This chapter summarizes the remarks of the four speakers who opened the conference and set the stage. It then summarizes the remarks of the four panelists in the first plenary roundtable session, which highlighted the views of science and innovation policy makers who are the ultimate consumers of the output of research conducted under the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program. The concluding section is a summary of the discussion that followed the panelists’ remarks.
The opening session of the SciSIP Principal Investigators’ Conference set forth the purposes of the conference and provided additional historical background. Speakers included Irwin Feller, professor emeritus of economics at the Pennsylvania State University and chair of the conference steering committee; Charles Vest, then president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, one of the constituents of the National Academies complex); Constance Citro, director of the National Research Council (NRC)’s Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), under whose auspices the conference was organized; and Myron Gutmann, then director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate.
Remarks of Irwin Feller, Pennsylvania State University
Irwin Feller described three overlapping and reinforcing agendas for the conference. The first was the formal agenda (see Appendix A), which was designed to help foster an intellectual exchange among funded researchers of the NSF SciSIP program and between these researchers and science policy practitioners. The second was an informal agenda to provide each participant an opportunity to meet and talk with colleagues and others who share a common interest in science and innovation policy, thereby helping to build the community of practice that is a central objective of the NSF SciSIP program. It was for this reason that the conference contained a mix of plenary sessions, breakout sessions, poster sessions, breaks, and conference-provided meals.
Feller stated that the third agenda was a personal one, in which the conference contributed to his own ongoing longitudinal study of the evolution of the science of science and innovation policy that began 50 years ago. It was in 1962 that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) published the seminal volume The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors (National Bureau of
Economic Research, 1962). He observed that the section and chapter headings in that volume read like the titles of today’s conference and many of its presentations—for example, Problems of Definition and Measurement, The Economics of Research and Development, The Changing Direction of Research and Development Employment Among Firms, and The Link Between Science and Invention. Many of today’s conference participants probably studied with people who authored the chapters in the NBER volume; some were taught by people who studied with those people; while some may have no idea what this volume refers to, but essentially have absorbed it as part of the ethos regarding the fundamental assumptions of science and innovation policy. Feller noted his own modest role in the conference that produced the NBER volume as the graduate assistant of one of the co-organizers. From that beginning, he maintained a continuing curiosity about how the field has advanced over this 50-year period, as well as to what extent it has contributed and has relevance to policy making. He called this conference a data point for his study by shedding light on what has been learned from the SciSIP initiative that is new, significant, and relevant.
Equally important in the advancement of the science of science and innovation policy field is the extent to which academic researchers and science and technology policy makers engage in productive interactive dialogue. Feller said one can dispense with a linear model in which knowledge flows downstream or downhill from academic research to policy makers. In fact, from previous workshops organized under the SciSIP program, it is clear that policy makers have a keen interest in the work that is being done through SciSIP and related initiatives (Teich and Feller, 2009, 2011). What policy makers would like first, he suggested, is some kind of translation so that research findings are comprehensible. Second, they would like a consumer report-type digest to see which of several competing models that deal with the same issues are more accurate or more relevant. But more importantly, the issues that policy makers wrestle with represent cutting edge challenges to the research community. Indeed, one of the continuing challenges to the SciSIP and cognate research communities is to see if it is possible to answer the questions posed by the late Dr. John H. Marburger, III, in his now-famous speech about the need for a science of science policy (Marburger, 2005).
Remarks of Charles Vest,10 National Academy of Engineering
Charles Vest identified three conundrums for science policy making. First, from the perspective of the federal government and in particular Congress, scientific research is supported as a means to an end—namely, to improve the economy, national health, national security, and other national goals. Yet, he observed, that may not be what motivates bright young scientists. They are driven in general by something totally different, such as intellectual curiosity, the thrill of the chase, and the deep burrowing into a very challenging intellectual problem. Somehow, he said, science policy making has to bring these two interests together in a way that drives the country forward.
Vest noted that policy makers face another conundrum in deciding whether to
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10Dr. Charles Vest, former president of the National Academy of Engineering, passed away in December 2013. For his brief biography, see http://www.nae.edu/Projects/MediaRoom/News/105530.aspx [January 2014].
invest in research directed to short-term or long-term results. He predicted that the future would see a lot more work in “Pasteur’s fourth quadrant” (Stokes, 1997): work that advances fundamental knowledge but also has an end goal in mind. Prime examples include not only the work of Louis Pasteur, but also the work at Bell Labs that advanced the science of physics and led to the transistor and all of the inventions that this new technology spawned (see Gertner, 2012). Yet a third conundrum is how to differentiate between what is a cost and what is an investment. Researchers all believe that funding for their work is an investment, but that is not always so obvious to policy makers.
Vest concluded by expressing his view that the role of science policy is to deal with these conundrums in a rational way, by drawing on metrics from research that explain the past and provide guides to the future and balancing those metrics with judgment. At the end of the day, the big issue is communication between the researcher community and policy makers. He challenged the conference participants to understand the issues facing science policy makers and articulate them in a way that people who are not part of the research community or particularly sympathetic to that community can begin to understand them.
Remarks of Constance Citro, National Research Council
Constance Citro noted that a CNSTAT review of statistics on research and development (R&D) spending, commissioned by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, contributed in a small way to launching the SciSIP program (National Research Council, 2005). The report recommended improvements in NCSES surveys about R&D expenditures and that NCSES pursue measurement of innovation. When briefed on the report, Marburger lamented that economic policy makers had the support of economists, who could bring to bear an array of data and macro and micro models. While the models were not always accurate, nonetheless, a whole toolbox was available to help policy makers evaluate the likely costs and benefits of different fiscal policies, tax and transfer programs, and so on. In contrast, Marburger felt that research in the area of science policy was in its infancy and had not achieved the scope and scale required.
Marburger’s subsequent speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) catalyzed the launching the SciSIP program at NSF within SBE. Kaye Husbands Fealing, who organized this conference, did the intellectual and logistical work that made it possible to initiate the program. She was followed by Julia Lane, now at the American Institutes for Research, then by David Croson, and now Joshua Rosenbloom.
Citro concluded by expressing the hope that the SciSIP program would generate longitudinal time series that could support research on what works in this very complex arena of science and technology policy. She stressed the importance that microdata sets be shared widely within the research community.
Remarks of Myron Gutmann, National Science Foundation and University of Michigan
Myron Gutmann reminded the conference participants of how unique the SciSIP program is. It is multidisciplinary, it incorporates a variety of sciences, it orients basic research toward immediate application to support informed policy, and it has accomplished a great deal in its short history. He said NSF expects that this multidisciplinary approach is going to continue, with a convergence of research in all of the relevant sciences. NSF also sees SciSIP as a broad intergovernmental initiative, both within the federal government and internationally.
Gutmann noted that NSF is one of two institutional co-chairs, along with the Department of Energy, of the Interagency Working Group on Science of Science Policy that brings together the best ideas across the government.11 That working group is just now rolling out an initiative on large-scale data for understanding the science of science policy. NSF looks forward to seeing how that initiative goes forward and to fostering linkages of federal statistical data with research in the underlying social sciences through interagency collaboration.
Gutmann urged the conference participants to think about two fundamental questions. First, how can deeper knowledge of science and innovation policy be translated into better outcomes for the nation? Second, looking in the other direction, what does rapidly advancing knowledge of science policy mean for the evolution of the social and behavioral sciences and their impact on society as a whole?
PERSPECTIVES OF SCIENCE AND INNOVATION POLICY MAKERS
The Roundtable of Science and Innovation Policy Makers was led by Albert Teich, former head of science policy at the AAAS and currently affiliated with the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University. In his opening remarks, Teich stated that the purpose of the session was to establish what science policy makers want from the SciSIP program. As important background, in addition to the reports of two workshops of SciSIP grantees cited by Feller above, Teich recommended the foreword by former U.S. Science Advisor Marburger in The Science of Science Policy—A Handbook (Husbands Fealing, Lane, Marburger, and Shipp, 2011), together with a chapter in the handbook that was in part inspired by Marburger’s charge to researchers—the production of knowledge that improves the management of the science and technology enterprise in the United States.
Teich then introduced the speakers: Sharon Hays, Computer Sciences Corporation and formerly chief of staff at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under Marburger; Thomas Kalil, OSTP; Joel Scheraga, Environmental Protection Agency; and William Colglazier, Department of State. Each speaker addressed the importance of SciSIP research, converging on the same key point—the need for greater and more timely communication of ideas between policy makers and researchers. This necessary bridge-
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11The interagency working group is chartered under the SBE subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council; see http://scienceofsciencepolicy.net/page/about-interagency-working-group-science-science-policy-sosp-iwg [January 2014].
building was described as the creation of infrastructure and incentives that foster meaningful and productive information development and sharing.
Remarks of Sharon Hays, Computer Science Corporation
Sharon Hays reflected on how Marburger’s vision and leadership influenced the evolution of the science of science policy, noting two important contributions of his speech to the AAAS in 2005. First was his call for the development of frameworks, tools, and datasets that could form the foundations of evidence-based decision-making in science and innovation policy; second was his call for the coalescence of the discipline of the science of science policy. Hays recalled that “… Jack wrote all of his own speeches, and this one was no different.” In Marburger’s own words (Marburger, 2005):
Much of the available literature on science policy is being produced piecemeal by scientists who are experts in their fields, but not necessarily in the methods and literature of the relevant social science disciplines needed to define appropriate data elements and create econometric models that can be useful to policy experts.
I am suggesting that the nascent field of the social science of science policy needs to grow up, and quickly, to provide a basis for understanding the enormously complex dynamic of today’s global, technology-based society. We need models that can give us insight into the likely futures of the technical workforce and its response to different possible stimuli. We need models for the impact of globalization on technical work, for the impact of yet further revolutions in information technology on the work of scientists and engineers, for the effect on federal programs of the inexorable proliferation of research centers, institutes, and laboratories and their voracious appetite for federal funds, for the effect of huge fluctuations in state support for public universities. These are not items that you can just go out and buy, because research is necessary even to frame an approach. This is a task for a new interdisciplinary field of quantitative science policy studies.
… but I worry constantly that our tools for making wise decisions, and bringing along the American people and their elected representatives, are not yet sharp enough to manage the complexity of our evolving relationship with the awakening globe. I want to base advocacy on the best science we can muster to map our future in the world.
Hays said she was struck by how Marburger articulated and synthesized the essential elements of an internal policy discussion that he and his staff at OSTP had been engaged in for months prior. The National Institutes of Health budget had almost doubled from its 1997 level, and there was the sense that other disciplines needed attention—specifically, the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering. However, OSTP asked
what evidence could support determining an optimal funding increase for the natural sciences and the optimal portfolio between the biological and medical sciences compared with the physical sciences and engineering. Decisions were mainly based on “go-to anecdotes” about the importance of R&D and serendipitous research findings oftentimes found using Internet searches.
Hayes also drew attention to Marburger’s call for greater engagement, collaboration, and productivity of scholars and practitioners in the social science of science policy, to the point where it could become a discipline. Not only did Marburger want tools at the ready for the decisions at hand, but also he wanted a cadre of experts—policy makers and researchers—who could develop new implementable techniques for informing science and innovation policy. This vision has been interpreted by some as a call for a community of practice that continually develops frameworks, tools, and datasets for implementing science and innovation policy.
Hays ended her remarks with a personal reflection:
It’s interesting to me that Jack’s speech was shaped largely by what many viewed as a debate in that zero sum game that is the federal budget development process between the biomedical sciences and the other disciplines such as, in particular, the physical sciences. But what arose, interestingly enough, was the flourishing of a set of disciplines that traditionally have not gotten as much attention in these policy debates about the R&D budget: economics, the social sciences, and so forth, which may for all I know may have been one of Jack’s motivations in the speech that he gave.
She went on to encourage the community of practice not only to celebrate what has already been accomplished, but also to continue to develop econometric models and estimates of return on investment to federal investment in scientific research, and to pursue other related questions that have been around for many years.
Remarks of Thomas Kalil, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Thomas Kalil gave his perspective on the importance of the SciSIP program from his role as a member of the White House staff in OSTP, serving as a “policy entrepreneur”—one who develops new ideas and solutions to science and innovation policy issues for consideration by the President and the senior members of the administration, particularly in the run-up to the State of the Union and the preparation of the President’s budget. Kalil impressed on SciSIP researchers that he has seen many occasions in which closer interactions between policy makers and academic researchers could have led to more productive outcomes. Obstacles to such collaborations need to be better understood and overcome. Kalil gave three specific instances to elucidate the importance of two-way communication between SciSIP researchers and policy practitioners.
First, Kalil gave the example of “advanced market commitments,” citing Michael Kremer’s (2001) work on development of vaccines for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor and particularly when markets are imperfect or nonexistent. Without a viable market, profit-maximizing firms are reluctant to develop drugs. The solution, based on Kremer’s findings, allows governments and donors to agree to purchase from pharmaceutical companies a sizable volume of doses of the new vaccine at a stated price. This agreement would require a large enough purchase by the buyers such that the producers of the vaccine would find it economically feasible to finance research, development, and production of the new drug. The risk of making the drug would be mitigated by the agreement, and if the companies were not successful in developing a viable vaccine, then governments would not be responsible for any of the development costs. Kremer called this a “pull mechanism” as opposed to the traditional push mechanisms of funding research and development. Kalil said that a Washington-based think tank, the Center for Global Development, created a task force on the issue in 2003, released a report in April 2005, and saw its concept embraced by the G-712 finance ministers in 2006.13 Five countries and the Gates Foundation together supported one of these ventures in 2007, and by 2010, poor children in developing countries were being vaccinated with a pneumococcal vaccine, which was expected to prevent seven million of these children from dying of diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis over the next 20 years.
Kalil noted further that this idea of pull mechanisms, although initially framed in the context of global health, is now also used in the area of global agriculture. In June 2012, the G-2014 announced its support for the AgResults Initiative,15 which is going to use a pull mechanism to stimulate innovation for global food security and agricultural development. The initial impact of the research and positive unintended consequences are what encouraged Kalil to anticipate similar opportunities stemming from the SciSIP research community. He impressed on the audience that “ideas matter, and academics can play a very important role in getting policy makers to consider new approaches.”
For his second example, Kalil cited the work of Harvard University labor economist (and SciSIP principal investigator) Richard Freeman, which illustrates that research can be policy-relevant even when presented in academic forums. Kalil referred to a Hamilton Project paper by Richard Freeman that clearly delineated results of a study on NSF-sponsored graduate research fellowships (Freeman, 2006). White House policy staff found the paper useful because it had a very specific proposal that was perceived as straightforward to implement—namely, according to a bullet point in the abstract of the paper: “The supply of applicants contains enough qualified candidates to allow for a
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12The G-7 or Group of 7, is an international group of finance ministers from the following countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States.
13See http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2005/December/05/dr00034135.aspx?p=1[January 2014].
14The G-20 or Group of 20, is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from the following countries and region: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States.
15See http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/ORGANIZATION/CFPEXT/0,,contentMDK:23005969~pagePK:64060249~piPK:64060294~theSitePK:299948,00.html [January 2014].
sizeable increase in the number of awards without greatly reducing measured skills.” Kalil said that, inspired by the results in the paper, the administration was able, even with budget constraints, to increase the budget enough to raise the number of grants considerably throughout the late 2000s.
The third illustration that Kalil presented was based on the work of Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani (e.g., Lakhani and Jeppesen, 2007), who has written extensively on problem solving using open-source networks or “open innovation.” NASA found that a solution for getting research-to-policy was to partner with Lakhani, creating a tournament lab, which is allowing NASA rapidly and inexpensively to crowd-source problems that require improved algorithms or software solutions. Kalil indicated that NASA is getting results that have been deemed to be better, faster, and cheaper using open innovation, and Lakhani is getting peer-reviewed publications with novel data from the activity.
Based on the lessons learned from these and other examples, Kalil offered his suggestions on ways to increase the flow of questions that policy makers have to academic researchers and to decrease barriers to the flow of ideas from researchers to policy makers. He stressed they are not one-size-fits-all solutions, but they offer some food for thought that could improve science and innovation policy outcomes:
(1) Policy makers could be more transparent about questions that require formal analysis. There are already processes in place, such as requests for information and notices of inquiry. However, Kalil suggested informal ways of connecting researchers and policy makers could be useful, for instance, following Lakhani’s open-source techniques. An example of this would be the use of Internet sites devoted to answering policy questions.
(2) Second, information that policy makers need to know or have at their disposal could be curated to move a given agenda forward. This would increase the extent to which academics not only provide empirical analysis about the status quo, but also offer policy prescriptions about public and private actions that could lead to more desirable outcomes.
(3) Finally, he suggested that NSF has the opportunity to develop specific activities to capitalize on key broader impacts of research that the SciSIP program has supported. For example, the NSF Innovation Corps Teams Program (I-Corps Teams) connects faculty and students that have potentially commercially relevant inventions to entrepreneurs that can help them move these ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace.16 An analogous set of activities could be put in place that could help researchers with interesting ideas move those ideas from scholarly journals to consideration by policy makers. Another example could be borrowed from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.17 Academics would publish an article in a scholarly journal, of which the final paragraph would suggest a given policy that could be implemented based on the findings. To avoid the problem of the policy maker never reading the article or the researcher not knowing enough information to design a useful policy, the activity would arrange for
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16See http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12602/nsf12602.htm [January 2014].
17See http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/hamiltonproject [January 2014].
academics who are interested in policy issues to produce 25- to 30-page papers, with 5-page summaries that are configured into a format that maps onto key policy design questions, thereby moving the initial ideas from academic publication to practice.
Kalil finished his remarks by commenting that he was very much interested in staying engaged with the SciSIP community. He said he wants to establish concrete conduits that could strengthen the two-way dialogue and partnership between policy practitioners and the academic research community.
Remarks of Joel Scheraga, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Joel Scheraga focused his remarks on the opportunities that are often obscured by the challenges of translating scientific information into timely and useful insights to inform policy and resource management decisions. He said research in the field of science policy is not focused on answering the particular questions being asked by decision makers at a point in time. In addition, even with an appropriate focus, scientists are often hesitant to inform policy decisions because they do not feel the science is “good enough yet” for use by policy makers.
Scheraga challenged the SciSIP community to build “a lasting bridge” that would facilitate information exchange between social scientists, natural scientists, the private sector, and policy makers, with the expectation that the ongoing dialogue and collaboration would yield better outcomes in a more timely fashion. He used illustrations from the environmental policy domain to emphasize how such collaborative efforts have been and could be productive.
Scheraga’s first illustration was of a current federal government partnership with states, tribes, and local communities across the country to enhance the resilience of communities and businesses to climate change. Billions of dollars are being spent now by cities all across the country on costly infrastructure in coastal areas, and much of that infrastructure is vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges, the frequency of which will go up as the Earth’s climate changes. Decision makers want to ensure that when these investments are made, whether it is by the public sector or the private sector, this costly infrastructure is protected and resilient to more frequent and intense storm events that will occur and are already occurring. Scheraga noted that better decisions could be made if they were informed and supported by the best available science at any particular point in time, including social science.
His second illustration concerned the operations of federal agencies in the face of climate change. In October of 2009, President Obama signed an executive order that called on the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force18 to recommend how the policies and practices of federal agencies all across the country could support a national climate change adaptation effort. A year later, the task force provided a set of recommendations to the President, two of which Scheraga highlighted during his remarks.
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18See http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/adaptation [January 2014].
(1) The first recommendation from the task force to the President called on all 63 federal departments and agencies in the federal government to develop and implement climate change adaptation plans with the express goal of ensuring that they could continue to fulfill their missions even as the climate changed.
(2) The second recommendation was to improve the integration of science into decision making. There was a need to prioritize activities that address science gaps important to adaptation decisions and policies being made right now by federal agencies and their partners. It was also important to develop “science translation capacity” to improve the communication and application of science to meet the needs of decision makers.
Scheraga reported that on June 29, 2013, federal agencies including EPA delivered their climate change adaptation plans to the Council on Environmental Quality. The agencies are now beginning the implementation phase. Those involved in the programs face the challenge of needing more information from the research community on which to make decisions. Scheraga indicated that policy makers know where the holes are, and that researchers could provide necessary information at this critical time in the problem-solving process. Building of that bridge is now a major focus of the U.S. Global Change Research Program,19 a consortium of 13 federal departments and agencies that spend upwards of two billion dollars on global change research; they are increasingly focusing on involvement from the social and behavioral sciences.
Scheraga’s final example related to the activities at EPA and other federal agencies that are “passionate” about helping tribes across the country adapt to a changing climate. Particularly, they are working with tribes living in coastal areas of Alaska who are coping with the changing climate. He mentioned the Newtok, Shishmaref, and Kivalina communities, where 20 years ago the physical science clearly indicated that homes were falling into the sea. Scheraga asked the social and behavioral scientists to help identify the problem (in addition to the physical science of climate change) and to provide policy makers with the information that would help mitigate the problem.
In closing, Scheraga reiterated the need for institutions as part of the solution to creating better access and communication between researchers and policy makers. He particularly wanted to see both communities try to address the change to the U.S. economy and livelihoods in the presence of climate change.
Remarks of William Colglazier, U.S. Department of State
William Colglazier, in his role as science and technology advisor at the U.S. State Department, took a broader, international view of the importance for SciSIP researchers to improve the accessibility of their techniques and findings. Based on countless discussions with science advisors around the world, Colglazier stated that the topic of science and technology policy is important to developed and developing countries alike. The topic of most common interest is the impact of science, technology, and innovation on economic development and the future prosperity of a given country.
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19See http://www.globalchange.gov/ [January 2014].
Colglazier listed the questions he found most pressing for science and technology policy makers around the globe as:
• How can a country improve its capacity in science and technology?
• What is the appropriate share of gross domestic product to spend on science and technology?
• What types of investments in science and technology are critical for economic development?
• Where should government focus its investments in education—kindergarten through high school, baccalaureate, or doctoral levels?
• Where is government most influential in funding research and development? Universities? National laboratories? Collaboration with private-sector firms?
• What policies can encourage bigger linkages between the universities and industries? What types of government programs might be most effective in stimulating academics and others who translate new ideas and inventions into commercial products?
• What are the most effective policies to facilitate startups and entrepreneurs, or to attract venture capital to potentially transformative emerging sectors?
The importance of salient anecdotes and stories was the main thrust of Colglazier’s closing remarks. He described three National Academies reports that informed science and innovation policy decisions in recent years, for which the compelling evidence was mainly qualitative. The first report, Rising to the Challenge: U.S. Innovation Policy for the Global Economy (National Research Council, 2012b), assessed comparative innovation policy looking at countries around the world. The report was particularly compelling because its recommendations were a consensus of experts from academia, government, and industry. The second report, Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to our Nation’s Security and Prosperity (National Research Council, 2012a), looked at what the United States needs to ensure that its research universities stay at the forefront in the 21st century. The last report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2007), had a major influence on the U.S. Congress, inspiring the America COMPETES Act of 2007. All three reports pooled judgments from experts about what the nation should do on these very important issues. Colglazier summarized his point this way: “Even the anecdotes sometimes carry more sway than some of the most carefully done academic research.” He suggested that social science and anthropological research have important tools for improving this type of evidence for use in public policy.
Discussion
Following the prepared remarks of the four panelists, Teich asked them a set of questions that have historically been the fodder of discussion, debate, and research regarding science policy: How much? Which fields? Is it possible to answer those
questions analytically? And is econometrics, as Marburger would have liked us to think, a good model for science policy? Is it possible to make rationally based policy in a system in the United States in which there are essentially adversarial parts of the government, one of which has hundreds of individual policy makers with their own differing views?
Highlights from the panelists’ responses to Teich’s questions include:
• There will not be a model that “spits out the right answer to all those difficult questions.” However, improvements to the frameworks, metrics, and solution sets for science and innovation policy are possible, and the SciSIP community is expected to produce advances in these areas.
• Metrics should inform the science policy debate, but policy makers should understand their limitations.
• Economics has given policy makers useful rules of thumb regarding investments in science and technology.
• SciSIP research should focus on explaining how ideas move from the laboratory to the marketplace. There is a need for rigorous empirical research to understand why there is a wide range in performance among academic institutions and national labs in technology transfer.
• The question of which fields should be targeted for investment could be better approached by focusing on specific problems to be addressed so that the appropriate array of fields could be drawn in to solve the problem.
• A question is who decides when information is “good enough” to inform decisions. Is it the policy maker (federal, state, or local level), the research scientist (natural scientist, social scientist), or the public? Communication between researchers and policy makers should include discussion on levels of uncertainty that policy makers are willing to accept in the solutions to problems provided by the researchers. It is incumbent on scientists to characterize uncertainties and to communicate the importance of those uncertainties and their implications to policy makers. This may change the way a policy maker implements a policy once the implications of those uncertainties is understood.
• Case studies that are carefully done can be very influential with policy makers. This is particularly evident when implementation strategies for programs are being considered. Having specific examples from previous activities is illuminating to policy makers.
• Congress is a stakeholder in the community of practice discussed earlier. Transparency of process is important—the questions posed, the scientific methods used, information that guided decisions, and so on all need to be communicated to congressional representatives and their staff.
The final question was from an audience member, who wanted the panelists’ thoughts on their observation that “there is a fair amount of bipartisan agreement among our parties and members of Congress related to the important of science and technology…” In response, Colglazier recounted a meeting with staff of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska on Capitol Hill:
We discussed this assessment with them [about climate change], and their senior staffer just glazed over. He wasn’t interested, he wasn’t interested. Just before we left, I was thinking how do I convey to him the importance of this issue, forget the politics? And I finally turned to him and I said: “Do you know what the Alaska pipeline sits on?” And he said “No.” And I said “Well, it sits on permafrost. And the permafrost is melting.” That’s all I had to say. He reached out and asked for a copy of the report.
The capstone observation of the session underscored its main theme. Colglazier stated: “It is incumbent on us to understand the interest and the issues of concern to the stakeholders including up on Capitol Hill, and to communicate in plain English to them the implications of the science for the things that they care about.”
