The Future Of NSF: Four Key Issues Require Clarification

A recent article in The Scientist, headlined "NSF Still Wrestling With Science Board Over Recommendations For Agency Future" (Barton Reppert, Feb. 8, 1993, page 1), discussed the report of the National Science Board's Commission on the Future of the National Science Foundation. This commission, of which I was a member, was asked to answer two questions: (a) How can NSF best ensure its continued support of basic academic research? and (b) What, if anything, should NSF do differently to meet the new national priorities in the post-Cold War period? The commission answered these questions, but, as The Scientist correctly noted, the report was worded rather ambiguously. Bruce Smith, a science policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, was quoted as saying about the report: "It's like the Dead Sea Scrolls, written in some kind of strange code." I rather agreed with Smith, and felt strongly that the issues surrounding NSF's future are so important that the commission's views should have been expressed with much greater clarity. For this reason, shortly after the report was given to the National Science Board, I wrote to the board to describe the four key points in the report on which I thought the commission was in full agreement, but which did not come through with the clarity they deserved. Here are the four points: 1. The National Science Board must not remain passive while enormous changes are taking place in the United States science and technology enterprise, its policies, institutions, and goals. Many of the mechanisms through which science creates public benefits are beyond NSF's control. Many are managed by federal agencies other than NSF. The agency has two choices: (a) take on the entire technological food chain from research to market, or (b) take an active--indeed, leading--role in helping the president and his assistant for science and technology formulate a technology policy within which NSF's proper role is defined and linked to the rest of the S&T and innovation enterprise. The first course leads to disaster, the second fulfills NSB's legislative mandate to inform the president and Congress about the health of U.S. science. The board's report on industrial R&D last summer is a good start, as is the NSF leadership of a number of activities of the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology, such as those concerning materials science and K-12 math and science education. NSF has demonstrated its ability to fit its activities into the broader scope of federal activities that deliver the benefits of R&D to the nation in its collaboration with the Department of Education in K-12 math and science education reform. NSF can also make sure that the research it sponsors is exploited for public benefit by more visible cooperation with agencies that use science in the development of technology, such as the departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NSF also sponsors the Critical Technologies Institute (CTI), which provides analytical support to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The agency could take a more active role in ensuring that CTI fully supports OSTP in formulating national policy. 2. NSF should continue to support research in the sciences and in engineering, and it should provide the facilities and infrastructure required for a strong national research capability. The present portfolio of disciplines and activities is broad enough; NSF does not need to expand that portfolio, as some have suggested--and many fear--to include commercial technology development or more elaborate programs of technology transfer to industry. Nor should NSF allow its engineering centers or its investments in the National Research and Education Network (NREN) to be divested to some civilian technology agency (as was proposed in one Clinton transition team document). NSF's grants should continue to insist on intellectual excellence in all it does, foster unsolicited proposals, cherish its "bottoms- up" style of project choice, and cling to merit-based competitive performer selection. 3. NSF must recognize that the U.S. technical community is weaker than it should be in many fields that are quite exciting intellectually, but also could be making a very big contribution to the nation's technological competitive advantage. An example is synthetic polymer chemistry. NSF must not allow pressure from disciplinary constituencies to prevent a distribution of resources into its programs and activities that better matches the technical challenges facing America. Instead, it should reach out to technically sophisticated people who understand the fields in which American science and engineering are underinvesting, and ask them to participate in an improved resource allocation process that is better matched to national needs than today's programs reflect. This is not a task to be laid on individual academic scientists in the manner of the Mansfield Amendment, which required universities receiving Defense Department funds to document how the science would contribute to military purposes. The NSB itself should make studies, consult with experts in industry and universities, and inform itself about the strengths and weakness of the nation's research capabilities. The board should then allocate resources among disciplines and programs with an eye to both scientific interests (pressures from good proposals) and the importance of the disciplines and programs as intellectual underpinnings of American technological ability. This does not mean setting up NSF divisions of environment, health, defense, and the like, in NIH style. NSF should not do applied (that is, problem-solving) research. It should pay more attention to disciplines and interdisciplinary research known to be poorly represented in our universities as we shift our attention from the Cold War to a cold economy. More advice from the most technically qualified people with industry experience should be sought. NSF should not tell university scientists what to do; it need only put properly allocated resources in the paths of bright people. 4. NSF must take more seriously the effectiveness of linkages that connect academic science and engineering to the users of the knowledge created, and strengthen those linkages where needed. The object is not to force university scientists to "get in bed" with industry, but to ensure that academic researchers have multiple opportunities to benefit from and collaborate with colleagues in industry and others putting science to use. Among appropriate linkage mechanisms, in addition to students going to work in industry, are university centers with industry participation, faculty-industry exchanges, development of the NREN and facilities shared with industry users, support for data evaluation, reviews, and S&T information services, workshops, conferences, and travel. The board should realize, however, that university science and engineering activities are very heavily involved with industry already. A recent study by economists Wesley Cohen, Richard Florida, and W. Richard Goe of Carnegie Mellon University found that 1,050 university-industry research centers on U.S. campuses were spending $4.5 billion annually, of which $1.5 billion came from industry. NSF and the universities it supports have no reason to feel that the contact between academic engineering and science is inadequate; rather, they should be focusing on the quality and importance of these activities in order to keep them at a high standard, helping industry while sustaining the independence and intellectual quality of academic research. Lewis M. Branscomb is director of science, technology, and public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The Future Of NSF: Four Key Issues Require Clarification

The Scientist Staff

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