Lewis Branscomb Explains How Dukakis Will Bolster Research

Branscomb The first problem is simply for the administration to organize itself to deal with issues of science and technology in a professional and effective manner. That is something that in my opinion the last several administrations have progressively been doing less and less well. Q How might this be accomplished? Will Dukakis be able to do it? Branscomb The president has to set the tone with his cabinet when he fills those jobs, but one thing that Dukakis has committed himself to is to use his science adviser to review senior level technical appointments to executive jobs. I think that’s absolutely essential. I don’t think that the science adviser needs a veto power. But I think all of those recommendations must pass through his office after they have cleared the White House personnel office. They should then go to the president with an attached memorandum from the science adviser that says, “I endorse this can- didate” or “I think this candidate has some shortcomings.” Q Would that be a difference between a Bush and a Dukahis administration? Branscomb I don’t know what the Bush people would do because I have very great difficulty in understanding how Mr. Bush sets his management priorities. He has been in these relatively passive roles for such a longtime. He might appoint a terrific team of people and they might do great things, but I just have no way of knowing. It’s easier to contrast what Dukakis would do with what the Reagan administration did, which was, by and large, to leave a lot of the technology positions vacant or to try to put political people into them—until they were rejected by the Congress. I think the administration has used SDI as a litmus test of competence for most of the high-level technical jobs, which seems to be relying on a political criterion where one ought to be basing decisions on a technical management ability. I do know something about Dukakis’s predictions, and I think he’s very likely to work hard at the task of finding competent, experienced people to fill these kinds of jobs. Q Why is it so important for the new administration to deal with science and technology “in a more professional manner?” Branscomb One reason is that the country’s technological capabilities are under serious pressure from able competitors, mast of whom are friends of ours, and the United States can no longer take its technical prowess for granted. We have to give serious top-level attention to the technical muscle of the country, and the starting point is surely to be sure that our defense technology is aimed at not only giving us the proper defense, but also at strengthening our economic base. While nobody seems to favor the kind of industrial policy that would allocate capital by industries, I believe there is an emerging consensus for a national technology policy if not an industrial one. It is terribly important to restore confidence on the part not only of the technical community, but the public at large in the government’s objectivity and credibility in making technical judgments and dealing with technical facts. One example is the environment, where for the last eight years we have seen all kinds of things that make me very uncomfortable about whether the president has been properly informed about the facts. When the administration suggests the right treatment for the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer is for everybody to wear hats, you really wonder if maybe the facts didn’t. Q Are there other cases where the facts didn’t get through to the Reagan-Bush administration? Branscomb I think it has been a serious problem in the way in which megaprojects have been dealt with. To the president’s credit, he has been enthusiastic about megaprojects; he has, in fact, endorsed the superconducting supercollider, the space station, and the X-30 (aerospace plane]. I believe the administration also basically favors proceeding with the human genome project and quite a number of other things, many of which are very desirable. But when you get down to looking at projects themselves—at their goals and how they are structured—only those that have been proposed and designed by the scientific community seem to me to hold up. QWhat projects don’t hold up? Branscomb Let me take the space station as an example. I believe that we should continue some manned space activity, and both candidates agree with that statement. But that only gets us to the question of what activity, and to what ends. If the purpose of man in space is to preserve the nation’s sense of self-worth, and in the process to explore certain particular operational capabilities—doing things in microgravity or whatever—then the next step is to define what the five-year or 10-year technical objectives are to be. If that were done, then we could go out and design a space activity that gives us those objectives— along with the political objectives—in the best way at the lowest cost. That’s never been done. Instead, NASA’s attitude is: Okay, we’re going to build the biggest space station with the most inhabitants we can manage with the bud- get we think we can get. I think NASA even puts in old technology if it costs less, in order to have a bigger space station. And that’s exactly counter to what ought to be the objective. QThe challenges facing the next administration, however, go far beyond designing a cost-effective space station. How will the administration be able to double the NSF budget and fund everything it wants to achieve in science and technology? Branscomb The NSF budget doubling is a terribly important thing to achieve. I compliment the president on trying to get it done, and I think it’s tragic that Congress didn’t take that first step. But Congress didn’t because the appropriations subcommittee found itself trying to balance housing needs for poor people against doubling the NSF budget, and I’m not sure that housing is where the penalty should have been taken. QWhere would you take the penalty? Branscomb It might have been taken somewhere in the scientific community, but the process didn’t permit that trade-off to happen. Changing the process is a complicated problem. But one approach would be to identify R&D programs that explicitly serve an authorized mission of an agency, and for which the funds should be traded off against other expenditures of the agency. The fusion program is in that category. The Department of Energy should come up with an energy technology strategy for the country, and the priorities ought to be set according to present and future energy needs. We should continue a basic research program in plasma physics, but the fusion program ought to stand or fall on its merits as a potential source of useful energy. Q What about an expensive program like the SSC? How do you decide if it is worth more than other important areas of research? Branscomb I think we ought to proceed with the supercollider, but I think the timing and the rate of progress are amenable to adjustment. If we think about how to compare the SSC with a new telescope or with materials research, the right way to look at it is in terms of the annual costs, not the total cost. That’s the way the trade-off actually happens, and the Energy Department is going to have to pay a couple of hundred million doilars a year to proceed with the supercollider, and it may have to cut back on other machines to make it possible. I also think it is reasonable, as Frank Press suggested, to ask the scientific community to struggle with the problem of balancing the needs of ground-based optical astronomy with the needs of oceanographic ships with the needs of accelerators with the needs of other areas of science. The fact that the budgets have gone down in real terms for optical astronomy, for example, really disturba me if I’m sitting there thinking about the supercollider. Q So you might go sLower on the SSC in order to find other aspects of science? Branscomb That’s right. Of course, if you’re going to go slower, it’s going to cost you more in the long run. So you may want to change the design slightly to try to get more science sooner out of what otherwise would have been a more stretched-out program. Q You said earlier that defense technology is inextricably linked to U.S. economic competitiveness. Doesn’t that imply that the science adviser should have a large say in the defense budget? Branscomb I think that that is terribly important, quite apart from the technical complexities involved in sound defense weapons strategies and arms control issues. The reason is the central importance of understanding the relationship between the defense industrial base and the economic competitiveness of the country. We spend 70% of our federal R&D budget on defense-related R&D, and yet many of our weapon systems are technologically obsolete. In fact, the whole process of translating military R&D into effective weapons systems is flawed, in part because it does not have the kinds of evolutionary technical upgrading that you find in competitive commercial industries. So in fact, technology is flowing from the commercial side to the military. I think military R&D now gives us only a nickel’s worth of commercial technology for a dollar’s worth of expense. All of these problems are partly the result of a bifurcation in national technology policy. Military technology policy has been based on the assumption that government knows best, while the government’s attitude toward helping the commercial sector to be more competitive is based on the assumption that the government knows least. I think that the Executive Office of the President needs an across-the-board look at government in- vestments and technology from the point of view of how they affect our industrial capability for both military and nonmilitary purposes. Q Can the national labs playa role? Branscomb National labs are very important. I have thought that we could dedicate some portion of a designated set of national laboratories’ efforts to a problem that is perceived to be a high priority for the president. I’ll give you an example of where that authority would have been very useful—the high-temperature superconductivity response. If you look at how the U.S. responded to that it really has been a sad story. The initial response of the U.S. came from three companies—IBM, AT&T Bell Labs, and Beilcore. Swift on their heels were the second-tier universities that were still working in superconductivity, the first tier having given it up. The third level of response was from the first-tier universities. But the national labs were very slow to respond. Here’s a case where a decision could have been made in the Department of Energy and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to. allocate several hundred people’s worth of effort quickly. It seems to me that national labs can play an important role if they are allowed to run hard at developing the process base and the technology base, and then spinning this off to small companies. QWhat would happen to SDI under Dukakis? Branscomb If Dukakis is elected, I assume the first thing that will happen is the SDI office would be reorganized. Right now it is sitting in the office of the Secretary of Defense and doesn’t go through any of the defense technology management structure. I would assume that he also would maintain some sort of exploratory research program probably in directed energy weapons. But it is a long way from being ready for prototype development, as Reagan has said it is. What really bothers me about the way the current administration has handIed technology is that it acts as though it were confused about the difference between basic science and development. Q How important is education? And what should we think about the growing number of foreign students in U.S. universities? Branscomb Education is the single most important issue about the future of the nation, period. It’s also the single most important issue in science policy. I am convinced that much of our poor industrial performance is simply due to people who are not thinking well and who are not well trained. Q How should we tackle the problem? Branscomb The very first thing that should be done is put a bigger budget in the NSF education program and make it terribly clear to the National Science Foundation that its job is the reform of science and mathematics and engineering education in America. But perhaps even more important is having a credible, responsible, and competent person as Secretary of Education; Mr. Bennett, I think, was a laughing stock. Q Overall, I presume you think Dukakis would be better for science in this country than Bush would? Branscomb Yes. I think Dukakis will run a more professional government.

Lewis Branscomb Explains How Dukakis Will Bolster Research

The Scientist Staff

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