Government
Debate over federal science policy sharpens Science, technology support in mixed economy is central to issue; both right-wing and left-wing think tanks are launching new programs Washington currently is engaged in one of the most spirited debates around science policy since the National Science Foundation was established in 1952. The picture is still largely impressionistic. But from the General Accounting Office to the Heritage Foundation, a broad rethinking is taking place that could affirm the structures for funding that several Administrations erected over three decades. Or the result could be a new superstructure out of a renewed understanding of the federal role in supporting science and technology for society and the economy. During the past two weeks, the Reagan Administration has decided that it can employ after all to good account a White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Acting OSTP director Benjamin Huberman went to Capitol Hill to testify on behalf of a trimmed-down $1.4 million OSTP budget and said a science adviser could be on board by early April. What is happening simultaneously is a realization among the neoconservative elements in Washington that life after all isn't quite so simple and structured as they would like it to be. They are finding that science policy is indeed a legitimate and complicated object of study. As a result, the Heritage Foundation—the Administration's "think tank"—has moved from regarding science policy as peripheral to its interests to taking it on as a topic central to an understanding of the governance system. What the foundation has done is appoint its energy director, Milton Copulos, to the task of searching for what might be the definitive neoconservative perspective on science and technology policy. Having had no policy, the Heritage Foundation now sees that revitalizing the U.S. from top to bottom is understanding the 14
C&EN April 6, 1981
technological revolution. It thus plans to sponsor seminars, meetings, round tables, and conferences around the issue. "We are favorably disposed toward technological innovation," Copulos says, "but we're trying to sort out how to square that with the roles of the government and private sectors. We want to know how you assess technology to determine where the government role is apparent. I don't think simply saying 'let's go build a new Energy Research & Development Administration' is the best way to do it. The key is to make sure a technological investment is realized without institutionalizing a government role for it." One concept Copulos says he is pondering is possible changes in patent law to give corporations a 10-year tax exemption on the profits gained from commercializing their patented inventions. Copulos says it is premature to discuss the advantages and drawbacks to such a radical patent policy shift (the revenue losses could be immense), but it is part of the back-to-basics approach he is initiating. The Heritage Foundation exercise could pull in several individuals experienced in contemporary science policy issues and engage them in some looks at the long-forgotten past. The history of the U.S. is in many ways a history of technology under differing economic and fiscal policies. Except for the agricultural research system, modern science policy emerged in a Keynesian economic environment. But the technological revolution during the late 1800's blossomed under a system in which the only form of federal revenue was tariffs. "There was no income tax during that time," says Copulos. Meanwhile, across town and at the other end of the political spectrum, the far leftist Institute for Policy Studies has just established a "Science-Values Synthesis Project," directed by Pennsylvania State University materials scientist Rustum Roy. "There is no institution today," says Roy, "which provides a vehicle for the study and research and dissemination to the concerned public and policy makers of the needed synthesis of science and values. The
Copulos: pondering patent policy shift
goal of our project is to fill this niche." Issues the project will study include nuclear arms policy, the financial issues around the development of biotechnologies, and communitybased technology. Codirector of the institute, Marcus Raskin, says he is open to joint dialogues with the Heritage Foundation. Copulos says he might be, too, but that he and Raskin usually get into heated arguments. What is clear is that everyone is feeling his or her way through newly found thickets. The key appears to be the forging of new concepts of Federalism in a scientific age—in a way a renewal of the old debate between the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians. The neoconservatives have a hard time assimilating their ideas with the existence of a mixed welfare-free enterprise economy, whereas the more liberal establishment says the only kind of economy that can exist today is mixed. The core of the emerging dialogue is a "town-gown-crown" exploration of new relationships—the town being local government and the industries within it, the gown being universities, and the crown being Washington. One must skip from agency to agency, from scientific society to scientific society to assemble a rough inventory of events. The American Chemical Society is struggling to establish a so-called research "super-
fund" by which corporations would establish an endowment for the sup port of academic research in chemis try. The Physical Society is exploring the same idea. At the National Institutes of Health, a sweeping program has been started to establish new forms of funding of university biomedical re search by private industry. "There was a lot of interest in this by the Health & Human Resources transi tion team," says Joseph Perpich, di rector of policy planning for NIH. "It's something that's going to con cern us for the next three to five years," he says. "We have a task force that is looking into the whole question of cost sharing and how to make it more effective. And we will be creat ing a task force on industrial-univer sity relations." One key task will be to re-examine patent policies and regu lations that would ensure that the universities benefit financially from discoveries their researchers make through such collaborations. Likewise, the Department of De fense, whose university research and development budget is about two thirds NSF's budget in the physical sciences, is embarking on a number of new ways of supporting academic re search. One possibility is modeling its program on the old Office of Naval Research policy of supporting purely basic research. One aide in the House science and technology committee perceives mainly a "roiling of the waters" as this Administration tries to sort out its thinking about the government role in scientific and technological devel opment. "President Reagan brought in with him a lot of amateurs who were sounding off on matters they really hadn't thought much about," he offers. "I see two thrusts in this whole thing," he says. "On one hand is the ideological-social-behavioral. The other is the economic. The first comes from the true believers who distrust government involvement in people's lives. On the other side is the need to do something about the technological competition from West Germany, Japan, and to the military extent, the U.S.S.R. This Administration is going against the more traditional Repub lican thinking that would have al lowed for more government involve ment with industry in the planning for such a technological competition. But I believe it will all settle down. Americans don't stay on one side of the road very long." Hidden by the attention given to all the budget cutting was a significant
"policy cut" at the Department of Commerce. The position of assistant secretary for technology, innovation, and productivity (previously assistant secretary for science and technology) has been eliminated. This was the position occupied by Jordan Baruch in the Carter Administration—a po sition from which U.S. technological strategy was to have been designed. Baruch managed the ambitious White House Domestic Policy Review on Industrial Innovation that un veiled its plan about a year ago. Al though the review was largely disap pointing to those expecting a combi nation of immediate economic incentives and a new perspective on the role of innovation in the future of the U.S., it did set in motion several small programs with high potential, longer-term payoff. Baruch has gone into private con sulting in Washington and has been forced to see abolished under Reagan his fledgling programs in generic technology, centers for industrial development, center for the utiliza tion of federal technology, and the office of strategy and evaluation. The truth is that the Administra tion is putting blind faith on the ide ological premise that the market is the best mechanism for choosing technological priorities and that the best role of the government is to stand clear of that process. But neither of its two major competitors, West Ger many and Japan, stands clear. In those governments, technology is managed and planned. Says one staff person in the Na tional Science Foundation in re counting a visit by an official from the Japanese Ministry for International Trade & Industry: "This man was almost pleading with me. 'Don't you understand,' he said, 'that the shape of the future is in technology?' He couldn't understand why the gov ernment wasn't taking a more stra tegic approach to its development. He knew that if the U.S. economy with its huge market continued to sag, the Japanese economy would go down with it." Thus, two connected debates will occupy science policy circles for some time in Washington. One will involve the university-industry interface and the search for alternative funding patterns for academic research. The other will continue to be the proper role of government in the stimulation of technology. The conservatives in power honestly don't know which forms help and which hurt the economy. WilLepkowski, Washington
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April 6, 1981 C&EN
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