GOVERNMENT
Bromley Assured of Confirmation as Bush Science Adviser In friendly confirmation hearings, Yale physicist promises positions on science education, atmosphere studies, computer networking Wil Lepkowski, C&EN Washington
At last, the nation's scientific community now knows it is going to get the kind of science advisership it believes the country—and it— deserves: a well-known scientist with close access to a receptive President, armed with a large and capable Office of Science & Technology Policy staff, assisted by four distinguished associate directors, and fortified by a prestigious group of 12 outside technical advisers. The restorer-designate is Canadian-born Yale physicist D. Allan Bromley—President Bush's nominee—who went before the Senate Commerce Committee 10 days ago for his confirmation hearings. Brom-
NEWS ANALYSIS ley verified and amplified all the influence-at-the-top, mastery-of-theissues formulations for science advising the community had been pressing on Bush ever since last fall's election, including a $3 million budget by next year to beef up to 33 positions on his OSTP staff. Bromley's manner was patrician, his voice resonant, and his delivery smooth as he moved with equal ease from genomes and super colliders to space stations and schoolteachers. Also notable was the quality of perception the Senators brought to the hearing. Senators John D. Rockefel-
Bromley: I won't be a lobbyist ler (D.-W.Va.), John F. Kerry (D.Mass.), Larry Pressler (R.-S.D.), and Albert Gore Jr. (D.-Tenn.), w h o chaired the hearing, all lobbed questions of depth and insight at Bromley on a wide range of issues. A slightly rough spot came when Gore asked him whether he agreed that action is needed now on cutting down fossil fuel combustion to ward off global warming. To that he said the facts simply didn't allow him to reach such a conclusion yet, although preserving the tropical rainforests was an obvious must. So he couldn't agree completely with the Senator. Gore said Bromley was wrong about his conclusion about the urgency of the greenhouse effect and needed to consult some facts he might have missed. Bromley also had to clarify for Kerry a part of his testimony that disclaimed any role for him as White House "spokesman" for science and technology. "What I should have said," explained Bromley, "was that
I do not propose to be a lobbyist for that community." He then added that he would do everything he could to "represent the best aspects of the science and technology community and to convey [its] consensus and judgment [in] Presidentiallevel decisions and discussions." So smooth was Bromley's presentation and so thoroughly versed was he in the issues that Gore assured him of expeditiousness in reporting his nomination to the floor. "Certainly on the basis of the record compiled in this hearing," Gore said, "I would foresee a very speedy approval of your nomination. I think the nation is fortunate to have someone of your caliber in this position." Bromley wasn't specific about how he would administer his newly endowed agency. But he said he would try to "carve out a substantial piece of my time for discussion on the longer range issues and focusing on our strategic role so I don't get nibbled to death by small problems." He said he was getting all the support he was promised when he accepted the nomination, and that he would structure his time to "make things happen." Bromley said his role was to "make sure the President and Congress get the best possible information that I can distill from the scientific and technical communities, and with that a measure of how certain and firm that information is." Bromley assured the committee that OSTP would be more deeply involved in the budget process throughout the many cycles of review that go into preparing the budget. He said he and Office of Management & Budget director Richard G. Darman have met frequently to discuss OSTP's enlarged role. "We will cooperate at many levels between our two offices in the proJuly 31, 1989 C&EN
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Government duction of the out-year budgets, making it possible for OSTP to have an input into its crosscutting and coordinating roles at a much earlier stage of the budget preparation than has been true in the past." Bromley stuck to the Administration's priorities in his support of Bush's favorite "mega-projects" such as the Superconducting Super Collider, the manned space station, and the mapping of the human genome. He said he agreed with Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that development of the hypersonic aerospace plane could be slowed down. He said he had high interest in the so-called Mission to Planet Earth, a multiagency effort to study changes in Earth's geosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. "I consider the Mission to Planet Earth as very important," he said. "There are a great many areas that haven't even been dreamt of yet. Having the data that we're going to get from that kind of a mission gives us a resource that is limited at the moment only by our imagination." Bromley expressed similar support for what Congress calls the "Information Superhighway," agency efforts to link the country's supercomputers via terminals placed in every American university. "I would give that very high priority because it has a catalytic effect on just about any branch of research and development that I can think of," he said. Bromley's discussion of the rival programs at the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy to map the human genome was equally articulate and politically sensitive. He said NIH's approach, with its focus on the creativity of individual investigators establishing a basic foundation for the program, is essential. So is DOE's, whose national laboratories are equipped with the needed exotic analytic instrumentation. Bromley was then led to render some of his ideas on the ethical aspects of science and technology and how his office would address them. "The questions on bioethics," he said, "are symptomatic of a whole set of problems we in science and technology are beginning to face up to. On the surface, they look scientific and technological. But 26
July 31, 1989 C&EN
if you look at them more closely, the Senators urged Bromley to adopt you find that what limits our action the "Everett Koop model" of Presiis our lack of knowledge of the so- dential service. Koop was the becial, behavioral, and economic con- leaguered but eventually admired sequences of the various courses of Surgeon General under President action science and technology may Reagan. seem to suggest. "Look carefully at Koop's success," "What this means to me is that counseled Gore. "He chose not to we are in this together, and it's long self-censor his remarks to keep them past time to make more common in line with the Administration. He cause than we have among the so- chose to exhibit tremendous percial scientists, the humanists, and sonal courage and intellectual inthe physical scientists and engineers. tegrity in stating the facts as he saw For that reason I want to break a them. I would urge you to emulate little with tradition and have mem- the fine quality of leadership that bers of my staff at OSTP in social Koop provided." sciences and have members of the Kerry pretty much summed up [President's Council for Advisers on for Bromley the "be like Koop" atScience & Technology] from social mosphere he will encounter time science backgrounds. Only by work- and again as he engages the politics ing together can we really address of science and technology on Capithe problems that transcend the tol Hill. Said Kerry: "It is my hope problems of science and technolo- that you will be an Everett Koop gy perse." science adviser who will galvanize Bromley was more passionate on this nation as it ought to be around science education than on any oth- these issues. Our future hangs on er issue. Though he proposed no this, such as on the new definitions government initiative of his own of national security that involve unin improving precollege science and derstanding the interrelationships math education, he did outline a of all these issues. three-point national effort that "I hope we're going to get away would be needed to spark improve- from a shortsighted political period ment in grade school and high where narrow politics are obscurschool teaching. First, he said, the ing all the long-term choices of immajor universities should raise their portance to the nation. We're talkscience entrance requirements for ing about going to Mars, planned freshmen. That way parents would moon stations, and we can't find insist that high schools improve the money for Mission to Planet their science-math teaching talent. Earth. We can't find the money for Second, the education establish- three quarters of the basics that ment must loosen its rigid bureau- we're struggling to provide. I just cratic requirements so that "fully think that debate has to be engaged qualified scientists, mathematicians, and I think you're eminently qualiand engineers from the private sec- fied to engage it." tor can teach in public schools withSo with Congress pressing for polout going through years of formal icy integration and with a science teacher training." adviser who understands the conThird, mechanisms are needed to cept, it could indeed be a new and reward "those lonely, endangered unprecedented era for science and people out there in the little high technology policy. As the indispensschools across the country who year able Merlin was King A r t h u r ' s after year stimulate an undue frac- "wondrous prodigy" (in the words tion of the young people who come of author Norma L. Goodrich), before them." He said Congress Bromley can at least symbolize synshould try to devise appropriate re- thesis of information and access to wards for those teachers whose power that Merlin exercised. The schools are seen as "educational hot results might not be quite so magispots" by the universities who have cal, but Bromley seems to recognize mapped the country in efforts to the limits of any pretension in a trace the origins of their more out- place where the objectivity of science is usually dominated by the standing students. • In repeated punctuations, most of subjectivity of politics.
