Notebook

Maybe It Should Be General Healy Retirements Not Seen As Hurting NASA Not Now Dear, I Have A Political Headache The High Cost Of Outreach Mixed News on NSF Funding Trends President Bush came to NIH last month to swear in the agency's new director, Bernadine Healy. While the occasion was entirely ceremonial--she took office April 9--Healy used it to make a characteristically bold statement about NIH's mission. Referring to its mandate to improve the nation's health, Healy declared that "NIH and the medical research community must hurry. . . . For us there are many wars yet to be won, and each day is our own Operation Bethesda Storm." NASA has plenty to worry about these days, including trying to shoehorn a $40 billion space station into its budget without gutting its science programs. But the fact that 30 percent of its work force is eligible for retirement shouldn't be one of them, according to the General Accounting Office. A new GAO report (GAO/NSIAD-91-185) predicts that only about one-half of those eligible to retire in any one year will actually do so, and that "most of these retirements will occur later rather than sooner" in the decade. The report also notes that the large number of scientists and engineers hired in the past few years, as NASA's budget has grown, has created a cluster of employees, aged 25-34, that balances the 50-59 cohort eyeing retirement. At the same time, GAO warns that federally mandated changes affecting such issues as pay scales, rules governing conflicts of interest, and retirement benefits could influence how many NASA employees receive that proverbial gold watch. NSF director Walter Massey has been on board only since March, but he's already assumed the role of savvy Washington insider in meetings with the National Science Board, the body that oversees the foundation. Last month, for example, at the board's long-range planning meeting, Cornell University president Frank Rhodes deftly turned a discussion about the health of the nation's scientific enterprise into a gripe session about how research universities are imperiled by a proposed cap on overhead costs, public resistance to higher tuition, and faculty displeasure over heavier teaching loads. "I can see I struck a chord," a startled Massey declared after listening to a chorus of such complaints from other board members. "But politically, you should understand that this may be the least appropriate time for universities to elicit greater support for research." He suggested that scientists "need to make our arguments on the basis of research being a sound investment in our country's future, not an entitlement program." The National Library of Medicine's system of regional medical libraries will cost three times more to operate over the next five years than it did in the previous five under new contracts awarded last month. The network has enjoyed a 10-fold increase since 1986 in the number of scientists and physicians who use its MEDLINE system to search its electronic database, according to NLM officials, and the new contracts, totaling $33 million, will allow regional libraries to expand their outreach efforts even further. The network has also added an eighth site, to serve New England, after NLM decided that the heavy concentration of users there warranted a regional library. As part of the new contract, the Southwest site has been moved from the University of Texas at Dallas to the Houston Academy of Medicine. The latest analysis of grants awarded by NSF over the years 1988-90 shows that, contrary to popular wisdom, overall funding rates at the foundation have risen. The data show an increase from 28 percent in 1988 to 32 percent in 1990 in the percentage of applications funded. The number of competitive awards made also rose, by 16 percent, to 7,942 over the same period. While these rosy numbers reflect the increase in NSF's budget during that period, they are tempered by the fact that the size of the average grant has shrunk by 4 percent over the period. As always, these overall figures obscure variations within disciplines. For example, only 27 percent of biological, behavioral, and social scientists succeed in their applications, while the success rate is 43 percent for geoscientists and 38 percent for those in the mathematical and physical sciences.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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