|
[About the Foresight Institute] | |
Federal contracts that require researchers
to obtain government approval before publishing or reporting preliminary
findings are unconstitutional, the U.S. District Court for the District
of Colombia ruled in late September. As a result, the court ordered the
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to return to Stanford
University a $1.5 million contract for human trial of a "partial artificial
heart." Now, NHLBI's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), has appealed that decision.
The clause in question barred the researchers from publishing any preliminary
findings without first obtaining permission from their contract officer,
whose decision would be final and binding. HHS maintained that the clause
served to prevent Stanford from releasing findings that "could create
erroneous conclusions which might threaten public health or safety if acted
upon" or that might have "adverse effects on ... the federal agency."
In his opinion, Judge Harold H. Green called these standards "impermissibly
vague." For instance, he asked: What constitutes an adverse effect
on a federal agency? "Who will decide whether the conclusions drawn
by Stanford are erroneous--the scientist or contracting officer?" (Science
News 140:318)
The Food and Drug Administration has approved
the sale of certain genetically-engineered foodstuffs without extensive
laboratory testing being required before they are available on supermarket
shelves. Foremost among these will be tomatoes genetically altered so as
not to rot so easily, thus allowing tomatoes to be picked later, and remain
fresh longer. (CNN May 26, 1992)
Nature reports that superconductivity
and nanofabrication research are being phased out as part of a broader shift
away from condensed matter physics. In its place will be more software technology.
Squeezed by economics and a corporate preoccupation with the bottom line,
three of the U.S. largest companies doing basic physics research are cutting
back operations and reducing their research staff. Bellcore (Bell Communications
Research) and IBM are shifting their research programs to applied research,
a move that has already closed laboratories and left dozens of researchers
looking for jobs. (Nature 356:184)
Robert Waterston, at the Washington University
in St. Louis, and John Sulston of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC)
Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge--the two principal collaborators
in the $6 million worm genome project--say that it is now time to move to
the next step in the sequencing effort with the development of an advanced
sequence technology and eventual production automation. As a highly repetitive
task, large-scale gene sequencing is tailor made for a commercial enterprise.
Further, moving this sort of "production line" work out of academic
laboratories frees university resources for basic research. (Nature
355:483)
Presidential Science Advisor D. Allen Bromley
told members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
that global change research has "matured" to the point where it
should place greater emphasis on accessing the results of the research already
carried out. The 1993 budget proposal recently submitted to Congress contains
five presidential research initiatives--science and mathematics education,
biotechnology, high performance computing, and advanced materials processing--in
addition to the global change effort. These represent the combined research
budgets of several government agencies in a particular field knitted together
by an overall research strategy. The initiatives on biotechnology and advanced
materials are new this year. (Nature 355:578)
In Korea, government bureaucrats are seriously
considering the introduction of a "science tax." Although such
a tax is unprecedented, the general scheme of accessing taxes for specific
purposes is well established. In the past, the South Korean government has
put extra taxes on corporations and its citizens to raise funds for defense.
So why not, the bureaucrats ask, have a tax to aid Korea's bid to catch
up with the technology of Japan and the West. (Nature 354:177)
For the last several years in the United States,
a battle has been waged between Big Science and Little Science. Constituencies
of scientists and engineers, politicians, and government officials argue
on behalf of their own needs. Each cites lofty goals: preservation of national
freedoms, global competitiveness, international prestige, and boosts in
our quality of life, which, they assert, depend directly on the continued
investment of public funds in their own perspective and brand of science
and technology. The good news is that both camps are probably right. The
bad news is that in all this discussion, few speak for the R&D engineer--the
person who can develop an idea uncovered in a laboratory to the point of
proving its feasibility.
Many good ideas that could contribute to economic growth are today stuck
in the library, ignored for lack of funds. In this budgetary shoot-out,
little thought is given to the R&D engineer, whether in government,
on campus, or in the corporate environment. Few champions exist for his/her
essential contribution: exploratory development. These folks are the ones
that examine the most promising basic research and determine whether it
can be integrated, packaged, and manufactured economically.
Arguing for Little Science, the National Academy of Science's president,
Frank Press, has called for setting tougher priorities for Big Science projects,
while increasing support for Little Science to safeguard the country's scientific
infrastructure. Leon Lederman, former director of Big Science's Fermilab,
brandished the results of a poll indicating that university scientists--primarily
the Little Science people--never felt more financially strapped. (IEEE Spectrum,
December 1991:14)
In a similar vein, in 1990 the U.S. government
and private sector spent over $600 for research and development for every
man, woman, and child in the country. Americans spend $30,000 to support
each scientist and engineer. Never in history has a research endeavor been
as well supported in any nation.
Increases in government and private sector spending, generous by any standard,
have brought total R&D funding to $150 billion as of 1990, but have
not been able to sustain the increases in the R&D community's population.
This situation is somewhat at variance with the conventional view of supply
and demand for scientists and engineers, which projects that the United
States will face a mounting "shortfall" of gargantuan proportion--400,000
to 700,000 scientists and engineers cumulatively by the year 2011, based
on NSF estimates. Care must be taken, however, in equating the word shortfall
with shortage: the first implies a reduction in production rates, the other
a demand that cannot be satisfied. Although we may in the future encounter
shortages in the total science and engineering work force, there clearly
is no shortage today of Ph.D. independent investigators in academia. The
shortage is one of money to support academic research, not of scientists
and engineers capable of conducting it.
There are just too many science and engineering investigators chasing too
few dollars. As a result, research proposal success rates have fallen significantly.
At the National Institutes of Health, less than one in four applications
actually receive support. And not only is the success rate falling, but
the peer review system--the underpinning of the competitive grant process--is
under stress. With the supply and demand for funds seriously mismatched,
it is not surprising to see (1) pleas for more funds, (2) calls for a speeding
of the proposal treadmill--and a reduction of its adverse effect on productivity
of science and engineering research--and (3) the growth of political lobbying
by scientific groups, each seeking its own ends in a tight national budget
environment. The key issue is whether the U.S. is prepared to adopt policies
that will assure a favorable position in the intensifying international
technology race. (Issues in Science and Technology
Spring 1991:35)
Japan's powerful Ministry of International
Trade and Industry (MITI) is at last taking its first step into genome research.
In a few weeks, the biochemical industry division within MITI will form
a committee to coordinate various small projects involving DNA analysis
and to consider a project to sequence the genomes of industrially useful
microorganisms. The eventual aim is a permanent government center for DNA
analysis. The committee will try to coordinate three small MITI projects
under the jurisdiction of the biochemical industry division: (1) a project
within Japan's huge fifth generation computer project that is developing
computer systems to handle the vast amounts of data arising from genome
research; (2) the application to nanoscale technologies, such as the scanning
tunneling microscope, to an analysis of DNA at a new interdisciplinary research
center in Tsukuba; and (3) a small project within MITI's huge global environment
research program to isolate and develop photosynthetic microorganisms to
absorb carbon dioxide. (Nature 356:181)
U.S. scientists are urging their government
to fund hundreds of small collaborations with their Russian counterparts
with part of $400 million set aside for the destruction of nuclear weapons
in the former Soviet Union. Under the plan, conceived during a two day workshop
held earlier this month at the National Academy of Sciences, those scientists
who already hold federal research grants would identify partners in the
former Soviet Union and provide them with money for vitally needed materials
and equipment, visits to the United States, and collaborative research.
"If we wait too long, they'll by dead," says one participant,
"I'd hoped that we could do something by May or June, certainly no
later than six months from now."
The proposal would keep active in the former Soviet Union those civilian
scientists whose ability to carry out research has been severely curtailed
by the political and economic chaos in the various republics. The goal is
both to keep Russian scientists productive and to strengthen U.S. science
by tapping into a rich new source of available talent. The program would
draw as much as $10 million from the fund created last fall by the U.S.
Congress to help the former Soviet Union to dismantle its nuclear arsenal
and to employ those who built those weapons. (Nature 356:182)
Government officials viewed the IMS as proceeding too far, too fast
These events surprised and dismayed many U.S. observers--particularly
government officials--who viewed the project as proceeding too far, too
fast. Two points were particularly sensitive. First, IMS was moving forward
without the kind of government-to-government negotiation customary in international
projects. Second, various institutions were offering Japanese interests
access to a wide range of U.S. technology without--some felt--having considered
the cumulative impact of their actions on the nation's competitive position.
The potential for conflict was exacerbated by cultural differences in approaching
new projects. The typical Japanese approach in both public programs and
business contracts is initially to sketch institutional and programmatic
commitments with a broad brush. Details are worked out on an ad hoc basis
as the enterprise matures. The U.S. tendency runs in essentially the opposite
direction: Fully-scoped programs are defined at the outset. In the early
spring of 1990, the United States took official action by invoking the authority
of the U.S.-Japan Science and Technology agreement--an umbrella for cooperation
between the two countries.
The independent American proposals to MITI for funding and the designation
of the SME as secretariat were withdrawn accordingly. The Department of
Commerce, designated as lead agency under the agreement, then began a domestic
and international discussion process. Throughout this evolution, the principal
assumptions on which the system had long been based--that the centralized,
competitive research can be wasteful, that diffusion of technology throughout
industry ultimately benefits all firms; that Japan has much to learn from
abroad; and that government and industry must work cooperatively--have never
been discarded. The IMS proposal incorporates the traditional paradigm,
adapting it to suit today's realities. In an effort of such scope and magnitude
it is obvious to the Japanese that all sectors--government, academia, and
the leading industrial firms--must make common cause.
Accustomed to viewing the West as the source of technology and realizing
that there are still technical areas in which the West leads, Japanese participants
in IMS naturally seek access to that outside expertise. Domestic pressures
have forced Japan to reorient its science and technology establishment around
two broad new themes: internationalization and innovation. Long insulated
from foreign influences, Japan is now trying to promote a genuinely international
culture across a wide spectrum of areas from consumer markets to art and
science. One important aspect of this transformation is the more equitable
exchange of ideas, technology, and people from within and outside Japan.
By welcoming foreigners into the Japanese technical establishment and underwriting
research abroad, IMS could contribute significantly to this movement.
The Japanese economy has evolved faster than expected from a capital intensive
to a research intensive system; research expenditures exceeded capital purchase
for the first time in 1986. The future of Japan's manufacturing sector depends
on automation to compensate for anticipated labor shortages: the average
age of the population is increasing in Japan faster than in any other major
industrial power. For these reasons, Japanese manufacturing is moving offshore.
American attitudes toward IMS reflect four distinct perspectives: internationalists
emphasize the integration of the U.S. into the global economy; the technical
community focuses on research agendas and funding; domestic interests emphasize
the need to maintain U.S. competitiveness; and the policy community highlights
public-private dialogue about technology.
The U.S. policy community--a collection of scholars, advocates, and makers
of technology policy--is a uniquely self-conscious entity, simultaneously
developing new policy initiatives and critiquing its own progress. From
this perspective, the value of IMS as a policy development process is even
greater than its long term promise as an R&D project. IMS has given
rise to new policy-oriented groups, notably the ad hoc industry steering
group, and by casting the Department of Commerce as the lead agency in this
instance, it has established new bureaucratic patterns.
Nowhere has the U.S. failure to access and profit from new technology been
more marked than in its interactions with Japan. In part, this has been
due to barriers to foreign participation in research consortia, but most
of these have now fallen. From the Japanese perspective, the IMS project
is intended to go one step further, opening the door to its domestic technical
apparatus. Having pushed so long for just such an invitation, Western interests
will suffer a setback in Japan if they fail to respond. As of yet, there
is still no federal entity that possesses both the authority and the wherewithal
for managing international exchanges. Such exchanges are likely to proliferate,
not decline; many of them may be modeled on IMS.
Instead of reinventing the wheel with every exchange, the United States
should capitalize on what it has learned throughout the IMS process and
create an office--most appropriately in the Department of Commerce--to gather
and disseminate information about international technology-development projects,
coordinate positions, and negotiate agreements. Whether in sports or in
scientific research, players need to know how to play the game before they
enter the fray. To compete in the arena of international R&D, the U.S.
needs to develop two critical capabilities: a clear and effective domestic
technology policy, and honing the skill at capturing the benefits of foreign
technology. The U.S. must be willing to design and invest in new programs
and policies to achieve these critical capabilities. (Issues
in Science and Technology Fall 1991:49-53)
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
took the first public step in a "strategic plan" for research
funding when it revealed the draft of a year's effort recently at a meeting
in San Antonio, Texas. The plan is being written to justify arguments for
greatly increased federal funding for NIH but, as NIH Director Bernadine
Healy expects, it will also bring into the open a number of fundamental
and contentious questions about the structure of the NIH enterprise itself.
Strategic planning also raises, inevitably, the notion that some areas of
research are so important, or intellectually interesting, that they deserve
funding increases at a rate that is higher than others. Healy is sympathetic
to this view, but the biomedical community as a whole--favoring the strategy
of every discipline on its own--has never successfully reached a consensus
on research priorities.
The scientists cum peer reviewers--perhaps genetically programmed
to eschew anything that smacks of "target" research--arrived in
San Antonio in an apprehensive mood, exacerbated by the fact that NIH officials
were so slow to get background documents out to meeting participants. As
the debate wore on some consensus became evident. It was generally agreed
that the idea of strategic planning is sound and should not be abandoned
just because it got off to a bad start. (Nature 355:573)
The U.S. President's recent 1993 budget proposal
released in January called for an 18% overall increase next year to the
National Science Foundation (NSF), and a 21% boost in its basic research
funds. The total budget for all the federal government science and technology
programs would grow from $74.6 billion to $76.6 billion--an increase of
less than 3%. That is below the 3.3% inflation rate that the administration
projects for 1993. But there is a good reason why the overall increase is
so small: defense R&D--which currently accounts for 60% of total government
expenditure on science and technology--would get only a modest increment.
Civilian R&D, in contrast is slated to grow by 7%, from $28.3 billion
to $30.4 billion. And within those totals, basic research would climb to
$14.3 billion, an increase of 8%. According to the presidential initiatives,
selected areas of both Big Science and Small Science see significant increases.
These initiatives call for a 24% increase in global change research up to
a total of $1.3 billion. High performance computing and communication increases
23% to $803 million, while advanced materials grows 10% to a proposed total
of $1.8 billion. Biotechnology is slated to grow 7% to over $4 billion.
And math and science education is also projected with a 7% growth topping
the $2 billion mark.
In terms of Big Science, the Superconducting Supercollider received a 34%
increase to $650 million and the Strategic Defense Initiative received a
31% increase to $5.4 billion, the largest single item in the big science
scorecard. (Science 255:673) [Editor's
note: As we go to press, continued funding for the Supercollider is in doubt.]
In a Science essay titled "Pork
Barrel 'Science'" it is mentioned that the polite term used by the
U.S. Congress is "earmarking," but whether one calls it earmarking
or pork barrel, the article goes on to say it is a reprehensible activity
practiced by a few powerful members of Congress. Moreover, it has reached
a point where the negative impact on scientific projects is very real, as
is apparent from the following excerpt of remarks by George Brown, chairman
of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. "In the NASA
area, I am certain that my colleagues recall the debate earlier this year
over the space station. The debate was, in many ways, a historic one. We
were asked to make a major decision on whether we could afford to continue
the space station when so many other programs were in dire need of funding.
These included space science programs, housing programs, environmental programs,
and veterans programs. We voted to continue the station, and there can be
no doubt that these and many other meritorious programs have not received
the funding they needed.
"Yet the conference report contains over $100 million in projects that
were never requested by the administration, never authorized, and never
discussed on the floor. We were never given a choice between a station and
those projects. These appear in the NASA portion of the budget, but some
can scarcely even be called space projects.
"The conferees generously set aside $40 million for a vast variety
of brick and mortar projects in West Virginia. These include $22.5 million
in funding for a national technology transfer center in Morgantown, WV.
The proponent envisions that persons inquiring about technological advances
that are taking place through government projects must write to West Virginia
for the answer. It includes $7.5 million for continued funding for the Wheeling,
WV, Jesuit College. I don't believe that anyone in Congress or in NASA knows
what this will be used for.
"It includes continued funding for a consortia of universities and
consultants in the Saginaw, Michigan, area which has somehow emerged as
the center for environmental research in the past three years ... NASA itself
has little idea where this funding is going. It includes $20 million for
the Christopher Columbus Center for Marine Research in Baltimore. I stress
marine research, not space research...
"The conference report terminates a vast variety of NASA scientific
projects such as the space infrared telescope, ... the orbiting solar observatory
... and the flight telerobotic servicer. These are all projects that scientists
have spent decades planning and developing. These are all projects that
could be funded with a little more restraint on the part of the conferees
..."
With regard to the pork barrel sites mentioned by Representative Brown,
it is no coincidence that the chairs of the three relevant appropriations
committees come from West Virginia, Maryland, and Michigan. (Science
254:1433)
A committee of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has identified several technologies predicted to be important in the U.S. Army within the next 30 years. The Strategic Technologies for Army Report (STAR) targets, in particular, key technology areas for ground warfare. Biotechnology played an important role in the report. A subcommittee suggests seven areas of biotechnology with the "highest payoff," including:
Admiral David Jeremiah, Vice Chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed the need to invest in nanotechnology
in a recent speech to the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics.
He also called for a new technical education process, citing the lack of
knowledge about nanotechnology among senior naval officers as an example
of why change is needed. (AIAA Convention, Naval Training Center, San Diego,
CA, 11Feb92)
Table of Contents - Foresight
Update 14
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 14 to html for
this web page.
| For ongoing nanotechnology information, Register for a |  |
| To
help prepare for nanotechnology | Make a Donation to Support Foresight |
| To
play a key role in Foresight's efforts | Become a Senior Associate |