PCAST Members Ready To Speak; President Seems Ready To Listen

Bush has attended each of the White House panel's meetings, raising hopes that PCAST will have an impact on science policy WASHINGTON -- On the job for barely three months, the members of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology are pleased that President Bush has attended at least a portion of each of their meetings. Powerful figures in their own right, they know that direct access to the Oval Office is one important measure of political clout in this city. But the 12 members of PCAST say that access is not enough. It's the message that matters, they say. And they add that the jury's still out on whether they will actually make a difference in shaping U.S. science and technology policy in the 1990s. "I don't think that we'll have any problem being heard," says Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University. "The challenge is to have useful things to say, to come up with some good ideas. If we don't, then we're all just wasting our time." In a series of individual interviews with The Scientist, members of PCAST discussed the important issues facing the panel, how they expect to deal with those issues, and how their impact should be measured. All said that presidential science adviser Allan Bromley has encouraged them to interpret their mandate broadly and examine all areas of science and technology. And each pointed to the president's attendance at their meetings as evidence that their opinions are highly valued by the administration. Bush spent three hours with PCAST at its inaugural meeting in February, seeking its members' opinions on the economic consequences of global climate change, the status of science education, and the impact of federal R&D spending on the economy. In March he spent a half-hour discussing economic competitiveness with them, and the president was scheduled to spend an equivalent amount of time at the group's most recent meeting in late April. Presidential science adviser Allan Bromley (see story on page 15) says that he expects the president routinely to meet with PCAST during part of its 1-day meeting each month. The members of PCAST are an especially diverse group. Unlike past panels, which were heavily weighted with those from the physical sciences, Bush appointed the likes of agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, cardiologist Bernadine Healy of the Cleveland Clinic, molecular biologist Daniel Nathans of Johns Hopkins University, environmental biologist Thomas Love-joy of the Smithsonian Institution, and economist Shapiro. They complement such well-known technologists as Solomon Buchsbaum of AT&T Bell Labs, Ralph Gomory, formerly at IBM and now president of the Sloan Foundation, John McTague of the Ford Motor Co., and David Packard, chairman of Hewlett-Packard, as well as University of Chicago physicist Walter Massey, Dartmouth College geologist Charles Drake, and engineer Peter Likins, president of Lehigh University. Given the range of their experience, the committee members speak in remarkably similar terms about the issues facing the country. The importance of training the next generation of scientists, the role of technology in helping the U.S. compete in an international market place, and the need for greater understanding of such important scientific issues as global climate change and AIDS top nearly everyone's list. In fact, several members emphasize that their role is specifically not to demand more for science but rather to see that scientific knowledge is applied to human needs. "The membership of PCAST is well-known, and the community is free to contact us individually. Clearly, we are a sounding board for the scientific and technical community, and it's important that we be coupled to it. But as to whether we should have public hearings and that sort of thing, the problem is the grandstanding that tends to take place. It's a question of how best to spend one's limited time, and I don't think hearing from a steady stream of outsiders is a very effective way to do that." --Solomon Buchsbaum, AT&T Bell Labs "The most important issue we face is helping the president and, indirectly, Congress in allocating the large amounts of money that we are already spending on science to those things that will be most beneficial to society," says Packard. "By that I mean strengthening the economy and the quality of life in this country. Those things are not necessarily the most glamorous activities on the scientific horizon, like space exploration or high-energy physics. My definition of scientific leadership is to utilize our talents to keep the United States on top." Shapiro makes the same point somewhat more broadly. "The government is interested in science and technology not just because of its ability to generate new knowledge," he says. "Rather, it's interested in taking advantage of that knowledge by translating it into useful services and products." Asked if he thought scientists and the general public understood that mission, he replied, "If you listen to the rhetoric out there, you'd get the impression that all we need is [to make] the discovery. That's necessary, of course, but it's only part of the solution to the problems that we face." The world has changed, notes Likins, and PCAST must act differently from its predecessors if it wants to influence the course of world events. "There was a time when we didn't think much about how science and technology contributed to the economy because we assumed that we'd always be a dominant economy," he says. "But that's no longer true. One thing PCAST can do is to help the administration perceive the connectiveness between education and our economic well-being. They are linked in ways that were not obvious in the 1960s but that are quite clear to us in the 1990s." The biggest challenge facing PCAST, says Buchsbaum, is to combine its wide-ranging knowledge into a common vision that will be helpful to policymakers. Simply providing information isn't enough. "PCAST must assess and crystallize key issues from their technical perspective," says Buchsbaum. "And we must strip off the extraneous matters, because policymakers can't deal with too many issues at once." The hard part, he adds, is to do it "without simplifying these issues to the point where they no longer make sense." PCAST is well-equipped to play such a role, says Massey. "I don't think that this group was appointed as a collection of experts," he says. "If we want experts, we can always form a task force of outsiders. We were picked, I believe, because of our broad backgrounds and breadth of interests." However, the process of forging such an amalgamation doesn't require members to check their individual opinions at the door, says Lovejoy. "I'm close to the only spokesman on PCAST for issues like global climate change and biological diversity," he says. "And even science education relates to this point, to the extent that the public is largely biologically illiterate and that it's very hard to get politicians to do the right things if the public doesn't understand the issue. So I feel that I have an obligation to speak out on these matters." One way that PCAST hopes to expand its reach is through a succession of ad hoc advisory committees. Chaired by a PCAST member and consisting of a few other PCAST members and a half-dozen or so outside experts, the committees will examine a particular issue relatively quickly, report to PCAST, and then disband. It's a way that Bromley has devised to draw upon additional scientific expertise, without making the advisory process itself too large and unwieldy. Buchsbaum, who is chairing such a panel on high-performance computing, sees it as a mechanism to get current, accurate, and objective information into the White House as quickly as possible. And he says the group won't pull its punches. "There are no restrictions on the scope of our inquiry," he says. "We're not going to micromanage, but we won't hesitate to speak up if we think there's something wrong. Our job is to help Allan Bromley determine whether the government is moving in the right direction in this field, and I fully expect him to take to heart any negative findings we might present." At the same time, Lovejoy sees a different task ahead for a panel that he will be chairing on climate change and the environment. "I think that it has to be a rolling agenda," he says. "It's such a huge topic and it requires such an overarching effort, that I see it as a series of time-limited studies, one building on the next, until we develop a comprehensive picture of the major problems that we're facing." Whatever the approach, says Drake, PCAST members must remember that they exist to help Bromley and Bush make decisions. "The president needs short-term advice on a variety of issues," he says. "You can't assign everything to a committee and wait 18 months for an answer. And I think that we have the breadth of disciplines and contacts to come up with the current best view of how things stand on a particular problem." PCAST members concede that it will be very difficult to measure whether their advice has improved federal policies in science and technology. But no one thinks that it's unfair to expect them to make a difference. "How should we be evaluated?" asks Nathans. "Take education as an example. I think it's fair to ask, once we've been in business for a while, if the administration is taking a stance in support of training new scientists and technologists. If not, then we haven't had an impact." To Shapiro, the key is originality. "If our ideas are not distinguishable from others - if there are no PCAST fingerprints on a particular policy initiative - then it may mean that we've decided to help out somebody s good idea. But I would hope in other areas, we will have been able to come up with an idea that's better than what anybody can offer. That's what will satisfy me."

PCAST Members Ready To Speak; President Seems Ready To Listen

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