Science's Big Shift

By DICK THOMPSON WASHINGTON

Ever since Ben Franklin began experimenting with electricity, the strength of American science has been the freedom it gives bright people to follow their curiosity. Today federally supported science is an enterprise unique in government: it is largely directed from the bottom up, driven by the ideas of individual scientists. In exchange for this freedom from political meddling, scientists promise enormous social benefits, from increased prosperity to better public health.

But while the U.S. government spent $27.6 billion on civilian research last year, the largest annual investment ever made by any country, there is a growing sense that something is wrong with the scientific bargain. AIDS remains incurable, and tuberculosis is returning. The economy is floundering as sophisticated consumer goods all seem to be stamped MADE IN JAPAN. The payback from the space shuttle seems tiny compared with the billions of dollars it burns up. Says Walter Massey, director of the National Science Foundation: "The public hears that we're No. 1 in science, and they want to know why that fact isn't making our lives better. The one thing that works in this country doesn't seem to be paying off."

Now government is preparing to take a different stance toward science -- and not just because a new Administration is coming to Washington. Long before the election, policymakers were concluding that they should assert more control over research by telling many scientists precisely what to work on. "We've got to do some readjusting," says Guyford Stever, co-chairman of a recent Carnegie Commission study on the future of American science.

At issue is the balance between two very different types of research: basic and applied. Basic scientists pursue knowledge for its own sake. They may study the sex lives of bacteria growing in Petri dishes or use giant accelerators to smash protons together to see what kinds of subatomic debris come out. Applied scientists, in contrast, have a social goal in mind. They take the knowledge gained from basic science and try to apply it to solving a problem or creating a new technology. They may use their understanding of light waves to construct an optical computer or test a drug to see if it will knock out the AIDS virus.

Without basic science, there can be no applied science. But a consensus is building that the U.S. spends too much of its research budget on the search for new knowledge and not enough on harnessing the knowledge already gained. Now every major federal science agency, from the National Institutes of Health to NASA, is experimenting with or proposing some form of "directed research" to meet social needs. This is a historic shift for science -- one that portends more planning and accountability than in the past. For the first time, science will be driven more by its consumers than its products.

The Clinton Administration will go along with, and even accelerate, this change in emphasis. The President-elect has repeatedly pledged to direct government support to such practical fields as fiber-optic communications, computer networking, biotechnology, robotics and magnetic-levitation train transportation. Vice President Gore will probably be in charge of coordinating federal efforts to spur technology.

Scientists are not taking this assault on their independence lightly. Thousands of letters (more than 250 in one day) have poured into the National Science Foundation from researchers protesting the agency's intention to "redefine" its role and focus more on applied research. Howls have been even louder over the National Institutes of Health's new "strategic plan," which would, among other things, encourage scientists to work more closely with industry. To some observers, the reaction from the scientific community is little more than the pleadings of another special-interest group trying to preserve its privileges. "I thought NIH existed to meet the needs of the public," says agency director Dr. Bernadine Healy of the outcry over the new strategic plan. "They thought NIH was here to serve scientists."

Researchers say America may be trading future knowledge for short-term political profit. The new approach, they fear, will dry up basic research, which has spawned entire segments of the national economy, including the biotech and computer industries. "What we're all worried about is that there will be less and less room to maneuver in basic research, the area that put us where we are," says Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel-prizewinning microbiologist from the University of California, San Francisco. "If we move our investment into some narrowly defined social contract, 10 years from now we will have nothing."

In the best of worlds, the nation's basic science structure would be left untouched even as applied research was strengthened. But the money isn't there. When the Bush Administration earlier this year submitted a 1993 budget that would have increased science spending only 6.5%, to $28 billion, Congress for the first time in recent memory actually whittled down the Administration's request -- to a 2.3% increase. The budget freezes spending at many agencies, including NASA, and cuts NIH's funds (in inflation-adjusted dollars) 0.1%. Moreover, appropriations for some science agencies came attached with warnings that, in the future, simply requesting more money will no longer be considered a realistic solution to science's problems.

Clinton hopes to ease the money crunch by transferring as much as $30 billion during the next four years from the Pentagon's research budget to civilian science and technology. But faced with an annual federal budget deficit of about $300 billion, the new President cannot support basic research in the lavish, no-strings fashion that scientists have come to expect. Giant projects such as the superconducting supercollider, the proposed $8.25 billion Texas-based atom smasher that will hunt for quarks and other exotic subatomic particles, will come under increasingly tough scrutiny.

The current controversy over science reopens an old debate. After World War II, proposals to establish a super-science agency were stalled for years as politicians and researchers fought for control. Scientists claimed that they alone could objectively and intelligently assess new research and chart future directions. But politicians were reluctant to hand out blank checks and then ask the recipients if the money was being wisely spent. As the debate wore on, scientists pointed to the postwar economic boom as a validation of their approach. The politicians finally capitulated, and the National Science Foundation -- funded by government but largely directed by the scientific establishment -- was created in 1950. In retrospect, it is now obvious that American economic dominance in the 1950s and '60s was virtually assured because competitors' production capacity had been destroyed by the war. The time has come, say critics of big science, to give the research system a thorough review and overhaul.

Lacking a comprehensive strategy, U.S. science has grown in ways no one really planned. For example, more than 40% of the entire federal investment in basic research goes into biomedical studies. Is that too much? Is the investment improving health in a measurable way? Another question is what to do with the nation's three nuclear-weapons labs. They each consume $1 billion a year. Is that too much in this post-cold war era? Why have three weapons labs when no new bomb orders are on the books and Congress is halting underground tests? And most important, what should be done with expertise developed in these centers?

Precisely how science will be redirected is unclear. Some have suggested the creation of a National Science Council within the White House that would have the same status as the National Security Council. Clinton's science advisers are studying the programs of the Department of Agriculture, which has had unparalleled success in enriching the farming industry through science and technology. The department, in cooperation with state governments, maintains agriculture extension offices across the country, enabling farmers to report promptly any problems they face. Solutions are then worked out in government research centers and applied back on the farm quickly enough to make a Japanese carmaker envious. That approach has eradicated such blights as boll weevil infestations, and it has made American farmers the most productive in the world.

Forging a stronger alliance between science and industry will not be easy. One problem is that academic scientists often consider themselves the elite of the research establishment and do not always collaborate well with their less exalted colleagues engaged in commercial pursuits. The damage caused by the gulf between basic and applied researchers has become obvious to Dr. Leon Rosenberg, who last year left his post as dean of Yale medical school to become the president of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. With a foot in both worlds, Rosenberg notes, "These two communities have developed their biases and their myths in isolation, and that's not in the country's best interests, and it's surely not in the best interest of public health."

Science should not be expected to work miracles, as overzealous researchers sometimes seem to promise. It can't build a leakproof nuclear umbrella, stop the evolution of new plagues or prop up an economy in the face of fiscal irresponsibility. But the consensus in Washington is that the full potential of American science is not being tapped. The job ahead for Clinton, the new Congress and scientific leaders is to determine how best to use limited research dollars to reveal new knowledge -- and put that knowledge to work solving society's problems.