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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 10KB | 209 lines

                                                                                POLICY, Page 34

Science's Big Shift


Researchers are used to doing what they please. But in the
Clinton era, more government money will flow toward work that
attacks society's problems.

By DICK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON


    Ever since Ben Franklin began experimenting with
electricity, the strength of American science has been the
freedom it gives bright people to follow their curiosity. Today
federally supported science is an enterprise unique in
government: it is largely directed from the bottom up, driven
by the ideas of individual scientists. In exchange for this
freedom from political meddling, scientists promise enormous
social benefits, from increased prosperity to better public
health.

    But while the U.S. government spent $27.6 billion on
civilian research last year, the largest annual investment ever
made by any country, there is a growing sense that something is
wrong with the scientific bargain. AIDS remains incurable, and
tuberculosis is returning. The economy is floundering as
sophisticated consumer goods all seem to be stamped MADE IN
JAPAN. The payback from the space shuttle seems tiny compared
with the billions of dollars it burns up. Says Walter Massey,
director of the National Science Foundation: "The public hears
that we're No. 1 in science, and they want to know why that fact
isn't making our lives better. The one thing that works in this
country doesn't seem to be paying off."

    Now government is preparing to take a different stance
toward science -- and not just because a new Administration is
coming to Washington. Long before the election, policymakers
were concluding that they should assert more control over
research by telling many scientists precisely what to work on.
"We've got to do some readjusting," says Guyford Stever,
co-chairman of a recent Carnegie Commission study on the future
of American science.

    At issue is the balance between two very different types
of research: basic and applied. Basic scientists pursue
knowledge for its own sake. They may study the sex lives of
bacteria growing in Petri dishes or use giant accelerators to
smash protons together to see what kinds of subatomic debris
come out. Applied scientists, in contrast, have a social goal
in mind. They take the knowledge gained from basic science and
try to apply it to solving a problem or creating a new
technology. They may use their understanding of light waves to
construct an optical computer or test a drug to see if it will
knock out the AIDS virus.

    Without basic science, there can be no applied science.
But a consensus is building that the U.S. spends too much of
its research budget on the search for new knowledge and not
enough on harnessing the knowledge already gained. Now every
major federal science agency, from the National Institutes of
Health to NASA, is experimenting with or proposing some form of
"directed research" to meet social needs. This is a historic
shift for science -- one that portends more planning and
accountability than in the past. For the first time, science
will be driven more by its consumers than its products.

    The Clinton Administration will go along with, and even
accelerate, this change in emphasis. The President-elect has
repeatedly pledged to direct government support to such
practical fields as fiber-optic communications, computer
networking, biotechnology, robotics and magnetic-levitation
train transportation. Vice President Gore will probably be in
charge of coordinating federal efforts to spur technology.

    Scientists are not taking this assault on their
independence lightly. Thousands of letters (more than 250 in one
day) have poured into the National Science Foundation from
researchers protesting the agency's intention to "redefine" its
role and focus more on applied research. Howls have been even
louder over the National Institutes of Health's new "strategic
plan," which would, among other things, encourage scientists to
work more closely with industry. To some observers, the
reaction from the scientific community is little more than the
pleadings of another special-interest group trying to preserve
its privileges. "I thought NIH existed to meet the needs of the
public," says agency director Dr. Bernadine Healy of the outcry
over the new strategic plan. "They thought NIH was here to serve
scientists."

    Researchers say America may be trading future knowledge
for short-term political profit. The new approach, they fear,
will dry up basic research, which has spawned entire segments
of the national economy, including the biotech and computer
industries. "What we're all worried about is that there will be
less and less room to maneuver in basic research, the area that
put us where we are," says Dr. Harold Varmus, a
Nobel-prizewinning microbiologist from the University of
California, San Francisco. "If we move our investment into some
narrowly defined social contract, 10 years from now we will have
nothing."

    In the best of worlds, the nation's basic science
structure would be left untouched even as applied research was
strengthened. But the money isn't there. When the Bush
Administration earlier this year submitted a 1993 budget that
would have increased science spending only 6.5%, to $28 billion,
Congress for the first time in recent memory actually whittled
down the Administration's request -- to a 2.3% increase. The
budget freezes spending at many agencies, including NASA, and
cuts NIH's funds (in inflation-adjusted dollars) 0.1%. Moreover,
appropriations for some science agencies came attached with
warnings that, in the future, simply requesting more money will
no longer be considered a realistic solution to science's
problems.

    Clinton hopes to ease the money crunch by transferring as
much as $30 billion during the next four years from the
Pentagon's research budget to civilian science and technology.
But faced with an annual federal budget deficit of about $300
billion, the new President cannot support basic research in the
lavish, no-strings fashion that scientists have come to expect.
Giant projects such as the superconducting supercollider, the
proposed $8.25 billion Texas-based atom smasher that will hunt
for quarks and other exotic subatomic particles, will come under
increasingly tough scrutiny.

    The current controversy over science reopens an old
debate. After World War II, proposals to establish a
super-science agency were stalled for years as politicians and
researchers fought for control. Scientists claimed that they
alone could objectively and intelligently assess new research
and chart future directions. But politicians were reluctant to
hand out blank checks and then ask the recipients if the money
was being wisely spent. As the debate wore on, scientists
pointed to the postwar economic boom as a validation of their
approach. The politicians finally capitulated, and the National
Science Foundation -- funded by government but largely directed
by the scientific establishment -- was created in 1950. In
retrospect, it is now obvious that American economic dominance
in the 1950s and '60s was virtually assured because competitors'
production capacity had been destroyed by the war. The time has
come, say critics of big science, to give the research system
a thorough review and overhaul.

    Lacking a comprehensive strategy, U.S. science has grown
in ways no one really planned. For example, more than 40% of
the entire federal investment in basic research goes into
biomedical studies. Is that too much? Is the investment
improving health in a measurable way? Another question is what
to do with the nation's three nuclear-weapons labs. They each
consume $1 billion a year. Is that too much in this post-cold
war era? Why have three weapons labs when no new bomb orders are
on the books and Congress is halting underground tests? And most
important, what should be done with expertise developed in these
centers?

    Precisely how sci