News & Views item - April 2006

 

 

The Science of Science Policy. (April 21, 2006)

John Marburger III

     It seems it all began with a set of remarks just a year ago by U.S. presidential science adviser John Marburger when he disclosed a "dirty little secret" that as Science reported "We don't know nearly enough about the innovation process to measure the impact of past R&D investments, much less predict which areas of research will result in the largest payoff to society".

 

Marburger challenged the scientific community, "I am suggesting that the nascent field of the social science of science policy needs to grow up, and quickly,"   and went on to urge scientists to incorporate "the methods and literature of the relevant social science disciplines" to explore trends such as the scientific community's "voracious appetite" for federal research funding, the "huge fluctuations" in state support for public universities, and the continuing advances in information technology.

 

In response to Marburger's cage rattling, Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University said at the time, "Rather than simply tracking the growth in industrial R&D, for example, we also need to look at how that affects public sector investment. The set of assumptions that goes into S&T policy is unbelievably oversimplified."

 

Harvard economist Joshua Lerner made the observation, "A lot of science policy has an amateur-hour flavor to it because it's done by scientists who aren't familiar with the principles of the social sciences, but it's also our fault. We economists haven't communicated as well with other disciplines as we should."

 

As Science pointed out at the time a primary stumbling block is "the sheer difficulty of coming up with a theoretical framework that takes into account enough of the important variables to generate useful results."

 

Now David Lightfoot, head of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) social, behavioral, and economic sciences (SBE) directorate will invite the US scientific community -- with some international help -- to take up Professor Marburger's challenge by addressing what is tentatively being called "the science of science policy".

David Lightfoot

 

According to Science the NSF is to hold "three workshops for researchers to lay the intellectual foundations for the initiative. By fall, NSF hopes to have US$6.8 million from Congress as a down payment on what Lightfoot envisions as 'a significant program' that would eventually support a half-dozen large research centers at U.S. universities and scores of individual grants."

 

While in its 2007 budget request the NSF claims the initiative will give policymakers the ability to "reliably evaluate returns received from past R&D investments and to forecast likely returns from future investments," David Lightfoot cautions, "One shouldn't overstate this goal; nobody is under the illusion that we're going to be able to hand these decisions over to the computers." But it should bring "a more evidence-based understanding of what happens to our R&D investments."

 

The timeline that NSF has drawn?

On 17 to 18 May, some two dozen cognitive scientists, social psychologists, and engineers will discuss the roots of individual and group creativity and innovation in science. On 1 to 2 June, a second workshop will explore the organizational components--how cultural, political, demographic, economic, and scientific patterns affect the creation and application of knowledge. In July, an international group of experts will suggest ways to improve existing surveys that measure various indicators of a nation's technological prowess, from publications to public understanding of science.

Lightfoot sums up the matter, "To date, the criteria most commonly used--citation analysis or other bibliometrics--are science-neutral and field-independent; that strikes me as a mistake and a significant limitation. Chemistry and archaeology have different scientific cultures, and those differences affect innovation."

 

And it appears that John Marburger may also involve himself because Science writes the "White House is also forming an interagency task force to oversee the initiative."

 

It may smack of a will-o'-the-wisp, but then the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) on hindsight gives the impression of having been very much a flight by the seat of bureaucratic pants while the maneuverings regarding Australia's Research Quality Framework (RQF) have the imprint of an extraordinary lack of intellectual discrimination.