certain period of time. I haven’t heard any complaints since then. So, I presume that people learned their lesson.
Q. The response to global warming remains a sore point. The president gave an address the other day that some people said represented a change in policy. Others said it was pure window dressing, that he offered no means for attaining the goals that he endorsed.
A. Probably no subject that has so great a technical dimension is less understood in the public discourse than this administration’s positions on climate change. Very inadequately portrayed in the media. I would say this administration became much more sophisticated then most people realize about climate change in the very first year, in 2001, when the president, the administration, declined to put the Kyoto Protocol before Congress for ratification. As usual in politics, that created a symbol that was used ever afterwards to characterize in a very shallow way what the attitude was, ignoring completely that the Senate had voted, like 99-0, that they would never agree to anything that didn’t include major emitting countries. So, at that point the president reached out to the National Academies of Sciences. And the National Academies responded very quickly, to their credit, with a very good report about science and the remaining questions. And the president basically accepted that document as the basis for his policies going forward. And even before I came, the decision was made to create a new management structure for climate science and for climate technology. And what was sophisticated was the recognition that this was going to be a technology issue. And, yes, there were remaining uncertainties about the science, but we knew enough to begin and get started. The president actually said that.
Q. The Academies presented a research menu. They did not call for any policy changes.
A. That’s true. But remember, one of the precipitating issues then was the extent to which any action you would take might make any difference at all. Was climate change being caused by human activity or wasn’t it? And the question put to the National Academies committee was the extent to which the situation was portrayed accurately by the summary for policy makers in the third IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, and they addressed themselves to that. I think they did a good job with that. They said the summary for policy makers overstated the case somewhat, but in fact, it’s likely caused by human activity. And that’s the phrase that the president used in his speech in 2001, which has really established a policy within the administration ever since. But most of the actions that have been taken on this have been taken in the name of energy security. There hasn’t been any withdrawal of support for climate science itself; in fact, there has been an increase. And there’s a positive attitude toward climate science, environmental science. It was understood early on that the response to global warming has to be through energy policy and technologies that allow you to generate and use energy without putting CO2 into the atmosphere. And there has been a commitment toward developing technologies that have conditions so that the necessary technology will result.
Q. But there was resistance all along the way — or certainly an absence of encouragement — for improved CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] standards, for example.
A. But improved CAFE standards have been proposed by the president.
Q. Not early in the administration. Now it comes along with less than a year to go.
A. Diesel standards were put in place pretty early. I think the record is better than most people think on CAFE standards. People wanted much more. Many people feel that things should go much faster. My view as science adviser is that it’s important to get started and it’s important to be investing in things that can make a difference. I think it’s important to know about climate science, it’s important to have some idea where the impacts will be and how fast they may occur. And as long as we are investing in those areas, that will help us to do that, and I’m happy. Now as far as the response is concerned, I know that whatever administration is in power, it’s going to be very difficult to get agreement on what to do. I don’t think it would be any easier if there were a Democratic president than it is. I think Congress is divided. Although with time, there is more consensus of what needs to be done. And to some extent, there’s been a transition driven by the experience of those countries that did sign up to the Kyoto Protocol with their ability to limit CO2 emissions in their own countries. They’re having a very difficult time. Watching that and learning more about climate science itself has broadened the discussion considerably and made it much richer and more inclusive of all things that people need to know about what do in order to mitigate and adapt than was the case in 2000.
Q. Did the many controversies about the administration’s dealings with science and science policy ever get you to think about resigning?
A. Absolutely not.
Q. You were getting barrages from the scientific community.
A. But you know, that’s only on a tiny fraction of the business of science in Washington. This office deals with everything. And climate change, stem cells, these are — they’re important, but how many hours a day does a science policy office need to spend on those things? There are many other important things that were going on.
April 24, 2008
'Science Rattles the Tin Cup' Draws More Fire
“Science Rattles the Tin Cup in Washington,” my post of April 14, evoked critical comments concerning my contention that well-endowed universities should spend more of their own money on research. Particularly grating to some commentators was my skeptical view of current levels of indirect-cost reimbursements. Now adding to the commentary is a well argued and informed critique of “Tin Cup” by Anthony DeCrappeo, president of the Council on Government Relations, and David Korn, chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges. I’ll comment on their views in a later post. But first, here is their critique, in full:
Dan Greenberg’s “Science Rattles the Tin Cup” is an informative study of how to use numbers selectively to support a specious argument. To try to set the record straight, we’d point out some numbers Dan neglected to mention.
Universities Already Significantly Subsidize Research Costs
According to the same NSF report cited by Mr. Greenberg, universities are the second largest funding source for academic research after the federal government, spending just over $9 billion of institutional funds. In fact, universities provide more support for university research than states, industry, and private foundations combined. Furthermore, because of the 26-percent cap on administrative costs imposed by OMB Circular A-21 in 1991, universities now absorb 100 percent of all new regulatory and compliance costs, which have progressively increased over the intervening years. These include new rules and costs for research on select agents, export controls, HIPAA mandated privacy protections and other human subjects regulation, research animal care, hazardous materials administration and disposal, and occupational health and safety standards.
Taking an historical view, NSF data reveal that over the period 1976 to 2006, universities’ share of R&D expenditures has grown faster than any other category. In the most recent NSF survey, institutional funds account for 19.0% of all R&D expenditures, compared to 12.0% of all R&D expenditures in 1976, a a growth factor of 58%. The share provided by industry research experienced similar growth (54%), while for all other sectors, including the Federal government (-6%),their respective shares declined.
Regarding indirect costs, Greenberg states:
“The National Institutes of Health, with a total budget of $29-billion, spends about $6-billion a year on indirect costs. That’s money that never gets to a laboratory.”
He goes on to assert:
“Indirect cost rates, generally amounting to 50 to 75 percent of direct costs of research at NIH, invite skepticism but are politically untouchable.”
To state that indirect cost payments to universities is money that never gets to a laboratory is a bizarre mischaracterization of the facts. For one thing, indirect cost payments represent partial reimbursement to universities for costs already spent by the university on infrastructure, including new research space and laboratories. For another, OMB rules require that a certain percentage of indirect cost payments be spent on new or renovated research facilities and equipment. Scientists cannot apply for grants and conduct research if the space and laboratories and other essential infrastructure do not exist!
The numbers Greenberg cites are also perplexing – if rates are 50 to 75%, and the NIH budget is $29 billion, then the amount one would expect NIH to pay for indirect costs would be $12 – 15 billion, not the $6 billion NIH actually pays. Why the disparity? Indirect cost rates at major research universities actually range from 38% to 69%, with the average about 51%. But actual recovery is a different story.
The GAO –hardly an academic lobby—did a study recently on this subject – GAO-07-294R – “National Institutes of Health Extramural Research Grants: Oversight of Cost Reimbursements to Universities”, and here are their major findings:
Proportion of Indirect Costs to Total Amount Awarded for Extramural Research Was Stable during Fiscal Years 2003 through 2005
The proportion of NIH extramural research grant funds awarded to universities for reimbursement of indirect costs remained stable during fiscal years 2003 through 2005. The amount in indirect costs awarded annually equaled about 28.5 percent of the total amount awarded in extramural research grants to universities. This was similar to the percentages for fiscal years 1992 through 2002, when indirect costs ranged from about 28.5 percent to about 30 percent of the total amount NIH awarded in extramural research grants to universities annually.
The stability of the proportion of indirect costs awarded during fiscal years 2003 through 2005 can be attributed to the stability of indirect cost rates during this period. For the 100 universities that received the most NIH funding for fiscal years 2003 through 2005 and for which DCA negotiates indirect cost rates, we found that average indirect cost rates were stable over the 3 years we examined. For each of these 3 years, indirect cost rates averaged about 51 percent of the modified total direct costs associated with NIH extramural research grants.
Even at an average of 51 percent, studies by COGR [e.g., see “Finances of Research Universities”, March 2008)] demonstrate that indirect cost recoveries fall significantly short of covering infrastructure costs. In addition to increasing costs associated with the operation and maintenance of research facilities, the administrative costs capped over fifteen years ago also fall increasingly short of covering the increased demands placed on awardee institutions to address ever expanding regulatory compliance requirements, as noted above.
When you add in the costs of faculty recruitment, two to three years of support for new research track faculty until they get their first grant, and bridge-funding when previously well funded and tenured faculty lose their grants, the fact is that colleges and universities must pony up institutional funds, by some estimates as much as twenty-five cents on every dollar, when their faculty are awarded a grant. Under this very real scenario, you don’t make up your losses by increasing your volume!
Greenberg’s claim that school’s are stingy about using their “plump” endowments completely ignores the fact that the use endowment monies and the earnings on them are generally tightly restricted by the will of their donors. So, while it may be true, for example, that Yale spent only $29.8 million of its earnings on endowment on research in 2006, according to their financial reports, in toto they spent $616 million from their endowment! These expenditures supported new faculty recruitments, the launch of new academic programs, improved facilities, financial aid for students, etc., http://www.yale.edu/investments/Yale_Endowment_06.pdf.
Lastly, Greenberg chastises industry for not going beyond “praise” in support of their academic partners, observing that industry’s “…focus is on applied research and development products.” We concur in this view, which should serve to remind all of us that in the United States, it is the federal government that has accepted the responsibility for supporting the fundamental, undirected research from which flows the discoveries so essential to strengthening the economy, improving health, and enhancing the nation’s security.
Comment [6]April 22, 2008
When the Press Calls: Rules for Avoiding Trouble
It’s not unusual for academic specialists to be disappointed with journalistic reports of their work or fields of speciality. From their perspective, press accounts, in print or on air, often err on big or little factual matters, lack balance, and convey
unwarranted assumptions — among other shortcomings. So, doctor, when a reporter calls about your hot paper or a public issue on which you’re an expert, how can you boost the odds for a wholesome outcome?
First, let’s eliminate the silent option, which some researchers have taken in the belief that their words are likely to be mangled, to the detriment of public understanding, and possibly to their own professional reputation. Assuming no scandal is involved, academic institutions covet public visibility. Let’s attribute that to their zest for public service. Maybe it has something to do with fund raising. In any case, countless universities and research organizations send reporters directories of staff expertise with invitations to call for assistance, comments, etc., when working on a story. The management wants its professors to meet the press. And most are willing to go along.
When the reporter calls for a telephone discussion or a face-to-face meeting, what should you do?
First, agree in a friendly manner to provide whatever assistance you can. But ask the reporter to describe the topic of interest and what information he/she wants you to provide. If the reporter is from a news organization with a reputation for integrity, it’s safe to assume that you’re not being exploited for some devious purpose. If the publication has a track record for brazen partisanship, be wary, and even uncooperative if questions are suspiciously framed.
If the reporter is taking notes, speak slowly and repeat essential points. Shorthand is virtually non-existent in the American press. If the conversation is being taped,
speak slowly and repeat essential points. Transcription is a laborious process, and the reporter is more likely to skip around in listening to the recording than to transcribe the whole.
On specialized matters beyond the reporter’s full understanding (of which there are bound to be many), don’t be snooty. Try to explain in the simplest terms possible. It’s often beneficial to follow up an interview with an e-mail that covers complex points. On deadline, it’s comforting to have that at hand.
Finally, for print interviews, try for an agreement to have your quotes and references to you read back prior to publication, with the understanding that corrections will be made at your request. Many news organizations and reporters (myself included) won’t go along with that arrangement, since second thoughts often arise, distort the interview, and slow down the production process. But it’s worth a try.
Follow these rules and you’ll reduce, but not eliminate, the odds for an unhappy outcome. Good luck.
Comment [10]