What Money Can Buy
An Interview With David Goldston on Reasonable Expectations for Science Policy
SOURCE: AP
David Goldston wants to ask the big questions about federal science policy. Can the research establishment become unsustainably large? Are scientists always an asset to Congress? And what are the problems with current methods of creating science policy?
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Biomedical breakthroughs, advanced energy technologies, prestigious grants to support entire careers in research—the subject of federal research investments can inspire grand expectations. But what should citizens, scientists, and politicians really expect from federal science and technology policy? On the weekend of April 5 and 6, 2008, graduate students gathered to discuss this question at an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, “Science and Technology in Society,” at the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
David Goldston, the former staff director of the House Science and Technology Committee, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, gave a keynote at the event. He addressed the misguided expectations that surround science and technology policy. Science Progress followed up with Goldston to talk about debates over science funding, why more is not always better, and the idea that scientists are galloping assailants of bad ideas. This interview has been edited.
Jonathan Pfeiffer, Science Progress: At the conference on science policy, you explained to graduate students that our tools for doing science and technology policy are “impoverished.” What did you mean by that?
David Goldston: Well, I think there are some basic questions in science policy that we don’t really have enough information to answer. What’s the optimal size of the system? Are there problems with having a system that’s too large, that becomes unsustainable, and that can sometimes demoralize its participants? What are the best ways we can promote innovation? What are the links between K-12 education, college education, and the functioning of the economy? All of these are basic questions that underlie science policy. We answer them by a mix of faith and sketchy, incomplete understandings from policy studies, all of which could use deeper probing.
SP: Tell us more about “unsustainable” investment into research institutions. What is the scenario you are thinking of, and what are the risks you think are so significant?
Goldston: Let me start by saying that I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t put more money into R&D than we are right now. But there is a question of how large the system should grow. We have a situation now where almost every college and university wants to be a player in federal research and wants to go after that kind of prestige and become a “research university.” Yet each research dollar produces more graduate students, many of whom then expect to be supported by further research dollars, and you have this sort of Malthusian situation where you could end up with the population of researchers growing far more quickly than any reasonable projection of the federal budget to support them could. And there certainly have been periods when it has been hard for Ph.D.s to get jobs, either in academia or elsewhere.
We have this situation now with the doubling of the National Institutes of Health budget where medical faculties grew very quickly—particularly those supported by so-called soft money, meaning one hundred percent by outside grants. When those increases didn’t continue, those people were left looking for funding for their laboratories. Now, many of us would have hoped that the funding for NIH wouldn’t flatten out quite so quickly, but even with reasonable increases, it would have been hard for that many people, and for that matter, the number of new buildings the universities built, to be supported in the way that people had been predicting.
SP: Stepping back for just a moment, these debates in science policy often focus on these questions of how much federal money to provide for research and development. Do you think these debates miss the point?
Goldston: I wouldn’t say they miss the point. It is certainly the starting point of any discussion of how much money should be there. I think again, those debates are usually a question of how much money is available given other macroeconomic constraints, rather than a kind of analytical discussion of how much money we need for the research establishment. The assumption is that more is always better. That’s not a bad side to err on, but it’s not analytical.
But I think we need to move beyond just having those debates to looking more closely at what kinds of things we should emphasize for funding. What can we do to make sure that younger researchers get funding? What can we do to make sure that some of the most exciting, innovative ideas get funded? Again, are there particular areas, whether it’s energy policy, or something else, that need a special focus? All of those kinds of questions get below and beyond the mere question of the absolute totals, and we need to have those discussions as well.
SP: How can we understand the nature of these specific questions that need attention? You said that climate change is an “outlier” in these discussions—that it is a special case. What qualities characterize science and technology policy issues in general? Why is climate change an “outlier”?
Goldston: Well, when I was talking about climate change as an outlier, I wasn’t talking about the research on it. I was making a point about the way science and policy intersect. And in most issues that involve science, science is only one factor, not a determining factor. The primary questions that are being asked about a policy question are not and should not be scientific ones. Science just provides the background. That’s an important factor, but it’s not the only deciding factor.
What I said is unusual about climate change is that for a long time, the debate in Congress actually revolved around a specific science question—is anthropogenic climate change real?—and there was an actual consensus answer from the scientific community, an answer that has become even more clear over time, and the answer is yes; and the debate continued—although this is starting to change—pretty much unchanged despite that scientific consensus. What I was saying is that any of those factors is unusual: for Congress to be asking a purely scientific question and for the scientific community to have a clear answer, but for that answer not to immediately alter the contours of the debate. All of those things are unusual, and yet because climate is such an overwhelming problem and an important question, sometimes the scientific community feels or assumes that every policy question involving science has the same unfortunate characteristics of the climate debate, when actually I would argue that it’s rather unique.
SP: You also said that scientists sometimes imagine themselves as “riders of white horses waiting to be called upon to clean up Congress.” Why do you say this is a dangerous idea?
Goldston: It gets back to this science and policy question. I was referring in particular to some of the articles that have come out since the recent election of Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL). This has nothing to do with Congressman Foster, and I’m not suggesting that it wouldn’t be a good trend to have some additional scientists in Congress. The more varied the backgrounds of members of Congress the better. But if you read what the scientific community sometimes says about this, the line is, “Oh, scientists are analytical! Scientists work with facts! If they got into Congress, we’d have solutions to all of our problems.” And this is a little bit of a caricature, but unfortunately, not much of one in terms of what people say.
Most questions are not purely factual. Congress usually does have and deal with the facts at hand. But those aren’t decisive. And science is not the only training that enables one to think analytically. So the assumption that if we add 435 scientists in the House or 100 scientists in the Senate, then all of our problems would be over, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the policy world. And it’s problematic, because in addition to creating unnecessary cynicism about the policy world, it increases the tendency of both members of Congress, politicians in general, and scientists to try to frame every policy question as a science question. And that tends to drag science into debates where it doesn’t necessarily belong, and also makes it difficult to discuss the actual policy issues that are before us, because everyone wants to pretend that they are “factual” science questions instead.
SP: Back to the question of money: What impact do lobbyists and earmarks have on science policy and federal research and development funding?
Goldston: I always thought earmarks should be limited, and I think the fact that the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have not been earmarked is certainly one of those agencies’ strengths. That said, I think some of the earmark debate is overblown. First of all, there’s an assumption about all the money within science agencies that is earmarked, which is that if it were not earmarked, it would still go to those science agencies. And that’s really not likely to be the case.
Certainly, fewer earmarks would increase the pot of money available in general and that could benefit science, but Congress is not setting up an agency budget and saying x amount will be earmarked. Congress is looking at how many earmarks we need, which affects the overall pot of money for all the agencies, not just the science agencies. There are certain earmarks that can be helpful. Congress may have ideas both in terms of local development, and in terms of particular areas of science that agencies are not paying enough attention to that it may be worth pushing on, especially if these are programmatic—I wouldn’t call them “earmarks”—but programmatic directions. In other words, it’s “spend money on this category of research” as opposed to “spend money on this particular project at this particular campus.”
But I think science earmarks have grown and diminished as part of the overall debate on earmarks, and so that will continue to be the case. I’d say earmarks should be limited. But they are not the major factor in what’s been happening to the science budgets overall.
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