Science And The Next President

Inside the Bush, Dukakis camps: Science advisers are named, but most downplay their role, and their advice seems absent WASHINGTON—With the presidential election hardly more than four months off, U.S. scientists face the possibility of seeing the issues dearest to them ignored in the campaign. While economic and national security questions have been batted back and forth for months now, science policy has yet to be a major topic of discussion for either George Bush or Michael Dukakis. Neither the Republican nor Democratic party front-runner has so far given a major speech-on any of the issues that most affect the country’s scientific health—for example, federal research funding, re pair of outmoded laboratories and crumbling buildings, insufficient interest by students in pursuing careers in science, the fate of the superconducting supercoilider, revitalizing space science, and ade quate support for AIDS research. Although campaign advisers insist that their candidate is vitally interested in science issues, the examples they offer—Dukakis’s opposition to the controversial Seabrook nuclear power plant, for example, or Bush’s support for education— hardly suggest that either candidate has developed a science agenda. In fact, Bush may have unintentionally painted a more accurate picture of the true status of science in the current campaign during a short speech at The Cleveland Clinic in the days preceding the May 3 primary in Ohio. Although the vice president had requested a briefing on what researchers were doing, he freely admitted that the information baffled him. “At one point,” Bush told his audience, “as Dr. Healy was explaining some of the latest research techniques, she turned to me and said, ‘Now Mr. Vice President, do you understand that?’ And I said, ‘Doctor, the last thing I understood was when you said hello." There is growing concern that this gap between scientists and the White House is widening. This spring the Carnegie Corporation formed a distinguished panel of scientists and policy makers to carry out a three-year study of how scientific and technical knowledge can play a more prominent role in the ongoing debate over national policy issues. At the same time, Congress has asked the National Academy of Sciences to analyze how it can obtain a more comprehensive view of federal policies that affect research funding. Neither effort will have any impact on the first year or two of the next administration, of course. So, The Scientist canvassed key campaign aides—and the scientists they named as being close to their candidate—to assess the actual proximity of scientists to each of the two men, of whom one will likely occupy the White House beginning next January. Representatives of both camps indicated that the information each candidate now receives comes from a variety of outside, unpaid advisers—scientists, it turned out, who often are reluctant to discuss their participation in the process. This contrasts sharply with the status of economic advisers. A few weeks ago, The New York Times published profiles of the principal economic advisers behind George Bush and Michael Dukakis. If The Times tried to do the same for science, it would be hard pressed to know whom to write about. Dukakis, according to his aides, favors an informal network of advisers. While any one of dozens of experts may be asked on occasion to write a position paper on a particular topic, none appears to maintain close and regular contact with the candidate. It’s an approach Dukakis has found useful during his three terms as governor of Massachusetts, say his aides, and one which draws heavily on scientists in the Cambridge area. Dukakis himself taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government after a rude 1978 defeat in the Democratic primary interrupted his tenure in the state’capital. “The governor is someone whose mill likes to have lots of grist in it,” notes Ashton Carter, a theoretical physicist who is associate director of the school’s Center for Science and International Affairs. Carter may be the closest thing to a science advisor to the Democratic hopeful. He has prepared material for Dukakis, and campaign officials have identified him as a spokesman on science policy issues. But Carter downplays his role in the campaign. “I don’t whisper into his ear by any means,” he says about his relationship to Dukakis. “In fact, it would be an exaggeration to say that he has science advisers.” Bush, on the other hand, has had direct access to top science officials in the Reagan administration in the course of carrying out his duties as vice president. For example, his belief that AIDS should not become a campaign issue but that the government should spend “whatever is necessary,” says one aide, is based on talking with experts coordinating the government’s current efforts against the disease. Which experts in particular, he wouldn’t say, explaining that controversy was running so high over the diverse approaches being recommended that the naming of particular individuals might incorrectly suggest the vice president was favoring one philosophy over another. The Bush campaign is also putting the finishing touches on a more formal mechanism of receiving advice that is expected to be directed by Alan Bromley, a Yale nuclear physicist and a member of the White House Science Council. How close Bromley is to the vice president could not be ascertained since Bromley declined to com ment on his role in the campaign. But The Scientist has been told that Bromley will head up a scientific advisory committee of a dozen or so prominent individuals from academe and industry. A White House official who is coordinating the group said that members will span the physical, biological, and health sciences and that they will be “actors, not merely reactors” in providing information to the candidate. He said that the members will include respected scientists who “have an appreciation for the public policy implications of their science” as well as those familiar with industrial R&D. David Packard of Hewlett-Packard and Solomon Buchabaum of Bell Labs, two other members of the Reagan science council, are also said to be playing a role in the Bush campaign. Although officials in both camps praise the value of this type of advice, they insist that none of the advisers has more than a limited role in setting the candidate’s agenda. That’s how it should be, according to Dukakis adviser Lewis Branscomb, who was IBM’s chief scientist before becoming director of the Kennedy School’s science and public policy program. “A candidate needs an economic policy, an industrial policy, a national defense and arms control policy, and a health policy,” Branscomb explains. “All of those areas have scientific aspects to them, and you need to get the science right. But science is not the key issue in any of those debates.” But not every scientist is as sanguine about scientists taking only a limited role in advising the next president. Bernadine Healy, a White House science policy analyst during the first Reagan administration and now director of research at The Cleveland Clinic [she briefed Bush], opines that the candidates must bear some blame for the low level of scientific debate this primary season. “Neither campaign is stressing science sufficiently, and that’s wrong,” complains Healy. This seems to be borne out by interviews with scientists who presumably would be in a position to do something about it. Branscomb and MIT’s David Baltimore have been cited by Christopher Edley, director of issues and policy for Dukakis, as important scientific advisers. However, both men deny having any regular ties to the campaign. Baltimore says that last fall he submitted a position paper on AIDS that is “not inconsistent” with the recent report on the subject from an Institute of Medicine committee on which he served, but that he “has not been a close adviser” to the Dukakis campaign. And Branscomb chides fellow scientists who, in the course of a presidential campaign, “like to make you think they are playing an important role when they are not.” In fact, he says that the campaign still “has to learn how to make use of the papers that people submit to them.” Monroe Trout is not shy about acknowledging his membership on Bush’s health policy committee. But the chairman of the board of American Health Care Systems and former director of research at Sterling Drug Inc., admits that science issues “have not received much attention so far.” As an example, he identifies AIDS as one of the vice president’s three top health policy concerns (the others are drug abuse and long-term care for the elderly), but adds that the campaign has not begun to address the issue of how to assess whether $1 billion in research (the expected federal level by 1990) is too little, too much, or just right for the scientific community to carry out its work. The candidates’ neglect of issues concerning science, technology, and health is downright disturbing to many scientists. Last month, for example, CORETECH, a Washington-based lobbying consortium of 80 research universities and 45 high-tech industries, tried to press R&D issues by inviting officials from both parties and the Bush, Dukakis, and Jesse Jackson campaigns to lunch. The meeting was the first opportunity for each campaign to present its man’s views on R&D issues. But Dukakis was the only candidate who sent a representative—Harvard’s Edley. And law professor Edley inadvertently revealed several gaps in the campaign’s knowledge of the subject. The two basic planks in the Dukakis campaign are financial integrity and greater opportunity, explained Edley. Applying that philosophy to the Department of Energy budget, he suggested, would mean “a shift in focus from farhorizon fusion research to work that is closer to commercialization,” such as photovoltaic cells and other renewable energy projects. Edley assumed that his message of university-industry cooperation would fall on receptive ears. But after lunch Edley was confronted by Nan Wells, director of governmental affairs for Princeton University, which, not coincidentally, is the home of the nation’s major fusion energy research program, the Tokamak project. Wells informed Edley that the program was barely holding its own in the face of recent federal cutbacks. She offered to send the Dukakis campaign material that would explain how fusion’s payoff was much shorter than most people realized. And she suggested that Edley get in touch with Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), a strong supporter of the Princeton project and—again not coincidentally—someone rumored to be on Dukakis’s short list of possible running mates. Edley politely accepted her offer, along with a generous helping of humble pie. But the candidates—and their aides—aren’t wholly to blame for the neglect of scientific issues; scientists themselves haven’t leapt into the fray. “Until the scientific community interjects itself into the campaign, it won’t get its issues taken seriously,” says Stuart Eizenstat, a veteran of several recent Democratic presidential campaigns who is active in CORETECH. “If you haven’t been involved in the campaign, it’s very hard to jump-start your issues once a new administration takes office.” Eizenstat, now with the Washington law firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, ticks off four things that scientists could do to push their agenda. One is to invite each candidate to give a speech before their professional organizations. “That forces the candidates to address these issues,” he says. Other approaches include submitting a questionnaire to be filled out by the candidate’s staff, requesting a meeting with the issues director of each campaign, and playing a role in hearings to draft the official platforms of each party. “It’s true that the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” he adds. And then there’s the thorny question of what kind of advice scientists can—and should—offer. “Access isn’t enough,” adds Eizenstat. “You need a concrete agenda—not just a plea to spend more on science.” That problem is one that scientists have only recently begun to address (see The Scientist, May 30, p. 1), and the debate has already engendered deep splits. Science Without Clout And finally there’s the question of clout in a society that seems not to care. Roland Schmitt, who recently concluded four years as chairman of the National Science Board, says that part of the problem is the extent to which science has become a part of daily life. Issues that are important to scientists fail to interest politicians, he says, because policy makers and the media do not consider them to be important science issues. “In this year of intense political ferment,” he told the Council of Scientific Society Presidents at a meeting last month, “one thing that should disappoint all of us is how little attention we get compared to other areas of political concern. Any suggestion or idea that affects, even minutely, a farm subsidy or a plant closing immediately gets front-page attention and [generates] vigorous discussion of the right course of action. Yet propositions concerning science and technology that will have far more impact on our society in the long run go unnoticed by the media.” Schmitt cited the transistor and the development of solid-state electronics as an example of a tremendous technical achievement that somehow was never viewed as a scientific issue. And so, the true message of the 1988 campaign to date is not simply that the scientific community has failed to snuggle up to a small group of men, one of whom will be the next president of the United States. Rather, it is that scientists, unless they act quickly, could continue to take a back seat in policymaking well into the future.

Science And The Next President

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