Foresight Update 14
page 3
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Policy
Watch
The United States and Britain have agreed to contribute to the
Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), the largely
Japanese-financed research organization based in Strasbourg. The
HFSP has announced the outcome of its third round of research
awards. The trustees "comprising two members from each of G7
countries, the European commission and Switzerland" last
week approved 37 research grants worth $24 million over three
years, and a further 128 two-year postdoctoral fellowships each
worth $42,000 per year. Reseach proposals are required to be
interdisciplinary and to involve international collaboration.
One of the postdoc recipients is Jan Hoh, a speaker at the Second
Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology last November.
Dr. Hoh will work at the Muller Institute at the University of
Basel, where he will use atomic force microscopy to investigate
biomembranes and ion channels.
The immediate problem is that research proposals far outnumber
awards. In this year's round, roughly 87% of the applications
were refused. The only solution appears to be a larger budget. (Nature
356:277)
Federal contracts that require
researchers to obtain government approval before publishing or
reporting preliminary findings are unconstitutional, the U.S.
District Court for the District of Colombia ruled in late
September. As a result, the court ordered the National Heart,
Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to return to Stanford
University a $1.5 million contract for human trial of a
"partial artificial heart." Now, NHLBI's parent agency,
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has appealed
that decision.
The clause in question barred the researchers from publishing any
preliminary findings without first obtaining permission from
their contract officer, whose decision would be final and
binding. HHS maintained that the clause served to prevent
Stanford from releasing findings that "could create
erroneous conclusions which might threaten public health or
safety if acted upon" or that might have "adverse
effects on ... the federal agency." In his opinion, Judge
Harold H. Green called these standards "impermissibly
vague." For instance, he asked: What constitutes an adverse
effect on a federal agency? "Who will decide whether the
conclusions drawn by Stanford are erroneous--the scientist or
contracting officer?" (Science News 140:318)
The Food and Drug Administration
has approved the sale of certain genetically-engineered
foodstuffs without extensive laboratory testing being required
before they are available on supermarket shelves. Foremost among
these will be tomatoes genetically altered so as not to rot so
easily, thus allowing tomatoes to be picked later, and remain
fresh longer. (CNN May 26, 1992)
Nature reports that
superconductivity and nanofabrication research are being phased
out as part of a broader shift away from condensed matter
physics. In its place will be more software technology. Squeezed
by economics and a corporate preoccupation with the bottom line,
three of the U.S. largest companies doing basic physics research
are cutting back operations and reducing their research staff.
Bellcore (Bell Communications Research) and IBM are shifting
their research programs to applied research, a move that has
already closed laboratories and left dozens of researchers
looking for jobs. (Nature 356:184)
Robert Waterston, at the Washington
University in St. Louis, and John Sulston of the UK Medical
Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology at
Cambridge--the two principal collaborators in the $6 million worm
genome project--say that it is now time to move to the next step
in the sequencing effort with the development of an advanced
sequence technology and eventual production automation. As a
highly repetitive task, large-scale gene sequencing is tailor
made for a commercial enterprise. Further, moving this sort of
"production line" work out of academic laboratories
frees university resources for basic research. (Nature
355:483)
Presidential Science Advisor D.
Allen Bromley told members of the President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology that global change research has
"matured" to the point where it should place greater
emphasis on accessing the results of the research already carried
out. The 1993 budget proposal recently submitted to Congress
contains five presidential research initiatives--science and
mathematics education, biotechnology, high performance computing,
and advanced materials processing--in addition to the global
change effort. These represent the combined research budgets of
several government agencies in a particular field knitted
together by an overall research strategy. The initiatives on
biotechnology and advanced materials are new this year. (Nature
355:578)
In Korea, government bureaucrats
are seriously considering the introduction of a "science
tax." Although such a tax is unprecedented, the general
scheme of accessing taxes for specific purposes is well
established. In the past, the South Korean government has put
extra taxes on corporations and its citizens to raise funds for
defense. So why not, the bureaucrats ask, have a tax to aid
Korea's bid to catch up with the technology of Japan and the
West. (Nature 354:177)
For the last several years in the
United States, a battle has been waged between Big Science and
Little Science. Constituencies of scientists and engineers,
politicians, and government officials argue on behalf of their
own needs. Each cites lofty goals: preservation of national
freedoms, global competitiveness, international prestige, and
boosts in our quality of life, which, they assert, depend
directly on the continued investment of public funds in their own
perspective and brand of science and technology. The good news is
that both camps are probably right. The bad news is that in all
this discussion, few speak for the R&D engineer--the person
who can develop an idea uncovered in a laboratory to the point of
proving its feasibility.
Many good ideas that could contribute to economic growth are
today stuck in the library, ignored for lack of funds. In this
budgetary shoot-out, little thought is given to the R&D
engineer, whether in government, on campus, or in the corporate
environment. Few champions exist for his/her essential
contribution: exploratory development. These folks are the ones
that examine the most promising basic research and determine
whether it can be integrated, packaged, and manufactured
economically.
Arguing for Little Science, the National Academy of Science's
president, Frank Press, has called for setting tougher priorities
for Big Science projects, while increasing support for Little
Science to safeguard the country's scientific infrastructure.
Leon Lederman, former director of Big Science's Fermilab,
brandished the results of a poll indicating that university
scientists--primarily the Little Science people--never felt more
financially strapped. (IEEE Spectrum, December
1991:14)
In a similar vein, in 1990 the U.S.
government and private sector spent over $600 for research and
development for every man, woman, and child in the country.
Americans spend $30,000 to support each scientist and engineer.
Never in history has a research endeavor been as well supported
in any nation.
Increases in government and private sector spending, generous by
any standard, have brought total R&D funding to $150 billion
as of 1990, but have not been able to sustain the increases in
the R&D community's population. This situation is somewhat at
variance with the conventional view of supply and demand for
scientists and engineers, which projects that the United States
will face a mounting "shortfall" of gargantuan
proportion--400,000 to 700,000 scientists and engineers
cumulatively by the year 2011, based on NSF estimates. Care must
be taken, however, in equating the word shortfall with shortage:
the first implies a reduction in production rates, the other a
demand that cannot be satisfied. Although we may in the future
encounter shortages in the total science and engineering work
force, there clearly is no shortage today of Ph.D. independent
investigators in academia. The shortage is one of money to
support academic research, not of scientists and engineers
capable of conducting it.
There are just too many science and engineering investigators
chasing too few dollars. As a result, research proposal success
rates have fallen significantly. At the National Institutes of
Health, less than one in four applications actually receive
support. And not only is the success rate falling, but the peer
review system--the underpinning of the competitive grant
process--is under stress. With the supply and demand for funds
seriously mismatched, it is not surprising to see (1) pleas for
more funds, (2) calls for a speeding of the proposal
treadmill--and a reduction of its adverse effect on productivity
of science and engineering research--and (3) the growth of
political lobbying by scientific groups, each seeking its own
ends in a tight national budget environment. The key issue is
whether the U.S. is prepared to adopt policies that will assure a
favorable position in the intensifying international technology
race. (Issues in Science and Technology Spring
1991:35)
Japan's powerful Ministry of
International Trade and Industry (MITI) is at last taking its
first step into genome research. In a few weeks, the biochemical
industry division within MITI will form a committee to coordinate
various small projects involving DNA analysis and to consider a
project to sequence the genomes of industrially useful
microorganisms. The eventual aim is a permanent government center
for DNA analysis. The committee will try to coordinate three
small MITI projects under the jurisdiction of the biochemical
industry division: (1) a project within Japan's huge fifth
generation computer project that is developing computer systems
to handle the vast amounts of data arising from genome research;
(2) the application to nanoscale technologies, such as the
scanning tunneling microscope, to an analysis of DNA at a new
interdisciplinary research center in Tsukuba; and (3) a small
project within MITI's huge global environment research program to
isolate and develop photosynthetic microorganisms to absorb
carbon dioxide. (Nature 356:181)
U.S. scientists are urging their
government to fund hundreds of small collaborations with their
Russian counterparts with part of $400 million set aside for the
destruction of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. Under
the plan, conceived during a two day workshop held earlier this
month at the National Academy of Sciences, those scientists who
already hold federal research grants would identify partners in
the former Soviet Union and provide them with money for vitally
needed materials and equipment, visits to the United States, and
collaborative research. "If we wait too long, they'll by
dead," says one participant, "I'd hoped that we could
do something by May or June, certainly no later than six months
from now."
The proposal would keep active in the former Soviet Union those
civilian scientists whose ability to carry out research has been
severely curtailed by the political and economic chaos in the
various republics. The goal is both to keep Russian scientists
productive and to strengthen U.S. science by tapping into a rich
new source of available talent. The program would draw as much as
$10 million from the fund created last fall by the U.S. Congress
to help the former Soviet Union to dismantle its nuclear arsenal
and to employ those who built those weapons. (Nature
356:182)
MITI Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS)
Project
A Japanese proposal for international cooperation in
international manufacturing research is forcing a reevaluation of
U.S. technology policy. The Industrial Machinery Division of the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry proposed the
Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) Project. The original
proposal, now substantially modified, called for a ten-year,
multilateral, cooperative research effort in the United States,
Europe, and Japan. Funding--originally projected at $1
billion--was to be derived from private as well as public
sources; Japan would contribute 60% of the cost and the United
States and Europe would split the rest. The details of the
proposal reveal why it has attracted so much attention.
In defining intelligent manufacturing systems as the focus of the
project, IMS's sponsors cast a very broad net. The term
"system" denotes the integration of technologies and
human skills across the entire range of corporate activities
relating to manufacturing--from order-booking, to design, to
production and marketing. (An "intelligent" system--or
technology--is defined here as one that monitors its own internal
processes and reacts to internal stimuli.)
The proposal includes a comprehensive list of topics to be
investigated in each area. International teams will pursue
projects jointly, with the aim of reducing redundancy in national
research portfolios. Further, the project seeks to harmonize
worldwide standards for intelligent manufacturing technology.
Early on, U.S. firms and universities responded to a MITI
solicitation by submitting more than a dozen proposals for IMS
related research funding. MITI retained the Society of
Manufacturing Engineers in Michigan to act as the project's
secretariat in the United States.
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| Government officials viewed the IMS
as proceeding too far, too fast |
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These events surprised and dismayed many U.S.
observers--particularly government officials--who viewed the
project as proceeding too far, too fast. Two points were
particularly sensitive. First, IMS was moving forward without the
kind of government-to-government negotiation customary in
international projects. Second, various institutions were
offering Japanese interests access to a wide range of U.S.
technology without--some felt--having considered the cumulative
impact of their actions on the nation's competitive position.
The potential for conflict was exacerbated by cultural
differences in approaching new projects. The typical Japanese
approach in both public programs and business contracts is
initially to sketch institutional and programmatic commitments
with a broad brush. Details are worked out on an ad hoc basis as
the enterprise matures. The U.S. tendency runs in essentially the
opposite direction: Fully-scoped programs are defined at the
outset. In the early spring of 1990, the United States took
official action by invoking the authority of the U.S.-Japan
Science and Technology agreement--an umbrella for cooperation
between the two countries.
The independent American proposals to MITI for funding and the
designation of the SME as secretariat were withdrawn accordingly.
The Department of Commerce, designated as lead agency under the
agreement, then began a domestic and international discussion
process. Throughout this evolution, the principal assumptions on
which the system had long been based--that the centralized,
competitive research can be wasteful, that diffusion of
technology throughout industry ultimately benefits all firms;
that Japan has much to learn from abroad; and that government and
industry must work cooperatively--have never been discarded. The
IMS proposal incorporates the traditional paradigm, adapting it
to suit today's realities. In an effort of such scope and
magnitude it is obvious to the Japanese that all
sectors--government, academia, and the leading industrial
firms--must make common cause.
Accustomed to viewing the West as the source of technology and
realizing that there are still technical areas in which the West
leads, Japanese participants in IMS naturally seek access to that
outside expertise. Domestic pressures have forced Japan to
reorient its science and technology establishment around two
broad new themes: internationalization and innovation. Long
insulated from foreign influences, Japan is now trying to promote
a genuinely international culture across a wide spectrum of areas
from consumer markets to art and science. One important aspect of
this transformation is the more equitable exchange of ideas,
technology, and people from within and outside Japan. By
welcoming foreigners into the Japanese technical establishment
and underwriting research abroad, IMS could contribute
significantly to this movement.
The Japanese economy has evolved faster than expected from a
capital intensive to a research intensive system; research
expenditures exceeded capital purchase for the first time in
1986. The future of Japan's manufacturing sector depends on
automation to compensate for anticipated labor shortages: the
average age of the population is increasing in Japan faster than
in any other major industrial power. For these reasons, Japanese
manufacturing is moving offshore.
American attitudes toward IMS reflect four distinct perspectives:
internationalists emphasize the integration of the U.S. into the
global economy; the technical community focuses on research
agendas and funding; domestic interests emphasize the need to
maintain U.S. competitiveness; and the policy community
highlights public-private dialogue about technology.
The U.S. policy community--a collection of scholars, advocates,
and makers of technology policy--is a uniquely self-conscious
entity, simultaneously developing new policy initiatives and
critiquing its own progress. From this perspective, the value of
IMS as a policy development process is even greater than its long
term promise as an R&D project. IMS has given rise to new
policy-oriented groups, notably the ad hoc industry steering
group, and by casting the Department of Commerce as the lead
agency in this instance, it has established new bureaucratic
patterns.
Nowhere has the U.S. failure to access and profit from new
technology been more marked than in its interactions with Japan.
In part, this has been due to barriers to foreign participation
in research consortia, but most of these have now fallen. From
the Japanese perspective, the IMS project is intended to go one
step further, opening the door to its domestic technical
apparatus. Having pushed so long for just such an invitation,
Western interests will suffer a setback in Japan if they fail to
respond. As of yet, there is still no federal entity that
possesses both the authority and the wherewithal for managing
international exchanges. Such exchanges are likely to
proliferate, not decline; many of them may be modeled on IMS.
Instead of reinventing the wheel with every exchange, the United
States should capitalize on what it has learned throughout the
IMS process and create an office--most appropriately in the
Department of Commerce--to gather and disseminate information
about international technology-development projects, coordinate
positions, and negotiate agreements. Whether in sports or in
scientific research, players need to know how to play the game
before they enter the fray. To compete in the arena of
international R&D, the U.S. needs to develop two critical
capabilities: a clear and effective domestic technology policy,
and honing the skill at capturing the benefits of foreign
technology. The U.S. must be willing to design and invest in new
programs and policies to achieve these critical capabilities. (Issues
in Science and Technology Fall 1991:49-53)
The U.S. National Institutes of
Health (NIH) took the first public step in a "strategic
plan" for research funding when it revealed the draft of a
year's effort recently at a meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The
plan is being written to justify arguments for greatly increased
federal funding for NIH but, as NIH Director Bernadine Healy
expects, it will also bring into the open a number of fundamental
and contentious questions about the structure of the NIH
enterprise itself.
Strategic planning also raises, inevitably, the notion that some
areas of research are so important, or intellectually
interesting, that they deserve funding increases at a rate that
is higher than others. Healy is sympathetic to this view, but the
biomedical community as a whole--favoring the strategy of every
discipline on its own--has never successfully reached a consensus
on research priorities.
The scientists cum peer reviewers--perhaps genetically
programmed to eschew anything that smacks of "target"
research--arrived in San Antonio in an apprehensive mood,
exacerbated by the fact that NIH officials were so slow to get
background documents out to meeting participants. As the debate
wore on some consensus became evident. It was generally agreed
that the idea of strategic planning is sound and should not be
abandoned just because it got off to a bad start. (Nature
355:573)
The U.S. President's recent 1993
budget proposal released in January called for an 18% overall
increase next year to the National Science Foundation (NSF), and
a 21% boost in its basic research funds. The total budget for all
the federal government science and technology programs would grow
from $74.6 billion to $76.6 billion--an increase of less than 3%.
That is below the 3.3% inflation rate that the administration
projects for 1993. But there is a good reason why the overall
increase is so small: defense R&D--which currently accounts
for 60% of total government expenditure on science and
technology--would get only a modest increment.
Civilian R&D, in contrast is slated to grow by 7%, from $28.3
billion to $30.4 billion. And within those totals, basic research
would climb to $14.3 billion, an increase of 8%. According to the
presidential initiatives, selected areas of both Big Science and
Small Science see significant increases. These initiatives call
for a 24% increase in global change research up to a total of
$1.3 billion. High performance computing and communication
increases 23% to $803 million, while advanced materials grows 10%
to a proposed total of $1.8 billion. Biotechnology is slated to
grow 7% to over $4 billion. And math and science education is
also projected with a 7% growth topping the $2 billion mark.
In terms of Big Science, the Superconducting Supercollider
received a 34% increase to $650 million and the Strategic Defense
Initiative received a 31% increase to $5.4 billion, the largest
single item in the big science scorecard. (Science
255:673) [Editor's note: As we go to press, continued
funding for the Supercollider is in doubt.]
In a Science essay
titled "Pork Barrel 'Science'" it is mentioned that the
polite term used by the U.S. Congress is "earmarking,"
but whether one calls it earmarking or pork barrel, the article
goes on to say it is a reprehensible activity practiced by a few
powerful members of Congress. Moreover, it has reached a point
where the negative impact on scientific projects is very real, as
is apparent from the following excerpt of remarks by George
Brown, chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology
Committee. "In the NASA area, I am certain that my
colleagues recall the debate earlier this year over the space
station. The debate was, in many ways, a historic one. We were
asked to make a major decision on whether we could afford to
continue the space station when so many other programs were in
dire need of funding. These included space science programs,
housing programs, environmental programs, and veterans programs.
We voted to continue the station, and there can be no doubt that
these and many other meritorious programs have not received the
funding they needed.
"Yet the conference report contains over $100 million in
projects that were never requested by the administration, never
authorized, and never discussed on the floor. We were never given
a choice between a station and those projects. These appear in
the NASA portion of the budget, but some can scarcely even be
called space projects.
"The conferees generously set aside $40 million for a vast
variety of brick and mortar projects in West Virginia. These
include $22.5 million in funding for a national technology
transfer center in Morgantown, WV. The proponent envisions that
persons inquiring about technological advances that are taking
place through government projects must write to West Virginia for
the answer. It includes $7.5 million for continued funding for
the Wheeling, WV, Jesuit College. I don't believe that anyone in
Congress or in NASA knows what this will be used for.
"It includes continued funding for a consortia of
universities and consultants in the Saginaw, Michigan, area which
has somehow emerged as the center for environmental research in
the past three years ... NASA itself has little idea where this
funding is going. It includes $20 million for the Christopher
Columbus Center for Marine Research in Baltimore. I stress marine
research, not space research...
"The conference report terminates a vast variety of NASA
scientific projects such as the space infrared telescope, ... the
orbiting solar observatory ... and the flight telerobotic
servicer. These are all projects that scientists have spent
decades planning and developing. These are all projects that
could be funded with a little more restraint on the part of the
conferees ..."
With regard to the pork barrel sites mentioned by Representative
Brown, it is no coincidence that the chairs of the three relevant
appropriations committees come from West Virginia, Maryland, and
Michigan. (Science 254:1433)
A committee of the National
Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has
identified several technologies predicted to be important in the
U.S. Army within the next 30 years. The Strategic Technologies
for Army Report (STAR) targets, in particular, key technology
areas for ground warfare. Biotechnology played an important role
in the report. A subcommittee suggests seven areas of
biotechnology with the "highest payoff," including:
- bioproduction of fuel, food, potable water, and
explosives;
- coupling of biosensors with electronic and photonic
devices;
- enhancing immunocompetence of soldiers by manipulating
"soldier's white blood cell" genomes;
- designing novel materials and molecules such as
lubricants, adhesives, coatings, and adaptive camouflage
in clothing protective against ballistics and chemical
and biological warfare agents;
- extending human performance by "direct coupling of
the human central nervous system to machines and use of
bionics and orthopedics" and,
- developing "soft kill" products that disable
machines or propulsion systems, change the soil or
vegetation, or degrade materials. (Genetic
Engineering News12,8:3)
Admiral David Jeremiah, Vice
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed the need to
invest in nanotechnology in a recent speech to the American
Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics. He also called for a
new technical education process, citing the lack of knowledge
about nanotechnology among senior naval officers as an example of
why change is needed. (AIAA Convention, Naval Training Center,
San Diego, CA, 11Feb92)
From Foresight Update 14, originally
published 15 July 1992.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 14 to
html for this web page.
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