Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 21, 1993 TAG: 9404220019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A newly budget-conscious Congress killed the project, but not before hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to start building what would have been the world's largest scientific instrument.
Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia's 9th District notes this debacle in explaining the need for the Science Policy Renewal Act of 1993, legislation he has introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. With the supercollider still seared in the national memory, it is a good time for a close look at how government sets spending priorities for scientific and technological research.
Boucher's legislation is aimed at ensuring that expensive science projects are clearly defined and linked to overall national goals right from the start, before they become costly mistakes. This is a critical need at a time when technology is burgeoning and changing the way the world operates.
How can the nation ensure that a research budget of more than $70 billion, spread among more than 20 departments and agencies, is spent wisely?
Well, Boucher doesn't say so, but we all know our politicians aren't rocket scientists. This is meant with no disrespect. The body of scientific knowledge is so vast that the expertise of scientists - unswayed by the agendas of agencies determined to protect their own fiefdoms and of congressmen determined to bring home the pork - is needed to guide the president in setting research priorities and to guide lawmakers in funding them.
The Science Policy Renewal Act would make permanent President Clinton's recently created National Science and Technology Council, making it a part of the president's office and giving it the task of improving interagency planning and coordination of science policy.
The legislation also would set up a Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology, a panel of eminent scientists that the president could turn to for advice and recommendations on science and technology issues.
And it would require the National Sciences and Technologies Assessment Panel to regularly assess the nation's research efforts, reporting to the president biennially on technologies it considers critically important.
The bill would put some teeth into all this advising and assessing by elevating the role of the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, giving him or her a direct say in developing the president's research and development budget.
Rising world population and diminishing unrenewable resources make advances in science and technology all the more imperative for the well-being and peace of the nation and the world. The United States has tremendous assets, in terms of wealth and talent, to contribute toward continuing progress for all of humankind.
It is scandalous, given the potential payoffs, that the investment in civilian research isn't greater, while so much is gobbled up by the military. It is also scandalous how pork-barrel momentum can overtake scientific peer review in the distribution of research dollars.
Government cannot finely predict what research is going to be fruitful, any better than it can judge which businesses to back in a free market. The point of research, after all, is to find out what we don't know. Funding this activity can never be an exact science.
Even so, America's science wealth and talent could be allocated more wisely. As Boucher suggests, there would be profit in greater reliance on the judgment of experts, on explicit goals, on coordinated efforts toward meeting them, and on some evaluation of what progress is being made.
The measure Boucher is co-sponsoring would help in these regards. Just as important, it would help raise the profile and influence of science in national policy debates.
by CNB