Policy, Polemics, Platitudes, Parenthood, and Preaching to the Choir
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Policy, Polemics, Platitudes, Parenthood, and Preaching to the Choir [All Meant in the Best Possible Way] Elton N. Kaufmann Vannevar Bush's post-WWII report, Science—the Endless Frontier, is fast becoming science—the endless debate. The
report was mentioned by every other speaker, at least it seemed so, at a recent, hastily orchestrated conclave of some of the most prominent science and technology policy leaders in the United States. The assembly was billed as a "Forum on Science in the National Interest: World Leadership in Basic Science, Mathematics, and Engineering." The Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) associate director for science, M.R.C. Greenwood and her small but energetic staff put together the two-day assembly at the National Academies' Washington, DC facilities on January 31 and February 1. As reported in Science 0anuary 14, p. 165), the forum's ostensible purpose was to help OSTP develop for basic research a "blueprint" analogous to the one laid out for technology policy by the President and Vice President in February 1993. On the agenda in one form or another I found all the components one would expect to comprise such a policy: education and training (human resource pools and their diversity, the research experience, public awareness); the research portfolio (federal priorities, industrial research, defense-civilian balance, international cooperation); the research infrastructure (universities, federal laboratories); technology transfer; and even the social science of science itself. Well over 100 science and policy leaders at the fully subscribed forum had been asked in advance to submit brief white papers on these themes. The product of this somewhat innovative call will presumably be folded into the policy formulation process at OSTP. The event's most heartening aspect was concentrated high-level attention to the science policy dilemma. The meeting attracted speeches from Vice President Al
Gore; Senators Barbara Mikulski, Jay Rockefeller, and Tom Harkin; and Congressman George Brown. In addition to the appearance of these powerful figures in science policy and funding, a surprising array of high-level individuals spent the full two days in active attendance. These
included Jack Gibbons (director of OSTP), D. Allan Bromley (former director of OSTP), Neal Lane (director of NSF) and several NSF assistant directors, Harold Varmus (director of NIH), Robert White and Bruce Alberts (presidents of the National Academies of Engineering and Science, respectively), and also several high ranking officials from NASA and the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Commerce. Although the rhetoric was that of the 1990s rather than of Vannevar Bush's era, only a few themes, all as familiar as Bush's, echoed in both initial pronouncements and ultimate conclusions. This, despite two days mulling over a plethora of complex interrelated science and technology topics. Simply stated, the meeting circled around two nearly axiomatic tenets ("parenthood statements"): (A) Science is good as seen from jus
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