GOVERNMENT
Mary Good: A Champion For Science And Technology Appointed to make the Commerce Department a major player in innovative civilian technology, she now fights to save R&D from budget cutters
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espite incredible technical progress and great intellectual excitement in the physical sciences, these are not the best of times for scientists, especially research scientists. Industry can no longer afford to utilize them to the same extent it did even five years ago. The government is still putting a lot of money into basic research in the physical sciences. But competition for federal research funds continues to grow increasingly fierce and time-consuming. All is not well in science education. A persistent excess of newly minted Ph.D. chemists and other scientists over the numbers needed for their traditional role in basic research is raising concerns. One concern is the ability of science to continue to attract its share of the best and brightest young minds. After a 50-year honeymoon dating back to World War II, public scrutiny of science and what it contributes to society is becoming more critical. Storm warnings of an incipient decline in public confidence in science—unless scientists start being more responsive to the public—are being posted, if still largely ignored. And now, in a move that has surprised many involved with science and its workings, the rambunctious new Republican majority in Congress has its budget-cutting sights firmly set on federal funding ofnondefense technological development programs. It wants to greatly reduce or even eliminate such programs, seeing them as inappropriate and counterproductive and dubbing them "corporate welfare." In addition, there is considerable sentiment in Congress to eliminate the Department of Commerce—industry and business' official advocate in government—altogether. Smack in the middle of a lot of these controversies is Mary Lowe Good. She is undersecretary for technology at the Department of Commerce. Under her wing falls the Office of Technology Policy, which describes itself as the only office in the federal government with the explicit mission of developing and advocating national policies to maximize technology's contribution to U.S. competitiveness. 16
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Also under Good's wing is the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). It embraces the scientific work and responsibilities of the old National Bureau of Standards plus some newer, expanded activities. One of these is the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). Established under the Bush Administration and funded at more than $300 million in fiscal 1995, ATP offers costshared awards on a competitive basis to industry for the development of high-risk, enabling technologies with significant commercial potential. It is ATP and similar costshared civilian development programs funded by NIST and other government agencies that are a particular target of the budget cutters. A recent congressional budget-balancing resolution would cut federal funding for civilian R&D from $34.3 billion in 1995 to $28.9 billion in fiscal 1998. This is a decline of 16% in current dollars or 23% in constant dollars. Much of the retrenchment is slated for next year. By fiscal 2002, the constant-dollar drop from 1995 would be almost one-third. A scientist in her own right, Texas-born Mary Good has a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the University of Afansas and firsthand experience throughout the chemical enterprise, making her eminently qualified to champion science and technology in its hour of need. After 20 years as a professor of chemistry and then materials science at the University of New Orleans and Louisiana State University, she enjoyed a 14-year career as a senior executive at what became AlliedSignal. While there, she oversaw, among other things, an annual research budget that by 1992 exceeded $800 million. She moved from AlliedSignal to her Commerce post in August 1993. Good was appointed to the National Science Board, the National Science Foundation's governing body, by President Carter in 1980 and chaired it from 1988 to 1991. President Bush appointed her to the President's Council of Advisers on Science & Technology (PCAST). She has served on a host of other science advisory
bodies. Very well known in the chemical community, she has been both president and board chairman of the American Chemical Society. She is the latest recipient of ACS's Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management. Late last month, the ubiquitous Good shared her views with C&EN Editor-at-Large Michael Heylin in her Department of Commerce office overlooking the Washington Monument and the Ellipse. Topics of discussion: The immediate prognosis for science and technology in this country and the fundamental societal and political factors that today are apparently changing science and technology—and especially its relationship with government and the public—forever.
world—in Europe, China, Japan, India—and we need to keep in this country a fair share of the intellectual activity that generates high-tech industries and high-paying, hightech jobs. That corporations involved in ATP-type programs may benefit from them is not my concern. My concern is, Does the nation benefit from them? For this country to grow economically, remain competitive worldwide, and develop new industries you need to encourage and involve whoever in the corporate world can help best with the technology. If they benefit, as well as the nation, that's wonderful. Somehow, we have to change the rhetoric.
You have recently stated that the proposed R&D budget cuts "represent nothing short of unilateral disarmament on the global battlefield " I haven't heard talk like that in Washington since former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger left town. Are things really that bad? It is all about national resources—how we divide them up between investment and spending for current needs. Clearly, R&D is part of the investment, as is education. Our major international competitors overseas are putting a fair amount of their resources into such investment. And in any kind of high-tech business you have to invest, or ultimately you can no longer compete. Also, a number of studies have indicated that the three things that drive economic growth are capital, education, and technology. These are three issues on which you need policies. Also, the proposed cuts in the federal R&D budget are coming in the civilian half. President Clinton wanted to get to a 50/50 split—defense/civilian. We were making progress. In 1995, we got the defense share down to about 54%. But with the budgets we are looking at, we are going back to a point where it will be at least 60% defense. Another problem is that most of the Department of Defense's R&D is going to very specialized weapons systems so the spillover to the civilian sector is not going to have the impact it had 30 years ago.
What about the argument that if work triggered by ATPtype programs is really worthwhile, companies will find ways to finance it themselves? From my experience in industry, it doesn't happen anymore. There was a time it did. Go back to, say, the 1955—75 period. In those days, the likes of General Electric and DuPont owned the U.S. market. They didn't have much in the way of foreign competition. They had excess resources they could put into long-term R&D. They had the time and resources to create new industries. And they did. For example, GE invested in imaging technology. They took it all the way from very basic research to a new industry—medical imaging. Today, the work of GE's central laboratories is driven by the needs of the corporation's business units. This means it is driven by businesses that already exist. It is not driven by the potential of creating new industries. This is true across the corporate board. The main reason is that the life span of technology is so much shorter than it used to be and international competition so very much more intense. Industry's R&D operations today are concerned with keeping pace with current businesses. So what we have to do in this country is to somehow ensure we have mechanisms that allow you to draw from the technology base to develop generic technologies that have potential for whole new industries. Industrial R&D is not doing that. Companies are very good at focusing on the products they have and the next one, or maybe two, generations. This is an area in which the government clearly has no role as the process is market driven. This is not what ATP is concerned with. What we want to do with ATP is to encourage the development of promising new technologies that are not market driven because there is no market for them today.
Doesn't technology policy come very close to the industrial policy that has long been anathema to many Republicans who see it as government interference in matters the market should decide as well as involving inappropriate handouts to companies? Yes, this issue has been raised. But in my view, ATP and like programs are not corporate welfare. They are country welfare. You do these programs and support them with federal funds on a shared basis because they are in the best interest of the nation. You do them to provide an incentive for continuing to do civilian R&D in this country. A very large cadre of technically very competent people is being built up around the
We want to encourage development of promising new technologies.
There seems to be no argument that basic research must be largely government funded and that product development is strictly a corporate matter. The issues all seem to involve what goes on in between. OCTOBER 16, 1995 C&EN
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GOVERNMENT
It is my argument that this piece in the middle is as important as basic research. And the government needs to provide incentives to ensure it gets done.
ment that I thought would get into trouble with Congress was the Commerce Department. I think we are back to looking at things in the very short term, which I think is a disaster.
Has industry been supportive But politically, how do you sell ofATP? a program that seemingly A lot of people in Congress say transfers funds from the they haven't heard from indushardworking taxpayer to the try about it. But there is a coalikes ofDuPont? Is this the islition of companies that is acsue that is killing these incentive in support. One problem is tive programs? that half of ATP grants go to Partially. It is certainly an argusmall and start-up companies ment that is used. I can rethat don't have the wherewithspond with an example. We al, knowledge, time, or funds have an ATP focus program on to lobby Congress. low-cost composites. Today the market for high-cost composI think we are back to looking at ites, mostly in aerospace, is The point has been made that things in the very short term. small and not growing. There the worst of the competitiveis potential for a whole new inness crisis is over and that dustry in structural composites U.S. industries are doing if you can make them at a price much better. that allows them to be competitive in consumer products. That is true for some industries. But in the process of doing At the moment, we don't know how to do that. We have a that, companies reduced their long-term R&D. They ate contract with DuPont that also involves several small comtheir seed corn. panies and some university people. But DuPont has the knowledge to drive the program and it is in the best interThere are a lot of smart people in industry. Don't they est of the nation for the company to do so. If the program realize they may be burning their technology bridges succeeds, DuPont may benefit from the sale of resins and and that the nation could be headed for a real economic maybe composites. But think about all the other companies crisis? that will benefit, too. Many of them do. But their argument is they have to live today or they will have nothing to talk about tomorrow. In the past, the Department of Defense and the National AeroYou make a strong argument. The Republican Party—tranautics & Space Administration budgets created whole new ditionally the party of business—is in power in Congress. industries. This is not happening now, except possibly for We have an Administration that is very understanding the boost that research sponsored by the National Institutes and supportive of the role of technology in economic of Health has given biotechnology. growth. So why are these technology development programs coming unglued? In the Cold War, the big umbrella for R&D was national security. But that umbrella doesn't look the same now. The We are really groping with that question. I was on Presibig national issue today is not national, but economic secudent Bush's PCAST when ATP was set up. We worked rity. So we have to replace the mechanism we used for R&D through all the arguments and had good bipartisan supduring the past 50 years with a new one that will work for port. When this Administration came in, it decided that ecothe next 25 when American companies will have to fight nomic growth was going to be one of its major focuses and like the dickens not only to export their stuff, but to sell it that technology was a piece of that. So it looked like a great on the U.S. market. opportunity to flesh out ideas like ATP that we had worked out over the past 10 years. Doesn't that mechanism have to be based on some new This all goes back to the early 1980s when it was obvious grand challenge? the U.S. was losing its manufacturing base. The issue then Yes, but it is not easy to make economic security that chalwas, What do we do to get back in the game? One was emlenge. It is not like putting a man on the moon. phasis on quality. Another thing was to start ATP with $10 million in 1990, about $30 million the next year, and $60 million in 1992. Then this Administration pushed funding To broaden this debate a little, former presidential scimuch higher. ence adviser George (Jay) Keyworth II recently commented on what he sees as a breakdown in the special Everything seemed to be moving. My view was that we trust between the public and science. Other not unhad had the arguments, understood the playing field, and friendly observers of science have made similar points had decided on the kind of things that made sense for the including the charge that science appears indifferent country to do. I have been one of the most surprised people to the day-to-day concerns of the average citizen. in Washington that these technology programs have beOne of the most difficult things to overcome is overwhelmcome such a hard sell. When I came here, the last depart18
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ing success. And science has had overwhelming success. For a long time, universities could concentrate on basic research. The government's mission agencies funded a lot of that, then moved it forward and did technological development. And everybody was in great shape. But one of the issues is that science, in and of itself, does not create new technology-based industries. If there are not interpreters of science and people who can visualize what a new market might be, new businesses don't get formed. Science itself won't create them. In many cases the science follows the invention—not the other way round. One still hears the argument from some members of academe that things must follow the simplistic sequence of basic research, technical development, product development, new products and services, and economic growth. It never worked that way. In today's world, it absolutely can't work that way. My response to these people is that the basic research community should be the biggest advocate of technology development programs. Why? Because it is these programs that make what research scientists do relevant to the public. If at some point in time the public becomes disenchanted with technology development, it won't fund basic research either. Is this starting to happen to basic science? Sure. Criticism is starting, including the charge that universities have gone to doing only research and forgotten about education. But criticism is not too bad today. We need to fix it before it does get bad. You have characterized the academic science community as one of the most reactionary in the country. Well it is. It doesn't really want to change. It is the overwhelming success thing. The universities need some real statesmen to start talking about what the nation needs in terms of innovation. Also needed are scientists to articulate to the public where science and technology is going, what it means to society, and what it means to students. What are the hard new realities the academic science community must come to grips with? Several things have changed. Into the 1970s, the science community and the universities were growing. There were still a lot of opportunities in the universities. Many chemistry Ph.D.s were still going to university-like corporate research operations. Today, there is far less chance for new chemistry Ph.D.s to either do what their professors did or get into corporate research. What they need is help in preparing to be
successful in other, business-related jobs. There is need for such technically trained people in many fields—including publishing, advertising, and marketing. Faculty need to move on from the idea that basic research is the only legitimate job for Ph.D.s if they wish to maintain at least a steady graduate student population. A change in the attitude of chemistry professors is more important than any change in curriculum. We need faculty to be as proud of their students who go into new types of jobs as they are of those who stay in basic research. The science community has always enjoyed having multiple sources for federal research funds. With the new era of limited resources and greater accountability for science, does some sort of consolidated department or agency for science and technology begin to make more sense? There is a clear need for a mechanism to review and coordinate the federal R&D budgets to eliminate duplication and provide an opportunity for agencies to benefit from research carried out elsewhere in the government. D. Allan Bromley, President Bush's science adviser, used the Federal Coordinating Council for Science & Technology to provide such oversight. The National Science & Technology Council (NSTC) was established by President Clinton to raise R&D oversight to Cabinet level. Both efforts allowed the development of cross-cutting R&D efforts and reduced duplicate R&D efforts. However, much of the vitality of our past R&D results has come because of the diversity of inputs from a variety of departments and agencies. This diverse vitality allows a much broader spectrum of ideas to emerge and to be cultivated by federal support. I very much support NSTC oversight but believe the diverse R&D base will still serve us best in the long run.
How do we start to get science and technology back on a firmer new footing? What we really need is to start the discussion that will set the science and technology agenda for the next 25 years. You can't set an agenda every year. It is too wasteful and you don't get much done. We had an agenda after World War II and it is amazing it lasted as long as it did. We now need a new agenda. My vision is that you have to have a civilian technology policy. This is not the same as industrial policy. I am not talking about deciding we need a steel industry and so subsidizing steel companies. I am talking about building a technology infrastructure so that all inScience, in and of itself, does not dustry can benefit from it and give us a chance of creating create technology-based industries. new industries for the 21st century. OCTOBER 16, 1995 C&EN
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