Does the fiscal climate accommodate traditional advocacy as a science-funding strategy?

By Steven T. Corneliussen

A 9 November Science magazine editorial called for scientists to intensify their usual lobbying for federal funding. Its authors, Alan I. Leshner, leader of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Mary Woolley, who heads Research!America, said that in this political season, "It is essential that every member of the science and engineering community personally convey to policy-makers and the U.S. public the great importance of strong science funding to the future of the country."

In a 20 December Nature commentary, maybe David Goldston had that thought in mind when he asserted that because fiscal policy and politics have fundamentally changed, science's success in federal budgeting can no longer be risked on mere intensification of the usual lobbying.

Goldston directs government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "In times of fiscal crisis," his essay begins, "the reflex response of interest groups is to circle the wagons and defend the status quo, arguing that any cuts would be fatal. Predictably, the scientific community in the United States is currently following that script." Scientists "have been making essentially the same arguments for basic research for nearly 70 years — linking it to economic growth and other public benefits — and few in politics have challenged them." But things are much different now, Goldston cautions, and that "shopworn" strategy needs replacing; its "familiar claims cannot survive close scrutiny."

Goldston asserts that US R&D advocates cling unwisely to a vision of increasing R&D spending until it reaches at least 3% of gross domestic product. This is harmful "in at least two ways," he says:

The [3%] target helps to fuel the scientific community's demoralizing and distorted sense that it is being neglected and willfully financed at suboptimal levels. And it leaves science advocates unable to answer persuasively if officials ask for proof that funding is inadequate or for an estimate of what would be sufficient.

Goldston calls for scientists to avoid being excluded from decision-making by planning now for the inevitable slowdown in the growth of science spending. Scientists, he prescribes, must "think about questions such as: which agencies, programs and fields are the lowest priorities? How can the government ensure that younger researchers are still able to get funding? Is there a thoughtful way to shrink a system that produces ever more grant proposals?"

---

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.