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Policy

Innovation Problem Haunts Policymakers

Frustration grows with perceived weakness of Administration’s efforts to boost U.S. competitiveness

by David J. Hanson
May 31, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 22

FUNDING CUTS
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Credit: Mitch Jacoby/C&EN
Public research universities may not be able to educate new scientists and engineers if state and federal funds continue to decline.
Credit: Mitch Jacoby/C&EN
Public research universities may not be able to educate new scientists and engineers if state and federal funds continue to decline.

Despite efforts by the Obama Administration to do something positive about the economy by proposing a plethora of programs to improve science and technology, the U.S. continues to face serious problems in science and engineering education and innovation that will require major changes in the way Americans think.

This was the split message delivered at the annual Forum on Science & Technology Policy presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C., this month. Speakers from the Administration generally touted government efforts, large and small, for improving science as a way to improve the economy, but industry and academic speakers were much more pessimistic about the direction the U.S. is taking on innovation and competitiveness.

In his keynote address, John P. Holdren, assistant to the President for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), said the Administration recognizes that many national and global challenges require science and technology expertise to be solved. “The centrality of these issues means moving science and technology back into the center of what the federal government says and does,” he explained. “Solutions to problems, including health care, energy, ecological integrity, and disease, will require partnerships not only across government agencies, but across countries.”

Holdren cited President Barack Obama’s stances on a number of technological issues, such as increasing the federal budget for research and development; promoting interagency research initiatives; and improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, as evidence of the President’s commitment to science. “It’s great to have a President who really gets it, a President with a vision,” Holdren said.

The variety of programs and initiatives that the government is proposing to deal with these issues was discussed by several Administration speakers from different agencies. John Fernandez, assistant secretary for economic development with the Department of Commerce, spoke to the oft-repeated theme of needing a more effective system for the commercialization of basic research. “We don’t have an effective system, neither in the national laboratories nor in our universities” for moving research discoveries into the marketplace, Fernandez said. He noted that his agency, along with the National Institute of Standards & Technology, is working to build a better innovation “ecosystem” to translate ideas and convert them to jobs in the economy.

Forum attendees also heard about efforts that are under way to strengthen Congress’ understanding of scientific and technological issues. Timothy M. Persons, chief scientist for the Government Accountability Office described progress his agency is making in performing technology assessments for Congress. The GAO Center for Science, Technology & Engineering was formally established in 2008 and has already prepared several reports, Persons said. “GAO was chosen for this because the agency is known for its objectivity and the fact-based and nonideological nature of its work,” Persons said.

Although the temptation is to see the GAO program as a replacement for the venerable Office of Technology Assessment that served Congress in the 1980s but was eliminated by Congress in 1995, Persons did not make that comparison. He said his office provides information for Congress on matters of interest or technology challenges and does not offer specific policy recommendations. And as the assessment office is becoming better known, Persons said, “more and more congressional committees are finding out about us and are trying to get us to do reports.”

A different effort to better understand the value of science and technology through improved data analysis is also moving forward. Science policymakers have been trying for several years to devise methods to quantify the output and impact of scientific research (C&EN, May 4, 2009, page 40). Creating this “science of science policy” has been under way since former head of OSTP John H. Marburger III suggested the idea at a AAAS forum in 2005. The latest effort is a pilot project by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to identify individuals funded by federal science agencies and correlate their funding with the outcomes generated by their research.

According to Stefano Bertuzzi of the NIH Office of Science Policy Analysis, the need for such an analysis has become more important since the passage of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, which increased funding for research and innovation projects on the premise that they would create new jobs and have positive impacts on the U.S. economy, he told forum participants. The pilot project, called Star Metrics, seeks to capture these long-term impacts of science—including publications, citations, and patents—by gathering data, in part, directly from the universities’ payroll systems and other existing sources.

“We are trying to put together an infrastructure by gathering these data with which we can quickly respond to state, congressional, and Office of Management & Budget reporting requests,” Bertuzzi said. He admitted, though, that there is not often a direct cause-and-effect link between research and increased societal benefits. And, he said, some scientists are wary of the data collection process because it is perceived as a tool to audit their work.

Despite these efforts by government departments and agencies to bolster science and technology and measure its impact, other speakers at the forum doubted their effectiveness. The core problem, as some participants described, is an increasing cultural divide between the public and the government.

Todd M. La Porte, associate professor for public policy at George Mason University and a past analyst for the Office of Technology Assessment, told forum attendees of the growing movement toward more public participation in areas previously left to experts—including technology assessment. He cited the recent report from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that envisioned more public input into science and technology decisions through a proposal called the Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology (C&EN, May 17, page 25).

“There is a frustration with public institutions for their lack of responsiveness,” La Porte said, “and a new principle that there should be ‘no innovation without representation’ is becoming important.”

To illustrate the growing divide between what the government provides and what the public wants and thinks it should pay for, Linda Katehi, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, described the financial situation occurring in California. The state’s budget crisis, she said, is devastating the ability of the public research university to train scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, and other professionals.

“California’s choices over the last three decades reflect an increasingly privatized concept of government,” Katehi said. Under this concept, the public “views government services as a private choice, as if one could review potential government programs the way one would check off options on a cable television plan” and pay for only the desired services, she explained. “Lost in this privatized version of government is the sense of communal belonging, of obligation in any social entity larger than the self, and of any responsibility to future generations.”

Katehi said that California’s money problems can happen in other states and that “we would be wise to heed the lessons of California’s fiscal crisis and its adverse effects on public education.” She said that if more public education funds are not forthcoming, she sees the state universities raising tuition and accepting more out-of-state students, whose higher tuition fees help defray expenses. Although government grants might assist some economically disadvantaged students, she said, the impact will be greatest on lower and middle-income families, which will no longer be able to pay for a public college education.

And education is almost universally seen as the key to improving U.S. competitiveness and innovation in the future. Andrew Taylor, a partner with Boston Consulting Group, told forum participants that the U.S. is no longer the world leader in innovation and is continuing to slip in such rankings. “Innovation is more important today than ever before,” Taylor said, “but the U.S. is losing its innovative edge to some very competitive foreign nations.” He pointed out that spending money on innovation does show results and that these other nations, such as China, are investing large amounts of money to develop innovation economies in areas such as information technology and biotechnology.

Taylor echoed Katehi in the importance of public education. “This is the engine of the innovation economy,” he said. “Investing in STEM education is absolutely crucial.” Other actions the U.S. should take include investment in more industry clusters and centers of excellence, removal of bureaucratic barriers to innovation, and increased intellectual property protection.

But increased government spending, whether on education or improved industrial innovation, is going to be difficult. Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the forum that the current huge federal budget deficits are expected to continue for some time and that this is putting great pressure on Congress to keep spending down. His data show that the percentage of U.S. gross domestic product that is debt could come close to that of Greece in the next decade.

“The U.S. faces a fundamental disconnect between the services that people expect the government to provide and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services,” Elmendorf said. “Therefore, putting U.S. fiscal policy on a safe path will require significant changes in spending, revenues, or both.”

Any such significant change in favor of science or technology appears unlikely. The failure of the House of Representatives to reauthorize the popular 2007 America Competes Act this month, which would have at least pledged higher federal spending on basic research and science education, indicates that Congress is not ready to commit new funds to science or education (C&EN, May 24, page 24). And considering the pleas for more federal help from every scientific and technical sector—education, research, industry, government—that was represented at the forum, this reluctance may only deepen the rift between what the public expects and what the government is providing.

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