Notebook

Not Just Passing Through A Critical Eye on Critical Technologies Math Society to Open D.C. Office The High Price of Public Understanding NIH Salary Cap Lifted, A Little National Science Foundation director Walter Massey says that he has no plans to leave the foundation before his six-year term ends in March 1997. But he's not surprised about persistent rumors, the latest involving Stanford University, that he's soon to become president of a major research institution. "I'm not trying to brag," he says. "But I'm fairly well-known, and it's something that just happens to people in my situation." Massey says he hasn't gotten any job offers since arriving at NSF last March, but, in any case, he "has too much to do here" to consider leaving the foundation in the next few years. Defense contractors are not spending enough on basic research into some 20 fields that the Pentagon considers vital to national security, according to a recent report by the General Accounting Office. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.Mex.), who in 1990 convinced his colleagues to pass a law requiring the Defense Department to encourage contractors to pay attention to these so-called critical technologies, asked GAO to assess the impact of that legislation. In a study of how 121 contractors spent $7.3 billion on federal funds for untargeted research and development projects, GAO found that less than half went into such technologies. In addition, GAO reported that the money was not distributed evenly across the various fields. Some 30 percent of the money was spent in only two areas--air breathing propulsion systems and semiconductor materials. Two other fields--superconductivity and biotechnology--received less than 1 percent of the total. To top it off, GAO reported, nearly two-thirds of the contractors said that the new law would have "little or no effect on their investments in these critical technologies." The 28,000-member American Mathematical Society, based in Providence, R.I., is opening an office in the nation's capital. William Jaco, the society's executive director, says that a Washington presence will "enhance our voice" on such issues as funding math research, reforming math education, and increasing public understanding of the contributions of mathematics to solving social and economic problems. "My only regret," says Jaco, "is that we didn't do this much earlier." The four-person office, with an annual budget of $250,000, is slated to open in August. It will be headed by John Bradley, a former University of Tennessee math professor and NSF program officer who was hired last summer as the society's first government relations officer. A new quarterly journal, Public Understanding of Science, debuts this month to help scientists explain themselves better to the public. "Scientists are increasingly aware of the importance of having the public on their side," says its editor, John Durant, assistant director of London's science museum, "but they often stumble in the dark when it comes to communicating with them." One self-imposed obstacle may be the cost of a subscription. At a per-issue price of $17 for individuals and $47.50 for institutions, the intended audience of educators, journalists, and policymakers may have a hard time believing editorial adviser Jon Miller's comment that "scientists need the public as much as the public needs scientists." A spokesman for IOP Publishing Ltd. of Bristol, England, says the price is competitive and well below that of some of its other titles. For more information, contact the American Institute of Physics Subscriber Services, 500 Sunnyside Blvd., Woodbury, N.Y. 11797-2999. The cap on the salary researchers can collect from their NIH grant has been raised by $5,000, to $125,000, for the current fiscal year. The cap does not limit how much money researchers can earn in any one year, but rather represents the most the government will pay them. The cap was imposed by Congress in 1990 after reports that a handful of clinical scientists in lucrative specialties were receiving hefty salaries from their NIH grants. Under the new cap, for example, a researcher who lists a salary of $150,000 annually and receives a grant on which she expects to spend 50 percent of her time could be paid only $62,500 in direct salary rather than the $75,000 to which she would have been entitled before the cap was imposed.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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