John Marburger, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President of the United States Give the Keynote Address to the 2007 AAAS Policy Forum. (June 19, 2007)

John Marburger III

TFW apologises for being slow off the mark, Dr Marburger gave his keynote address at the beginning of May this year but it is of sufficient international interest for us to reprint excerpts.

The complete text of his address is available on line.

Every year our multiple science communities scrutinize so intently the individual budget trees of their respective fields that I am always concerned that they miss the forest of broader policy issues that affect them all. My intention over the years has been to draw attention to long term issues and use whatever power my office has to address them apart from the frenzy of the annual budget cycle.

 

No law of nature or of politics guarantees that this real-life science posture will reflect a sensible science policy. The only hope of coherence in our national science posture is for all the diverse actors to agree on a general direction and give it priority year after year.

 

Within government a number of interagency committees have sprung up to address problems at the intersection of science and security... [for example] the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), established by this Administration in 2004 and mentioned in my AAAS policy speech that year, has been meeting quarterly since the summer of 2005. For an impression of the care with which this group is considering the problem of “dual use” bioscience, see the draft of the report it considered at its meeting last month Proposed Strategies for Minimizing the Potential Misuse of Life Sciences Research.

 

The National Academies’ 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm… was an important expression of this view, and echoed findings of many other reports. Notable among its recommendations was increased funding for basic research in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering – areas that had stagnated while the budget for biomedical research soared. The report even recommended that investment in these areas should increase “ideally through reallocation of existing funds, but if necessary via new funds”. That statement is a rare recognition of the fact that federal funds for science are limited and that some programs may have to be held constant or reduced to fund priorities.

Dr Marburger then scolded the AAAS for including "earmarks" in its analysis of the Federal R&D budget, and then proceeds to attempt to show by ignoring them that black is really white.

[Note: According to the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "uses [as a] definition of earmarks ...specified funds for projects, activities, or institutions not requested by the executive, or add-ons to requested funds which Congress directs for specific activities."]

Dr Marburger then undertakes the blame game: it's not the President that's mean with basic research funding its the Congress. This is a game that is much easier to play using the US system of separation of powers than it is under a Westminster system.

He then returns to a theme which formed the basis of an editorial in Science two years ago and a concept which was later analysed by Peter Hall and reprinted in TFW.

Dr Marburger:

Two years ago in this Forum, to repeat myself again, I argued that the ratio of federal science funding to GDP is not necessarily a meaningful indicator of a nation's science strength. I called for better benchmarks and a new "science of science policy" that would give us a surer foundation for setting priorities and better arguments for taking action. I am impressed and pleased with the response to that plea, not only by our own National Science Foundation, which has launched a program in the "social science of science policy," but also by the international community. The OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – has acknowledged the need to have better data, better models, and better indicators that take into account the dynamic and global nature of research and development. Meanwhile, in the absence of a deeper understanding of cause and effect in the new era of globalized technical work, we need to be wary of reading too much into ratios and rates. Today, however, I want to make a different point.

And what transpired was a clear warning that federal funding for biomedical research was going to get squeezed. Dr Marburger pointed out:

[In a speech last October I claimed] "the universe of research universities has expanded to an economically significant size, by which I mean that the sum of financial decisions by its individual members has an impact on the resources available to any one of them. It is not quite a zero-sum game, but we have moved into a new operating regime where the limits of the 'market' for research university services are being tested." The doubling of the NIH budget that occurred, with everyone's blessing, over a five year period ending in 2003, was an experiment in the rapid expansion of a broad but still well-defined scientific field. The most obvious lesson from this rapid growth is that it could not be sustained. There is a deeper lesson.

He then invoked what might be termed The Sorcerer's Apprentice model.

The response to the NIH doubling has been an abrupt increase in research capacity, financed not only by the direct federal investment, but by state governments and private sector sponsors eager to leverage this investment, not least to enhance competitiveness for additional federal funds. We now have an enlarged biomedical R&D labor pool – a new generation of researchers – who are populating new expanded research facilities and writing federal grant proposals in competition with the previous still-productive generation of their faculty advisors. And they are training yet another generation of new researchers who hope to follow the same pattern. I cannot see how such an expansion can be sustained by the same business model that led to its creation.

And yet there remains in fact a great dearth of US born next generation researchers while rapidly developing economies are staring at major shortages of properly trained and suitably talented individuals to sustain their growing requirements.

Dr Marburger effectively told the AAAS that its members had better start looking elsewhere than to the federal government if they wanted to continue to increase their resources: "The message here is that federal funding for science will not grow fast enough in the foreseeable future to keep up with the geometrically expanding research capacity, and that state and private sector resources should be considered more systematically in formulating federal science policy."

To call it a "geometrically expanding research capacity" was patent nonsense, but that's hardly the point, Dr Marburger is simply relaying the administration's message: "You will have your own ideas about how to fill the inevitable gap between the exponentially increasing research capacity and the much more slowly growing federal ability to satisfy it. Of all the policy issues to be discussed in today’s forum, I think this one will be with us for the longest time and will have the greatest impact on how and what research is performed in our institutions."

Surely, from an Australian viewpoint, keeping in mind the significant shortages predicted over the next five years and beyond of skilled scientists, and engineers, and the budget surpluses the federal Coalition sees as its trump card there is a "US sent" opportunity, and attempting to set up university campuses in Singapore is not the way to go.