Setting Our Science Priorities in Order

Frank Press

[Reprinted from a collection of essays, Headline News, Science Views, published by National Academy Press, 1991. Written 10 January 1989. At the time of this essay, Frank Press was president of the National Academy of Sciences]

Science and technology present the Bush administration with some of its best opportunities to leave its mark on history. The super collider, a program to map the human genome, the space station, a new AIDS initiative, and increased research on environmental problems and superconductivity are among the many possible initiatives that could change our world profoundly.

Yet, even as investments in science and technology offer greater promise than ever before for producing significant benefits in health, the environment and other fields, the United States faces unprecedented budget deficits. How, then, is it to pursue these new opportunities while also providing adequate support to smaller-scale research, science education and other activities that are less visible but of equal, if not greater, importance?

That is a dilemma facing the new president and Congress, and it is made more difficult by the inadequate system now in place to make federal budget decisions about science and technology. Although effective in the past at helping the United States assume world leadership in these fields, the system is unable to provide us with clear national priorities in the face of these historic opportunities and constraints.

The system does do a good job of setting priorities within specific agencies involved in science, but not when it comes to looking across agency lines and establishing priorities overall. Both the executive branch and Congress are left focusing on the trees instead of the forest.

For example, when researchers in Zurich announced in late 1986 that they had discovered materials that become superconductive at much higher temperatures than anything recorded previously, they set off an international race to develop new applications and industries. Officials in Washington soon began asking what the United States was doing in the field, only to discover that the federal effort was split among five agencies with no capacity for overall assessment in place. In the end, Congress had to create a special commission to provide direction.

Similarly, federal efforts to understand global warming and other kinds of climate change are now divided among the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies. Such a multiplicity of efforts has many benefits, but it should not be as difficult as it is to find out what the government is doing overall about climate change.

The federal government now spends more than $60 billion annually on science and technology activities, and it needs to allocate the money more effectively. At congressional request, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine recently offered some suggestions on how this might be accomplished.

Our basic message to both President-elect Bush and the Congress was the same: Set clearer priorities before dividing the budget pot among the different agencies. Specifically, we said the president should establish overall goals in science and technology that individual agencies can use as guidelines in preparing their own budgets. Congress should follow a similar process.

These goals should be set not only along traditional agency lines, but also in terms of how they will contribute to the nation's underlying science and technology base - its work force and research facilities - or to broad national objectives, such as industrial competitiveness and environmental protection. Major initiatives such as the space station may need to be considered as a separate category.

A greater effort should also be made to distinguish between military and civilian research in the budget. Much military research has limited application to the civilian sector, and lumping the two together tends to overstate the true size of the U.S. science and technology enterprise. Reforms like these do not alter the traditional prerogatives of government officials. Nor do they lead to a centralized science bureaucracy, which might threaten the flow of unconventional ideas that are so essential to the scientific process.

Instead, rationalizing the budget process in this way will help officials see the "big picture" on questions as vital as AIDS, the space program, the global environment and agriculture. They will become better able to put science and technology to work to solve the problems that lie ahead for our nation not only over the next four years, but in the decades to come. Science, of all pursuits, ought to be handled more rationally.