GOVERNMENT

Scientists Warned on Quality of Research

Washington, D£. * * * * * * * * * *

"The research community has an important role to play in the coun­try's future, but it has to emerge from the comfortable cocoon it has inhabited for the past 20 or so years and come to grips with the realities of the 1980s." Those are the words of N. Douglas Pewitt, assistant di­rector of general science in the Of­fice of Science & Technology Policy.

He went on to warn the Division of Professional Relations that the focus of this Administration's sci­ence policy is not aimed, as in the past, almost solely at the health of science and its institutions. Rather it is aimed at getting the best possi­ble return on the federal invest­ment in science and technology. Support for R&D and a strong sci­ence and technology base is viewed as a means to an end, not an end in itself. That means that to gain feder­al support, research must meet three criteria—excellence, pertinence, and appropriateness.

"The strong federal commitment to R&D stems from our nation's needs in the 1980s and beyond. These are not the 1960s or the 1970s; the world has changed, and the sci­entific communities must respond to these changes," Pewitt says.

The Administration's budget re­quests for R&D, he says, show "that the government does respond en­thusiastically to programs, even as esoteric as basic research, that have clear relevance and importance to national objectives," such as a healthy economic growth and a strong national defense. But, he adds, it must be remembered that large numbers of projects or even larger numbers of scientists and en­gineers don't automatically produce leadership and that the Administra­

tion's real concern is with the quali­ty of research, not the quantity. "This is the time to do a job with the best tools we have, not a time to dissipate our resources by parceling them out in response to popular demand," he contends.

Pewitt throws cold water on the idea that a fixed percentage of the gross national product be set aside as a guaranteed funding level for R&D. Such a suggestion, he says, "is deadly to good science [because] the first entitlement begets more. Pretty soon we have individual dis­ciplines demanding their guaran­teed share, then regional demands for their share. Next we would be divvying up the portions among universities, four-year colleges, and two-year colleges. All too soon the only criterion that ought to count— excellence—gets lost in the noise of formula grants, geographical distri­bution and set asides."

In response to a suggestion that too many good research proposals are going unfunded, Pewitt replies that about 30% of proposals in typi­cal fields get funded and "that's just

Pewitt: must meet three criteria

about right." When it gets to a point that all worthwhile proposals are getting funded, then it becomes ob­vious that some proposals that are not any good are getting funded, he says; it's the nature of things. "I hope," he says, "we never get to the point where we have so few good-quality proposals that we can fund anything like all of them. That would be a vast misallocation of resources."

Still, he admits, "these are tough times for federal funding and they will remain tough for a while." But he points out that those disciplines that present well-considered, uni­fied agendas for their research have the best chances of getting support for their programs. "I need not elab­orate to you," he adds, "on the conseqences of letting decisions be made by nonscientists on the alloca­tion of R&D funds without any con­structive input. The scientific com­munity must be willing to contrib­ute to the policy process by estab­lishing its own priorities and stand­ing by them in the public arena."

One way the Administration is trying to foster such input from the scientific community is by asking the Natiojtal Academy of Sciences for its input on priorities in various areas of research. An example is the wide-ranging study of chemistry chaired by George C. Pimentel of the University of California, Berk­eley, which is expected to be re­leased late this month. This ap­proach of seeking the "collective judgments of experienced senior people in a field," Pewitt believes, represents a "reasonable attempt at making necessary policy judgments." However, he says, "we don't have any secret algorithm or any correct way to do it, no more than peer review is the perfect process for in­dividual grants. We need something better. To be perfectly honest, we're bumbling around trying to find the right way." D

September 19,1983 C&EN 17