Smart mobs is veteran tech-watcher Howard Rheingold’s term for the growing ranks of people linked to each other through the mobile Internet. In the millions worldwide today, mobile devices could start outnumbering personal computers connected to the Net as soon as a year from now. When that happens, says Rheingold, paging or phoning and “texting” won’t simply be easier; almost unconstrained by location, the combination will also unlock new possibilities for socializing, doing business, and political networking.

This revolution is sneaking up on Americans, Rheingold contends, partly because we’re not leading it. For cultural reasons he spells out and business reasons he rues–mainly competing standards, “clueless marketing,” and a pricing model that thwarts those willing to try new technology–the future of the mobile Net arrived in Japan, Scandinavia, and elsewhere while the United States was thinking about putting on its shoes.

Plenty of American teenagers have mobile phones and can send text, but in Tokyo 90 percent do. They use the aptly named “i-mode” at all hours to share their thoughts and feelings silently in real time, track their friends’ whereabouts, and to decide while on the run where to congregate next. Going further, hundreds of thousands of dating-age Japanese have subscribed to a service, Lovegety, that lets them know when another subscriber with the right stuff is within 15 feet of their texting phone.

Helsinki is also fast going wireless. There, many parents use the buzzword “swarming” to describe “the cyber-negotiated public flocking behavior of texting adolescents.” There too, experimental location-sensing devices in mobile Net phones hook users through sensors, beacons, and computers into a “digital city” of geo-information systems that tell people where they are, what that spot has to offer, and how to get where they want to go.

Rheingold’s world tech tour includes stops in Stockholm, U.S. Indian reservations, Manila, and other places where mobile Net devices have already been deployed. Some of the concepts and technologies explored in Smart Mobs, such as “smart rooms” that sense and answer inhabitants’ needs or the “digital cities” described above, seem likely to become everyday realities once production or installation costs come down. Others, especially wearable computers that extend human sensory powers or “attentive billboards” that gather demographic information on onlookers and then adjust the message accordingly, seem further off. Rheingold distinguishes between the near at hand and the far from feasible. But occasionally he succumbs to the gee-whizness of it all, and he doesn’t always clearly connect the technologies he describes to his governing idea that wireless web interactions are on balance a positive-sum game.

Still, Smart Mobs is more than a technological travelogue. The book also contains searching interviews with dozens of cyber-visionaries and inventors (many of whom are American) and the author’s own reading of philosophers and social critics who speak to his questions about new technology’s potential to excite cooperation and to function effectively without heavy-handed government regulation, as well as about its dark side. In making his case for a light touch, Rheingold he takes a blanket approach to technology change and choice, turning to Robert Wright’s 2002 book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, the work of Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessing, and such intellectual titans as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Lewis Mumford, Mancur Olson, Joseph Schumpeter, and Jaques Ellul for insights and applying them broadly to mobile computing’s social and antisocial sides. For example, he turns to game theory to illustrate how the interactive nature of the wireless Net will lead to the development of “reputation systems” that will prevent the excesses of self interest. Rheingold argues that the fact that participants are likely to interact repeatedly on the Net will result in peer-pressured self-regulation among virtual communities that will ensure quality control and responsible behavior.

The vision

In Rheingold’s view, “peer to peer ad-hocracies” formed by users of smart-mob devices are uniquely able to “combine the powers of computation with the growth capabilities of online social networks.” This potential is rooted in the early development of the Internet, which this and other authors have painted as largely unscripted, altruistic, and anonymous. In “P2P” lingo, every client is also a server: All use the Net but also give back to it by sharing information. In Rheingold’s crystal ball, Wireless P2P tech, the next phase of the communications revolution, could make journalists, political activists, consumer advocates, forecasters, and researchers (not to mention restaurant and movie critics) of all who use it, thus creating new forms of public confidence and trust.

Rheingold worries that his idealistic vision and the Internet ethos could be derailed by growing threats to American liberties–threats to privacy and freedom as marketers further invade people’s lives and electronic surveillance increases, to sanity and civility as convenience trumps community, and to human dignity as machines take over more life functions. More tractable evils (that actually receive more attention) are security breaches, radiation emitted by some smart mob technologies, and interference, as well as cultural debasement as editing all but disappears.

As we ponder the first set of problems and attack the second, says the author, overcoming technological and regulatory barriers needs to be a priority. Rheingold fears that the media conglomerates that have licensed the broadcast spectrum will want to protect their investment and preserve the centrally controlled model of information dissemination in which they produce and the rest of us pay. This will mean a continuation of the complex government regulatory apparatus, which is designed to protect consumers from corporate power but which also slows innovation. Treating the broadcast spectrum as a public good or commons, an article of faith among broadbanders, would, he says, pare the need for government regulation, maximize the resource, and spark innovation. The choice soon upon us, as he sees it, is between centralized control by a few or decentralized coordination by the many.

Meaningful choice has to be informed, of course, and Rheingold says we choosers have work to do. Lest mobile Netsters become passive consumers instead of true empowered networkers with their creative juices flowing, more practical knowledge on four issues is essential. We need to know more about how to regulate the mobile Net to promote innovation and competition democratically, how natural and artificial interdisciplinary systems of cooperation work, what all-pervasive 24/7 media do to our brains and coexistence with others, and how ubiquitous computing might reshape cities. Although Rheingold doesn’t pretend to have more than tentative answers, these are questions that policymakers and smart mobs alike need answered.

Equally enthralled by techno-visions, today’s “killer aps,” and the social effects of both, Rheingold creates a sound, if still sketchy, framework for steering and assessing communications technology change in general and the spread of smart mob devices in particular. He asks good questions, and he’s two steps ahead of more narrowly focused tech analysts. If the author is a bit too enamored of the geek world and too suspicious of those who would enter it for profit, Smart Mob is nonetheless a lively and reliable guide to the wireless landscape and its broadest policy implications.

Beyond College for All reexamines the school-to-work transition for those who do not go on to further education after high school. In particular, it focuses on the connections and contacts made (or not) between students, employers, and high schools, documenting the considerable confusion and lack of information among these parties. The book also examines the nature of the contacts made between employers and high schools and what types of information are sought and shared among schools and potential employers. The focus is on the United States, but the book also discusses possible lessons learned from Japanese school-to-work transition programs. As a result, it provides readers with a one-stop reference written by one of the leading scholars on this topic.

Although the book is presented as the work of one author–James. E. Rosenbaum, professor of sociology, education, and social policy at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University–it is actually a compilation of previously published articles and working papers written by Rosenbaum and coauthors. Several of these papers have been updated and expanded by Rosenbaum from their earlier versions. Nevertheless, it is puzzling that recognition of these coauthors was relegated to chapter notes at the end of the book.

The book begins with a brief overview of the frameworks used by researchers in economics and sociology to examine the school-to-work transition. It also presents the basic theoretical model underlying the work in this book: the linkage model, which deals with the ways in which social contacts convey information. This introduction serves to set up one of the book’s primary hypotheses: that a better understanding of how institutional networks can influence the matching process between students and potential employers can shed light on what conditions help promote a more successful transition from school to work for non-college-bound young people.

The book next examines high school students’ beliefs about the relative importance of their performance to their future career plans. It documents how students who performed poorly in high school are also more likely to fail in college. The book in effect argues that the strategy of simply trying to provide an opportunity for all to attend college is misguided. Because school officials fail to challenge students on how realistic their chances of college success are, students end up underestimating the difficulties associated with college work.

An analysis of the attitudes of 27 high school guidance counselors from eight Midwest high schools finds that they are no longer either screening students for colleges or preparing them to go directly to work. In the past, the book argues, guidance counselors discouraged a disproportionate number of women and minorities from attending college. But today the pendulum has swung in the other direction: They are reluctant to tell any high school senior that he or she is not college material. Instead, community colleges bear the responsibility for delivering the bad news.

Using detailed information from interviews with 51 employers, the book examines employers’ connections with high schools. Topics discussed include the importance of academic skills in employers’ hiring decisions of high school graduates, the degree to which employers mistrust information provided by high schools on potential hires, and the ramifications of this on the criteria that end up being relied on for these decisions. The book also describes possible reasons why employers do not make more effort to improve their linkages with high schools.

The book then moves from insights gained from interviews of small samples of employers and schools to analyses of large longitudinal data sets. The nonacademic behaviors of high school students are related to their later life attainments. The impact of personal versus institutional contacts on labor market outcomes is examined in terms of the probability of obtaining employment and initial and later wages. Personal contacts are divided between those from relatives and those from friends. Institutional contacts are divided into those from school and those from employment services. The evidence presented suggests that obtaining a job through contacts made through relatives and schools has a larger effect on earnings nine years after school than contacts made through friends or employment agencies. The importance of school-to-employer contacts is especially important for women and minorities.

The book also makes clear the importance of vocational education teachers in helping high school students understand the types of work options available to them if they do not continue their education. In fact, the book argues that some vocational education teachers provide valuable linkages with employers. It discusses U.S. examples of successful school-to-employer connections that mimic some of the best aspects of the German and Japanese school-to-work systems.

In short, Beyond College for All argues that the current policy of both local educators and the federal government to emphasize college for all is misguided. By failing to inform students in high school who are not college-bound of the importance of both academic and “soft” skills, high schools end up sending on to college a large fraction of students who fail to thrive. Rosenbaum argues that these students could have been identified in high school and then redirected to a more successful non-college track. And he points out that the trend of the past 20 years has been to decrease funding for vocational programs and teachers at a time when they could have played a more important role in linking schools with employers.

Food for thought

Although the book challenges the reader to reassess current policy, I was left with several observations and unanswered questions. First, the author is quite enamored with the German and Japanese school-to-work systems. However, as these countries have struggled with their economies, it has become clear that educational systems alone are not a sufficient condition for growth. Thus, although improving school and employer linkages is an important goal, the ultimate success of an economy to absorb non-college-bound youth will be driven by additional factors as well.

The book is on the mark when it stresses the importance of communicating to students the rigors of college, and that their high school course work is a critical component in their eventual success in postsecondary education and the labor market. However, to conclude that the entire high school guidance community behaves as those described in the small and unrepresentative sample presented in this book is an inappropriate stretch. More generally, as the author points out in his discussion of the role of vocational education teachers, students gain information on the labor market opportunities available to them from a range of adults, including their teachers, parents, and community leaders. The problem lies not solely in what specific guidance counselors may or may not say in a brief session with a high school senior, but more generally in the standards and expectations set by a much wider range of educators and those who provide guidance to youth.

In addition, much of the book focuses on the differences between those with a college degree and those with a high school degree. There is relatively little discussion of the benefits of attending a community college or enrolling in a proprietary institution that provides additional skills training. I would not be so dismissive of the potential gains from attending community college or going on to some form of additional intensive skills training after high school. Although I am sympathetic to the idea that college may not be the best path for all students, this begs the question of what is the alternative. Do we really think that a high school degree is sufficient to prepare youth for tomorrow’s or even today’s labor market? How do we break the vicious circle in which those without education beyond high school are less likely to receive training investments from employers? Nevertheless, I share the author’s concern that some policymakers appear to view community colleges as a magic elixir that will address all of the educational problems that have accumulated in the K-12 experience. I also agree that matching and mentoring students is still critical to the success of any these investments.

The book is also surprisingly silent on the range of school-to-work programs that were undertaken during the 1990s to try to improve the linkages between schools and employers. In addition, there is no discussion of the current trend toward high-stakes testing in high schools as a way to motivate students about the importance of academic skills and to provide more information to prospective employers on what students actually know when they graduate. I hope and expect that in future work Rosenbaum and his colleagues will examine the impact that this testing has on the transition from school to work, especially for non-college-bound youth.

Beyond College for All begins with an evaluation of the U.S. labor market made 15 years ago that states, “A crisis is emerging in the American labor market. Young people who do not get college degrees have been called the ‘forgotten half.'” This book serves as a reminder that we are still struggling to address this forgotten half. As we identify and implement policies aimed at improving the school-to-work transition, Rosenbaum provides us with much food for thought.

Voracious snakehead fish from China crawl out of a Maryland pond, while 100-pound Asian carp smash into recreational boats on the Mississippi River. Armies of alien rats, numbering in the millions and weighing up to 20 pounds, raze wetland vegetation in Louisiana. Softball-sized snails called Rapa whelks silently devour any and all Chesapeake Bay shellfish in their paths. The images would be comic if they were not real. Instead, they have helped to convince Congress that the threat to the U.S. economy and environment from these and other nonnative species is enormous and that the federal government should get serious about keeping them out.

If Congress does act, then we owe these cartoon villains a debt of gratitude. In the world of alien species prevention, there is no time like the present. The list of invader species plaguing U.S. coasts is long, diverse, and growing. A recent Pew Oceans Report cites aquatic invasive species as a top threat to marine biodiversity, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reported that invasive species are second only to habitat destruction as a threat to endangered species.

The environmental effects of invasive organisms can be as subtle as they are serious. A wasting syndrome afflicting the fry of native sport fish in Lake Ontario results from the adult fish eating nutritionally deficient nonnative forage fish. Ecosystem effects of an invasive organism do not just come and go; they ripple and morph over time. Recent die-offs among Great Lakes waterfowl due to botulism are being traced to the zebra mussel infestation that occurred more than 15 years ago.

Goods traded in markets are not exempt from degradation by invasive species. Commercial fishing, aquaculture, water-related recreation, and waterborne transportation, which together comprise much of the economic base of coastal regions, are all vulnerable to dramatic downturns precipitated by foreign animals, plants, fish, and insects. The EPA estimates the annual economic cost of the damage in the United States to be $100 billion.

Good start left adrift

The potential destructiveness of future invaders should motivate the nation to do its utmost to prevent new arrivals. Ships are a good place to start. Scientists believe that most invasive aquatic organisms hitch rides to U.S. coastal waters by adhering to the hulls of commercial ships or by traveling in their ballast water (the water pumped into below-deck tanks to increase a ship’s stability). Today, ships move more than 80 percent of consumer goods, and the steady growth in global trade is increasing the opportunities for invasive species to reach new habitats.

Until now, invasive species have been a cost of global trade that the U.S. public has unwittingly accepted. But growing awareness of the ecological and economic impact of aquatic invaders now attracts a diverse array of interest groups to an increasingly vibrant policy debate. Environmentalists want strict regulations to block the entry of nonindigenous species. Ship owners are concerned about the cost of methods to combat the threat. Port operators, sport and commercial fishers, and regulators also have a stake. Internationally, a debate rages between the “flag states,” such as Liberia, Cyprus, and Panama, which register many ships and oppose regulation, and “port states,” such as the United States, Australia, and Norway, which favor regulation in order to protect their coastal resources.

In the United States, Congress has enacted a statute to combat invasive species transfers by ships, but federal agencies have not aggressively implemented the law and industry has not taken the required actions. Now, the nation has a timely opportunity to set this situation aright.

In 1990, Congress passed the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act (NANPCA), the first-ever federal regulation of ships with the purpose of reducing the transfer of nonnative organisms. The act required ships entering the Great Lakes after operating outside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone either to first purge their ballast in the open ocean, using a process called ballast water exchange (BWE), or to otherwise treat the water with an environmentally sound alternative technology that is at least as effective as BWE in preventing the discharge of potentially troublesome organisms.

In 1996, Congress reauthorized the original act as the National Invasive Species Act (NISA), which expanded the ballast-management program to be national in scope. Although the new program was to be voluntary at first, the NISA directed the secretary of transportation to make the program mandatory if compliance proved inadequate. In June 2002, with only 20 percent of vessels visiting U.S. ports even bothering to report their ballast operations, much less comply with the new management guidelines, the U.S. Coast Guard announced its intent to make the program mandatory–at some future date.

Why have federal efforts to prevent new introductions of species by ships been so anemic? Certainly, some fault resides with underfunding and a lack of attention to congressional directives by implementing agencies. The national program is running about two years behind schedule, and the Great Lakes program, which was implemented on schedule, has never been reviewed or revised during its decade of operation. As a pioneer regulatory effort, the Great Lakes program would have benefited greatly from a midcourse evaluation and revision. Since 1990, economics have driven more and more ships to enter the lakes in the loaded condition. Ships loaded with cargo still carry large quantities of viable organisms in the unpumpable ballast, which can be resuspended and discharged into the lakes. Because ballast water exchange cannot be implemented on a ship in the loaded condition, we need to replace the practices prescribed in the regulations implementing the 1990 law with a suite of management practices better suited to current conditions.

Another problem has been a lack of clarity regarding what ships should be asked to do. When the original NANPCA was enacted, it was well known that BWE had many limitations, which led Congress to allow for the possibility of alternative treatment of ballast water aboard ships, even though no such technology was yet known. The greatest of BWE’s limitations are that it is difficult to monitor and enforce, has unknown (perhaps unknowable) effectiveness, and can occasionally be unsafe for ships.

Although a silver bullet technology that can effectively and efficiently treat ballast water of any type of ship or voyage is unlikely, a toolbox of treatment methods could address the variety of environmental, economic, and operational contexts in which ballast treatment must take place. To help fill this toolbox, Congress sought to spark development of ballast-treatment technologies through authorizing grants to help inventors of potential treatments demonstrate their systems and to enable researchers to assess their effectiveness. Consequently, during the past six years, treatment alternatives such as ozone, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, filtration, heat, chemical biocides, and deoxygenation have matured to the point of readiness for shipboard demonstration. Although it is too soon to know for sure, the effectiveness of these approaches could well prove to be competitive with BWE, especially when the numerous disadvantages of BWE are factored in. But 10 years after Congress first gave ship owners the option to treat their ballast as an alternative to BWE in Great Lakes trade, there is still no process in place for motivated ship owners to experiment with that option.

New tools needed

The lack of a clear procedure for approving technologies is nested in a larger problem: There is no quantitative standard for alternatives to BWE. Federal law says that ships can use alternatives to BWE if they are at least as effective, but the government never developed a measure of BWE effectiveness to which the alternatives can be compared. The main reason for this lassitude is that the biological effectiveness of BWE is notoriously variable, even among the ballast tanks within a single ship, and difficult to measure. A report of the Ballast Water and Shipping Committee to the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force found that BWE effectiveness ranged from “39 percent to 99.9 percent, depending upon the taxonomic groups and ships studied.” And these estimates may exaggerate effectiveness, because in practice it is often impossible to conduct BWE at all because of safety, cargo load, and route constraints.

In the face of such difficulties, the Coast Guard has abandoned the task of providing a working estimate of BWE effectiveness to which other treatments could be compared. Instead, the agency now directs interested ship owners to conduct complex shipboard experiments to provide direct and real-time comparisons between BWE and alternative treatment. This emphasis on case-by-case demonstration of the superiority of any treatment to BWE may solve problems for the Coast Guard, but it conflicts with the nation’s policy objectives. The science required for precise real-time comparisons between BWE and treatment aboard an operating cargo ship is so onerous that even the most motivated ship owners are unlikely to accept the challenge. The difficulties include the size and complexity of the experimental subject (a ship), the rate of flow of the subject medium (ballast water), and the diversity of biological communities at the source and discharge of the treated water. Moreover, such comparisons likely will not be accurate. Because the effectiveness of BWE is so variable, many repetitions are needed for a comparison study to produce useful information.

The consequences of the current approach to approving treatment alternatives are severe for the vendors of prospective treatments, for ship owners who might like to purchase them, and for the environment. At a September 2001 Northeast-Midwest Institute conference on development of ballast treatment systems, venture capitalists stated that although the global market potential for ballast treatment could exceed $1 billion per year, they will have no interest in supporting such inventions until a quantitative standard is set, and ship owners will not experiment with using them until clear guidelines for approval are laid out. The current approach essentially removes the bottom rung of the research and development ladder. We cannot learn how well treatments can be made to work on ships without experience using treatments on ships.

The lack of a clear standard is also creating regulatory chaos. In the absence of a clear federal program to address ballast water transfers of organisms, the user groups negatively affected by invader species have pressured states to step into the void. California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington have passed or are considering legislation addressing ballast operations of ships. Some of these laws come with their own treatment standards. A bill pending in New York would require ballast water to be sterilized to meet standards set by the state department of environmental conservation. Washington has passed a law that features a peer-review process for approving proposed ballast-treatment alternatives. California is exercising a process it developed for approving alternatives in the context of its mandatory ballast-management program.

Other agencies and jurisdictions also are becoming involved. The St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation requires ships visiting the Great Lakes to carry out management practices over and above those required by the Coast Guard. Environmental advocates have initiated legal action that asserts that the Clean Water Act requires the EPA to assume responsibility for regulating ballast discharges.

Good time for improvement

Order must be brought to this chaos. Developing a simplified regulatory landscape that promotes use of treatment technology on ships would improve the efficiency of trade, assure more consistent environmental protection, and guarantee safety for ships. In addition, a strong domestic program will improve U.S. credibility in international discussions of alternative ballast-treatment standards. Fortunately, the time is now ripe for implementing such a practical federal approach.

When Congress authorized the NISA in 1996, it did so for a period of six years. Thus, the act expired in 2002. Congress now has the opportunity to reauthorize the law to better structure a way forward, a way that urges effective action by implementing agencies and encourages use of treatment by ships. In September 2002, Sens Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), along with Reps. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), Ron Baird (D-Wa.), and Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), introduced the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act (NAISA). They are reintroducing the act in 2003. The proposed legislation provides the structure needed to advance the program in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the maritime industry, implementing agencies, and the environment.

This structure includes two clear phases: an interim phase (up to no later than 2011) during which BWE remains an option regardless of its biological effectiveness, and a final phase (beginning no later than 2011) in which BWE and all other treatment options will be held to a standard that will ensure protection of the environment. As regards to the interim period, Congress would provide greater direction to the Coast Guard on what it means by equivalency between BWE and alternative treatments. Because no single number can adequately describe all potential levels of BWE effectiveness, establishing an equivalency standard for treatment is less a technical challenge and more an exercise in policymaking. Sponsors of the NAISA therefore are correct to propose an interim benchmark. The legislation establishes 95 percent “kill or removal” of vertebrates, invertebrates, phytoplankton, and larger forms of algae. This working estimate is based on the best-expected performance of BWE.

The implementing agencies are charged with defining an environmentally protective standard for the final phase of regulation. In order to eliminate risk, the standard may well have to involve aspects of the ship other than ballast water; the ship’s hull, anchor chain, and sea chest (where the ballast water enters the ship), for example, are also means by which aquatic hitchhikers move about the globe. The standard during the final phase must be met using the best available technology that is economically achievable, and these criteria should be recalculated every three years by class of ship and by new versus existing ships. This approach provides incentive for treatment vendors to attempt to produce treatments that achieve complete protectiveness. Where technology does not yet exist to achieve that high level of environmental protection, the best available treatment must be employed.

So are there treatments that can do the job in either the interim or final phases of regulation? The answer will vary across ship types, between new and existing ships, and over time. Experiments by the Great Lakes Ballast Technology Demonstration Project on a barge platform, as well as on ships, show the strong potential for filtration and UV radiation to meet the initial standard in some ship applications. Filtration with a 50-micrometer screen removed more than 90 percent of live zooplankton, and when combined with a relatively low dose of UV, the reduction exceeded 95 percent. Other experiments suggest that deoxygenation can be effective, at least during the interim period, and that additional techniques could well prove effective for meeting the final standard.

Areas for action

Clearly, more testing should be taking place. But without a structure in place to guide that work, it simply will not happen. The NISA left the structure building entirely up to the implementing agency; fortunately, the NAISA reauthorization bill does not. The new act would mandate government action in a number of critical areas, some of them ranging beyond setting standards for ballast treatment. Among the areas covered are:

All ships. The NAISA would require all ships to report ballast operations; to conduct best management practices; to have an invasive species management plan on board; to cooperate with approved local rapid-response efforts; and if the ships entered service after 2002, to be fully equipped with an approved ballast treatment system.

Transoceanic vessels. For vessels that visit U.S. ports after operating outside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the proposed act sets forth a two-stage process with solid deadlines for requiring state-of-the-art ballast management. It establishes an interim standard for treatment and BWE for the first stage, from enactment to no later than 2011, and calls for a final standard to be developed for the second stage, with the goal of eliminating the risk of introducing nonnative organisms.

Coastal shipping. The large volume of shipping that occurs along the coasts of the United States, Canada, and Mexico can create the same type of invasive species problems caused by transoceanic shipping, but such ships were not covered by any of the previous legislation. Coastal shipping was exempted from ballast rules because the sole approved treatment, BWE, could be performed only in the open ocean, where these ships never venture. The NAISA would require coastal ships to keep records of their ballast operations and to adhere to the same rapid-response contingency strategies that apply to transoceanic ships. The act also accelerates the adoption of ballast treatment by providing incentives and setting a date for when ballast treatment would be mandatory.

Rapid response. Past invasions have taught that time is critical in mounting an effective and affordable response. Agencies must be notified, appropriate response tools must be found, and money must flow–all in a closely coordinated manner. But currently there is no established process for such cooperation. The proposed act creates a process for contingency planning and for the rapid disbursement of funds to support federal teams (when invited by states), as well as state and interstate entities with approved plans.

Planned importation of species. Although many invasive species arrive as stowaways, some are deliberately imported for use as live food, in aquaculture, in the pet and aquarium trade, and for fish stocking. Even organisms that are not intended to be released into open water can escape and may become invasive. Under existing law, there is no uniform, systematic process for screening or regulating proposed importation of live organisms. The NAISA would establish a common screening process for all imported species, regardless of planned use. The goal would be to identify potential problems early and take appropriate action to prevent them.

Environmental soundness. Federal legislation designed to protect waters and lands from pollution by pesticides and herbicides says nothing about measures to control and contain invasive species. And although the NISA authorized in 1996 required that ballast treatment be environmentally sound, it provided little structure for the administration of this requirement. Under the proposed act, aquatic nuisance species will be managed and controlled using a number of methods. These methods include chemical, mechanical, and physical approaches (such as ballast treatment) to prevent the introduction of troublesome organisms, as well as approaches to control and contain any outbreaks that may occur. The act also will help resolve the problem of lack of adequate oversight and direction by assigning an agency responsibility for creating standards and establishing a screening method for evaluating environmental soundness.

Dispersal barriers. Waterways that connect hydrologically distinct basins and water bodies can serve as pathways for the transmission of aquatic nuisance species. The Army Corps of Engineers recently completed construction of a barrier that will prevent fish and other swimming organisms from moving between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Additional work on dispersal barrier technologies has been conducted on the Champlain Canal, which is the probable point of entry to Lake Champlain for 50 percent of nuisance species, including the sea lamprey, the zebra mussel, the white perch, and the water chestnut. The NAISA would fund research to evaluate the effectiveness of such barriers and would expand the dispersal barrier program to address other waterways.

Research and monitoring. Our knowledge of invasive species is limited. We need to know more about how they arrive, how their arrival can be blocked, how to recognize when a species has become a problem, how to respond when a problem arises, and how to evaluate the overall effectiveness of our programs. The proposed act creates a national interagency aquatic research program designed to address these questions with a minimum of redundancy and competition among agencies.

That is the promise, but the future of the NAISA is not assured. The act is the product of intense negotiations among the various interest groups. Each of those stakeholders, although for different reasons, wants national legislation that provides a comprehensive response to the threat of invasive species. If those groups maintain their commitment to cooperation, then the NAISA could be approved early in the 108th Congress. If stakeholders press their individual demands, however, then the bill could well stall, allowing invasive species the chance to cause further ecological and economic damage.

Testy about Testing

Concerns about race, class, unions, and state budget priorities have elevated the testing of students to a major national issue–and muddied the discussion.

Discussions of standardized testing often seem to be about anything but the tests themselves. Advocates of school choice and vouchers hope that poor test results for public school students will convince lawmakers to allow some public money to be used to subsidize private school education. Test results are being used to guide decisions about how funding should be distributed among public schools. Colleges of education are being challenged to release results of how their graduates perform on teacher certification exams. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the question of affirmative action because of complaints that some minority students with low standardized test scores are being admitted to selective state universities. With so many powerful and emotionally charged issues swirling around, it is often difficult to focus on the tests themselves.

One of the ironies of standardized testing is that it began as a way of opening the doors of the elite colleges to the underprivileged. Harvard University president James B. Conant believed that admissions officials gave the graduates of expensive private schools an advantage over public school graduates in gaining admission. He wanted a reliable and objective way of comparing the achievement of all students, believing that a vast number of public school students would be able to demonstrate their academic superiority. Some of his benighted counterparts welcomed the idea of testing for the opposite reason; they believed that the test results would give them a justifiable rationale for excluding certain religious and ethnic groups. Conant was right, and a diverse group of high-scoring students began to gain access to the best schools.

Trouble began when it became clear that standardized testing was not the solution for all groups. In particular, African-Americans, whose average tests scores were lower than those of other groups, began to see standardized testing as a barrier to admission. Universities that were eager to have a fair representation of African-American students either set different requirements for standardized test scores or gave more weight to other factors, such as overcoming adversity, in making admissions decisions. Applicants who consider these admission practices unfair have taken the universities to court, and now the practice will be considered by the Supreme Court.

One of the stated purposes of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation is to ensure that poor and minority students are being educated to meet the same standards as all other students. The goal is to make all schools accountable for providing an adequate education to all students, but critics fear that poorly funded schools with large numbers of low-income and minority students will be punished by reductions in funding if their students score poorly. They say that the legislation has unrealistically high expectations for improving performance of poor and minority students in the short term and that it is unfair to sanction schools who are not meeting expectations quickly. They fear that the legislation could be implemented in a way that punishes students for the misfortune of attending underperforming schools rather than using the tests as a tool for improving education. The legislation aims to enable students at underperforming schools to transfer to more successful schools, but for many students and school systems this is not a practical option, because students are reluctant to leave their friends, the good schools are already overcrowded, or transportation is inconvenient.

Teachers themselves have doubts about testing. They worry that the focus on a single test will narrow the curriculum and lead teachers to emphasize test-taking skills at the expense of more important matters such as writing and problem solving. Why can’t we simply trust teacher evaluation of students? One reason is that too many teachers have abandoned their responsibility to assess students rigorously. The College Board reports that almost 40 percent of students who take the SAT exam have “A” averages, but colleges find that a growing number of their students need remedial classes because they have not learned the basics needed for college. Having encountered college freshmen who do not know the difference between upper and lower-case letters, I have no doubt that at least some schools and teachers need to be held more accountable.

Even real estate agents have a stake in the test results. Higher scores mean higher home prices, and housing and schools have a symbiotic relationship. The children of the affluent score higher on average than those of lower income groups, and higher home prices mean more affluent homeowners and higher scores. In addition, many schools are funded out of real estate taxes. Higher home values mean more revenue for the schools and the opportunity to improve the quality of education. Of course, the situation is the reverse for students from low-income families, and the achievement gap between rich and poor seems destined to grow.

Back to basics

With all respect for the wisdom of judges, teachers’ union officials, school choice activists, real estate agents, and all the others who have strong opinions about testing, we thought it might be enlightening to listen to what educators, psychometricians, and learning specialists have to say. In the interest of clarifying the discussion of testing, the University of Texas at Dallas and the National Academies sponsored a symposium on student assessment in February 2002 with the goal of returning the focus to testing itself. The symposium paid special attention to the experience of Texas, which has been a leader in testing and a model for national policy. The articles in this issue began as presentations at that conference. They examine the thinking behind national policy on testing, the science that should guide testing, the problems that can emerge when testing is misused, and the testing industry’s capacity to maintain quality as the demand for testing grows.

We do not have room for articles by all the speakers at the symposium, but for those who are interested we want to recommend the excellent work done by the other speakers: Texas education reform activist Darvin Winick, Dallas school superintendent Mike Moses, National Research Council staffers Michael Feuer and Pat De Vito, Amherst College economist Steven Rivkin, Just for the Kids executive director Brad Duggan, University of California at Berkeley psychometrician Mark Wilson, and University of Texas at Dallas education policy analyst John F. Kain.

Testing is important, and there is much about testing that needs to be debated. But the debate should begin with the details of testing itself rather than peripheral issues. As a first step, we should dismiss the categories of “pro-testing” and “anti-testing.” The vast majority of Americans see testing as a useful way to ensure that students are learning what we want them to learn. The discussion of testing needs to be about whether the full range of desirable skills is being assessed, whether the standards of performance are fair and reasonable, whether the test is aligned with the curriculum, whether test results are being considered in context with other indicators of student achievement, whether test results are being properly interpreted and used for the purposes for which they were designed, and whether testing is being used for its ultimate purpose: to gain a better understanding of how well young people are learning and to gain insights into what can be done to enhance their education.

Conflict of interest in biomedical research first came to public notice in the 1980s via a number of cases of scientific misconduct in which perpetrators had financial interests in the outcome of their research. The cases, highly publicized, were summarized in the 1990 report of the House Committee on Government Operations entitled “Are Scientific Misconduct and Conflicts of Interest Hazardous to Our Health?” and spurred the issuance of federal regulations in 1995. The linkage of misconduct with financial self-interest was unfortunate, because it seemed to fix in the public mind the belief that any financial interest of investigators in their research is inevitably problematic. It is noteworthy that during this period concern centered mainly on individual faculty interests and their threat to scientific integrity, and the communal threat to public health posed by falsified scientific information. At the time, the academic community made thoughtful attempts to address these concerns, as reflected in several notable reports.

Recently, public uneasiness about financial conflicts of interest has resurfaced, but now the focus is on both individual and institutional financial interests and their possible linkage to endangerment of individual human research subjects. Moreover, the concerns recur in a larger context of growing skepticism about the adequacy of the federal regime for protecting the welfare of human research subjects, a topic addressed in numerous well-publicized reports from the General Accounting Office (GAO), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the HHS Inspector General, the National Institutes of Health, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, the Institute of Medicine, and the Office for Human Research Protections.

The most recent GAO report, issued in November 2001, concluded that academic institutions’ policies and procedures on financial conflicts of interest reflected a disturbing degree of variability in content and implementation. The report concluded that current federal regulations and oversight are limited in their promotion of research integrity and protection of human subjects, and recommended “that HHS undertake efforts to highlight and communicate best practices for institutions to identify and to manage investigator and institutional financial conflicts of interest…[and] . . . that HHS develop specific guidance or regulations to address institutional financial conflict of interest.”

It was in this context that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) announced in October 2000 its intention to form a task force to recommend policy and guidance regarding academic medicine’s management of financial conflicts of interest in human subjects research. AAMC was aware that the Association of American Universities (AAU) was forming a Task Force on Research Accountability (on which both authors have participated), and therefore chose to focus its efforts in the more circumscribed area of clinical research in which the AAMC’s members are leading participants.

AAMC undertook this effort for two major reasons. First and foremost was the peril to academic medicine and public health of eroding public confidence in academic biomedical research. Second was growing concern that academic medicine has not been sufficiently responsive to the profound changes that have occurred during the past two decades in the ecology of academic biomedical research.

These changes have been driven by four major factors. First, the astonishing progress of biomedical science has afforded ever deeper and more powerful understandings of the molecular and genetic bases of human health and disease, and collapsed the time-line between fundamental discovery and commercial development. Second, the invention of recombinant DNA technology spawned a burgeoning biotechnology industry, the scientific agenda of which continues to be deeply intertwined with academic biomedical research and researchers. Third was the seminal holding of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 that a recombinant bacterium was patentable subject matter. By stating that “anything under the sun” made by humans was patentable, the decision deemed a vast expanse of fundamental biomedical research and technology eligible for intellectual property protection and, therefore, private appropriation. Fourth, the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act, also in 1980, gave federal research awardees both the right to patent their discoveries and the obligation to promote the commercialization of their federally funded research results.

As a consequence, the intensity of the interaction of academic medicine with industry has increased dramatically, as has the prevalence of faculty and institutional financial interests in academic biomedical research. Some alarmed observers have opined that academic medicine is facing a veritable pandemic of financial conflicts of interest, and a few have even suggested that academia is busily bartering its very soul for the prospects of material enrichment. At the same time, public discourse about these matters has been badly confounded by deep-seated conflict between the public’s impatience to reap the benefits of biomedical research and its failure to appreciate that the pathway of commercial development in biomedicine is almost exclusively dependent on private investment, much of it involving venture capital and small business investment. The public increasingly recognizes and exhorts academic medical centers to serve as engines of regional socioeconomic development but at the same time remains intolerant of any tinge of suspicion that the academy’s deepening engagement with industry might distort the conduct or color the reporting of research. This conflict of public expectations severely burdens the challenge faced by academic medicine to implement conflict of interest policies that are transparent and credible, while at the same time workable and sensible.

The AAMC Task Force was chaired by William Danforth, former chancellor, then chairman of the board of trustees of Washington University in St. Louis, and, to embrace all stakeholder communities in the process, included leaders of medical schools and teaching hospitals, clinical investigators experienced in the commercial development of research inventions, leaders from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, general counsels, bioethicists, nationally recognized patient advocates and media representatives, and a former member of Congress. The task force was asked to explore territory beyond that defined by current federal regulations. Specifically, it was asked to consider “whether certain types of financial interests [in research on human subjects] should be prohibited” (none are prohibited categorically under existing Public Health Service [PHS] regulations) and “under what circumstances, if any, it is acceptable for institutions to invest in and sponsor faculty entrepreneurial activities involving human subjects” (PHS regulations do not address the topic of institutional conflict of interest).

The task force produced two reports. The first, issued in December 2001, offers policy and guidelines for the oversight of individual financial interests in research involving human subjects. The second, issued in October 2002, provides principles and recommendations demarcating the bounds and circumstances of appropriate conduct when an institution hosts research involving human subjects and the institution or its administrators have direct financial interests in the research. It is noteworthy that with a single exception (noted in the first report) this eclectic and strong-minded group of distinguished individuals with very different perspectives was able to achieve consensus on issues that are extraordinarily challenging and complicated.

Individual conflicts

While noting that most individual conflicts of interest are being managed through existing institutional policies and practices, the task force acknowledged that financial interests in human subjects research are distinct from other interests inherent in academic life that might impart bias or otherwise contaminate research objectivity. They may threaten scientific integrity by fostering real or apparent biases in study design, data collection and analysis, adverse event reporting, or the presentation and publication of research findings. The task force recognized the importance of the burgeoning partnership among industry, researchers, and universities, but noted that these interactions place new demands on institutions to be scrupulous in the enforcement of conflict of interest guidelines.

Moreover, existing federal financial disclosure regulations do not require a comprehensive system of disclosure and oversight of all significant financial interests in human subjects research, whether such research is federally funded or privately sponsored. Equally important, federal regulations do not acknowledge the unique obligations that attend research involving human beings. The task force asserted “academic medicine must look beyond the scope of current federal financial disclosure requirements and delineate more fully the bounds of acceptable conduct for those who conduct research with human subjects.”

The task force identified several core principles to animate institutional policies concerning individual financial interests in such research, including:

Institutions should regard all significant financial interests in human subjects research as potentially problematic and requiring close scrutiny. Institutions should establish “a rebuttable presumption that an individual who holds a significant financial interest in research involving human subjects may not conduct such research.” Though the task force did not believe that every financial interest jeopardized either the welfare of human subjects or the integrity of research, it was strongly committed to the notion that institutions should “limit the conduct of human subjects research by financially interested individuals to those situations in which the circumstances are compelling,” regardless of the source of research funding, and wherever the research is carried out under institutional auspices.

In the event of compelling circumstances, an individual holding a significant financial interest in human subjects research may be permitted to conduct the research. Case-by-case analysis should determine whether the circumstances are deemed compelling, based on such factors as the nature of the science, the nature of the interest, how closely the interest is related to the research, the degree to which the interest may be affected by the research, and the extent to which the interest is amendable to effective oversight and management. By recommending that institutions specify the criteria that their conflicts committees would apply to determine whether sufficiently compelling circumstances exist to justify proceeding with research in the face of conflict, the task force communicated its sense that these circumstances be relatively uncommon, that they be clearly specified, and that records of such circumstances be maintained.

Institutional policies should require full prior reporting of each covered individual’s significant financial interests that would reasonably appear to be affected by the individual’s research, updated reporting where necessary, and review of any significant financial interest by the institution’s conflict of interest committee prior to final IRB approval of the research. The task force’s definitions of key terms included several significant departures designed to impel more stringent institutional practices than are required under current PHS regulations. Thus, a broad definition of “conducting research” reaches deeper into a research team, to include designing or directing research, serving as the principle investigator, enrolling research subjects (including determining eligibility or obtaining informed consent), analyzing or reporting research data, or submitting manuscripts describing the research for publication. “Significant financial interest” newly embraces in the task force’s formulation equity interests, including stock options, in non-publicly traded financially interested companies regardless of value, royalty income or the right to receive future royalties under a patent license or copyright, non-royalty payments or entitlements to payments in connection with the research that are “not directly related to the reasonable costs of the research,” and “bonus or milestone payments to the investigators in excess of reasonable costs incurred,” no matter from whom received. Service as an officer, director, or in other fiduciary roles for a financially interested company, whether or not for remuneration, is considered to be a significant financial interest, unlike in the federal regulations.

Reflecting its core principle of individual accountability and responsibility, the task force endorsed a process of annual reporting to the institution, with prompt updating whenever necessary, as well as certification by investigators to institutional review boards (IRBs) that they have current conflict of interest information on file with the institution when they submit proposals to IRBs. In addition, the task force recommended that the conflicts committee review any significant financial interests that would be created by potential licensing agreements of university technology.

Institutional policy should require disclosure of the existence of significant individual financial interests in human subjects research to appropriate state and federal officials, to research funding providers and sponsors, to editors, to research subjects in the consent process, to participants in multi-center trials, and in other appropriate forums. The institution should prohibit “payments from the institution or the sponsor to a covered individual, if such payments are conditioned upon a particular research result or tied to successful research outcomes.” Payments, including those for subject enrollment or referrals to research studies, are permissible only to the extent that they are reasonably related to costs incurred and reflect fair market value of the services performed.

Institutional policies on intellectual property, publication, and documentation of gifts must be affirmed. The special vulnerability of students and trainees should be acknowledged through prohibition of publication restrictions on activities of students or trainees or, failing that, the requirement that any agreements restricting publication be subjected to close scrutiny by the conflict of interest committee and fully disclosed to students and trainees prior to their involvement in any such activity.

Institutional conflicts

The massive growth of the federally sponsored academic research enterprise since World War II has occurred under a system of federal oversight of research conduct that is remarkably deferential to university autonomy. The linchpin in this system is the credibility with which universities demonstrate responsibility and accountability for managing their federally supported research portfolios, or, put differently, the trustworthiness of awardee institutions. Only recently has the matter of institutional financial conflicts of interest in clinical research come under close scrutiny, as the public has recognized the growing institutional investment in the commercialization of their faculties’ research discoveries and the increasing prominence of equity holdings in startup companies and other small businesses founded on university technologies.

As the 2001 GAO report stated, “some collaborations have raised concerns that research . . . institutions that have significant financial interests in the research may focus attention on the financial rewards of the research, compromising its integrity and the safety of human subjects.” In addition, institutional officials sit on boards of major corporate interests, including interests whose work brings them into close association with universities. Suggesting that institutional financial interests “may color [an institution’s] review, approval, or monitoring of research conducted under its auspices or its allocation of equipment, facilities, and staff for research,” the report called on HHS to issue regulations or guidance to address institutional conflicts of interest.

In tackling this complex and largely uncharted issue, the AAMC task force did not provide exhaustive guidance, but rather established a conceptual framework for assessing institutional conflicts of interest and offered specific recommendations for the oversight of certain financial interests in human subjects research that merit special scrutiny. The task force’s work complements and further develops the general recommendations issued on this subject by the AAU in its 2001 Report on Individual and Institutional Financial Conflicts of Interest, by presenting the first detailed formulation of principles by which institutional conflicts of interest should be evaluated and managed.

The task force recommended that the conflict between the institution’s competing fiduciary responsibilities–on the one hand its legitimate interest in its own financial health and the economic viability of its academic and research missions and on the other its ethical obligations to protect human subjects and the integrity of its research–should be resolved by a clear declaration that the welfare of human subjects and the integrity of research must not be compromised or appear to be compromised by competing institutional financial interests.

Throughout its report, the task force returned repeatedly to the theme that separation of the functions of financial management and technology licensing from the functions relating to management and oversight of human subjects research represents the pillar of credible management of institutional conflicts of interest, whether achieved by external management or (with more difficulty) internal firewalls. However, in some circumstances, despite separation of function, the protection of human subjects is still not assured to be free from the fact or the appearance of conflict and therefore, absent compelling circumstances and careful management of the conflict, the research in question should not be conducted at or under the auspices of the conflicted institution.

The source of institutional financial conflicts is not confined to investments and income, but includes those instances in which officers and administrators face a conflict between their primary institutional responsibilities and their secondary and personal financial interests. Though such interests are normally governed by an institution’s policies on individual conflicts of interest, the task force noted that “an official’s position may convey an authority that is so pervasive or a responsibility for research programs or administration that is so direct that a conflict between the individual’s financial interests and the institution’s human subjects research should also be considered an institutional conflict of interest.” Such circumstances require the disclosure of all relevant details to a superior, and if conflicts cannot be eliminated through recusal or managed effectively through a strategy approved by the institutional conflict committee, the research should not be conducted by the institution or under its auspices.

The heart of this report is found in its enumeration of the circumstances that ipso facto may create or appear to create institutional conflicts of interest in human subjects research, and must therefore receive close scrutiny:

• When the institution is entitled to receive royalties from the sale of the investigational product that is the subject of the research,
• When through technology licensing or investments related to technology licensing, the institution has obtained an equity interest or an entitlement to equity of any value in a non-publicly traded sponsor of human subjects research at the institution,
• When through technology licensing or investments related to licensing, the institution has obtained an ownership interest or entitlement to equity of greater than $100,000 in value…in a publicly traded sponsor of human subjects research at the institution, or
• When with respect to a specific research project, institutional officials with direct responsibility for human subjects research hold a significant financial interest in the commercial research sponsor or the investigational product. Significant financial interest is defined for this purpose essentially identically as in the report on individual conflicts of interest.

In addition to the relationships identified above that warrant close scrutiny, the task force believed that certain other relationships could also merit special attention, including:

• When an investigator or institutional official with research oversight participates materially in a procurement or purchasing decision involving major purchases from or supply contracts with a commercial entity that sponsors human subjects research, or
• When an institution has received substantial gifts from a potential commercial sponsor of human subjects research, taking into account the magnitude of the gift(s) over defined periods of time, whether the gift is held for the benefit of the institutional unit where the human subjects research is to be conducted, and whether any institutional officer who has authority over the administration of the research has been involved in solicitation of the gift.

The task force made clear that it did not intend to prevent institutions from accepting philanthropy from corporations that sponsor human subjects research. However, it affirmed the necessity of identifying circumstances in which the appearance of conflict is present and of establishing means to assure that inappropriate considerations do not jeopardize the welfare of human subjects or contaminate the objectivity and integrity of the research. The task force also affirmed the necessity of institutions’ having clear policies to ensure that all gifts are appropriately accepted and recorded.

Oversight mechanisms

To evaluate institutional conflicts of interest, the task force recommended a standing institutional conflicts of interest committee, all members of which should be independent of the direct institutional line of authority for human subjects research. Though the choice is left to each institution, the task force urged institutions to consider the advantages of separate individual and institutional conflicts committees, in view of the complexity and sensitivity of the issues to be considered by the institutional committee, the need for participation by senior officials, and the strong recommendation that public members be included to increase the transparency and credibility of the committee’s work

Linkages between the institution’s office of technology licensing and the institutional conflicts committee should be forged, so that there would be a report to the committee when, as a result of a licensing agreement, the institution takes or intends to take an equity interest or any entitlement to an ownership interest in or royalty payments from a potential sponsor of human subjects research. Institutional conflicts, including those of institutional officials, must be reported to the IRB of record.

The task force recommended that in general human subjects research should not be conducted in the presence of any of the earlier enumerated financial interests that deserve special scrutiny. As in the case of individual conflict of interest, exceptions should be made only when the circumstances are compelling (as defined in the first report), and there is an effective management plan.

As with individual conflicts of interest, the task force was convinced that instances of potential institutional conflicts tend to be highly situational and that evaluation should be on a case-by-case basis, with the circumstances and context of each case fully considered in the oversight process. Establishing rules that permit exceptions allows universities and their academic medical centers to establish their own standards for how compelling the circumstances must be to support rebuttal of the presumption, but it was the clear intent of the task force that the bar be set high.

The task force made a number of additional recommendations concerning special research circumstances, including a recommendation that when the institution holds one of the financial interests creating an ipso facto conflict, it not conduct related human subjects research except as a non-primary and non-coordinating site in a multi-center trial. Again, required disclosure of institutional financial conflicts to the IRB of record, to research subjects, and in all publications constitutes the essential element of a transparent conflicts management process.

Recognizing that its recommendations on individual and especially institutional conflicts of interest extend beyond current legal requirements, as well as beyond standard institutional practices, the task force’s intention was to assist the academic community in responding voluntarily and credibly to the emerging concern over institutional conflicts of interest in human subjects research. The AAMC intends to follow the fate of the task force’s reports to determine how influential and effective they will be, whether any of the provisions prove unwieldy or unduly burdensome, and whether aspects of this complicated and sensitive set of issues merit further attention. The reports are stringent, and their widespread adoption would significantly raise the standards for oversight and management of individual and institutional financial conflicts of interest in human subjects research, as well as reduce the disturbing variability in institutional policies and practices highlighted in the recent literature.

The epilogue that ends the first report serves equally well the second. Its conclusion states: “The Task Force does not believe, and does not intend, that adoption of the recommended policy and guidelines by the academic medical community should interfere with healthy academic- industry relationships, or with the continued robust flow of academic biomedical invention into products that benefit the public. The Task Force does believe that these policies and guidance can help to ensure that these relationships remain principled and capable of withstanding intense public scrutiny.”

Workers in many modern industrial settings have long faced a multitude of chemical threats to their health and safety–some of them obvious, many more barely perceptible. As early as 1972, a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health survey found that “approximately 25 million U.S. workers, or one in four, [were] potentially exposed to one or more of the nearly 8,000 hazards.” Stunningly, for 90 percent of the chemicals present in surveyed workplaces, “neither the employer nor the employee knew the identity of the chemicals in the trade-name products.” When workers became ill from chemical exposures, such ignorance hampered diagnosis and treatment. According to an article in the journal of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, a worker who got sick often could say little more than “I work with the 203 stock” to his or her doctor.

The following years saw growing public awareness of the dangers posed by industrial chemicals. As but one example, lung cancers and lung tissue scarring caused by asbestos demonstrated unequivocally that hazardous substances could cause severe harm in insidious, imperceptible ways. Unions and some policymakers seized upon this challenge and advocated for workers’ “right to know” about chemical exposures and associated dangers, and in the early 1980s they won workplace right-to-know laws in a number of states.

At the national level, 1983 brought a landmark victory for this movement when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued its Hazard Communication Standard (HCS). Promoted by regulators, union leaders, and the chemical industry, the HCS represented a novel approach, based on transparency and disclosure of information to workers, to reducing illnesses and injuries from chemicals. Although the government issues specific standards for many especially noxious chemicals, such as asbestos, benzene, and lead, OSHA could never hope to formulate separate standards for the hundreds of thousands of hazardous chemical products in use. Instead, OSHA chose a “performance-based” approach, as embodied in the HCS.

The standard creates a two-part chain of disclosure: First, chemical manufacturers and importers must evaluate the hazardousness of the substances they produce or import and disclose such information to employers who purchase their products; and second, employers must make this information available to all of their workers who handle hazardous substances. In practice, this means that manufacturers and importers must attach to all containers of hazardous chemicals descriptive labels that provide the identity of the substance, a hazard warning, and the company’s name and address. The companies also must complement their labels by providing employers with more extensive information about chemical identity, physical and chemical characteristics, physical and health hazards, precautions, emergency measures, and other matters. Finally, in plants that expose workers to hazardous substances, employers must train employees on how to access chemical information, protect themselves from risk, and respond to emergencies.

OSHA initially limited the scope of the HCS to the manufacturing sector, because it accounted for more than 50 percent of illnesses caused by exposure to chemicals. Soon after the standard was adopted, however, the United Steelworkers of America mounted a series of legal challenges that resulted in HCS’s scope being extended to all industries where employees were exposed to hazardous chemicals. Today, the HCS is one of OSHA’s most pervasive regulations, covering more than 3 million workplaces where, according to the agency, “more than 32 million workers are exposed to 650,000 hazardous chemical products.”

Mixed success

The hope that motivated implementation of the HCS was that releasing various kinds of information would increase the ability of workers and others to fend for themselves in the face of complex risk environments. OSHA anticipated that workers would use the information “to protect themselves, and to support and participate in their employer’s protective programs.” The agency also hoped that employers would be propelled by the accumulation of this type of information to switch to less hazardous chemicals.

Measured against such hopes, however, the HCS’s success has been mixed. Two decades of experience demonstrate that simply providing workers with information does not necessarily increase understanding or change behavior. For workers who have suffered injuries and illness, new chemical information has enabled them to establish the chains of exposure and toxicity that hurt them. This knowledge, in turn, has improved treatment and their ability to secure compensation.

But disclosure has been disappointing as a preventative tool for workers to avoid these harms. Complex chemical information, frequently conveyed in confusing ways, has been difficult for many workers to understand and use. Even if workers accurately understood the risks posed by workplace chemical exposures, many of them would have limited abilities to act on this information by, for example, finding safer jobs or demanding more pay to compensate for dangers they face. Finally, manufacturers and employers enjoy great discretion over how they will implement the regulation’s requirements for chemical evaluation, hazard communication, and worker training. This latitude has generated wide disparities in compliance and the quality of information.

Now, however, a timely alignment of circumstances provides the nation with an opportunity to improve the HCS’s performance. As in the United States, the use of information disclosure to mitigate the dangers of workplace hazards has gained credence internationally. Ten years ago, the United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development launched a mandate to develop a Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for hazard classification and communication. This international set of rules seeks to harmonize the three major hazard communication systems: U.S. regulations, the Canadian system, and European Union standards. The GHS also creates rules to protect workers and consumers in developing countries.

This effort recently reached a milestone. In December 2002, two UN committees were scheduled to formally endorse the harmonized system. The international criteria will then be implemented by national governments. Implementation is likely to be a lengthy process. In the United States, regulators expect it will be fully implemented around 2008. This process will affect a number of agencies, including OSHA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Although individual countries cannot unilaterally modify the GHS, national agencies will enjoy some discretion when implementing the harmonized system.

The GHS thus creates two windows of opportunity in which policymakers might use the lessons of the past to inform improvements to hazard communication. First, the long U.S. experience can inform the activities of policymakers in other countries and in international organizations as they grapple with the complexities of information policy. Second, international standards will compel U.S. lawmakers and policymakers to reopen accepted HCS rules and practices as they seek to conform to the new global requirements.

Learning from experience

As part of the process of revision in the United States, the limitations of the HCS should be acknowledged and repaired. In this light, there are a number of lessons that should be considered by members of Congress as they harmonize U.S. laws with the GHS, as well as by OSHA regulators who will subsequently revise the implementation of the HCS to avoid the pitfalls of the current system:

Information disclosed under the HCS can be exceedingly complex. The required Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) provided by manufacturers and importers to employers are often quite long, technical, and written in jargon that confounds many workers. Even owners of small businesses that use hazardous chemicals in their activities are often unable to understand MSDSs. A 1990 study by the Printing Industries of America found that workers with 15 or more years of education were able to understand only two-thirds of the information contained in MSDSs. OSHA-sponsored research lead by Paul Kolp of A.T. Kearny Inc. has confirmed that workers understand only about 60 percent of the health and safety information presented in MSDSs. Accuracy poses an additional hurdle. The same researchers found in one study that only 11 percent of MSDSs were accurate in all of the sections that described health effects, first aid, personal protective equipment, and exposure limits.

The chemical industry responded to such criticisms by developing a simplified MSDS format, which was approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). This format, which has been widely but voluntarily adopted, made MSDSs more comprehensible in part by presenting information in uniform and consistent sections. For example, workers seeking first aid measures can refer to a single section (section 4) of the new MSDSs. However, limits to the comparability of information remain even in these standardized MSDSs. Different manufacturers preparing MSDSs for similar chemicals can generate divergent hazard evaluations and descriptions of exposure effects. Because they serve diverse audiences that include employers, health professionals, union representatives, and workers, MSDSs tend to use a vocabulary that is suited to sophisticated users. Each of these obstacles is compounded for workers with low literacy or for international workers with limited English skills. (MSDS information is typically conveyed in English only.)

Even if MSDSs were more user-friendly, individual psychological tendencies to misperceive and misunderstand risk would continue to hamper effective use of hazard information. According to Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago, individuals are prone to probability neglect–that is, they tend to pay more attention to risks that involve extremely bad outcomes with remote probabilities, such as airplane crashes or tornadoes, while downplaying risks that are more probable but whose outcomes are not perceived as vividly, such as heart attacks or injuries from bicycle accidents. In addition, individuals find it difficult to distinguish among low-probability events. It is cognitively complicated to distinguish between a 1 in 100,000 hazard probability and a 1 in 1,000,000 chance. Beyond a certain threshold, probabilities seem so remote that people discount risks and reduce their precautions.

Individuals frequently rely on past experience to guide their actions. Workers who have never encountered problems in handling some substance may simply incorrectly presume that the material is safe and so fail to take adequate protective measures.

Training programs can help to address these obstacles of understanding and perception. The HCS presciently required employers to provide training to workers in this regard. However, the current standard allows employers wide flexibility to determine the method and content of training. Some excellent training programs are conducted in small groups and include lifelike simulations and interactive sessions where workers can express their doubts and receive feedback. But less-effective programs consist of little more than a video presentation that provides only limited help in educating workers.

Research by one of the authors of this article (Fung) and colleagues on a variety of disclosure regulations shows that third-party organizations can enhance this regulatory approach by performing two important functions. They can make information more accessible to the users–that is, workers, who are the intended beneficiaries of disclosure–and they can improve users’ ability to understand data and react appropriately. Third-party organizations can also act as users’ representatives and press to strengthen the regulations that provide that information. In the case of the HCS, unions were crucial in its adoption and expansion. However, unions in many industrial sectors lacked the capacity to make this knowledge accessible to workers by systematically analyzing and reinterpreting chemical information. In a few areas, such as the steel, petrochemical, and automobile industries, unions did urge employers to substitute safer chemicals in place of more dangerous ones. However, outside of the 13 percent of U.S. workers who are unionized, there are few third parties organized to help workers use chemical-hazard information to protect themselves.

On the other hand, employers have turned out to be one of the primary users of MSDSs. Perhaps from a desire to limit liability and minimize the costs associated with illnesses and accidents, employers have used MSDS information to substitute less-hazardous chemicals in their processes. A 1992 study by the Government Accounting Office found that 56 percent of employers reported a “great” or “very great” improvement in the availability of information and that one-third of them had switched to less-hazardous chemicals after receiving more detailed information from their suppliers. However, many employers will make such substitutions only when it does not come at too great an expense. Voluntary substitution thus offers an incomplete mechanism to improve safety.

Crafting improved regulations

These lessons suggest several principles for improving not only workplace hazard communication policy but also for crafting effective information-disclosure policies generally:

Information should be simplified and focused. Dumping data on the public is generally not useful, because too many intended beneficiaries lack the capability to understand and make use of the information. Simply increasing the quantity of information often makes it more difficult to identify useful information; information oversupply can lead to cognitive overload. It is not a question of how much information people need to make them aware of hazards, but rather of selecting and conveying salient information that will be processed and utilized. Too often, regulators seem to trade quantity for quality.

Policymakers should consider the perspective of intended users in designing the ways in which policies will generate, present, and disseminate information. Though MSDSs were intended for workers, they speak a language that is accessible mostly to sophisticated users. As a result, MSDSs have become a major source of information on hazardous and nonhazardous chemical products that enables employers to manage their liability and respond to the market’s demand for transparency and greener products. Workers, on the other hand, tend to consult MSDSs only after an injury or illness has occurred, limiting the preventative potential of information. The harmonized format for MSDS as proposed in the new international guidelines is not significantly different from the ANSI-approved format currently used in the United States. Labels, on the other hand, convey more significant information. Making use of symbols and pictograms can increase comprehension, especially for non-English-speaking employees working in the United States. After the introduction of the harmonized labels and MSDSs, it would be valuable for OSHA to test their comprehensibility and their impact in changing workers’ behavior. Should OSHA find that these are still limited, a stronger emphasis on training could improve workers’ protection. Unless hazard information is effectively communicated to workers, the power of this information to enable workers to take preventative precautions will remain limited.

Information should be presented using concise and crisp language. For example, the term “lacrimation” should be replaced by “tears,” and more crude images of the consequences of accidents, shown during training, could elicit a stronger change in behavior. The vocabulary should also be used consistently so that words like “poison” always have a precise meaning that will not change according to the source of the warning. In the nutritional labeling of food, for example, the term “recommended daily allowance” successfully conveys information in a standardized and concise format. Clear metrics and standardized formats enhance the usability of information.

Similarly, information is more easily interpreted when it is comparable. In disclosure systems such as those used for nutritional labeling and automobile safety, for example, consumers can compare the relative features of competing products. Information provided by the HCS, by contrast, does not enable workers to compare the relative risks posed by chemical exposure in different workplaces. Aggregating information upward in this way would certainly pose a formidable challenge, but it would dramatically enhance workers’ ability to use this information.

Third-party organizations, including unions and workplace safety groups, are fundamental lubricants in disclosure systems. Beyond the traditional role of representing workers’ interest in negotiations with employers, third-party organizations can help users analyze and act on complex data, and they can compel employers to reduce risks. Analysis of other disclosure systems demonstrates that the involvement of third-party organizations has been crucial to the sustainability and improvement of information-based regulation. The HCS would have been much more effective had third-party organizations been more consistently involved not only in introducing the standard but throughout its implementation.

Unions have played a particularly important role in improving the quality of training, making sure that workers are not simply given information, but that they actually understand it and adjust their behavior accordingly. Acting on this experience, institutionalizing the presence of third-party organizations in designing and delivering the training might be extremely beneficial, especially for nonunionized workplaces. Creating continuing roles for third-party organizations to be involved in the generation, interpretation, and use of data could trigger a healthy mechanism to use the information and assure better worker protection.

Unfortunately, because of the relative paucity of unions, along with the scarcity of other types of workers organizations, it might be more realistic to focus on employers’ incentives to elicit the control function that third-party organizations should play. For example, to assure that training is carried out effectively, companies that invest in “good training”–including interactive training, with real life simulations and sessions to evaluate workers’ understanding–and that have low injury and illness rates might be rewarded by reducing their required contributions to worker compensation programs. Another measure might be to invest in the existing Committees for Occupational Safety and Health, nonprofit coalitions of unions, health professionals, workers, and activists, to strengthen their monitoring capacity in nonunionized workplaces.

As a bottom line, then, policymakers seeking to design strategies of information disclosure should thoroughly analyze the chains that connect information to understanding and understanding to action. Simply providing information does not necessarily enable workers or other individuals to interpret or utilize it. Policymakers should take into account the opportunities and resources that determine whether, and how, the intended beneficiaries of disclosure can act on information that is provided. How, for example, can workers use information about hazards to protect themselves or to press employers to make their workplaces safer? Which workers will have the bargaining power to demand premiums to compensate for health risks? Who will be able to secure employment in safer venues?

Effective information-based regulation, like other regulation, seeks to induce changes in actual behavior. In the case of information-based regulation, policymakers are frequently tempted to assume that the release of information will itself be sufficient to generate effective actions and responses. The HCS experience shows that policymakers should resist this temptation. Instead, they should squarely face the intricacies and pitfalls of information provision and craft policies that overcome them.

Federal research funding

The sharing of costs between sponsors and performers is a contentious issue with ancient roots. What we know for sure is that performances have definite costs and that someone has to pay them. What we do not know is how much performances should cost and what strategies are best for society if, after the performance, the costs are judged excessive. Anyone who has had a kitchen remodeled or a car repaired knows that buyers and sellers approach the transaction with different expectations and different mental pictures of what is at stake.

Arthur Bienenstock’s article, “A Fair Deal for Federal Research at Universities” (Issues, Fall 2002), summarizes well the status of these issues for federally sponsored research from a university administrator’s viewpoint, a perspective with which I have much sympathy. As an official broker of advice between universities and government agencies, I take mild exception to the implication that the government is unwilling to pay its fair share of federally sponsored research. I say only mild exception, because there is an unfortunate lack of policy consistency among agencies regarding research costs, especially indirect costs. One could reasonably infer from the chaotic pattern of federal research cost reimbursement policies that at the very least the government does not know what “fair” means.

The problem centers on indirect costs, which are real enough but sensitive to management strategies for providing the essential environment for research and which include not only heat, light, and ventilation but also the bureaucratic apparatus needed by any organization that does business with the federal government. The cost of the latter is easier to estimate than to justify. Apart from more or less arbitrary choices of how to respond to the federal appetite for data, there is an element of risk involved in failing to satisfy that appetite. Federal auditors are likely to question expenses that seem excessive, whereas university auditors and lawyers aim to identify all relevant expenditures.

Then there is the question of the value to the performer of federal sponsorship. Do universities gain earning power from a portfolio of federal grants? What is the value to a university of intellectual property rights; competitiveness in recruiting students, faculty, and donors; curricular enrichment; or access to summer salaries for faculty? Is it fair for taxpayers to pay for these benefits?

Bienenstock is an expert on all these issues, having been a federal science policy official when the RAND study of federal research reimbursement was commissioned. He cites this study as evidence that there is a reimbursement shortfall, and he points to the Federal Demonstration Partnership, which is the most productive mechanism currently working to generate better models for sponsorship. I agree with Bienenstock’s admonition that this effort needs to be expanded, and my office is establishing a new subcommittee within the National Science and Technology Council to do just that. The university research enterprise is such an important part of U.S. science leadership that its costs and sources of support must be completely understood. Thanks in part to Bienenstock’s efforts, the issue is beginning to get the attention it deserves.

JOHN H. MARBURGER

Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy

Executive Office of the President

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Many years ago, Vannevar Bush wrote in Science, The Endless Frontier that universities, in conducting research for the federal government, should be neither unduly taxed nor unduly rewarded. This delicate balance has, for almost 50 years, been the subject of a perennial and sometimes acrimonious debate. Arthur Bienenstock’s article helpfully frames today’s dialogue.

At its core, the costing issue remains unchanged and unresolved: Who shall pay the costs of federal research conducted by our public and private universities? For decades, government has sought ways to limit cost recovery and to shift the cost of its research programs to the universities. Policy has ratcheted steadily toward a one-size-fits-all costing system. Universities and government are locked into a process of perpetual change in costing policies, cost shifting, negotiation, and endless analysis of increasingly technical detail.

Lost in this adversarial process is a deeply shared commitment to a costing system that is equitable, efficient, effective, and appropriate to the requirements of government and to the diverse and unique needs of our preeminent public and private universities. The debate too often ignores the policy and costing implications of rigorous third-party analyses that document chronic underrecovery of costs, growing unmet facility needs, and the implications of steadily expanding administrative burdens.

For example, one of the most significant issues now facing research universities and the government is the issue of research compliance. There has been a tendency in the past decade for the government to issue compliance regulations that universities must follow, but legitimate as these regulations may be, they are promulgated without the funding to support their development or implementation. With the current 26 percent cap on administrative reimbursement, some universities are left with no choice but to absorb the cost of these mandated changes. The problem is exacerbated because rarely do new regulations replace existing regulations; they are added instead. In an era when universities and businesses have made substantial investments to redesign and improve their business practices, it is important to consider that Office of Management and Budget Circular A-21 is substantially the same document that was introduced in 1958. A reevaluation and rethinking of this circular are long past due, including a careful assessment of the problems created by the administrative cap. It is important to recognize that, overall, indirect cost rates at universities have not increased during the past decade, although the distribution between the facilities and the administrative portions of the rate may have changed.

As our national goals expand and society’s expectations of our universities grow, the problems posed by our obsolete costing system will only intensify. As Bienenstock rightly implies, it is time for government and universities to clarify and reaffirm fundamental first principles that will correct and sustain a cost recovery system that is appropriate to sustaining the world’s preeminent research and education enterprise–an enterprise that is essential to our future economic vitality, security, health, and quality of life.

CHARLES M. VEST

President

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Authur Bienenstock provides a powerful illustration of the destructive consequences of government policy that seeks to keep university cost reimbursement revenue-neutral rather than commensurate with documented expenditures for research. The Council on Governmental Relations (COGR), which comprises in its membership 150 research-intensive universities, agrees with Bienenstock’s serious warning that the progressive shifting of government research costs to the research providers is based on unrealistic expectations about the universities’ capacity to absorb an increasingly larger share of new mandates.

It is ironic that this cost shifting persists while at the same time official government policy underscores the value of its partnership with research universities. As the nation faces challenges to its health, economy, and national security, the government relies on university research more than ever. The current system for negotiation of research support infrastructure includes the negotiation of rates for facilities and administrative costs (F&A), which in theory provide for full recovery of these costs. Although complex, the system is based on mutually agreed-on principles of accountability, allowability, and reasonableness. Yet the universities in our membership typically are not reimbursed to the full extent of their negotiated rates. Many of the dire consequences cited in Bienenstock’s article would be eliminated if official government policy for full cost recovery of negotiated rates were followed by federal agencies. In cooperation with the Association of American Universities, COGR is currently engaged in an intensive dialogue with several federal agencies on this subject, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Education.

Of special concern is the support of research facilities. The doubling of the NIH budget for extramural research underscores the concern about suitable facilities. Although the cited need for an additional 9 million in net assignable square feet of space for biomedical research is dramatic, it does not tell the entire story. Research laboratories incur higher utility costs than other comparable university space. COGR has the support of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Naval Research, the major agencies that negotiate F&A rates, in arguing that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should lift its restriction on the recovery of utility costs.

We believe that OMB’s fiscal strategy to stay revenue-neutral distorts the government’s obligation under its own negotiated rate structures and may in the long run undermine the growth of the research enterprise. Universities are prepared to support buildings and infrastructure to provide the first-class research that the taxpayer expects. It is the government’s responsibility to fully fund that research. Denial of the fact of creeping cost shifting from the government to research universities must stop. Bienenstock, an eminent researcher as well as a policy expert, has provided an important warning. His advice should be heeded.

KATHARINA PHILLIPS

President

Council on Governmental Relations

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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In highlighting the overlooked findings of the Office of Science and Technology Policy-commissioned RAND study on the indirect costs associated with the conduct of federally sponsored research at universities, Arthur Bienenstock quite rightly calls for “A Fair Deal for Federal Research at Universities.” Ensuring a hearing for this case with decisionmakers in Washington in an atmosphere in which terrorism, war, tax cuts, budget cuts, and deficits are paramount will require a fresh perspective on the RAND study’s facts. The consequences of underfunding research, particularly the infrastructure of research, must be framed with the current concerns of elected and appointed officials in mind. That means connecting the dots between government support for the research that determines this nation’s global preeminence in science and the economic growth based on that preeminence. It also means connecting the dots between a robust research enterprise and enhanced national security, and between federally supported research and local economic prosperity in communities across the nation.

Effectively making the case to policymakers about the importance of having the federal government pay the full costs of research also requires a united front by university administrators, faculty, and agency officials. Rather than assume that it is policymakers’ willful ignorance or the public’s lack of interest that stymie a fair deal for research, the university community would do well to begin making the case at home. Many science faculty (not to speak of arts and humanities faculty) simply do not credit arguments that universities are losing money on federally supported research. The forests of building cranes on university campuses are there for everyone to see. Less visible, but as Bienenstock notes, no better understood, are research faculty forced to engage in clerical duties necessitated by mandated limits on support staff. Can the faculty and administration agree to make the case for fair reimbursement of facilities and staff costs?

I recommend implementing more transparency in university governance, including transparency about financing. My experience as CEO of a research institute is that the more financial information shared with faculty and staff, the more opportunity to build commitment to shared goals. Conducting peer reviews of administrative functions is one way to throw light on the subject. In addition, the university and its faculty must reach out to the immediate community and do more “friend”–in addition to “fund”–raising. Public opinion poll data show that despite overwhelming support for research itself, only about half the adult population can identify a single place where research is conducted. If taxpayers aren’t aware of research close to home, they aren’t likely to be its advocates. If elected officials are not hearing from many constituents on a regular basis that their local university needs more resources to conduct research, these same officials will direct their time and energy to issues that they perceive as having more relevance to their constituents.

MARY WOOLLEY

Research!America

Alexandria, Virginia

[email protected]

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Arthur Bienenstock makes it clear that little has changed since I was involved with the issue of indirect cost recovery as president of the Association of American Universities from 1983 to 1993. It is still the case that federal policymakers–politicians and bureaucrats alike–are dazzled by the fruits of research but are uninterested in paying a fair share of the costs of tending the orchard.

Congressional interest in the subject begins and ends with periodic instructions to agencies to reduce the costs of doing research, by which they mean the indirect costs. The executive branch, led by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is happy to comply, since appearing to get more research for less money satisfies the twin political imperatives of supporting science and being what passes in Washington for fiscally responsible.

It makes no difference which party controls the presidency or the Congress; the attractions of spending on the direct rather than the indirect costs of research lead both in the same direction. The result, as Bienenstock shows, is that even in a period of rapidly rising appropriations for research, universities are pressed to spend more of their own money to provide and maintain the infrastructure from which it comes.

Bienenstock correctly identifies administrative costs and facilities construction and renovation as the core of the problem for universities. What may have been forgotten by now is that after a year of intensive study and discussion involving universities, scientific societies, and officials of OMB and the Office of Science and Technology Policy that took place in 1991-1992, an agreement was reached that made sense then and still makes sense. Universities, realizing that administrative costs were hard to defend publicly, agreed to a 26 percent cap on them. The government, for its part, recognized that the cost of research facilities would inevitably rise as research became more complex, and so its representatives agreed to a more realistic treatment of facilities costs within the indirect cost formula.

That agreement was in the process of being translated into policy when an election campaign took place. Candidate Bill Clinton, in an unnecessary and ill-advised effort to appease the community of principal investigators, promised that, if elected, he would put more money onto the laboratory bench and less into the mysterious maw of the university. Clinton’s election doomed the agreement. The cap on administrative costs took effect, the direct costing of clerical salaries was eliminated, and the reimbursement of facilities costs was unchanged. The result is the one that Bienenstock has graphically described.

It has long been clear that the universities’ “partner” in the research enterprise has reneged on the obligations of a true partner. Perhaps Bienenstock’s contribution can help move the otherwise sensible people involved to a clearer view of where their, and the public’s, interests lie.

ROBERT M. ROSENZWEIG

Palo Alto, California

[email protected]

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Developing world transportation

In “The Developing World’s Motorization Challenge ” (Issues, Fall 2002), Daniel Sperling and Eileen Claussen do an excellent job of exposing the looming threat of global motorization for the countries involved and for the entire planet. They also explain why technology alone can’t save us. Massive shifts in behavior and land use are needed, but that requires firm policies and strong financial signals rewarding transportation efficiency and punishing profligacy. But how can the United States, the undisputed world champion of conspicuous transportation consumption, publicly promote such a goal to a skeptical world?

In the 1930s, cars started pushing trolleys, buses, and nonmotorized travel off our streets and roads. More cars required more roads and, by the 1960s, road building had destroyed more housing than was constructed by our entire national public housing program. Today, transportation consumes, on average, 19 percent of household budgets–more than food and three times average household medical costs. It also represents 65 percent of all U.S. oil consumption (50 percent of which is imported) and is both the largest source of domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (33 percent) and the fastest growing. Yet the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has the smallest policy staff of any federal cabinet agency, spends just $800,000 annually on global climate change research, and is actively promoting our car culture abroad.

The first rule of holes is: If you are in one, stop digging. We must stop exporting our bad behavior. We know that our transportation program is unsustainable, yet USDOT’s international outreach program is all about road building. The U.S. Agency for International Development is helping to establish a highway lobby in Russia. Our international trade agencies are helping automakers gain market share around the world. Yes, a key purpose of our international outreach program is to support U.S. economic interests. But we are doing so in a policy vacuum, oblivious to the threats so abundantly documented in this article. Meanwhile, the hole gets deeper.

We need strong policy guiding our international transportation outreach. We have a story to tell: that of a penitent sinner. We now know how to access places without destroying them. We can model how transportation drives land use and plan accordingly. We know the importance of strong regional governance and of citizen-based planning. We ask: Who benefits from public transportation investments, and who pays?” and exposing some gaping equity issues. We are looking at transportation and public health. Slowly, we are inviting transit, including bus rapid transit, rail, and nonmotorized users, back onto our public ways. It is this knowledge, not our technology, that we must export. If not, as the authors predict, “disaster looms for cities of the developing world–disaster from which the industrialized countries cannot be isolated.”

This is not about cars; global motorization is, of course, inevitable. However, as pointed out in this article, hugely important choices exist over the “timing, extent, and form of motorization.” The United States has just 5 percent of the world’s population and 16 percent of its land area, but 52 percent of its paved roads. We now have 769 cars per thousand of population, or more than one per licensed driver. But China has only eight. There is yet time for the developing world to avoid our fate, but not much. We can, and must, help in this effort.

DAVID G. BURWELL

President

Surface Transportation Policy Project

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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China’s rapid economic growth is accelerating the country’s rate of motorization. Having learned from the experience of the developed countries that motorized transportation is essential to building productivity and prosperity, China recently adopted a policy to encourage families to purchase cars. Even though China has only 5 million cars (four cars for every 1,000 persons, compared to a global average of 100 cars per 1,000 persons), the problems of air pollution, traffic congestion, and vehicle accidents have already appeared in the country’s large cities. We are eager to learn lessons from other countries that will help China begin at this early stage of motorization to alleviate the associated problems.

One often-mentioned strategy is to improve technologies and strengthen the institutions for financing, planning, developing, and managing public transit. To do this, China will need technological and financial assistance from other countries. I therefore appreciate Sperling and Claussen’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) proposals, which would facilitate cooperation between the developing and the developed countries in the effort to control greenhouse gas emissions. Near-term CDM projects might include enhancement of diesel engines used in agricultural vehicles, improved refining processes for producing low-sulfur petroleum fuels, and development of better traffic management systems. Mid- and long-term projects might include development of batteries, fuel cells, and coal-based liquid fuels.

The CDM, as described in the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, is much better than the earlier International Green House Gas Reduction Activities Implemented Jointly Program (an earlier pilot phase in which projects did not earn credits), which was restricted to bilateral and multilateral lending among governments. With its trading flexibility and opportunities to work with private enterprises, the CDM is likely to function more smoothly and effectively.

Even though the US has decided not to endorse the Kyoto Protocol, it has expressed its desire to work with other nations to deal with the problem of growing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the United States has taken steps to reduce use of fossil fuels through fuel economy standards for auto fleets, the gas guzzler tax, and the Partnership for the Next Generation of Vehicles research program. The time has come for the United States to take the next step by establishing a quota system of greenhouse gas emissions and a mechanism for emissions trading. This would unleash the entrepreneurial spirit that has proven so successful in generating innovation in other sectors of the U.S. economy.

LI GANG

Beijing, China

Former president of First Auto Works, the largest auto company in China.

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Congestion relief

It is quite true, as Martin Wachs points out in “Fighting Traffic Congestion with Information Technology” (Issues, Fall 2002), that the use of information technology (IT) in areas such as congestion pricing or charging users on a per-mile basis could resolve the congestion issue. However, it is also likely true that developing the political will to accomplish this will be impossible for a variety of practical reasons.

Studies have shown that connecting all traffic signals in an arterial system can provide at least a 20 percent improvement in travel times in urban areas. But an individual driver does not really realize that such an improvement has taken place, because he or she will still occasionally be stopped by red lights. For an individual, there is no connection between large costs and benefits received.

As you move toward the use of more advanced technologies, such as in-vehicle audio and visual dashboard instruction, it will be interesting to observe the interaction between an increasingly older driver population, which has great difficulty programming a VCR, and the “gee-whiz” effect of the latest technologies. On high-speed rural expressways, it is difficult to ensure that older drivers at crossroads even see stop signs!

If we move to more sophisticated systems such as user fees paid by credit card along with congestion pricing, some other difficulties come up. Should an 80,000-pound vehicle be assessed at a different per-mile use rate than an automobile? If congestion pricing is used, will the people in urban areas be willing to see their user fees shared across rural areas of the country, which have low population densities and hence low vehicle miles traveled but need widely dispersed systems for the production of grains, meats, and produce on which the urban areas depend? This could give new emphasis to the donor-donee arguments that seem to accompany each new federal-aid highway and transit reauthorization.

Some of the facilities in some urban areas are just flat worn out and no amount of IT will avoid major capital improvement costs, such as on I-15 in Salt Lake City or I-80 in Omaha. Replacement of existing facilities that includes the necessary IT will still be required in many jurisdictions, and the funding to do that along with enhanced IT will be a daunting challenge.

Wachs has shown that it is technically possible to solve the congestion problem with IT. However, privacy rights, funding issues, and the perception of congestion will make it difficult to make rapid and uniform progress. The best hope for alleviating congestion is with a balanced approach, including accelerating the application of IT, reconstruction of worn-out facilities, and occasional new construction where warranted. It will not be cheap.

E. DEAN CARLSON

Kansas Secretary of Transportation

Topeka, Kansas

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I always enjoy the latest offering from Martin Wachs, one of our most clear-headed thinkers about the challenges of improving urban mobility. His article was worth reading if only for the long-overdue debunking of two persistent bromides in recent commentary about traffic congestion: (1) that traffic delay costs our economy billions of dollars in lost productivity, when many truckers avoid peak hours like the plague and many commuters stuck in peak traffic are quite productively occupied in making calls on their cell phones or reviewing email on their laptops; and (2) that the dense mixed-use development characteristic of “smart growth” will reduce traffic congestion, when it is much more likely to increase it in the urban neighborhoods where such development occurs.

I wish that Wachs had spent more time outlining the obstacles to implementing his two chosen solutions to traffic congestion: information technology (IT) and road pricing. In my view, the biggest barrier to wider IT deployment in our transportation system is institutional, indeed, almost ideological. The public agencies that have grown up in the earlier interstate era and in the current rail transit boom are so dedicated to capital construction projects that managing the capacity once they’ve built it is still an afterthought. The same IT apathy is manifested by the environmental and community-based organizations that were formed to fight the highway lobby. Thus, IT is orphaned without a solid base of advocates in either camp.

As for congestion pricing, Wachs makes the case that road tolls may soon overtake the fuel tax as the transportation revenue mechanism of choice, because of the growing use of electric and fuel cell vehicles whose owners won’t pay the gas tax. The demise of the internal combustion engine has been predicted for decades, yet it keeps on chugging, especially in the fast-growing, gas-guzzling SUV market these days. And trend-setting California seems to be moving away from tolling. San Diego officials have removed the tolls from the Coronado Bridge, and the Orange County Transportation Authority just bought the SR 91 express lanes in order to decommission its variable pricing scheme and build more nearby free capacity.

In the end, I agree with Wachs’ conclusion that “the most significant determinants of the future of IT [and congestion pricing] for traffic control will be political rather than technical.” Some helpful advice on this vexing subject would be a fine topic for his next article.

STEVE HEMINGER

Executive Director

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Oakland, California

[email protected]

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Transit-oriented development

Transit-oriented development is an important tool in the construction of livable communities: places where our families and neighborhoods are safe, healthy, and economically secure. Livable communities offer residents a choice of where to work, where to shop, and where to play, along with a choice of how to get there.

“Countering Sprawl with Transit-Oriented Development ” by Dena Belzer and Gerald Autler (Issues, Fall 2002) makes a strong case for using transit-oriented development to provide Americans with real development and mobility choices. When each year the average American driver spends 443 hours–more than 18 sleepless days–behind the wheel, and more than 40,000 people die in auto accidents, transit-oriented and mixed-use development is about livability at its most basic: Giving people transportation options in full-service communities can add hours to their days and years to their lives.

The surest path to a livable community is meaningful public participation. But simply giving the citizens a forum in which to express their concerns about already-planned development is not enough. Elected leaders must encourage ongoing public participation as a community’s vision and goals are defined and implemented. Only when a community participates in every aspect of the planning process will development dollars have their maximum effect.

The federal government needs to be a constructive partner as communities develop and implement transit-supportive projects. In 2003, Congress will take up the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, known currently as TEA-21. This bill will determine how much federal support will be available in the years to come and how communities can spend that transportation money. As a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, my priority is to see that some of the most important provisions of the previous landmark transportation bills are preserved, including the ability of local jurisdictions to use federal funds for transit-oriented development and to “flex” funds between modes. By keeping funding flexible, we give local decisionmakers the power to make choices that make sense in their own communities.

The work of Belzer and Autler goes a long way toward clarifying what we mean by transit-oriented development and how we can make it work. By encouraging livable communities that encompass a variety of transportation options, we can make transit a catalyst for strengthening communities throughout the country. Our role in Congress is to provide the sound, flexible policy to make it happen.

REP. EARL BLUMENAUER

Democrat, Oregon

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Terror in transportation

“Countering Terrorism in Transportation” (Issues, Summer 2002) by Mortimer L. Downey and Thomas R. Menzies concludes that the inherently open, accessible nature of public transportation makes a “piecemeal” approach to security that focus on sealing off discrete points of vulnerability in a transit system a less than optimal strategy. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) agrees strongly with the authors’ overall recommendation that “transportation security will have to be undertaken collaboratively” and involve a variety of public and private entities.

Immediately after September 11, FTA launched a five-part security program that emphasizes assessment, planning, training, testing, and technology. This initiative puts into practice many of the authors’ recommendations. For example, Downey and Menzies call for a broader and more sophisticated approach to transit security that considers each system as a whole. Many public transportation hubs involve assets that are owned and overseen by both public and private entities, as well as multiple modes of transportation, ranging from rail to air to bus. FTA’s security assessments of the nation’s largest transit systems have adopted a holistic “systems analysis” approach to these complex security environments.

I am especially pleased that FTA is helping transit officials develop collaborative region-wide relationships through its innovative “Connecting Communities” forums. These two-day forums, which kicked off in Orlando on May 22, 2002, and are scheduled for 17 locales nationwide, bring together transit officials with police, fire, and other emergency responders to discuss and strengthen plans for a regional response to terrorist attacks. A terrorist attack on a transit system affects not just one asset or sector. Therefore, it requires a coherent regional response. These forums help build the collaborative approach to security that transit officials will require in order to meet the challenges of the post-September 11 world. FTA has awarded more than $3.3 million to 80 of the largest transit agencies to conduct emergency response drills with all responders in their region.

Collaboration also applies to the sharing of information and technology. Downey and Menzies recommend a technology clearinghouse that will help guide transportation system owners. FTA is currently identifying security technology that is deployable in transit environments and is accelerating the development of Project PROTECT, a chemical detection system that is being prototyped in the Washington, D.C., subway system. We must continue to work with the Transportation Security Administration and our federal partners to leverage the benefits of research being conducted in other sectors that might be applicable to transit and vice versa. FTA, working with the transit industry and others, intends to serve as a security resource clearinghouse to the entire transit industry, making available the most up-to-date information on new technologies and security protocols.

FTA’s security initiative is shaped by lessons learned from the tragedy of September 11, many of which confirm the authors’ recommendations. New York City transit officials credit their success in evacuating public transportation systems that day, without a single fatality or injury, to the cooperative and trusting relationships that they had developed with New York’s first responders and to the presence of realistic emergency plans that had been repeatedly tested and drilled. Keywords for transit security, as New York City illustrated on September 11, are collaboration, planning, and a coherent system-wide approach. FTA’s security program puts these ideals into practice.

JENNIFER L. DORN

Administrator

Federal Transit Administration

U.S. Department of Transportation

Washington, D.C.

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Market-based regulation

In “Are All Market-Based Environmental Regulations Equal?” (Issues, Fall 2002), Ian W. H. Parry describes how policies that generate revenue (such as taxes or auctioned tradable permits) can have lower economic costs than policies that do not (such as tradable permits that are distributed for free). That is because the government can use the revenue to offset existing taxes that dampen economic activity by discouraging people from working and investing. Parry also points out that two policies that are designed to achieve the same level of environmental benefits can have very different distributional effects.

What Parry is somewhat unclear about, however, is how to balance the competing objectives of minimizing economic costs and preventing further increases in income inequality. First, he states that, “Pollution control measures should be evaluated mainly by weighing their environmental benefits against their economic costs for society as a whole. Distributional objectives are much better addressed by altering the income tax system or providing a safety net through the benefit system.” But next, he claims that, “It still makes sense, however, to avoid environmental policies that increase income inequality.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think that it is possible to support both points of view. What Parry fails to note is that policies that minimize economic costs also add to income inequality. For example, suppose the government wanted to cut carbon emissions by 15 percent. Diane Rogers and I found that the economic cost of achieving that goal would be minimized with a system of auctioned permits, in which the revenue was used to decrease corporate taxes (reported in the June 2002 issue of National Tax Journal). Such a policy, however, would be regressive. If one estimates the distributional effects, using reported income and expenditure data, such a policy would lower real income for households in the lowest income quintile by 6 percent while raising real income for households in the highest quintile by 1.5 percent. In contrast, if policymakers used the auction revenue to provide equal lump-sum payments to all households, the policy would have a progressive distributional effect, but the cost to the economy would be more than six times as high as with auctioned permits and a cut in corporate taxes.

Given that we can’t simultaneously choose the most cost-effective policies and avoid policies that increase income inequality, which criterion do we use? I think that Parry had it right the first time. We must choose policies that minimize economic costs (and hopefully are justified by environmental benefits) and then address distributional objectives using other policy tools. That does not mean, of course, that we can ignore the distributional consequences of environmental policies. Legislators should be aware of them and indeed may choose to implement other policy changes that would offset them. But avoiding environmental policies that increase income inequality could mean shrinking the economic pie that we have to slice up.

Finally, I think it is important to note that the real problem with grandfathering carbon permits–a policy that Parry rightly criticizes–is not simply that it increases income inequality but that it does so without producing offsetting economic gains. Rogers and I found that an auction combined with a cut in corporate taxes would be roughly as regressive as grandfathered permits, but would cost the economy far less (approximately $5 billion annually, as opposed to $31 billion). Thus, I would rephrase Parry’s second assertion to state that we should avoid policies that would increase income inequality without also increasing aggregate wealth.

TERRY DINAN

Senior Analyst

Congressional Budget Office

Washington, D.C.

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Paying for invasive species damage

In “Paying for Protection from Invasive Species ” (Issues, Fall 2002), Peter T. Jenkins proposes a logical and reasonable source of funds for addressing issues related to harmful and invasive alien species. What could be more appropriate than for those who, intentionally or inadvertently, move harmful living taxa from where they are to where they are not wanted, to bear residual liability for undesirable consequences.

The issue of the irresponsible movement of living organisms that results in biological pollution of our environment warrants far more concern and attention than it is now given. Unlike most chemical pollutants, which break down over time, biological pollutants grow, adapt, multiply, and spread forever, unless mitigated. Non-native invasive species of plants, insects, diseases, and vertebrates now do vast harm, and other species pose a threat to our agricultural and managed and natural ecosystems, and to society, which depends on ecosystem sustainability. Biological pollution needs be addressed with the same or perhaps greater concern than that given chemical pollution. The bold article by Jenkins does just that.

ROBERT E. EPLEE

U.S. Department of Agriculture (retired)

Whiteville, North Carolina

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The economic and environmental threat from invasive species is a bipartisan issue. There is broad agreement that new management actions are needed to reduce its impact. Agreement on the severity of the problem is the easy part. Many federal and state plans exist, with well-thought-out and practical management ideas. If implemented, such plans could save our nation a great deal of financial and environmental loss. However, reaching agreement on who will pay for these new prevention and control programs will be anything but easy.

When asked who should pay for a new service, our response is often “anyone but me.” Our federal and state governments are sliding deeper into debt and looking for new cuts, not new spending. U.S. private industry is facing increased global competition. New fees and taxes are said to decrease the ability of U.S. corporations to compete in the global market. Private citizens delight in waving the flag of patriotism while lamenting every dime of taxes paid to keep our nation strong and quality of life high. Increasing the federal debt to pay for invasive species management is always an option; just let the kids worry about paying the tab.

Peter T. Jenkins offers a very reasonable and responsible solution to paying for invasive species management programs that could, in the long run, save us money and improve our quality of life. His solution spreads the cost over a broad range of global traders and travelers, minimizing the cost to any one group and focusing on those who present the greatest risk of introducing new invasive species.

Will those at the highest risk of affecting our society with new invasive species accept a small fee to prevent or control their impact? I hope so. Then again, we can just let the kids worry about it.

SCOTT S. SMITH

Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator for Washington State

Olympia, Washington

Proposed big increases for R&D in FY 2003 may be in jeopardy

Hefty increases in research and development (R&D) spending proposed by the House and Senate for fiscal year (FY) 2003 may be in jeopardy because of President Bush’s determination to hold overall discretionary spending in line. The president’s position was undoubtedly strengthened by the November election, which gave Republicans control of both the Senate and the House.

When Congress adjourned in November, it had approved only two of the 13 appropriations bills for FY 2003, which began on October 1. Both covered defense spending and have been signed into law. Until final decisions are made on the other bills, all other programs will have to operate at FY 2002 funding levels.

Department of Defense (DOD) R&D spending in FY 2003 will increase by $9.1 billion or 18.4 percent. DOD weapons systems will receive much of the increase, but basic research will increase by $1.5 billion or 6.8 percent, and applied research by $4.5 billion or 10.8 percent. DOD science and technology activities, encompassing research plus advanced technology development, will rise to $11.7 billion, up 13.5 percent. This amounts to 3.2 percent of the total DOD budget, compared with 2.6 percent that had been proposed by the president.

In the eleven nondefense bills drafted by the Senate, total FY 2003 federal R&D funding would hit $117 billion, a 14 percent increase. Although most of this increase would go to defense R&D and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), nondefense R&D, excluding NIH, would rise 4.4 percent. This total includes an 11.9 percent increase, to $3.9 billion, for R&D at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The Senate would complete NIH’s five-year doubling plan, providing a 16.4 percent increase in R&D funding for a total of $26.4 billion. Most other R&D funding agencies would also get increases over FY 2002; exceptions are the Transportation and Agriculture Departments, whose FY 2002 budgets were inflated with one-time emergency appropriations to respond to the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The nine nondefense bills drafted by the House would also provide generous increases for many R&D programs, including a 14.5 percent or $510 million boost for NSF R&D, a 6.9 percent or $697 million increase for R&D at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and an 8.3 percent or $48 million increase in Environmental Protection Agency R&D. R&D at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would fall by 0.3 percent or $10 million. The House has not drafted two of the largest appropriations bills, which include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Commerce, and Education.

The president’s original budget request proposed a ceiling of $750 billion for all discretionary spending, and he has repeatedly insisted that he will veto any appropriations bills that could cause the total to exceed that amount. The House set a $755 billion total, but found it impossible to write 13 appropriations bills capable of winning a majority vote while staying within the total. The Senate discretionary spending total was set at $771 billion. This higher total made it possible to draft all 13 appropriations bills, but the full Senate approved only one nondefense bill because the floor schedule was consumed with debates on homeland security legislation, authorization for military action against Iraq, drought, and other disaster relief, and other nonbudget issues.

The new Republican-controlled Senate may be amenable to bringing its discretionary totals in line with President Bush’s original request, which called for an overall cut in nondefense R&D spending. Although the large increase for NIH approved by the Senate will probably remain because it was included in the president’s budget, the R&D budgets for the other agencies are now uncertain.

Department of Homeland Security will have big S&T component

On November 25, after months of partisan debate over personnel rules, President Bush signed legislation establishing a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with the primary mission of preventing terrorist attacks within the United States. DHS will bring together nearly 170,000 federal employees and up to $35 billion in annual funding in the largest reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s.

The new department will have significant role in science and technology (S&T) related to homeland security. DHS will have its own S&T policy infrastructure as well as a significant research and development (R&D) portfolio, drawing on programs transferred from other agencies, as well as newly created programs.

The law creates an under secretary for science and technology, a provision absent from the Bush administration’s original proposal, to serve as the head of a new S&T infrastructure. The under secretary, who will report directly to the secretary of homeland security, will be in charge of the Directorate of Science and Technology, one of four broad directorates in the new department. This directorate will have responsibility for setting R&D goals and priorities, coordinating homeland security R&D throughout the federal government, funding its own R&D programs, and facilitating the transfer and deployment of technologies for homeland security.

The under secretary will act as scientific and technical adviser to the secretary and will convene a Homeland Security Advisory Committee consisting of first responders, citizen groups, researchers, engineers, and businesses to provide S&T advice. DHS will create a new federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), the Homeland Security Institute, to act as a think tank for risk analyses, simulations of threat scenarios, analyses of possible countermeasures, and strategic plans for counterterrorism technology development.

The S&T directorate will also have an Office for National Laboratories to coordinate DHS interactions with Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories that have expertise in homeland security. The office will have the authority to establish a semi-independent DHS headquarters laboratory within an existing federal laboratory, national lab, or FFRDC.

The homeland security legislation directs DHS to establish one or more university-based centers for homeland security R&D, and includes 15 detailed criteria for where to locate it. It has been widely reported that House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-Tex.) drafted the criteria in order to favor Texas A&M University. In order to win the support of senators opposed to what they saw as an uncompetitive earmark, incoming Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) worked with House leaders to issue a promise to amend the legislation in the next Congress to make competition for the center more open.

The S&T directorate will house a new research agency named the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Department of Defense (DOD). HSARPA will award competitive, merit-reviewed grants in a wide spectrum of R&D, from basic research to prototyping new technology products. The legislation authorizes $500 million in fiscal year (FY) 2003 for the agency, but the actual appropriation will have to be decided as part of the FY 2003 budget process.

In addition to HSARPA, DHS will fold in existing R&D programs from DOE and the Departments of Agriculture and Transportation. Precise R&D funding figures are not yet available because of the vague parameters of the final legislation and because the FY 2003 budget process was left unfinished by the 107th Congress.

Although the original administration proposal envisioned a $3.4-billion R&D portfolio for DHS, the final legislation suggests a portfolio of up to $800 million. In contrast to the original proposal, the final legislation keeps federal bioterrorism R&D programs, which could total as much as $2 billion in FY 2003, within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instead of transferring them to DHS. The homeland security secretary would, however, have joint authority with the HHS Secretary to set priorities for these programs.

Although DHS will have an enormous impact on the federal government and especially on goods and travelers crossing U.S. borders, the impact on scientists and engineers will be minimal. Few federal scientists and engineers will be affected. The new priority-setting powers of DHS, however, mean that NIH bioterrorism research priorities will be set with strong input from the new department.

Because the 107th Congress failed to complete the FY 2003 budget, all domestic programs are currently operating at FY 2002 funding levels. As a consequence, there is no money available to create new programs such as HSARPA unless funds can be shifted from existing programs. Congress hopes to finish work on FY 2003 appropriations in January, before DHS formally comes into existence, but it will be difficult to meet this goal. It may be months, then, before the new department has the necessary resources to begin organizing its S&T infrastructure.

Congress approves bill authorizing a doubling of NSF spending

After a compromise developed in response to White House objections, Congress passed the National Science Foundation (NSF) doubling bill (H.R. 4664), which authorizes NSF programs for the next five years. The bill specifies funding that would rise to $9.8 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2007, compared with the agency’s current FY 2002 budget of $4.8 billion. The president was expected to sign the bill.

The bill’s passage represents a milestone in a long-term effort by the scientific community and NSF’s congressional supporters to increase the agency’s budget. Although total federal funding of scientific research has risen dramatically in recent years, the increase has been driven largely by support for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, leaving funding for many other areas stagnant. NSF’s mission is to strengthen the nation’s capabilities in all scientific disciplines.

“Improved science and math education, scientific innovation, and new technology hold the key to our nation’s future economic success, as well as to our national security,” said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.). “We turn to NSF to solve some of our most pressing problems; we can’t turn from NSF when we decide where to invest federal funds.”

Although the House passed its original version of the bill in June and the Senate finished its version in October, objections by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) delayed final passage until the very end of the session. OMB argued that five years was too long for an authorization bill, and that doubling the agency’s budget would be arbitrary and inconsistent with President Bush’s efforts to lower spending and institute management reforms.

Eventually, congressional negotiators and OMB officials agreed to a compromise that removed the word “doubling” from the bill’s title and made the final two years of the authorization contingent on NSF’s progress toward meeting a set of management goals.

The agreement solidified an additional set of compromises that had already been worked out between the House and Senate versions of the bill. The final legislation does not include a Senate provision that would have combined a math and science partnership at the Department of Education with a similar program at NSF. Critics of this provision argued that the Education Department program, which distributes funding based on formula grants, is designed to have a broader reach than the NSF program and should remain separate.

Also dropped from the final bill was Senate language expanding eligibility to participate in NSF’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). NSF had expressed concern that expanding the program would dilute the funds available to participants.

Several programs focusing on education are authorized in the bill, including the math and science partnerships program; an effort to encourage the hiring of “master teachers”; a program to encourage girls to study math and science; the “Tech Talent” program, which would provide grants to universities that increase the number of science, math, and engineering majors they graduate; and the Robert Noyce scholarship program, which would provide financial support to science, math, and engineering majors who pledge to spend two to four years teaching math and science in a secondary or elementary school.

The bill authorizes the creation of plant genome research centers and research partnerships to conduct basic research focused on plants that are important to the developing world. The legislation also includes specific funding levels for research programs in information technology and nanotechnology.

Republican control of Congress could lead to science policy changes

Because science and technology research generally enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, the outcome of the November elections and the return to a Republican-controlled Senate will not likely result in major shifts in funding priorities. However, significant changes could materialize in policy issues that involve science matters but are fueled by politics.

One example is the proposed comprehensive ban on both research and reproductive cloning championed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Brownback was unsuccessful during Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s tenure in shepherding his bill to the floor for debate. But on the day after the election, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer called the bill a priority, and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the new majority leader, supports it. However, strong support remains for a measure supported by the scientific community that would permit cloning for research purposes to proceed.

Republicans are also likely to resurrect a comprehensive energy bill that was approved by both houses but failed in conference committee. Although some science provisions may be kept intact, many of the most contentious energy issues, such as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, are now up for grabs. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) will replace Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) as chair of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Bingaman was a strong force behind the 2002 bill, but Domenici’s priorities are likely to differ substantially.

On the regulatory front, environmentalists will anxiously await the policy agenda of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the incoming chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, who has a strong pro-industry voting record.

In the medical research arena, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) will assume the chairmanship, and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the ranking member slot of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. In addition, Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Kennedy will continue as chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Public Health Subcommittee. Frist is stepping down as the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which should give him more time to devote to health policy issues.

A key committee for civilian R&D is the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will become chairman and Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) ranking member. Both have recently focused primarily on telecommunications and broadband policy, and likely will continue to pursue that agenda.

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) will become chairman of the committee’s Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) as ranking member. Although Allen’s agenda is still relatively unknown, he worked with Wyden on both the NSF doubling bill and the cybersecurity R&D bill.

In a potentially significant development for the scientific community, the House Republican leadership moved recently to exert more control over appropriations. From now on, the chairs of appropriations subcommittees will be appointed by the speaker and the majority leader rather than succeeding to their posts on the basis of seniority. Presumably, chairmen who are beholden to the speaker and majority leader for their posts will be more willing to take direction from the leadership.

President Bush signs cybersecurity R&D bill

On November 27, President Bush signed into law the Cybersecurity Research and Development Act, authorizing nearly $903 million in funds over five years to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The funding would go toward an array of programs to improve basic research in computer security, encourage partnerships between industry and academia, and generate a new cybersecurity workforce.

House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y), who first proposed the new law, said that it is designed to “usher in a new era in cybersecurity research. Cybersecurity research will no longer be a backwater, but rather will become a priority at two of our premier research agencies.”

The bill authorizes $593 million between fiscal year (FY) 2003 and 2007 for NSF, of which $233 million would go to basic research grants; $144 million to the establishment of multidisciplinary computer and network security research centers; $95 million to “capacity building” grants to establish or improve undergraduate and graduate education programs; and $90 million to doctoral programs. In addition, it authorizes $25 million in grants for faculty development to establish training programs to increase the number of professors teaching courses in cybersecurity. Finally, NSF would receive $6 million to support computer and network security education grants under the Scientific and Advanced Technology Act of 1992.

NIST would receive almost $310 million, of which $275 million would go toward research programs that involve a partnership among industry, academia, and government laboratories. In addition, money can be spent on postdoctoral research fellowships. The bill provides $32 million for intramural research conducted at NIST laboratories.

In addition to the $310 million in research funds, the new law provides $2.15 million for NIST’s Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board to conduct analyses of emerging security and research needs. Finally, the bill would provide an additional $700,000 for the National Research Council to conduct a two-year study of the nation’s infrastructure vulnerabilities.

New system to scrutinize foreign students hits snags

A new system designed to more closely scrutinize foreign students is unlikely to be fully implemented by the January 30, 2003, deadline set by Congress, according to witnesses at a fall 2002 hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has been setting up the new system, called the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS). SEVIS is an electronic database for monitoring visas issued to foreign students and for tracking those students once they arrive in the United States. It was designed to reduce fraud, improve the collection of data that can be analyzed by appropriate agencies, and augment the INS’s enforcement capabilities.

Glenn A. Fine, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, said that although SEVIS would “technically” be operational by the deadline, it was unlikely that INS will have completed all the necessary steps to ensure “full and proper” implementation. His concerns centered on whether the INS “will assign and train sufficient numbers of dedicated staff to review and approve the schools’ applications to access SEVIS; whether SEVIS will be operational at all INS ports of entry, service centers, and consular posts; whether the INS will conduct sufficient and thorough site visits of schools applying to accept foreign students; whether the INS adequately will train school officials to use SEVIS; and whether INS will train INS inspectors and investigators adequately to use SEVIS to detect fraud.”

Janis Sposato, the INS’s assistant deputy executive associate commissioner, said that SEVIS has been available to selected schools since July 2002 and that the software would be fully deployed by the January deadline. She acknowledged that not all schools will have been certified to begin using the new system and that not all INS agents will have received the necessary training. But she argued that these delays should not be of enormous concern, noting that, “It’s a process, not an event.”

Sposato said that the INS had been reviewing school petitions for eligibility to issue visas since July and that as of September 11, 2002, 736 were actively putting student records into the electronic system, 595 had submitted a certification petition and were awaiting approval, and an additional 590 schools had created petitions but had not submitted them as yet. She estimated that by January 30, 2003, between 7,500 and 74,000 institutions would be certified and using SEVIS. But many of the committee members as well as other witnesses expressed skepticism.

Complicating the current situation is that Congress required that a temporary system be established by September 11, 2002, in order to monitor students on a preliminary basis. However, this Interim Student and Exchange Authentication System will not be able to share data with the SEVIS system. Thus, as the January deadline approaches, academic institutions and federal agencies will find themselves in the situation of having to register information in two separate systems.

California approves landmark stem cell legislation

The state of California on September 22 approved legislation that would make it legal to derive embryonic stem cells from human embryos and to conduct research using stem cells from “any source,” thereby opening the door for institutions to conduct somatic cell nuclear transfer (also referred to as research cloning).

The landmark legislation was intended to remove what legislators considered a logjam created by the Bush administration’s narrow stem cell policy and the inability of Congress to pass any legislation related to reproductive and research cloning. Although some states have passed legislation prohibiting the cloning of a human being, California is the first state to take a definitive stand in support of the controversial subject of research cloning.

The bill states that “the policy of the state shall be that research involving the derivation and use of human embryonic stem cells, human embryonic germ cells, and human adult stem cells from any source, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation, shall be permitted, as specified.” At the same time it would prohibit a person from “cloning a human being, and from purchasing or selling an ovum, zygote, embryo, or fetus for the purpose of cloning a human being.”

A unique aspect of the bill is that it opens the window for the expenditure of state public funds to support stem cell research. It takes that position that “publicly funded stem cell research, conducted under established standards of open scientific exchange, peer review, and public oversight, offers the most efficient and responsible means of fulfilling the promise of stem cells to provide regenerative medical therapies.” However, the bill stops short of actually authorizing specific funds for research.

By taking this stance California legislators hope to lure companies and other institutions interested in pursuing the field of stem cell research to the state.

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“From the Hill” is prepared by the Center for Science, Technology, and Congress at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (www.aaas.org/spp) in Washington, D.C., and is based on articles from the center’s bulletin Science & Technology in Congress.

The passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act significantly increased the prominence of standardized testing in the nation’s K-12 schools. Every state will have to test every student repeatedly in reading, mathematics, and science, and student scores will be a critical measure of how well the schools are fulfilling their mission. For the Bush administration, testing is the key to accountability, and analysis of the results will be a powerful influence on future curriculum and classroom practice.

Since most school systems contract out test preparation to private firms, one practical question to ask as the country begins to implement the NCLB testing requirements is whether the testing industry can meet the demand for tests that will be coming from the states. In considering this question, we have to consider everything that schools and the public expect from such a high-stakes testing program.

Even before the passage of NCLB, states were asking for custom tests aligned with specific standards. They wanted combinations of multiple-choice and open-ended items that could, as deemed appropriate, be released to the public as part of the pubic awareness initiative so critical to high-stakes testing programs. States wanted electronic data banks of test questions linked to specific content requirements of the curriculum. They wanted multiple versions of each test to address issues of security and the opportunity to field test questions for use in future tests. States wanted tests in large print, audio, Braille, and numerous languages to meet the needs of special populations. In addition to tests pegged to state standards, they wanted norm-referenced tests that would compare each student’s performance to that of other students across the state and country. They also wanted practice tests, study guides, data management tools, electronic reports, and the ability to manipulate and merge data from a variety of different sources. Of course, they all wanted to administer tests as late as possible in the school year and then to receive results before the end of school.

As daunting as this sounds, the testing industry believes it is up to the challenge. Although the NCLB testing requirement is usually described in the press as something new for the schools, the reality is that virtually all U.S. school systems are already conducting testing programs in response to previous federal legislation or their own desire for accountability. The NCLB is more likely to require a reconfiguration rather than an expansion of testing. States such as Maryland, Alabama, and Pennsylvania have already indicated that they will be eliminating their current testing programs and replacing them with testing that meets the NCLB requirements. We expect to see the states narrowing their testing to meet a few key criteria: States will be demanding tests that allow for rapid and meaningful reporting of results, that focus measurement on achievement of critical state standards, and that are carefully aligned with the required curriculum. If the states are reasonable in their demands, the challenge to the testing industry will be serious but not insurmountable.

History of testing

The signing of NCLB certainly did highlight the power of assessment in the lives of students, teachers, parents, school officials, and policymakers. Although seen by some as a dramatic development in testing, in a fundamental way this law was the logical next step in the natural evolution of the state of achievement testing and standards-based education reform that began with the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965.

ESEA required the states to assess the progress of students who were receiving federal support through programs such as Title I for low-income students. The Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 amended ESEA by extending the testing requirement to all students. Time and research had shown that for all children to learn, the entire school had to be focused on the learning of all children. The de facto segregation of students into regular classrooms and “special services” classrooms had to end. The 1994 legislation required all states to have standards of academic achievement; to assess students at three stages (grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12) to determine if they were meeting the standards; and to implement an accountability system that would identify schools where students were not making adequate progress.

Although it took six years of discussion to fully articulate the requirements of the Improving America’s Schools Act, the testing industry began to see significant growth in requests for state-owned standards-based assessments soon after the bill was passed. In the mid-nineties, the states began to ask for their own custom-designed tests rather than the off-the-shelf tests that the companies had already prepared. Test publishers found themselves in the business of developing content, manufacturing tests, and scoring and reporting on assessments that were not part of their inventory and, in fact, did not last beyond a single administration. This stressed the capacity of the testing industry. At Harcourt we found ourselves preparing more than 20 new editions of tests in less than half the usual time.

This shift away from test-publisher products to state-owned, work-for-hire products opened the door for new companies to enter the industry and grow in the marketplace. The new companies were able to compete for business, because there was no longer a need to have a full catalog of already-prepared tests. With more companies looking to hire testing experts and the states also needing to add staff with testing expertise, the competition for talent was fierce. The sudden surge in demand made it difficult to maintain quality. Sometimes errors were found in test results, reports from the companies were sometimes late, and the cost per student increased. The public was not happy.

By 2000, the maturation of the standards-based era became evident. At that point, 49 of the states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had content standards in at least some subjects. Twenty-four of the states had both content standards and performance standards. Although testing was becoming commonplace, its importance was not yet clearly established, and states varied considerably in how they used test information. With the majority of states having progressed this far into standards-based education reform, the stage was set for NCLB, which made the tests the primary criterion for determining school accountability for individual student learning.

The 1999-2000 Annual Survey of State Student Assessment Programs prepared by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) revealed that all states except Nebraska and Iowa had mandated testing in place. Of these 48 states, all assess reading, mathematics, and science at some grade levels. Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas had met the full requirement of NCLB by mandating testing programs in grades 3-8 and one high school grade–though it is not certain that all had developed standards-based tests in all areas. Therefore, at least 40 states need to expand their testing programs to be compliant with NCLB. At first glance this task seems impossible.

Viewed a different way, the burden is not that overwhelming. According to CCSSO data, which includes 49 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Department of Defense schools, a total of 1,823 tests are being administered in all subjects in all grades in 57 political units. For each of these political units to meet the NCLB standard of testing students in grades 3-8 and one high school grade in mathematics, reading, and science would require the administration of 1,197 tests, a 34 percent reduction from the total number of tests now being administered.

The NCLB does not require the use of open-ended questions, which are expensive and time consuming to grade. If the 20 or so states that now use open-ended questions eliminate them from their testing, it will result in a further decrease in the total testing burden. Changes in the volume of questions being field-tested could also have a significant effect on the total testing burden. In the interest of keeping the public informed about what is being tested, many states now release the full content of each test after it is administered. This means that a completely new test must be prepared each year. The items for next year’s test must be field-tested by including them in this year’s test. Since only a few questions can be included in each test, it is necessary to prepare 30 to 40 separate versions of the test in order to be able to test enough items.

If the states decide not to release the test each year, they need to produce only three versions of each test to maintain a secure testing program: the primary test: a version that students who fail the test could take for retesting: and a backup version to use in the event of a security violation. This would greatly reduce the cost and difficulty of preparing tests. The time and money saved in this way could be redirected toward efforts to understand how the test results can be used to improve classroom practice or curriculum design. In addition, resources could be devoted to preparing developmental scales that would make it possible to determine if an individual student is making adequate annual progress.

The expansion of testing in the 1990s forced the testing industry to add staff and expand its capacity in other ways. Having this added capacity in place will make it possible to take on the challenge of developing a new generation of tests.

Industry’s focus

For the testing industry, NCLB is about assuring our customers that we can build standards-based tests consistent with the research requirements and third-party alignment of NCLB, and that we can score the tests and report the results promptly with 100 percent accuracy. On the development side, regardless of whether customers reconfigure their testing programs, test publishers must be able to demonstrate their alignment methodology and to have their alignment studies validated by independent third parties.

The content itself is broadly prescribed by the legislation. Each state is responsible for setting detailed standards. It has already become apparent that there will be considerable variation in how states set and express their standards. The number and nature of the standards will determine how each state test is designed, and most of the states were not thinking about test design while developing their standards. In many states, the standards are numerous and detailed. To test the students on all of these standards will require tests that require far more time than the states want to devote to testing. Revising the standards is not practical. Most states followed very well articulated processes for widespread review and participation in the content standards formulation, and they have neither the will nor the time to repeat the process. States will therefore have to make difficult decisions about what to include in their tests.

Some standards–for example, to read five fiction and five nonfiction books in ninth grade–simply cannot be tested. Others, such as oral reading and speech fluency, cannot be measured on a paper-and-pencil test. But most states still have too many standards to assess in a reasonable amount of time. A state that decides that it cannot test for all standards has two options. The first is to establish superordinate standards, each of which is meant to incorporate a group of more specific standards. This will provide a broadbrush picture of student achievement but not the type of detail needed to fine-tune classroom activities. The second is to identify a core of critical standards that are tested every year with other standards being tested periodically. This option is the most useful for providing detailed guidance for teachers.

Once this decision is made, a state and a testing company must work together to identify test items that correspond with the standards and fulfill the NCLB requirements. The states and the industry have been doing this type of work during the 1990s. What is different this time is that the test also has to satisfy the federal government. Each state will have a development partner and an external auditor in the person of the federal government.

Because the test results will have powerful consequences for schools, scoring accuracy is of primary importance. Each test publisher understands this well and strives diligently to make zero errors a reality for all test scores. As the criticality of scores increases under NCLB, test publishers will be challenged to secure the psychometric resources required to make zero error a reality for all testing programs. With the number of psychometricians graduating from doctoral programs already too low to meet the demand, companies will be hard pressed to recruit and maintain such talent.

It seems quite clear that year-to-year reporting on individual students and on certain cohorts will be required to satisfy NCLB. Year-to-year tracking of individual students will require assigning a unique identifier to each student so that the student can be followed from grade to grade, school to school, and district to district. When states do not provide this unique identifier, test publishers will have to find a way to do it.

To make the tracking of individual scores over time meaningful, it will be necessary to establish a development scale that provides a model for how much a student should be advancing from year to year. The designations of basic, proficient, and advanced are too broad to be useful for helping an individual. It would seem much more appropriate to monitor student learning along a fine-grained developmental scale that can register small changes in progress.

Both the states and the testing companies will find it difficult to recruit expert staff. As the criticality of scores increases under NCLB, test publishers will be challenged to secure the psychometric resources required to make zero-error scoring and reporting a reality for all testing programs. With the number of psychometricians graduating from doctoral programs already too low to meet the demand, companies will be hard pressed to recruit and maintain such talent. State education departments will need to hire additional psychometricians to manage the test preparation process and to analyze results and apply the findings to classroom practice.

States will have to convene working groups of teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, and testing experts for the time-consuming task of selecting curriculum content, developing standards, and aligning test questions with the standards. Active teachers need to be included in these groups, but it is not clear how someone could teach and attend an endless series of meetings at the same time.

If the states were uncertain about the wisdom of maintaining their own state testing programs as well as introducing new tests linked to NCLB, the decline in state tax revenues resulting from a slowing economy should help them make the decision. For virtually all the states, the wise path is to narrow their focus and limit their expenses by focusing on meeting the basic NCLB requirements. This will not only make their burden bearable but also enable the testing industry to focus its resources so that it can sustain quality while developing new tests for all the states. From the perspective of the industry, it makes more sense to figure out what can be done well than to try to do everything. In particular, we should be ensuring that the scoring and reporting of results is accurate and devoting adequate resources to the task of using the test results to enhance the quality of instruction. We must remember that the purpose is not more and better tests, but more effective teaching and a better education for all students.

This is a time when the constructive power of science and technology (S&T) can propel humankind to new levels of global well-being, or when their destructive power could bring an era of darkness and suffering. Although decisions by governments and intergovernmental organizations are fundamentally political processes, in a technology-driven world, S&T advice is needed for those political decisions. The S&T advisor, the advisory committee of experts, a select panel, or whatever the unit is must provide the best possible scientific counsel to the political decisionmaker.

That means reaching consensus about the state of the science–for which there is never quite enough data–and then making clear what assumptions underlie any conclusions. Scientists and engineers can choose to go further by recommending a political course of action, but that is taking on a different role, that of lobbyist, activist, or special interest pleader. Of course, every citizen has the right to promote a political position, but one must distinguish that from the activity of providing expert scientific or technical advice. To be effective, an advisor must retain credibility as well as integrity.

In a recent discussion with the deputy secretary of state, I said that I would feel that I had truly succeeded in my job as science advisor if he and the secretary would ask themselves with respect to every decision they had to make: What does S&T tell us about this situation? His answer was: Look, there are a lot of issues that we deal with that don’t involve science.

I agree that if the secretary is heading off to meet with the leaders of Pakistan and India to persuade them not to start a major conflict that could end in a nuclear exchange, there is not much last-minute S&T advice to give him as he boards the plane. However, S&T do play a major role in gathering and interpreting the reconnaissance data, assessing technical capabilities, and understanding their deployment of forces. Seismic monitoring helps in assessing their nuclear capabilities, and up-to-date communications are vital for keeping the negotiator fully informed on new developments. Strictly speaking, this is not S&T advice, but drawing on S&T expertise to interpret this information and to ensure that it is accurate and useful is an important contribution to foreign policy.

S&T are equally important at international institutions. A recent National Research Council (NRC) report, Knowledge and Diplomacy, recommended the creation of science advisor positions or advisory offices and advisory procedures at senior levels in the governing bodies of United Nations (UN) organizations that have major developmental responsibilities. The report recognizes that moving forward on an agenda of global sustainable development requires an effective source of S&T advice for those that will drive the process. I hope that this report is as influential as the 1999 NRC report on S&T in foreign policy that resulted in my position being created at the Department of State. I support the effort that has already begun to have the NRC do a similar study about how S&T can most effectively serve the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) in its broad development mission.

I must mention two other institutions in which the National Academies also play a major role. The first is the Inter-Academy Panel, which is made up of about 80 national and regional science academies of the world. It has proven to be a valuable global forum, especially for building national advisory capabilities and providing science advice to governments and international institutions. In 2000, this panel established the 15-member Inter-Academy Council to conduct science policy studies and offer direct science-based advice to intergovernmental organizations on questions with high S&T content. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has welcomed this new instrument and asked for an urgent study on increasing agricultural productivity in Africa.

New challenges

Although this council will play an important role, I see an opportunity for the S&T community to do even more. I propose a new series of challenges for the National Academies and particularly for hands-on practitioners. Advice about what path to take is helpful, but the scientists, engineers, and physicians also can play an essential role in implementation. We have to make sure that these organizations are equipped to carry out all that good advice that they are getting. Let me give you a few examples.

The recent World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg was criticized by some advocates of the poor and of environmental protection for catering to the self-interest of powerful countries and corporations. However, Calestous Juma, a Kenya-born professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said that the activists missed the point at WSSD. He said that the meeting marked a transition to a new way of thinking about development: away from global agreements and toward national and local actions. In this strategy, partnerships among government, business, and community will be the key to a sustainable future.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who represented President Bush at Johannesburg, told the delegates that the United States considers science-based decisionmaking to be an essential foundation for sustainable development. But he also talked about the need for good governance, which includes responsible stewardship of the economy and of the environment. When he returned home, Powell told the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that WSSD was a success but emphasized that it was not an end in itself. He praised it as the start of a process based on an emerging sense of global cooperation in addressing real issues such as clean water, energy, health, agriculture, education, biodiversity, and S&T capacity.

In addressing these issues, the secretary highlighted the powerful new theme of public-private partnerships. He also challenged the PCAST members to help in building the kinds of partnerships that will make the WSSD vision a reality. I am pleased that the National Academies have begun a major new activity on S&T for sustainability, building on their previous excellent report Our Common Journey. Also, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) helped the U.S. engineering community to produce a broadly endorsed statement of support for sustainable development that was released and promoted at the WSSD. This subject of sustainability is a perfect challenge for NAE, because there will be no solutions to problems such as inadequate water quality and energy infrastructure without the help of engineers.

Another example of progress is President Bush’s announcement during a recent speech at the UN that the United States will rejoin the UN Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO). Having supported this move during my two years on the job, I am particularly pleased with this decision. I fully expect that we will find that UNESCO is still afflicted by diffuse programs, weak staff, top-heavy bureaucracy, and other problems that gave us headaches in the past. In fact, some critics of UNESCO argue that the United States should not become a full member but should participate in only a few select UNESCO activities.

This would save money and allow the United States to avoid addressing problems within UNESCO. However, I just cannot accept the idea that the world’s leading power would fail to enter into a body that is dedicated to global advances in education, science, and culture. We must try to exert real leadership in making UNESCO an effective force for good. We need an excellent U.S. national committee, with strong representation from the S&T community. We must get good people into the organization to assist in continuing reforms and optimizing its programs.

Let me mention another area where the collective voices of the Academies must be heard. The dominant theme in Washington today is the war on terrorism, and the Academies have stepped forward to show how S&T can serve to counter this frightful scourge. But some responses to the threat of terrorism are disturbing. Some people have overreacted in calling for the government to pull up the drawbridge, fill in the moat, and bolt the gates to keep out those who would do us harm.

The problem is that we don’t know for sure who poses a threat, do we? Roughly half a million foreign students are enrolled in U.S. universities. Half of our engineering and physical science graduate students are from abroad. Creating impediments for all of these students does not serve the national interest. Yet, new visa processes have resulted in longer waits for approval and for more denials. Foreign scientists and engineers who want to attend international conferences held in the United States are often finding it impossible to obtain a visa in time to attend. A former research colleague of mine just wrote to me that his top postdoc candidate this year from India finally gave up on his U.S. visa application and went to France. The recent Space Policy Summit and World Space Congress in Houston were deprived of a number of important delegates who did not get their visas in time to attend–a major embarrassment to us as an open society.

I do not want to minimize the danger of terrorism, but we should be able to protect the public without undermining S&T education and research. We are not defending a castle. We are defending a society whose very essence has been built on a foundation of openness and individual freedom. The S&T community needs to work with government officials to help achieve a balance between security and openness. To understand the importance of foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States, we should remember a World War II joke about a high-level White House meeting concerning the atomic bomb. In the middle of one session, one of the members said, “Gentlemen, why are we wasting our time? Why don’t we just speak Hungarian?”

Much of the strength of this nation has been in its diversity. The United States has benefited immeasurably from its policy of providing refuge and opportunity to people who have suffered from tyranny or deprivation abroad. Last year 70 percent of the pages in the Journal of Physical Review came from foreign authors. The United States is not the source of all S&T progress, and the country must not cut itself off from what is done elsewhere.

Cooperation works

Finally, I am a great believer in S&T cooperation as a bridge to friendly elements in hostile countries, as well as an effective means of strengthening ties with our friends, particularly in developing countries. Certainly, the sustained dialogue that members of the Academies had with Soviet physicists was an important part of what kept us from blowing each other up during the long years of Cold War tensions.

To me, one of the great dangers of the terrorist threat is that it zealots could escalate it into a broad confrontation of Islam with the West. S&T cooperation provides us with a concrete means for building selective bridges to the Islamic world, which can help to avoid such a clash. A recent public opinion poll in Muslim countries found that although U.S. foreign policy and cultural values were not highly regarded, the nation’s S&T achievements earned the highest respect and admiration. For example, 95 percent of those polled in Iran had a favorable view of U.S. S&T. By comparison, a poll conducted in France found only 56 percent positive about U.S. S&T. We need to have the good sense to build on our strengths.

Although cooperation sounds simple, it is not. Even with a federal budget of more than a trillion dollars, including $112 billion for research and development (R&D), no U.S. government agencies have an easy or convenient mechanism for supporting international cooperation in S&T. That has not stopped many resourceful people from finding ways to cooperate, with each agency doing what it can based on its unique mission, legislation, and funding capacity. In my view, this is not a satisfactory way of dealing with this subject–one of great potential value to our foreign policy and international relations, but also to our scientific community in helping them to know the researchers and the R&D programs that are active elsewhere in the world.

Political scientist Eugene Skolnikoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who worked half time at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) during the Carter administration, recently told me that during that period OSTP developed a proposal to establish a new government institution expressly for the purpose of funding S&T cooperation with other countries. The Office of Management and Budget, the House and Senate authorization committees, and the House Appropriations Committee approved a $10 million first-year budget. But in the end, a small but determined opposition in the Senate killed the bill, and a grand idea died.

What a shame. What a loss from our still anemic quiver of active foreign policy tools. After two years at the State Department, I feel even more strongly that we need such a program. We could more quickly and effectively respond to the visits from science ministers of many countries that have committed money to building their own S&T capacity and seek only a chance to cooperate with U.S. institutions. We could even make a small grant to the fledgling Arab Science and Technology Foundation based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, aiding its attempt to build a more effective research community in the Arab world.

It could help us with Eastern European countries, to which the United States provided some help in S&T after the fall of the Berlin Wall but little since. Enhanced cooperation can likely be achieved without the creation of a new agency. Slight changes in spending guidelines and dedicated funding at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies that support S&T research could do the job. But whatever the solution, I am convinced we need better instruments for putting real meat on the bones of our international S&T relationships. Indeed, this might be a good issue for the Academies to examine in greater detail.

What happens when the scientific community’s responsibility to society conflicts with its professional self interest? In the case of research related to climate change the answer is clear: Self interest trumps responsibility. In 1989, Senator Al Gore provided this justification for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP): “More research and better research and better targeted research is absolutely essential if we are to eliminate the remaining areas of uncertainty and build the broader and stronger political consensus.” Over the next 13 years, the nation spent more than $20 billion on research under the USGCRP, with the promise that new fundamental knowledge about the climate system was a crucial prerequisite for effective policymaking. During this time, the politics of climate change have become more intractable, and the path toward scientific certainty much more challenging.

Given this track record, two questions have become unavoidable: First, has research focused on “reducing uncertainty” provided information needed by decisionmakers? Second, is it possible that such research has actually impeded effective policymaking?

Now is precisely the time to confront these uncomfortable questions. Having declined to participate in the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration has refocused attention on climate change research with the recent release of the draft strategic plan for its Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), the new umbrella structure for the USGCRP and the year-old Climate Change Science Initiative. The strategic plan will be finalized in April 2003, after an exhaustive process of public and expert input, including a three-day workshop last December, attended by more than 1,000 people (mostly government and academic scientists), and a formal review by the National Research Council (NRC). As in the USGCRP in 1989, the focus of the draft plan is on reducing uncertainty as the basis for action on climate change.

Our position, based on the experience of the past 13 years, is that although the current and proposed climate research agenda has little potential to meet the information needs of decisionmakers, it has a significant potential to reinforce a political situation characterized, above all, by continued lack of action. The situation persists not only because the current research-based approach supports those happy with the present political gridlock, but more uncomfortably, because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include scientists themselves. Things are unlikely to change for the better unless the climate research community adopts a leadership role that places societal responsibility above professional self-interest.

No one should deny that the decade-plus public investment in climate science has delivered continual progress in deepening our understanding of the earth and its climate, including major advances in areas such as abrupt climate change, coupled ocean-land-atmosphere dynamics, and year-to-year variability. This research agenda has directly reflected the priorities of the science community, especially as reflected by the recommendations of NRC committees. Fully half of the climate research budget has been devoted to space-based observation hardware, which on the one hand creates its own constituency in the space community, and on the other generates a data stream that reinforces the existing research agenda. In contrast, the needs and capabilities of decisionmakers who must deal with climate change have played little part in guiding research priorities.

The new CCSP Strategic Plan does take a small step in recognizing decisionmakers’ needs by focusing some attention on “decision support resources,” but it has no mechanism for reconciling decisionmaker needs with research priorities, assuming instead that the research proposed is that which decisionmakers must need. Given the experience of the past 13 years, it would seem appropriate for the plan to examine not only the claim that uncertainty can in fact be reduced, but also the belief that such a reduction is necessary for effective policy. Instead, the plan labors under the false assumption that policymakers require reduced uncertainty in order to take action.

This assumption arises from political expediency, not good science policy. In the late 1980s, policymakers figured out that the way to survive the intense political battle over climate change was to accept the idea that science could resolve policy uncertainties about the future and thus obviate the need for action in the present. This explains why in 1990 President George H. W. Bush joined a Democratic Congress in support of the legislation forming the USGCRP. For politicians, research itself served as action.

At the time, proponents and opponents of hydrocarbon emission reductions joined together in support of the research program, as each wagered that more research would strengthen their respective positions. Surprise: They were both right! The tens of billions of dollars in research devoted to date to the USGCRP have provided considerable grist for advocates who support action, but also have produced enough scientific surprises and complexities to sustain the opposition as well.

So, after nearly a decade and a half, the context for the president’s new CCSP is changed only in its details. In the Kyoto Protocol, proponents and opponents of action now have a specific vehicle to champion or oppose, but the calculus remains the same. Science continues to flourish because of the intense politics of climate change. The scientific community continues to promise politicians that they will provide the basis for climate change decisionmaking by reducing uncertainties and generating plausible projections about the future climate. Politicians gladly pass off the responsibility to the scientists, and advocates of all stripes accept science as the turf on which the political battle over climate policy should be waged. Not surprisingly, the CCSP and its promoters in the Bush administration continue to chant the familiar mantra, emphasizing the need to reduce uncertainties and improve projections as the basis for improved decisionmaking.

How decisions are really made

Somehow missed in this political logrolling have been two facts. First, even full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which is probably politically, if not technically, impossible, will have no discernible effect on the impact of climate on society and the environment. Second, better decisions about people and ecosystems in the context of climate depend very little–if at all–on reduced uncertainty or plausible projections about climate change. In the face of fundamental uncertainties, decisions are made routinely on equally complex and far-reaching issues, such as economic policy, foreign policy, and national security. In such arenas, policymakers accept lack of certainty as a condition of life, and although they may call upon scientific research and technological innovation, it is not to reduce uncertainties to some theoretical point that would resolve political dispute. On the contrary, our own research on the role of prediction in decisionmaking in a wide range of science issues suggests that policymakers need research to increase the range of plausible choices available to them in the present. As a member of Congress asked more than a decade ago: “How much longer do you think it will take before [the USGCRP is] able to hone [its] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take . . . justified by what we already know?” The organization of the current CCSP offers the following answer: Forever.

Given the legitimating political role conferred on science and scientists in the climate change arena, the scientific community is in a position to motivate change. If scientists are serious about wanting to do research that supports decisionmaker needs, then they could insist on a systematic and rigorous assessment of such needs as primary input to setting research priorities and then modify priorities accordingly. And for scientists who believe that the current state of knowledge is already sufficient to justify particular policy actions, a provocative strategy would be to follow the example of those in the Cold War physics community who believed the nation did not need additional weapons of mass destruction and therefore opposed the funding of research intended to support weapons’ development. Today’s scientists could oppose research whose funding is predicated on the claim that action depends on further reduction of uncertainties. The effect in both cases would be to remove science as a cause of gridlock and to make viable new lines of research that would better support the needs of society.

Such a quixotic response is of course unlikely, not simply because it would require scientists to argue against their own professional self-interest, but also because it would reveal the amazing incoherence of our current approach to connecting climate policy and science. Put simply: The types of knowledge we have been emphasizing for the past decade or so, despite their significant scientific value, are not those we will most need in dealing with the challenge of climate change. It’s as if the National Institutes of Health focused its research on making better projections of when people will die, rather than seeking practical ways to increase health and life expectancy.

A new focus

Some readers of this commentary may protest that the science of climate change is quite good enough to justify action, and we agree. But the question is: What action? The answer to this question, and a starting point for a CCSP more directly relevant to the needs of decisionmakers, comes from those who deal with climate-related effects on a daily basis. For example, the recent declaration resulting from the Delhi meeting under the Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded that “actions are required to diversify energy supply by developing advanced, cleaner, more efficient, affordable and cost-effective energy technologies” and also that “adaptation requires urgent attention and action on the part of all countries.” Conspicuous by omission was any mention of action predicated on reduced uncertainty or better projections.

The actions called for in the Delhi meeting reflect the simple reality that climate change must be confronted along two parallel paths. First, over the long term, reducing the anthropogenic contribution to climate change will require decarbonization of our energy system. At the same time, no matter how energy policies evolve, we have every reason to expect that humanity’s ability to control the behavior of climate will remain quite limited. So, second, society will have to reduce its growing vulnerability by improving its capacity to prepare for and respond to climate events and their effects. Motivating politicians and policymakers to improve energy policies and reduce vulnerability to climate effects may be challenging, but it does not require a reduction in uncertainty about the future climate. However, it does require a realignment of research priorities.

Public and private investment in energy R&D has declined by almost two-thirds in real dollars since the late 1970s. In a recent article in Science, Martin Hoffert and colleagues conclude that significant reduction of carbon emissions, even if politically accepted, faces significant technological hurdles that cannot be overcome without considerably more attention to advanced energy research. The logic of the current approach is based on the assumption that a reduction in uncertainty about the future will create the political will necessary to implement a global regime of emissions reductions and limitations, which in turn will force greater attention to advanced energy research. The experience of the past decade or more suggests quite the opposite. We believe that progress on developing cost-effective carbon-free energy sources will be more quickly stimulated through direct investments in energy research and technology justified for their own sake. If nothing else, the focus on climate uncertainty has distracted us from the fact that there are plenty of reasons to improve energy policy, not least of which are the national security benefits gained from energy independence, the environmental and health benefits of cleaner fuels, and the long-term economic efficiencies that can be delivered by renewable energy sources.

At the same time, a large body of research on natural hazards, adaptive ecosystem management, and decisionmaking in the context of climate variability tells us that understanding and reducing vulnerability is the locus of knowledge with the most value for decisionmakers seeking to increase societal and environmental resilience to future changes in climate. Ironically, up until a year or so ago, the strategic planning process for the nation’s climate change research program showed signs of moving in this direction. Early drafts of a USGCRP strategic plan focused on the need to support research to characterize societal and environmental vulnerability to climate effects and to develop options for enhancing resilience. A true commitment to such a plan would have demanded a significant realignment of science priorities. But these themes have all but disappeared from the draft CCSP plan that is now under consideration, and research related to vulnerability remains at best a minor focus.

The return to a focus on science to reduce uncertainty cannot be attributed entirely to the change in administrations, though no doubt this has played a part. Politicians are able to substitute research for other action because a large portion of the climate science community, particularly those focused on global and regional climate modeling and the earth and space-based platforms to provide data for such models, continue to claim that more of their research will indeed lead to the reduced uncertainties allegedly necessary for policymaking. If scientists blew the whistle on this claim, its political viability would vanish.

We support a robust, well-funded basic research effort on the global earth system to provide a long-term base of understanding. But there should be no pretending that such research will be directly policy relevant, except in the obstructionist sense demonstrated during the past decade. To move beyond the gridlock that continues to characterize climate policy will require leadership, ultimately of policymakers, but first from scientists who, having benefited from the current approach, are willing to publicly confront its obvious political and social failures.

One way to exercise this leadership and make the CCSP more useful to decisionmakers would be to involve policymakers, in whose name the program is justified, in structuring, implementing, and evaluating the program’s research. Practically, this would mean sharing control over resource-allocation decisions with the mission agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Energy, Transportation, and Heath and Human Services, whose day-to-day business actually involves decisions related to climate. Another way would be to conduct serious research on the information needs of relevant decisionmakers at the local and regional level–farmers, emergency managers, city and regional planners, natural resource and energy supply managers, to name a few–as a basis for determining areas of research that are most likely to provide support for effective actions. We recognize that these approaches would represent a fundamental shift in the science and policy of climate and would likely result in a significant change in scientific and budgetary priorities for climate research. But if the public, rather than the scientific community, is to be the primary beneficiary of the nation’s commitment to climate research, then this is the direction in which we must move.

The U.S. highway system faces many challenges in the years ahead, challenges that cannot be successfully addressed without new knowledge and innovations of all sorts. For example, how can highway agencies and their contractors reconstruct heavily used urban freeways while maintaining service and minimizing traveler delays and community disruption? Can the application of “intelligent” information and communication technologies reduce motor vehicle crashes, squeeze additional capacity out of existing highways, and improve the reliability of motor vehicle travel? How do roadways affect the natural environment, and what can be done to mitigate their impact? Can we develop affordable materials that will significantly extend the lives of highway pavements and bridges?

As users of the nation’s highway system and residents of communities affected by highways, most of us can identify with questions like these, or at least their premises. No wonder: The U.S. highway system handles more than 90 percent of all trips to and from work, more than 80 percent of intercity person trips over 100 miles, and about 70 percent of freight traffic, based on billings. Clearly the United States is heavily dependent–too dependent in the view of many–on its highway system; but like it or not, the nation will continue to depend on this system for decades to come.

Consequently, questions such as those posed at the outset will be relevant for years to come. Answering them requires research that expands our knowledge about highways, their performance, and their impacts. The stakes are significant, because highways are closely linked to economic development, public health, environmental quality, and lifestyle, as well as being a substantial public expense.

Unfortunately, research does not receive the attention or support in the highway field that it does in other sectors. Several factors contribute to this situation. First, the field has a low-tech image. The familiarity of the system and its use of materials and technologies whose origins can be traced to antiquity contribute to the thinking that there is nothing left to learn about highway technology and that today’s challenges are no different from ones the industry has faced before. Second, the highway system is highly decentralized. Roughly 35,000 governmental units operate highways, and tens of thousands of private companies provide materials and services. Most of these organizations do not have the wherewithal to support research on their own, and the sheer numbers involved make it difficult to transfer innovations into practice, even when the benefits are proven and substantial. Third, there are few incentives to innovate. The prevalence of highly prescriptive design specifications and low-bid procurement practices provides little incentive for private-sector contractors and material suppliers to conduct research on their own and offer innovative products. In addition, in the public sector, there are no market or competitive factors to push innovation. Finally, the benefits of research are hard to measure. Miracle cures for problems such as traffic congestion and motor vehicle crashes are unlikely. Progress is more often made through a combination of incremental improvements, making it difficult to attribute the benefits to a particular research project or investment. Moreover, the benefits come in multiple forms, some of which can be measured (for example, out-of-pocket cost savings or reduced fatalities and injuries) whereas others cannot (for example, improved aesthetics).

All of this translates to highway research spending that does not match the investment levels of other industries. Research spending for highways, including technology transfer and other activities that promote innovation, is less than 0.6 percent of total highway expenditures by highway agencies. Emerging industries, such as information and electronics and medical substances and devices, spend 7 percent or more of their net sales on research, and even relatively mature industries, including basic industries such as materials, machinery, and chemicals, devote 1 to 3 percent of their net sales to research.

Research success stories

Despite the modest investment in highway research, there have been many research success stories. Examples include roadside-barrier and crash-cushion designs that have saved lives and avoided serious injuries; computer-managed traffic signal systems that reduce delays and air-pollutant emissions; paving materials that last longer and reduce lifecycle costs; early treatment strategies that mitigate the effects of snow and ice; data that have monitored changes in travel behavior; and models that forecast how changes to highway and transit systems would affect travel. The reality is that virtually every aspect of highway planning, design, operation, and construction has improved during the past 40 years as a steady stream of innovations have been introduced. But as noted earlier, these improvements have been largely incremental, with few dramatic innovations that would be obvious to the public. Further, demands on the highway system during the past four decades have significantly outpaced capacity growth. From 1980 to 1997, vehicle-miles of travel on the system increased by 67 percent, while system lane-miles increased by just 4 percent. As result, although the system is far safer and more efficient in many respects, the traveling public often experiences more congested roads that do not deliver the service they expect or have had in the past.

To produce innovations, the nation relies on a decentralized highway research “program,” which is really a mix of loosely connected, relatively independent programs and activities that lack strong overall management. The available resources for highway research, roughly $700 million per year, are spread among many organizations, including state and federal laboratories, universities, consultants, and other research organizations. It is tempting to conclude that these resources would be used more effectively if they were much more concentrated and under the direct management of a strong national research entity. That would be a mistake.

Although there is much room for improvement in the way highway research is organized and conducted, a decentralized research program that directly involves operating agencies and other stakeholders is critical to keeping the program relevant and improving the chances that promising products and techniques will move from the laboratory into practice. As long as the ownership, management, and operation of the highway system are decentralized, a compelling case will exist for keeping research relatively decentralized as well.

With that said, the federal government is clearly the most important single participant in highway research in the United States. It has played multiple roles during the past 80 years, and without its involvement and leadership, there would be many fewer success stories to report. The federal government has provided:

Support for state research programs. Congress encouraged and later required state departments of transportation to spend a fraction of their highway federal-aid dollars for research. Currently, at least one-half percent must be spent on research. With these funds, states sponsor in-house research and other innovation-related activities, contract research with universities, and engage in cooperative research with other states. In addition, the states voluntarily pool funds for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), which is administered by the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board (TRB). Typically, state-sponsored research, including NCHRP, is highly applied, addressing specific technical problems that need near-term solutions and often leading to new specifications and design guidelines. Many states also play a leadership role in introducing innovations to local governments, which have little research capability on their own. Without federal support, state departments of transportation would not abandon research, technology transfer, and other innovation activities, but it is likely that a dramatic drop in scale would occur.

Direct support for research. Acting through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the federal government maintains its own research laboratories, provides funding for university research, and manages merit-based contract research.

Technology transfer. The federal government has promoted innovation through technology transfer programs and training activities and, at times, through regulations governing design and specification requirements for federally supported highways. With offices in every state and a technically savvy staff, the FHWA is well positioned, indeed uniquely positioned, to fulfill this role.

Special research programs. With support from state departments of transportation, Congress has occasionally authorized special, highly focused research programs to fulfill a specific mission. A large-scale pavement-testing program was completed in the early 1960s, and the five-year Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP), started in 1988, explored several mostly materials-related topics. Both programs were well funded, addressed a few pressing problems, and led to significant changes in highway design and materials.

New directions

Indispensable as it has been, the federal research program faces new challenges that could ultimately threaten the effectiveness and perhaps viability of the program. And as with any research program, periodic adjustments in direction and organization are required in any case. TRB and National Research Council committees have been reviewing various aspects of the research program for the past 10 years, with particular emphasis on the research funds directly managed by FHWA. These committees recently completed three reports that address the federal program and where they believe it should be headed: The Federal Role in Highway Research and Technology (2001), Strategic Highway Research: Saving Lives, Reducing Congestion, Improving Quality of Life (2001), and Surface Transportation Environmental Research: A Long-Term Strategy (2002). In brief, their recommendations call for the following actions:

Refocusing the federal research program on topics that reflect a long-term, national perspective. Such a focus would complement the state- and private-sector-funded programs that emphasize shorter-term, highly applied research. It would include fundamental, long-term research, because, for example, only research of this type will enable us to understand at the molecular level how the composition of asphalt and concrete affects their performance as highway materials. Also, long-term study is needed to understand better how individuals and households make choices related to travel and how these decisions interact with other lifestyle choices. A refocused program would also include research that fills gaps that other research programs are unable fill, such as pavement experiments or other large-scale data collection efforts that require a sustained commitment of resources. Finally, it would include research on emerging issues with national implications. A variety of topics related to federal policy and regulatory responsibilities fit this category, as well as wholly new concerns such as heightened security and counterterrorism needs.

Providing for more substantive stakeholder involvement in setting priorities and allocating resources. There are many stakeholders in the highway system, including state and local agencies, private-sector companies that provide materials and services to these agencies, highway users of all sorts, and communities and others affected, directly and indirectly, by the highway system. Stakeholder involvement approaching a sense of ownership is needed to promote the use of new technologies and other innovations, and it is vital in maintaining stakeholder and congressional support for the program. Equally important, it is crucial to keeping the program relevant and attuned to changing needs.

Involving stakeholders can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Formal advisory groups composed of stakeholders can provide strategic guidance, workshops can involve stakeholders in setting topic area priorities, and merit review panels can include stakeholders in the selection of research organizations. FHWA already has many such mechanisms in place, so it is not a question of starting from nothing but rather one of more fully exploiting and augmenting mechanisms already in place.

Reemphasizing competition and merit-based evaluation in awarding research contracts. Congressional designations of funding to specific institutions or for relatively narrow purposes have grown from about 10 percent in 1997 to as high as 60 percent in subsequent years. Technical competition and merit review are the best ways to ensure the maximum return on investment in research funding and to guarantee that the door is open for talent and creativity.

Supplementing established programs with a new continuing program that would address the growing list of important topics at the nexus of highways and the environment. Different perspectives and mistrust between highway and environmental organizations often prevent practical solutions to problems as diverse as storm water runoff and environmental justice. For example, there are competing “facts” and views about the impact of highways on the human and natural environment, the public response to alternative transportation services, the role of highways in creating or enabling low-density development, and the economic impact of highway expansion. Many issues of this sort routinely arise in required environmental impact statements. Available resources for research have not been commensurate with the significance of these problems, and responsibility for finding the resources (highway agencies, environmental regulatory agencies, or others) has not been clear.

This proposed program would involve highway and environmental groups in the oversight of a new, independently managed research program seeking solutions to problems that ultimately require acceptance by both groups for widespread implementation. The program would incorporate features from existing cooperative research programs such as the Health Effects Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results Program, the NCHRP, and the Transit Cooperative Research Program.

Supplementing established programs with a new Strategic Highway Research Program. Modeled after SHRP, this program would be created for only six years. It would sponsor research at an unprecedented scale on four of the most critical problem areas facing motorists and highway agencies.

Accelerating the renewal of U.S. highways. Much of our highway system, particularly interstates and primary arterial highways, must be reconstructed in the coming years, and because we are so dependent on them, they must be reconstructed while remaining open to traffic. Systematic approaches to reconstruction offer opportunities to significantly reduce the construction time and mitigate the disruption to motorists and adjacent communities. These approaches would include new construction methods and materials, new processes that integrate design and construction planning, new strategies for traffic control and safety, and new procurement methods and specifications. At the same time, opportunities exist through better materials, designs, and maintenance planning to rebuild highways that will last longer and require less frequent maintenance. This research would include not only the development of new methods and approaches but also activities aimed at promoting implementation.

Making a significant improvement in highway safety. Seat belt laws, occupant restraint devices, tougher limits on alcohol consumption, and a host of other vehicle and roadway safety improvements have significantly reduced fatal crash rates on a per-mile-driven basis. But with more than 40,000 lives lost each year and 3 million injured, highway crashes remain nothing less than a public health crisis. With the “easier” safety measures already largely implemented, further improvements in crash rates will be tougher to achieve. Indeed, the growth in travel is already starting to outstrip accident rate reductions and produce net increases in total fatalities annually.

There are many promising new safety measures, such as in-vehicle warning systems or systems that combine detection with automated response. But these technology-based measures raise many questions that are currently unanswerable. What sorts of information will be of greatest value to drivers, and how should it be presented to them so that it can be readily understood and appropriately acted upon? Under what circumstances should vehicle control be relinquished to automated systems? If the vehicles become safer, will drivers adapt and drive faster or in worse conditions, thereby reducing or even eliminating the expected improvement in overall safety?

For the longer term, safety experts agree that more-effective countermeasures cannot be developed without much better information about driver behavior and the specific causes of crashes. Technologies such as in-vehicle event data recorders offer new opportunities to collect this information. The task is great and likelihood of success uncertain, but the door is now open as never before to pursue this research.

Providing a highway system with reliable travel times. Nonrecurring incidents, such as crashes, disabled vehicles, hazardous material spills, major athletic events, and other special events, account for much of the unpredictability in highway performance. Systematic approaches are needed to identify such incidents quickly, alert drivers who still have an opportunity to avoid the incidents, and then swiftly clear them and/or mitigate their consequences. A combination of new strategies, new technologies, and new relationships between the emergency responders and other public agencies involved is needed. Research in this area would pursue all three and would also include implementation strategies.

Providing highway capacity in support of the nation’s economic, environmental, and social goals. The United States will never again build new highways at the pace of the interstate era. Nonetheless, new roads are being constructed and existing roads are being reconstructed with added lanes. This research would examine new approaches to highway development that better balance environmental, aesthetic, and social considerations with engineering and economic considerations. More specifically, it would develop new tools for designing facilities, assessing impacts, and working with affected users and communities.

Research in all of these problem areas is under way today, but the scale of effort is too small to promise near-term research results that could substantially change practice. FHWA can act on some of these recommendations on its own, but most will require congressional consent and action. In the coming year, Congress will be working on legislation to reauthorize the federal surface transportation programs that expire at the end of fiscal year 2003. As always, research will not be at the top of the agenda. Funding levels, formulas that allocate funds among states, and various program specifics will attract most of the attention and energy of legislators, their staffs, and the various interest groups. But when the smoke clears, it may be that what is done, or not done, to support research will have greater long-term consequences.

Are careers in scientific research still attractive to the most talented young Americans? This is a critical question since it is widely held that innovation in science depends less on the many “worker bees” in the enterprise than on a decent sprinkling of the very best minds. In one sense such careers surely remain attractive because breathtaking advances in fields such as neuroscience, genomics, and computer science are intellectually exciting. But there are also less attractive aspects that top students must consider in making choices about advanced education and careers. Training and apprenticeship times in science have become very long: ten years or more counting the postdoctoral appointment that has become nearly obligatory for most attractive career positions. Compensation for graduate students and postdoctoral appointees is very modest for professionals who are often in their mid-thirties. Probably most important, prospects for autonomous research positions in academe and elsewhere that most would-be scientists aspire to at the end of this long road are uncertain and increasingly slim.

Why should society and policymakers worry about this? In most fields we depend on market signals and mechanisms to guide people to educational and career tracks. If our best and brightest choose to become lawyers and investment bankers rather than scientists and engineers, why not say, “So be it”? A laissez-faire approach will not work in this case because public policy largely determines the demand for scientists and engineers with advanced degrees. Most PhD-trained scientists are employed in research or teaching, and the most of the support in both areas comes from government. From a policy perspective, it is critical to recognize that the research and teaching most scientists do has an important public good element, meaning that society as a whole benefits in ways not fully valued in market signals such as compensation levels. Government’s role is to ensure through policy that the value of the public good is recognized. If policies serve to make scientific research careers inadequately attractive to the best young minds, this will surely work to society’s detriment in an age when scientific and technological advances are basic to key values such as economic growth, environmental protection, public health, and national security. In short, we cannot leave these decisions to the market without recognizing that we, the citizenry, are a large part of the market.

Unfortunately, current policies for human resources in science and engineering are not responding to clear signs that our best and brightest are turning in growing numbers to other career paths. Our investigation showed that little attention is being paid to student quality issues. It seems to be assumed that, as long as graduate programs are of high quality, top students will be attracted without much direct attention from policymakers. We think there is good reason to doubt this premise in several natural sciences disciplines as numbers of top U.S. students headed for graduate school have declined and as it becomes more difficult to recruit and enroll international students as well.

Moreover, to the extent policies do respond to perceived shortages, they tend to be shortsighted and to exacerbate longer run problems. This is true of recent policies that simply expand the number of visas granted to foreign scientists to fill empty job slots in industry, and of government R&D support policies that pay little heed to impacts on graduate students. Expanding imports of young scientists to fill empty slots at bargain wages dampens the market signal that more opportunities and higher salaries would provide to domestic talent. Similarly, R&D support policies often have counterproductive impacts on graduate student incentives and flows because the policies are largely oblivious to such considerations. When R&D funding declines in an area, such as in the physical sciences where it fell 18.5 percent between 1992 and 2000, supported graduate research assistant positions decline and top students with other attractive alternatives are dissuaded from pursuing the field. This might be justified to a point if the field was in long-term decline, but such is not plausible in fundamental areas of science.

Conversely, in hot fields such as many of the life sciences, research assistant positions have grown rapidly in recent years, whereas the growth of “permanent” research and teaching positions has not kept pace. The result has been a logjam in numbers of recent PhDs caught sometimes for years in postdoctoral positions with very modest salaries that generally provide little autonomy in selecting research topics or applying for grants. At this point, still-apprentice scientists are typically in their mid-thirties and well into what should be their most creative and productive years when intellectual and professional autonomy is most desirable. Women in these circumstances may be especially discouraged as their prime childbearing years pass by. Most troubling, as PhD numbers continue to climb, the career prospects for many long-term postdocs are dim. The National Research Council study Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists (1998) found that the proportion of life sciences PhDs holding faculty positions nine to 10 years after earning their degree fell from 61 percent in 1973 to 39 percent in 1995, and the proportion not holding full-time jobs in science increased to 20 percent by the latter year. The signals this sends the next generation of the best and brightest cannot be encouraging. Clearly, more systematic policy thinking, taking explicit account of the need to maintain the flow of top domestic talent into graduate programs, is needed.

Signs of decline

According to the National Science Foundation, from 1993 to 2000 the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolling in graduate programs in the natural sciences and engineering (S/E) decreased more than 14 percent, with the greatest declines in mathematics (32 percent), engineering (25 percent), and physical sciences (18 percent). Enrollments increased slightly in biological sciences and computer science. PhD awards in the S/E fields fell by more than 10 percent between 1995 and 2000, and preliminary 2001 data show further declines.

We wondered how the most outstanding students were affected. To study trends among top students enrolling in S/E graduate programs, we analyzed Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores over several years using data provided by the Educational Testing Service. We focused on U.S. citizens and permanent residents scoring 750 or above on the GRE quantitative scale (5 to 7 percent of all examinees) since this scale is usually of greatest interest to admissions committees in S/E fields.

Between 1992 and 2000, the total number of examinees scoring at this level with plans for graduate study in S/E fields fell by 8 percent (to around 8,000), while the number planning study in non-S/E fields increased by 7 percent (to about 4,650). Engineering and mathematics saw the largest declines in top scorers, 25 percent and 19 percent respectively. There were moderate declines in top scorers headed for physical sciences and computer science through 1998 but these trends reversed by 2000. Within the S/E total, biological sciences were increasingly popular among top-scorers, showing a 59 percent gain between 1992 and 2000, though from a relatively low base. The non-S/E area attracting the largest growth in top scorers was the ETS category “health sciences” (really health professions), consisting largely of short-training-cycle graduate professional fields such as physical therapy, speech/language pathology, and public health. As a group these fields attracted 88 percent more 750+ scorers in 2000 than in 1992 (878 individuals in 2000). Significantly, the overall declines in top scorers headed for S/E graduate programs were not the result of a decline in the proportion of top scorers among GRE examinees but rather reflected a general decrease in total numbers taking the GRE and expressing an interest in S/E. This suggests that more top students may have been pointing toward professional schools that require other admission tests.

One encouraging sign is that the number of high-scoring women and minorities intending to pursue graduate S/E training increased during the 1990s.

Where are top students going?

We also studied trends in other large professional tracks–law, medicine, and business–to try to discern paths of top students who might have pursued S/E studies. We found scant evidence that top undergraduate S/E majors were being attracted to law school. Between 1992 and 2001 the number of S/E majors taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) fell almost 19 percent. Unduplicated applicants to law schools decreased 24 percent, enrollments were flat, and mean LSAT scores of examinees and applicants fell slightly. So, it is unlikely that more top S/E students applied to law school.

A more ambiguous picture emerged in medicine. The number of U.S. applicants (unduplicated) increased from 1992 to 1996, then fell almost 25 percent by 2001. The number of new MD matriculants was flat and those with S/E undergraduate degrees declined by 3 percent between 1992 and 2001. Although these patterns do not suggest that more top S/E students entered medical school, the scores of applicants and matriculants on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) rose appreciably during this time on both the biological and physical sciences scales. The scores of non-S/E majors increased comparably, making it difficult to determine whether the proportion of top students in the pool increased or whether changes in the test may have led to the higher scores.

There are clearer signs that more top S/E students were attracted to graduate business schools. The number of MBAs awarded annually grew by nearly one-third, to more than 112,000, between 1992 and 2000. S/E majors’ share of all Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) examinees increased from 17 percent in 1992 to 20 percent in 2001. The absolute number of GMAT examinees with S/E undergraduate majors grew 31 percent between 1998 and 2001 alone. Additionally, the mean GMAT quantitative scale scores of S/E majors rose from 34 to 37 (on a 0-60 scale) between 1992 and 2001. (The scores of non-S/E undergraduate majors also increased, but less.) All in all, these patterns suggest that business schools very likely attracted a larger share of high scoring S/E majors during the 1990s.

To further investigate changes in the graduate study and career plans of top S/E students, we obtained data from the Consortium for Financing Higher Education (COFHE), a group of 31 highly selective private colleges and universities. We focused on the five COFHE schools with response rates above 50 percent on surveys of their seniors in 1984, 1989, and 1998. This spans a substantial period, including one year when the labor market was relatively sluggish following a recession (1984), and two years characterized by prosperity and robust labor markets (1989 and 1998). Thus, consistent trends emerging during the entire period cannot easily be attributed to labor market variations.

We analyzed data from more than 2,000 senior natural science majors (U.S. citizens and permanent residents only) who responded to the survey shortly before graduation regarding their plans for the next autumn. The trends are striking. The number of science majors planning advanced study in any field the next fall declined steadily from 48 percent in 1984 to 28 percent in 1998. Those planning immediate graduate study in S/E fields dropped from 17 percent to 12 percent during this span. Plans to attend medical school declined from 16 percent in 1984 to 10 percent in 1998. The paths showing substantial increases in shares of these graduates were: employment, up from 48 percent to 60 percent, and “undecided,” up from 4 percent to 10 percent, between 1984 and 1998. The basic patterns were similar across gender and ethnic groups, and the values for the 1989 cohort nearly always fell between those for the earlier and later years. For the elite subset of COFHE S/E majors with A or A- GPA’s, proportions headed immediately to graduate school were higher but declines were steeper: from 68 percent of the 1984 cohort down to 43 percent by 1998. The proportion headed straight to graduate school in S/E declined from 25 percent to 18 percent and to medical school from 25 percent to 17 percent.

The share of all COFHE S/E majors indicating no plans at all for advanced study during the course of their careers more than doubled, from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 1998. Among the A students, this proportion grew from under 3 percent in 1984 to more than 12 percent in the 1998 cohort. These increases may understate the true picture. It seems likely that plans to attend graduate school later are more likely to be derailed than immediate plans, especially in S/E where the traditional norm has been to enroll immediately after college.

In sum, the evidence is highly suggestive that top U.S. students with potential to become scientists are turning away from S/E graduate school (except in biological sciences) toward other career paths. It appears that significant numbers are choosing professional schools, notably business and non-MD health professions, which promise careers with good income prospects without the long years of schooling and apprenticeship that science requires. The comparison with S/E careers in which, after successfully negotiating a decade or more in training, the newly fledged scientist typically faces a job market with too few desirable jobs relative to the number of qualified seekers is increasingly stark.

A demand-side approach

If the labor market for PhD scientists is not sending a strong enough signal to attract the highest caliber students to S/E graduate school, then public policies should focus on demand-side issues as the first priority. Policies have traditionally focused on pumping up the PhD supply side by creating more graduate and postdoctoral fellowships and assistantships, but that is not the answer to the current problem. The savviest candidates will not be interested, because they will recognize that the career prospects are still dim. And if the policy were to succeed in attracting a large number of students, it would eventually lead to the unappealing postdoctoral logjam pattern that is now common in the life sciences.

In theory, demand-side policy responses might include a general increase in academic or R&D funding partly designed to improve career prospects for young scientists or even, as some nations have done, the creation of explicit policy to provide support to all or most PhD-trained researchers. If pursued consistently, these steps would surely increase the appeal of PhD careers, but for a variety of reasons–budget constraints, traditions of mission- and project-based funding, evidence that a significant proportion of PhDs will not be productive researchers–such policies are not in the cards in the United States today. More realistic would be a policy of modest new federal support for a significant number of selective research assistant professorships in the natural sciences and engineering at universities. These would be available only on a highly competitive basis to experienced and proven postdoctoral scholars who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Because of limited permanent job opportunities in academe and other research institutions relative to the current supply, some of these proven talents would otherwise have no alternative in research except another postdoctoral or similar apprentice position. Some will no doubt leave scientific research entirely just at the time of life when they are likely to be most creative and productive.

It would be essential that the new positions be designed to be as competitive, intellectually autonomous, and financially attractive as junior faculty posts at research universities and with similar periods of appointment, such as an initial three-year term with one renewal possible upon rigorous peer review analogous to the process for assistant professors. To stretch federal resources further, universities seeking eligibility to host these appointees should be given incentives not only to make the posts attractive–faculty and principal investigator status, opportunities for participation in graduate student training and departmental intellectual life, provision of appropriate research facilities–but also to leverage additional support from state and private sources. Candidates completing these externally supported assistant professorships should have an equal chance as their more traditional-track colleagues for tenured posts available at the end of their term of support. If no such post was immediately available, the candidate could be reviewed for continuation supported by funds he or she should by then be able to secure on her/his own.

Although providing appropriate research facilities could be problematic for some institutions, such a program should be attractive to many research universities for it would improve their capacity to attract top-drawer younger scholars, increase faculty capacity, and thus research output and visibility. The main benefits to society would be to keep more of our most able young scientists doing science on meritorious projects of their own initiative–as most postdoctoral appointees cannot do–during what are often a scientist’s most innovative and productive years; and assuming the program is large and visible enough, to expand the pool of attractive research jobs perceived by outstanding young people who are at the point of choosing between graduate S/E studies and other pursuits. Given the immediate and long-term value to society of keeping our best and brightest young people involved in scientific research, a program just large enough to make an impact on these students’ choices seems a very good bet to produce benefits exceeding its costs. There are probably few better investments in the federal budget portfolio today.

Many people are simply puzzled by the heavy emphasis on standardized testing of students and eager to find out exactly what is gained by such activity. The title of the National Research Council study that I co-chaired states the goal directly: Knowing What Students Know. The concerns about student assessment are quite well known: misalignment of high-stakes accountability tests and local curricular and instructional practices, narrowing of instruction by teaching to tests with restricted performance outcomes, the frequent failure of assessments to provide timely and instructionally useful and/or policy-relevant information, and the failure to make full use of classroom assessments to enhance instruction and learning.

The goal of our committee was not to review all the alleged shortcomings of past or current tests but to take the opportunity to rethink assessment. During the past 30 years, there have been major advances in the cognitive sciences that help us to understand the ways that people learn, which in turn help identify more precisely what aspects of student achievement we should be trying to assess. During the same period, there has been equally rapid progress in the development of measurement techniques and information technology that enhance our ability to collect and interpret complex data and evidence. The committee brought together experts in measurement, cognitive and developmental psychology, math and science education, educational technology, neuroscience, and education policy to determine how these recent developments can be applied to assessment. The committee’s stated mission was to establish a theoretical foundation for the design and development of new kinds of assessments that will help students learn and succeed in school by making as clear as possible to them, their teachers, and other education stakeholders the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Most assessments now in use fail to meet this objective.

We want assessment to be a facilitator of higher levels of student achievement. This will require a departure from current practice that must be guided by further research as well as policy changes. What we’ve learned from research enables and compels us to do a better job with assessment.

What is assessment?

Assessment is a process of gathering information for the purpose of making judgments about a current state of affairs. In educational assessment, the information collected is designed to help teachers, administrators, policymakers, and the public infer what students know and how well they know it, presumably for the purpose of enhancing future outcomes. Part of the confusion that I mentioned above stems from the fact that some of these outcomes are more immediate, such as the use of assessment in the classroom to improve learning, and others are more delayed, such as the use of assessment for program evaluation.

This means that in looking at any assessment, we have to keep in mind issues of context and purpose. Sometimes we’re looking for insight into the state of affairs in the classroom, at other times emphasis is on the school system. The particular focus could be to assist learning, measure individual achievement, or evaluate programs. And here’s the rub: One size does not fit all. By and large, this has been overlooked in the United States. As a result, we have failed to see that changes in the context and purpose of an assessment require a shift in priorities, introduce different constraints, and lead to varying tradeoffs. When we try to design an all-purpose assessment, what we get is something that doesn’t adequately meet any specific purpose.

Any assessment must meld three key components: cognition, which is a model of how students represent knowledge and develop competence in the domain; observations, which are tasks or situations that allow one to observe students’ performance; and interpretation, which is a method for making sense of the data relative to our cognitive model. Much of what we’ve been doing in assessment has been based on impoverished models of cognition, which has led us to highly limited modes of observation that can yield only extremely limited interpretations of what students know.

It does little good to improve only part of this assessment triangle. Sophisticated statistical techniques used with restricted models of learning or restricted cognitive tasks will produce limited information about student competence. Assessments based on a complex and detailed understanding of how students learn will not yield all the information they otherwise might if the statistical tools available to interpret the data, or the data themselves, are not sufficient for the task.

We should move away from the simplistic notion that a test is a test is a test. We have to make certain that any given assessment is designed for its specific purpose and that within that context all three legs of the assessment triangle are strong.

Scientific foundations

Advances in the sciences of thinking and learning need to be used for framing the model of cognition, which must then inform our choices about what observations are sensible to make. Developments in measurement and statistical modeling are essential for strengthening the interpretation of our observations. For a thorough description of recent developments in the cognitive sciences, I must refer you to another NRC study How People Learn. I can’t begin to do justice to what’s been accomplished in this large and dynamic field, so I’ll limit myself to the bare bones of what we need to know in order to develop sound assessments.

The most critical implications for assessment are derived from study of the nature of competence and the development of expertise in specific curriculum domains such as reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. Much is known now about how knowledge is organized in the minds of individuals–both experts and novices in a field. We know more about metacognition: how people understand their own knowledge. We recognize that there are multiple paths to competence; that students can follow many routes in moving from knowing a little to knowing a lot. One of my favorite insights is that we now know much about the preconceptions and mental models that children bring to the classroom. They are not blank slates, and we can’t simply write over what is on those slates. In fact, if we fail to take into account how they know things, we are very likely to fail in instruction. In addition, much of students’ knowledge must be understood as highly contextualized and embedded in the situation in which it was acquired. The fact that we have taught fractions does not mean that students have a broad and flexible knowledge of fractions.

Contemporary knowledge from the cognitive sciences strongly implies that assessment practices need to move beyond discrete bits and pieces of knowledge to encompass the more complex aspects of student achievement, including how their knowledge is organized and whether they can explain what they know. There are instructional programs and assessment practices for areas of the curriculum based on cognitive theory, but much more work is needed.

Interpreting data on student performance is neither simple nor straightforward. Researchers have been refining techniques for deciding how data can be filtered and combined to produce assessment results, as well as determining how much information on what types of tasks needs to be collected. Statistical models are especially useful in four situations: high-stakes contexts in which we want to make decisions that have major effects on students’ lives; when we know relatively little about the history and experiences of the students being assessed; for complex models of learning; and for large volumes of data.

How do advances in measurement enable us to go beyond simplistic models of general proficiency? Three general sets of measurement issues account for most of the discontent with current measurement models, and each concern can be accommodated by various newer models. The first concern is whether we need to capture performance in terms of qualitatively discrete classes or a single general continuum of performance. The second is whether we need to be evaluating single or multiple attributes of performance. The third concern is whether we are evaluating status at a single point in time or change and growth over a period of time. Dealing with these issues requires a progression of models and methods of increasing complexity.

Fortunately, we have a collection of new measurement methods that can deal with more complex measurement concerns, but they have yet to be applied completely to the practical work of assessment. Information technology can help in this effort, but it will require more thought and research to explore the fit between particular statistical models and varying descriptions of competence and learning. Doing so requires extensive collaboration among educators, psychometricians, and cognitive scientists.

Assessment design and use

In moving from the scientific foundations to the design and use of effective assessment, we encounter four major challenges: developing principles to guide the process of assessment design and development; identifying assessment practices that are connected to contexts and purposes; exploring feasibility questions, particularly the potential for applying technology to many new design and implementation challenges; and being prepared to consider the possibility of a radical vision for the transformation of assessment.

Assessment design should always be based on a student model, which suggests the most important aspects of student achievement that one would want to make inferences about and provides clues about the types of tasks that will elicit evidence to support those inferences. What this means for the classroom teacher is that assessment should be an integral part of instruction. Students should get information about particular qualities of their work and what they can do to improve. Along the way, they should also be helped to understand the goals of instruction and what level of performance is expected of them. Of course, this will become possible only when cognitive science research findings are expressed in a user-friendly language. The implication for large-scale testing is that an integrated approach holds promise for drawing more valid and fair inferences about student achievement. But in order to implement this approach, policymakers will have to relax the constraints that drive current practices. For example, states should be allowed to administer more complex tests to a sample of students to acquire more fine-grained information on what students can do or to embed assessments in the curriculum in subjects such as art. The goal is to replace single assessment tests with systems of assessment that cut across contexts and are more comprehensive, coherent, and continuous. A number of assessment systems have been developed, and they give us a good starting point for further development.

Computer and telecommunications technologies provide powerful new tools that are needed to meet many of the design and implementation challenges implied by merging cognitive models and measurement methods. Compared to a conventional paper-and-pencil test, a test designed for administration on a computer makes it possible to consider novel ways of presenting questions, including a richer mix of task designs and question formats, assessing a broader repertoire of cognitive skills and knowledge, recording and scoring complex aspects of behavior, and embedding assessments in learning environments. If we let our imaginations roam a little, we can see an assessment system that is radically different from the annual multiple-choice test on a narrow slice of material.

Rich sources of information about student learning can be continuously available across wide segments of the curriculum and for individual learners over extended time periods. Electronic tests can be far more easily customized to the individual student and to the particular purpose or context. As we consider how to apply the insights of cognitive and measurement science, we should not limit ourselves to tinkering with testing as we know it. We should imagine assessment that is truly useful for a number of purposes, most importantly to aid in student learning.

Road map for action

This vision of an assessment system designed to help students learn will become reality only if we continue making research progress, reform policies to allow innovation in testing, and take the steps necessary to make changes in practice. The major research challenges include developing models of cognition and learning that are particular to each area of the curriculum while also developing statistical models designed to match the cognitive theories. To improve the fairness of the tests, we need to find reliable ways to incorporate what we know of the individual student’s instructional history. And to ensure that the new assessments will work in practice, we should form multidisciplinary design teams that include practitioners as well as researchers.

Practitioners will have to assume a key role in research designed to explore how new forms of assessment can be made practical for use both in classroom and in large-scale contexts and how various new forms of assessment affect student learning, teacher practice, and educational decisionmaking. This will entail developing ways to assist teachers in integrating new forms of assessment into their instructional practices, exploring ways that school structures (such as class period length, class size, and opportunities for teacher interaction) affect the feasibility of effectively implementing new types of assessment.

Developers of educational curricula and classroom assessments should create tools that will enable teachers to implement high-quality instructional and assessment practices that are consistent with modern understanding of how students learn and how such learning can be measured. But simply delivering these tools to teachers will not be enough. The teachers themselves will need to be familiar with the cognitive science from which the new tools and approaches have emerged. We need to develop training materials that will enable teachers to understand how new research should be incorporated into their classroom practice. Instruction in how students learn and how learning can be assessed should be a major component of teacher preservice and professional development programs. Standards for teacher licensure and program accreditation should include training in assessment. This clearly is an enormous task and another area in which new information technology can play a critical role. Computer- and Internet-based training materials could make it possible to reach a large number of teachers quickly and at relatively low cost.

The country is apparently committed to the need for large-scale assessments of all students, but that need not be a commitment to the type of tests we use today. We can develop assessment systems that examine the broad range of competencies and forms of student understanding that research shows are important aspects of student learning. Although this can involve some of the familiar forms of testing, it must also incorporate a variety of other approaches, such as matrix sampling of items for test administration and curriculum-embedded measures.

We also need to devote more attention to explaining our new approaches to students, teachers, and administrators. All participants should be helped to understand what the learning goals are and how the assessment process advances those goals. This extra effort should also extend to the reporting of results. Too often the test score is communicated simply as a verdict with which one must live. We should develop reporting mechanisms that enable teachers and students to use the results to focus their efforts and improve educational outcomes.

We need to work with policymakers to help them recognize the limitations of current assessments and to convince them to support the development of new systems of multiple assessments that will improve their ability to make decisions about education programs and the allocation of resources. We must disabuse them of the dangerous belief that important decisions can be based on single test score. An accurate picture of student achievement can be attained only through a mix of assessment measures, from the classroom to the national level, that are coordinated to reflect a shared understanding of how learning occurs. Policymakers also need to understand that assessment is a movie, not a snapshot. What we really want to know is how students are progressing over time, not where they stand on a particular day.

Finally, educators and researchers need to work in cooperation with the media to improve public understanding of assessment, particularly as more complex assessment systems are implemented. Parents and voters need to be able to use this information to guide their decisions. Without sound information in accessible form, they will become even more puzzled by the mysteries of assessment.

If we all work together, we can replace assessments that are often narrow one-shot tests of skills divorced from the school curriculum with an assessment system that is comprehensive in merging a mix of measurement approaches, coherent in its link to sophisticated models of learning and its alignment with the curriculum, and continuous in linking each student’s performance over time.

Despite the economic slowdown that spread across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area in 2001, investment in and exploitation of knowledge remain key drivers of innovation economic performance, and social well-being. Over the past decade, investments in knowledge–as measured by expenditures on research and development (R&D), higher education, and software–grew more rapidly than did gross fixed capital formation and played an important role in driving economic growth.

After stagnating in the first part of the 1990s, OECD-wide R&D investment grew in real terms from US$ 416 billion to US$ 552 billion between 1994 and 2000, and R&D intensity climbed from 2.04 percent to 2.24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The European Union (EU) as a whole lagged behind the United States and Japan in R&D intensity, prompting calls to boost the EU’s R&D intensity to 3 percent of GDP by 2010.

OECD governments are paying more attention to the contribution of science and innovation to economic growth and have introduced a variety of new initiatives and reforms to better harness the results of their investments in S&T.. Linkages between industry and science and diffusion of knowledge within national innovation systems are emerging as a primary focus for innovation policy. Industry not only increased its in-house R&D spending but is also increasing its support for university research. Public research is being reformed to contribute to economic and social needs.

Growth in research is increasing the demand for skilled workers and researchers, which is leading to changes in immigration and education policy, as well as to the creation of centers of excellence to act as magnets for scientific and technical talent. Many countries are making it easier for highly skilled workers to enter permanently or temporarily, and they are also increasing support of higher education to increase the supply of homegrown talent. Countries such as Chinese Taipei, Ireland, and Korea, which have seen a large number of their best workers leave, are experiencing success with policies to lure some of these workers back, especially as their domestic science and technology capabilities have improved.

The source of this information plus a great deal more data and an analysis of the policy environment is the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2002, which is available at www.SourceOECD.org.

R&D expenditures continue to grow

After a decline in the early 1990s, Gross expenditures on R&D (GERD) rose steadily across the OECD area and appeared to be on a continuing upward trend through 2001, both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP. Cutbacks in business R&D in high-tech sectors will likely stunt growth in 2002, but R&D intensity in the United States and Japan has surpassed 1990 levels. R&D intensity in the EU has yet to recover fully to the 1990 level.

On his first day in office, President Bush announced that education was his priority and set forth a plan that was based on four principles. The first, of course, is accountability. The president said that too many children across this nation are not educated to their potential and fall behind their peers in educational achievement. We have let this condition fester, because we have always assumed that there were some children who couldn’t learn well. We offered remedial programs, but the bottom line is that we never expected them to reach the same standard as the rest of the children. As the U.S. economy has evolved over the past few decades, education has become a more important requirement for economic success, and our failure to provide an adequate education to many young people will limit their opportunities throughout their lives.

In 1950, roughly 20 percent of U.S. jobs were professional positions, 20 percent required skilled labor, and 60 percent required only unskilled labor. Formal education wasn’t a necessity. Children leaving high school with limited skills or even without a diploma could still find jobs. They could acquire the limited training that they needed and earn enough to enjoy a middle-class life. That’s no longer the case.

In 2000, the job market is still 20 percent professional, but now it’s 65 percent skilled, leaving only 15 percent unskilled. In a nation with a steady stream of immigrants who are willing to accept very low wages, there is intense competition for a small number of unskilled jobs that don’t even pay well. We know that if we want our young people to have the opportunity to earn a decent living, raise a family, and become active members of society, we must provide them with a good education. That is the underlying motivation for the president’s No Child Left Behind legislation. The president and Secretary of Education Rod Paige are both committed to improving the life chances of our children and recognizing that the first principle that should guide reform is that we as adults need to take responsibility for the quality of learning in our schools.

Studies that seek to identify the factors that improve school performance all agree that teacher quality is the critical element of success. Of course, in some situations, even a magnificent teacher is not enough. Consider a sixth grader who ranks in the 20th percentile of student performance. That child is entering middle school without adequate basic skills in reading and math. Middle-school teachers are not trained to teach students rudimentary reading and mathematics, so this student is likely to be shunted into classes where little if anything is taught. The student might even be allowed to pass on through middle and high school without ever developing these skills. If the student lives in a state that does not have a high-school exit exam, he or she could receive a diploma.

When Rod Paige became superintendent of the Houston public schools, he noticed that the system had an unusually large number of ninth graders. He wondered where they were coming from. He discovered that in ninth grade, students were required to meet specified academic standards in order to be promoted. This was the first time that these students took a test with real consequences, and many were failing. He found that many of these students stayed in school for a year or two while their former classmates became sophomores and juniors. But when these classmates began talking about picking up tickets to graduation and being measured for their robes, the nonachievers quietly drifted away from school. They didn’t want to be around when their failure would become obvious to everyone. Paige rightly recognized this as a failure of the school system, not the students.

During the past few decades, we’ve learned an enormous amount about how children learn. In particular, we know much more about the process by which children learn to read, and we know that the inability to read proficiently is a barrier to further progress in education. These kids who became stuck in ninth grade had probably fallen behind their peers by third grade. After that, teachers think that it is not their job to teach reading, and they typically will not teach reading unless a student asks for help. This is not the responsibility of a nine-year-old; it is the job of the adults, the schools, and the school districts. This is where accountability must begin.

The second principle is to put control where it belongs. We cannot simply mandate from Washington how every school ought to operate, what standards it ought to use, what structures it ought to put into place. That’s got to be done in the states. Indeed, the states are likely to find that it is even more effective to have the school districts and the schools determine how best to help their students achieve high standards. And so in the bill, the states are left to determine what their standards should be, to develop assessments that are aligned with these standards, and to create an accountability system that must–for the first time–include all children.

The third principle is parental choice, and I am disappointed that the legislation that Congress passed did not go as far as the administration hoped it would. We recommended that any child in a low-performing school be allowed to transfer to a better-performing school, whether it be private or public. Congress agreed that no student should be forced to attend a low-performing school, but the majority decided that students have a right to attend a better public school but not a private school.

The legislation also enables parents who decide, perhaps for social or practical reasons, to keep their child in the low-performing school to use public money to pay for additional help for the child. This help can be provided by the public school system, by private companies, or by community organizations. The legislation’s goal is to have all students meet high academic standards. It provides the states with the flexibility to develop their own ways to achieve that goal.

The fourth principle is to research what works. Although that sounds very simple and obvious, the reality is that we have not done it. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been too busy fighting the “reading wars” between the advocates of phonics and the advocates of whole language. The result of this obsessive struggle is that we sometimes find kids who have developed wonderful decoding skills through phonics but who aren’t reading because they are not given anything interesting to read. At the other extreme are some kids who are surrounded by good literature that they cannot decode. It should have become apparent by now that there is no conflict between the two approaches. Research has shown that kids need alphabetic awareness, phonetic decoding skills, and stimulating literature.

We also need to learn more about how children learn mathematics, science, and social studies. Our colleagues at the National Research Council have been working on this, but we need to do more. The Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement is putting more of its resources into research in these areas, so that we can provide teachers with better strategies and better tools.

The need for assessment

Of course, in order to figure out what works in the classroom, we need to assess student performance. Assessment is critical to making schools accountable and to identifying practices that make schools and teachers successful. Unfortunately, we are not doing enough to assess student progress.

Many states test students only once in elementary school, once in middle school, and once in high school. That amount of testing does not provide us with enough data to understand what is happening in the schools, so the new legislation requires schools to test more frequently. We should be realistic about what it will take for each of the 50 states to develop reliable tests that are carefully aligned with their goals and curricula. The schools and the private-sector companies combined might not have the expertise necessary to develop 50 separate sets of tests, and the states will have to decide if they want to team up with other states to produce a joint test or to use an off-the-shelf test until they can develop their own.

The whole point of annual assessment is that it provides a very rich data source that can be used to help individual children and to identify where teachers’ strengths and weaknesses lie. We know that if we look longitudinally at the classroom performance of children in a particular teacher’s classroom and find that every year those children miss certain objectives, the problem is probably the teaching strategy or the teacher’s content knowledge, not the children. Assessment can be a wonderful tool for principals and teachers to use to determine what professional development they need. If there are teachers whose students always do well with those objectives, let’s observe those teachers more closely to uncover the keys to their success and then share those insights with other teachers.

We can also use the data to evaluate schools and school districts. Although many people are not happy to hear me say that, the truth of the matter is that we are not running our school systems as well as we should. I’m sorry if people are upset at that, but we have children for whom we are not providing even an adequate education, and those children deserve no less than a first-rate education.

No school system lacks the desire to do right by their students. They are underperforming because they don’t know how to do it differently. What happens over time is that underperformance erodes their morale; it erodes the teachers’ belief that school performance is in their control, and they start saying, well I was very successful with the students I used to have, so it must be the students. And what we have to say is, yes, students have changed. They learn differently than we do. They are much more accustomed to receiving information in short bursts from interactive multimedia sources, which means it’s a lot harder to get them to sit and listen to a lecture for 40 or 45 minutes than it was for some of us who grew up with books and other print media as our primary information source.

The fact that they learn differently doesn’t mean that they can’t learn. Some schools are doing an exemplary job, and the Department of Education has published a report on those schools. Knowing that it can be done makes it incumbent on us to have an assessment system that makes it possible to see that all schools succeed.

The goal is to have a test that measures how well the students are learning. A common concern is that if there is a test, teachers will teach to the test. But this is a circular argument. If the assessment is a good measure of what it is we want children to know and be able to do, then I certainly want the teachers teaching to the test. If it’s not, no matter what they do, they’re not going to be able to help children. Thus, the quality of the assessment is absolutely critical.

But more than that, the quality of the leadership in the schools and school districts is critical, because what we don’t want to see happen is that the assessments to be passed by all children become the ceiling rather than the floor. There are schools where they say if you’re going to measure me on mathematics and reading, we’re going to spend all of our time doing mathematics and reading. Art, science, and social studies can be covered by someone else in the future. But it is the school leader who has to support, monitor, and assist teachers in teaching a rich curriculum to every child. The complexity of the world in which these children are going to live requires that they be educated to high levels. We don’t want to cut back on or eliminate subjects that will enable them to lead rich and satisfying lives. Superintendents and principals must remind teachers that well-educated children pass tests. These are not the kind of tests that require that a child spend every moment focused on test practice.

Some children may need additional instruction to meet the standard, and that’s why we have before-school and after-school programs. That’s why we’re talking about giving a lot more flexibility to states in spending federal funds. They can spend their money on Title I activities aimed at low-income students, increased salaries for hard-to-find science and math teachers, or the 21st Century Schools program. The accountability system will provide the incentive to motivate school leaders to determine what works best in their context.

Other questions remain: Should states allow school districts to have local assessments; can there be a mix of criteria for assessment; can assessments differ from year to year? What do we do in the two states that have provisions in their state constitutions that forbid statewide testing? What about Iowa and Nebraska, which have local control systems in which each district creates or purchases its own assessment? There are other states that plan to do state assessment in some grades and local assessment in others. The overarching question is how do we ensure that all the assessments are comparable? The federal policy is that the burden of proof is on the states to demonstrate that their assessments are adequate.

Implementing accountability

The other big issue with assessment has to do with accountability. I know that there are some who believe that what we ought to be looking at is not where students stand at the end of the year but how much progress they have made since the preceding year. Because all students begin the school year at a different level of achievement, the critical question is how far forward the school is able to move the student in a year. This has been dubbed the “value-added” approach.

The intention of Congress is that we should pay special attention to the amount of progress that occurs over several years, because a single test is simply not sufficient to evaluate student achievement or a school’s quality. I agree that we can learn much from the value-added approach, but it is not sufficient to ensure that all students meet a high standard. We should not be satisfied that children who are trailing their peers by several years in achievement simply improve somewhat year to year without ever catching up. We want all students to reach a recognized standard.

States will have some flexibility in demonstrating that their students are meeting a high standard, but they have to demonstrate that all subpopulations are doing well. It will not be enough to raise the average score by raising the performance of the best students even higher. That is not the spirit of No Child Left Behind. The requirement that 100 percent of the children achieve proficiency has many educators swallowing hard. Indeed, our biggest challenge could be convincing school leaders that we can do this. That’s why we keep bringing people back to take a look at what Texas has accomplished in setting a firm standard and enabling the overwhelming majority of students to meet that standard. Texas deserves praise for what it has done, but now it’s time to raise the bar even higher. I am confident that Texas will succeed again and that it will inspire other states to do the same.

The states should not expect instant success. They understand that they will have to meet high standards, but until they see how their students do on the benchmark tests, they will not know how much improvement is needed. They should expect some rough sailing ahead. A large percentage of high-school juniors are likely to find that they are not at the level they should be. What do school officials say to parents who want to know why their children who have passed all their courses are not where they should be when it is too late to catch up? This should be a wake-up call to educators that they need to identify problems earlier and take action immediately to help these students catch up, so that when they finish high school they have the skills they need for work or higher education.

It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to admit that very often we have let empathy get in the way of doing what was best for the children. We have said that this child is poor, that this child has a dysfunctional family, and that this child has to work, so we can’t hold these children to the same standards. We let them move through school with C’s and D’s until at the end of high school they are woefully lacking in basic academic skills. Good assessments should enable us to identify these students so that we can intervene early and often to help them. A good assessment should let us know not only which students are falling behind but also what the major stumbling blocks to each student’s progress are. We should begin educating these children as individuals. When each individual receives an adequate education, the benefit to the nation will be immeasurable.

With the nation about to embark on an ambitious program of high-stakes testing of every public school student, we should review our experience with similar testing efforts over the past few decades so that we can we benefit from the lessons learned and apply them to the coming generation of tests. The first time that there was a large-scale commitment to accountability for results in return for government financial assistance was in the 1960s, with the beginning of the Title I program of federal aid to schools with low-income students. The fear then was that minority students, who had long been neglected in the schools, would also be shortchanged in this program. The tests were meant to ensure that the poor and minority students were receiving measurable benefits from the program. Since that time, large-scale survey tests have continued to be used, providing us with a good source of data to use in to determine program effects and trends in educational achievement.

Critics of testing often argue that the test scores can sometimes provide an inaccurate measure of student progress and that the growing importance of the tests has led teachers to distort the curriculum by “teaching to the test.” In trying to evaluate these claims, we need to look at the types of data that are available and their reliability. In other words, what we know and how we know it. For example, when people claim that there is curriculum distortion, they are often relying on surveys of teachers’ perceptions. These data are useful but are not the best form of evidence if policymakers believe that teachers are resisting efforts to hold them accountable. More compelling evidence about the effects of testing on teaching can be obtained by looking directly for independent confirmation of student achievement under conditions of high-stakes accountability. Early studies revealed very quickly that the use of low-level tests produced low-level outcomes. When students were evaluated only on simple skills, teachers did not devote time to helping them develop higher-order thinking skills. This was confirmed in the well-known A Nation at Risk report in the early 1980s and about a decade later in a report from the congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

In 1991, I worked with several colleagues on a validity study to investigate more specifically whether increases in test scores reflected real improvements in student achievement. In a large urban school system in a state with high-stakes accountability, random subsamples of students were given independent tests to see whether they could perform as well as they had on the familiar standardized test. The alternative, independent tests included a parallel form of the commercial standardized test used for high-stakes purposes, a different standardized test that had been used by the district in the past, and a new test that had been constructed objective-by-objective to match the content of the high-stakes test but using different formats for the questions. In addition to content matching, the new test was statistically equated to the high-stakes standardized test, using students in Colorado where both tests were equally unfamiliar. When student scores on independent tests were compared to results on the high-stakes accountability test, there was an 8-month drop in mathematics on the alternative standardized test and a 7-month drop on the specially constructed test. In reading, there was a 3-month drop on both the alternative standardized test and the specially constructed test. Our conclusion was that “performance on a conventional high-stakes test does not generalize well to other tests for which students have not been specifically prepared.”

At the same time that researchers addressed the validity of test score gains, studies have also been done to examine the effect of high-stakes accountability pressure on curriculum and instructional practices. These studies, which involved large-scale teacher surveys and in-depth field studies, show that efforts to improve test scores have changed what is taught and how it is taught. In elementary schools, for example, teachers eliminate or greatly reduce time spent on social studies and science to spend more time on tested subjects.

More significantly, however, because it affects how well students will eventually understand the material, teaching in tested subjects (reading, math, and language arts) is also redesigned to closely resemble test formats. For example, early in the basic-skills accountability movement, Linda Darling-Hammond and Arthur Wise found that teachers stopped giving essay tests as part of regular instruction so that classroom quizzes would more closely parallel the format of standardized tests given at the end of the year. In a yearlong ethnographic study, Mary Lee Smith found that teachers gave up reading real books, writing, and long-term projects, and focused instead on word recognition, recognizing spelling errors, language usage, punctuation, and arithmetic operations. Linda McNeil found that the best teachers practiced “double-entry bookkeeping,” teaching students both what they needed for the test and the real knowledge aimed at conceptual understanding. In other cases, test preparation dominated instruction from September until March. Only after the high-stakes test was administered did teachers engage the real curriculum such as Shakespeare in eighth-grade English. These forms of curriculum distortion engendered by efforts to improve test scores are strongly associated with socioeconomic level. The poorer the school and school district, the more time devoted to instruction that resembles the test.

I believe that policymakers would benefit from seeing concrete examples of what students can and cannot do when regular teaching closely imitates the test. One high-stakes test for third graders included a math item showing three ice cream cones. The directions said to “circle one-third of the ice cream cones.” Correspondingly, the district practice materials included an item where students were to circle one-third of three umbrellas. But what we have learned from research is that many students who have practiced this item only this way cannot necessarily circle two-third of three ice cream cones, and most certainly cannot circle two-thirds of nine Popsicle sticks.

Other systematic studies show dramatically what students don’t know when they learn only the test. In a randomized experiment conducted by Marilyn Koczer, students were trained exclusively to translate either Roman to Arabic numerals or Arabic to Roman. Then random halves of each group were tested on their knowledge using either the same order as their original training or the reverse order. Students who were tested in reverse order from how they had practiced, were worse off by 35 to 50 percentile points, suggesting that the high test performance for those tested in the same order as practiced does not necessarily reflect deep or flexible conceptual understanding.

We also have to be careful in listening to discussions of alignment between the curriculum and the test. It is not enough that each item in the test correspond to some standard in the curriculum. To be useful, the test items must cover a wide array of standards throughout the curriculum. Many teachers will teach to the test. That’s a problem if the test is narrowly structured. If the test covers the full domain of the curriculum, then there is no great harm in teaching to the test’s content. But there still can be a problem if students are trained to answer questions only in multiple-choice format. They need to be able to write and reason using the material.

The setting of performance standards, which is usually done out of sight of the public, can have a powerful effect on how the results are perceived. Texas made two interesting choices in setting its standards. It wisely made the effort to coordinate the standards across grades. For example, in setting the 10th-grade math standard, it also considered where to set the standard for earlier grades that would be necessary to keep a student on schedule to reach the 10th-grade standard. Although policymakers set the standard by saying they wanted students to know 70 percent of the basic-skills test items, this turned out to be the 25th percentile of Texas students. Selecting a low performance standard was wise politically, because it made it possible to show quick results by moving large numbers of students above this standard.

My state of Colorado made the educationally admirable but politically risky decision to set extremely high standards (as high as the 90th percentile of national performance in some areas) that only a pole-vaulter could reach. The problem is that it’s hard to even imagine what schools could do that would make it possible to raise large numbers of students to this high level of performance. Unless the public reads the footnotes, it will be hard for it to interpret the test results accurately.

These political vicissitudes explain why psychometricians are so insistent on preserving the integrity of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is given to a sample of children across the country and that teachers have no incentive to teach to, because the results have no direct high-stakes consequences for themselves or their students. The test’s only purpose is to provide us with an accurate comparative picture of what students are learning throughout the country.

If states so choose, they can design tests that will produce results that convey an inflated sense of student and school progress. There may also be real gains, but they will be hard to identify in the inflated data. NAEP is one assessment mechanism that can be used to gauge real progress. NAEP results for Texas indicate that the state is making real educational progress, albeit not at the rate reflected in the state’s own test. Texas is introducing a new test and more rigorous standards. Let’s hope that it provides a more realistic picture.

There are signs that Congress understands the possibility that test data can be corrupted or can have a corrupting influence on education. Even more important, it has been willing to fund scientific research studies to investigate the seriousness of these problems. In 1990, Congress created the NAEP Trial State Assessment and concurrently authorized an independent evaluation to determine whether state assessments should become a regular part of the national assessment program. More recently, Congress commissioned studies by the National Research Council to examine the technical adequacy of proposed voluntary national tests and the consequences of using tests for high-stakes purposes such as tracking, promotion, and graduation. Even President Bush’s new testing plan shows an understanding of the principle that we need independent verification of reported test score gains on state accountability tests.

The nation’s leaders have long faced the problem of balancing the pressures to ratchet up the amount of testing with uncertainty about how to ensure the validity of tests. Ten years ago, many policymakers embraced the move toward more authentic assessments as a corrective to distortion and dumbing-down of curriculum, but it was then abandoned because of cost and difficulties with reliability. We should remember that more comprehensive and challenging performance assessments can be made equal in reliability to narrower, closed-form machine-scorable tests, but to do so takes more assessment tasks and more expensive training of scorers. The reliability of the multiple-choice tests is achieved by narrowing the curricular domain, and many states are willing to trade the quality of assessment for lower cost so that they can afford to test every pupil every year and in more subjects. Therefore, we will have to continue to evaluate the validity of these tests and ask what is missed when we focus only on the test. Policymakers and educators each have important roles to play in this effort.

Policymakers

Preserve the integrity of the database, especially the validity of NAEP as the gold standard. If we know that the distorting effects of high-stakes testing on instructional content are directly related to the narrowness of test content and format, then we should reaffirm the need for broad representation of the intended content standards, including the use of performance assessments and more open-ended formats. Although multiple-choice tests can rank and grade schools about as well as performance assessments can, because the two types of measures are highly correlated, this does not mean that improvements in the two types of measures should be thought of as interchangeable. (Height and weight are highly correlated, but we would not want to keep measuring height to monitor weight gain and loss.) The content validity of state assessments should be evaluated in terms of the breadth of representation of the intended content standards, not just “alignment.” A narrow subset of the content can be aligned, so this is not a sufficient criterion by itself.

The comprehensiveness of NAEP content is critical to its role as an independent monitor of achievement trends. To protect its independence, it should be sequestered from high-stakes uses. However, some have argued that NAEP is already high-stakes in some states, such as Texas, and will certainly become more high-stakes if used formally as a monitor for federal funding purposes. In this case, the integrity of NAEP should be protected substantively by broadening the representation of tasks within the assessment itself (such as multiple-day extended writing tasks) or by checking on validity through special studies.

Evaluate and verify the validity of gains. Special studies are needed to evaluate the validity of assessment results and to continue to check for any gaps between test results and real learning. I have in mind here both scientific validity studies aimed at improving the generalizability of assessments and bureaucratic audits to ensure that rewards for high-performing schools are not administered solely on the basis of test scores without checking on the quality of programs, numbers of students excluded, independent evidence of student achievement, and so forth. Test-based accountability systems must also be fair in their inferences about who is responsible for assessment results. Although there should not be lower expectations for some groups of students than for others, accountability formulas must acknowledge different starting points; otherwise, they identify as excellent schools where students merely started ahead.

Scientifically evaluate the consequences of accountability and incentive systems. Research on the motivation of individual students shows that teaching students to work for good grades has harmful effects on learning and on subsequent effort once external rewards are removed. Yet accountability systems are being installed as if there were an adequate research-based understanding of how such systems will work to motivate teachers. These claims should be subjected to scientific evaluation of both intended effects and side effects, just as the Food and Drug Administration would evaluate a new drug or treatment protocol. Real gains in learning, not just test score gains, should be one measure of outcome. In addition, the evaluation of side effects would include student attitudes about learning, dropout rates, referrals to special education, attitudes among college students about teaching as a career, numbers of professionals entering and leaving the field, and so forth.

Many have argued that the quality of education is so bad in some settings, especially in inner-city schools, that rote drill and practice on test formats would be an improvement. Whether this is so is an empirical question, one that should be taken seriously and examined. We should investigate whether high-stakes accountability leads to greater learning for low-achieving students and students attending low-scoring schools (again as verified by independent assessments). We should also find out whether these targeted groups of students are able to use their knowledge in nontest settings, whether they like school, and whether they stay in school longer. We should also try to assess how many students are helped by this “teaching the test is better than nothing” curriculum versus how many are hurt because richer and more challenging curriculum was lost along with the love of learning.

Educators

Locate legitimate but limited test preparation activities within the larger context of standards-based curriculum. Use a variety of formats and activities to ensure that knowledge generalizes beyond testlike exercises. Ideally, there should be no special teaching to the test, only teaching to the content standards represented by the test. More realistically, very limited practice with test format is defensible, especially for younger students, so they won’t be surprised by the types of questions asked or what they are being asked to do. Unfortunately, very few teachers feel safe enough from test score publicity and consequences to continue to teach curriculum as before. Therefore, I suggest conscientious discussions by school faculties to sort out differences between legitimate and illegitimate test preparation. What kinds of activities are defensible because they are teaching both to the standards and to the test, and what kinds of activities are directed only at the test and its scoring rules? Formally analyzing these distinctions as a group will, I believe, help teachers improve performance without selling their souls. For example, it may be defensible to practice writing to a prompt, provided that students have other extended opportunities for real writing; and I might want to engage students in a conversation about occasions outside of school and testing when one has to write for a deadline. However, I would resolve with my colleagues not to take shortcuts that devalue learning. For example, I would not resort to typical test-prep strategies, such as “add paragraph breaks anywhere” (because scorers are reading too quickly to make sure the paragraph breaks make sense).

Educate parents and school board members by providing alternative evidence of student achievement. Another worthwhile and affirming endeavor would be to gather alternative evidence of student achievement. This could be an informal activity and would not require developing a whole new local assessment program. Instead, it would be effective to use samples of student work, especially student stories, essays, videotapes, and extended projects as examples of what students can do and what is left out of the tests. Like the formal validity studies of NAEP and state assessments, such comparisons would serve to remind us of what a single test can and cannot tell us.

Of these several recommendations, the most critical is to evaluate the consequences of high-stakes testing and accountability-based incentive systems. Accountability systems are being installed with frantic enthusiasm, yet there is no proof that they will improve education. In fact, to the extent that evidence does exist from previous rounds of high-stakes testing and extensive research on human motivation, there is every reason to believe that these systems will do more to harm the climate for teaching and learning than to help it. A more cautious approach is needed to help collect better information about the quality of education provided in ways that do not have pernicious side effects.

On the morning of February 9, 1998, an American Airlines 727 on final instrument approach to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport suddenly pitched downward. Despite the pilot’s corrective actions, the aircraft hit the ground just short of the runway. Twenty-three people were injured, and the aircraft was substantially damaged. In statements filed with the National Transportation Safety Board, American Airlines, the Allied Pilot’s Association, and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants all argued that electromagnetic interference was probably to blame for the crash. The two professional groups wrote that “circumstantial evidence” pointed to an improper glide-path signal received by the aircraft’s instrument landing system due to electromagnetic interference “from onboard electronic devices or ground-based equipment.” After investigating the accident, the safety board could find no hard evidence that such interference had occurred and blamed the accident on pilot error and an out-of-date setting of the autopilot.

In 1996, the crew of an airliner that had just taken off from Salt Lake City International Airport was informed by air-traffic control that the craft was 30 degrees off course. The pilot and copilot’s flight instruments indicated no error. On this day, the weather was good and air-traffic control was able to appropriately vector the aircraft. The flight crew later concluded that electromagnetic interference from a laptop computer being used in the first-class cabin had caused the problem. In his report on the incident, the pilot stated, “I would have really been sweating if it had been instrument flight rules in that mountain area.”

How commonly does radio frequency (RF) interference cause safety problems for commercial aircraft? We have concluded, based on several types of analyses, that RF interference from consumer electronics is unlikely to have figured in more than a few percent of commercial air accidents, if any at all, during the past 10 years. There are no documented cases of a fatal aircraft accident caused by RF interference, although it is possible that interference has been an unrecognized factor in some crashes, perhaps simply by momentarily diverting a pilot’s attention during a critical maneuver.

But there clearly is room for concern. For one thing, incidents of RF interference by passenger electronics with aircraft systems do happen regularly. We have estimated that reported events are occurring at a rate of about 15 and perhaps as many as 25 per year, based on a random sample of incident reports filed between 1995 and 2001 with the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). Additional events may go unreported. Moreover, with the rapid proliferation of consumer electronics and wireless technology, these numbers will almost certainly grow.

In addition, RF interference is a complicated and subtle phenomenon. Pilots and maintenance personnel may not readily identify problems even when they exist. Problems are likely to increase with aircraft age as avionics are removed, modified, or changed and as gaskets, shielding, and grounding straps become corroded, get left out, or are otherwise rendered ineffective. In newer “fly-by-wire” aircraft, which depend more heavily on complex electronic circuitry, the number of system locations in which RF interference might cause difficulties grows. Aircraft designers and manufactures, as well as airline maintenance personnel, are aware of these problems, and they work hard to minimize vulnerabilities. But faced with the slimming down of work forces, expanding job responsibilities, and the retirement of older personnel who had specialized knowledge and experience in electromagnetic compatibility, the potential for problems increases.

The electromagnetic environment

A commercial airliner is a study in electronic complexity. Aircraft systems–marker beacons, distance-measuring equipment, traffic-alert and collision-avoidance systems, microwave-landing systems, and Global Positioning Systems, among many others–operate across a wide range of radio frequencies. Likewise, a host of consumer electronic devices–laptops, cell phones, game systems, CD players, and the like–produce emissions that range across all of these frequencies. In addition to producing emissions at their nominal design frequencies, passenger electronic devices often also produce emissions at other frequencies due to harmonics and other mechanisms. The physical environment of the aircraft further complicates matters. Aircraft cabins are large metallic tubes that can act as resonant cavities at some frequencies, and an aircraft’s windows, which are basically openings in a conducting plane, can radiate as slot antennas.

New consumer electronic devices are required to meet RF emission standards set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These standards are intended to prevent interference with other users of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, because of problems in testing, enforcement, and other areas, it is not clear that all new devices conform to these standards. In addition, as devices get banged around in use and get modified or repaired by owners or service personnel with limited training, some of them can begin to produce emissions that exceed their designed specifications.

RF interference from consumer electronics can affect various flight-critical aircraft electronic systems in several ways. Radiation can pass out of the windows and enter antennas located on the outside of the aircraft. Emissions also can directly enter electronic devices inside the aircraft or induce currents in wiring that is connected to those devices. Of course, aircraft systems have been designed and tested to minimize the risks of such interference. But if emissions from passenger electronics are great enough, these measures may be insufficient to protect some properly operating systems. Of greater concern is the possibility that some of an aircraft’s systems may not be operating as precisely as intended, perhaps due to aging or maintenance. In addition, devices that individually test as reliable may exhibit problems when operated together. RF interference with aircraft systems can often involve very subtle interactions among a number of different system components, and such interference may be difficult or impossible to detect through routine testing and preflight checkout procedures.

Intentional transmitters in the hands of passengers further complicate the picture. As all Americans now know as a result of the heart-wrenching calls made from Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, cell phones can be operated successfully from the air. The FCC bans cell phones from use in flight, not primarily for safety reasons but to reduce their interference with ground-based communications systems. At altitude, a cell phone illuminates many base stations, and their ban is intended to avoid overloading the system that coordinates the hand-off of calls from one base station to the next. Clearly, this ban also helps protect aircraft from on-board sources of electromagnetic radiation–but it is not a perfect solution. Some passengers occasionally turn on their cell phones during a flight, as evidenced by incident reports to the ASRS and a small survey we conducted of passengers, not to mention by numerous informal observations. In addition, some passengers forget to turn off their phones when flying. Such phones emit periodic “here I am, are you out there?” signals in order to locate and coordinate with base stations. Modern phones may first try this at low power, but if they do not receive a response, they try again at higher power. How common such short transmissions are on today’s airliners is not clear. There are probably a few such phones occasionally transmitting on many flights.

In-flight use of cell phones also is likely to increase under pressure from passengers who want to stay connected. Several airlines are now installing “microcell” systems in their cabins that will support cell phone use during flight. These systems enable passengers’ phones to communicate at low power with an on-board base station, which in turn is connected, via a dedicated radio link, to the terrestrial telephone system. Many airlines also are moving to install electrical power and Ethernet connections at passengers’ seats. Because of the high data rates involved in computer processors and in Ethernet communications, and because the systems are being connected directly to aircraft electrical systems, these in-seat facilities hold some potential to cause RF interference with aircraft systems.

These are not the only sources of radiation likely to appear in aircraft cabins. Wireless systems are growing in popularity. Soon, customers will want to operate laptops, personal digital assistants, or game systems in different parts of the cabin while networked together using wireless technology. For example, the sales representative in seat 12C, preparing for an upcoming presentation to a potential customer, may want to use his wireless system to ask an engineer in seat 19F for help with some technical details on their product. Similarly, teenagers in 15B, 16C, and 23F may want to challenge each other in the latest multiperson computer game.

Pressures on airlines will probably also grow to support wireless Internet connections in aircraft cabins. In a few more years, even more potentially problematic sources of radiation may become an issue. For example, “ultrawideband” emissions have been demonstrated to interfere with the operation of aircraft Global Positioning Systems, and GPS is playing an increasingly central role in plans for future navigation and instrument approach systems.

Managing hazards

Safety purists might argue that airlines should simply ban the use of all consumer electronic devices in aircraft cabins under the authority they already have through existing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. The FAA specifies that, “no person may operate…any portable electronic device on any…aircraft” unless an airline has determined that use of the device “will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.”

It is unlikely, however, that airlines will issue such a ban. Competitive pressures among airlines are large and growing. Business travelers, who are the most likely to want to stay connected and networked, are also the most profitable group of customers. There will be enormous pressure to introduce new services as airlines search for sources of comparative advantage. As long as one major airline allows or supports a service, there will be pressure on others to do the same. Further, since some of these technologies carry clear productivity and other benefits, it would be inappropriate to restrict their use through an overly precautionary policy if more balanced risk management solutions could be developed.

Instead, there are a number of management and control actions that parties on all sides of the issue can take to help improve air safety. For one thing, airlines, aircraft and equipment manufactures, and regulators should make greater use of the classic tools of risk analysis to examine the problem of RF interference. However, because of the enormous diversity and complexity of the systems involved, the constantly changing aircraft environment, and the limited analytical resources, we believe that such conventional studies will not be sufficient for identifying and assessing all important potential accident sequences in a timely manor.

Greater progress can be made through five broad strategies that will foster adaptive management and control. These strategies involve:

• Paying careful attention to aircraft equipment design and certification, and to quality control in maintenance. Obviously, airlines should maintain due vigilance regarding their existing equipment and systems. Moreover, airlines should move with great caution as they proceed to consider new aircraft systems. The potential for problems associated with emerging wireless systems is probably large. Since individual airlines may not have the resources to adequately evaluate all systems under development, a joint effort is indicated, and in the interests of public safety, some federal money should be provided to augment airline resources. FAA budgets have long been tight, and today they are stretched even thinner by the demands imposed in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The FAA, the FCC, airlines, and equipment manufacturers should form a joint industry-government cooperative program to perform evaluation and testing, and Congress should appropriate funds to support the federal contribution to this undertaking. In addition to expanding the extent and quality of analysis and testing, such a program also would help to reduce redundant testing efforts across the industry. And since participation would be mandatory for all airlines, it would improve information sharing and eliminate free riding. Today, because of competitive considerations, airlines that have invested heavily in interference testing are sometimes understandably reluctant to share results with other lines that have invested less heavily.
• Augmenting the Aviation Safety Reporting System so that once again it can support statistically meaningful analysis of events and trends. The ASRS is operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in cooperation with the FAA. Flight crews, controllers, maintenance staff, and others send confidential reports concerning observed safety problems to NASA, where the reports are summarized in a form that assures confidentiality and avoids punitive consequences for those reporting. The system has become a cornerstone of aviation safety, as well as a model for other fields, such as medicine. The ASRS has received more than 500,000 incident reports and issued more than 4,000 safety alerts, and outside researchers have drawn on the database to produce at least 60 reports and papers. But NASA now can afford to enter only 15 percent to 20 percent of the incident reports it receives. Entries are chosen on the basis of a “watch list.” Between 1995 and 2001, only 10 percent of the reports, about half of all entries being made, were randomly selected. Because of budget cuts, the practice of including an identifiable random sample has been dropped. Thus, ASRS can no longer be used to do full, statistically valid time series studies of all types of incidents, including those involving RF interference. Clearly, Congress should provide budgetary support to reinstate the random sample.
• Improving characterization and analysis of the RF environment on aircraft. The only reported studies of potential interference from consumer electronic devices have involved static tests conducted on the ground. With FAA support the authors are undertaking a pilot program of in-flight measurements (as well as measurements of a sample of the public’s laptops and game systems), but it will be some time before results are available. Such measurements could be made a routine function on all flights. Modern flight data recorders–the familiar “black boxes” that serve as tools for investigating aircraft crashes–have hundreds of channels for recording data. Major airlines now routinely apply data-mining methods to the records from each flight in order to improve operational efficiency and quality assurance and to search for anomalies that may be indicative of problems. It would be relatively straightforward to install in aircraft cabins a set of RF detectors that would continuously monitor field strength in several spectral bands and record the data in the black box. Analysts could then include an examination of the cabin electromagnetic environment in their search for potential interference problems.
• Developing and deploying simple real-time tools to help flight crews detect RF emissions. If airline cabins were equipped with RF detectors, then flight crews could take corrective action when strong electromagnetic emissions occurred. The utility of equipping flight crews with easy-to-use hand-held RF detectors also warrants investigation. If such observations ultimately identify particular types of electronic devices that are seriously troublesome, then legal or other mechanisms should be available to keep them off of airliners in the future. Currently, there is no systematic way to keep offending devices off of flights.
• Paying greater attention to managing the RF emissions of consumer electronics. The FCC currently does not confer with the FAA when establishing RF emission standards for consumer devices. Such coordination would be desirable. In addition, the national debate over the management of the electromagnetic spectrum and wireless technology should pay greater attention to the consequences that different policies will have for the aircraft environment. If the expected growth of wireless technology leads to interference problems that are sufficiently grave, then it may prove necessary to adopt more aggressive control measures. For example, the FCC might require manufacturers to include override capability in wireless devices so that they could be turned off by a centrally transmitted control signal during critical phases of flight, such as take off and final approach. Such a “silencing” capability might also prove beneficial in other critical settings, such as hospital critical care facilities, as well as in such social settings as theaters, restaurants, and library reading rooms. This type of regulation, however, would raise important questions of civil liberties, social vulnerability, and the potential for “common-mode failure” in important communications systems, and such a requirement should not be imposed without careful analysis and a balancing of risks, costs, and benefits.

Taken together, these actions will enable regulators and the airline industry to better characterize and adaptively manage the risk that RF interference from consumer electronics poses to aviation safety. In an industry that has eliminated or is effectively managing most large and obvious sources of risk, such persistent risks increasingly warrant attention.

Like a bee pollinating a field of flowers, biologist and honeybee researcher Mark Winston spent more than two years buzzing around the twilight zone of agricultural biotechnology. This genetically modified (GM) terrain is a bewildering netherworld located somewhere between university laboratories and corporate board rooms, with compulsory detours to U.S. government regulatory agencies, Canadian canola farms, public interest group headquarters in a rural English village, and international patent and law courts.

What Winston found as he flitted about was, as Wonderland’s Alice would say, a landscape that became “curiouser and curiouser” the more he explored. It’s a world in which antibiotech leaders like Jeremy Rifkin try to highlight the inadequacies of the patent system by petitioning the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to approve a process to merge human embryos with embryos from an animal like a chimpanzee to create a kind of “humanzee.” It’s a not-too-distant universe in which genetically modified canola plants might produce anticoagulants for medical use, edible vaccines, and antibodies to fight against cholera and measles or the bacteria that cause dental cavities. And it’s a world that pits the science community against environmentalists, multinational corporations against organic farmers, and the technologically rich countries against the “gene-rich” but economically poor nations of the developing world.

This book is important because Winston, unlike many scientists, recognizes that resolving what some have called the Great GM Debate is not simply a matter of validating scientific data or assessing benefits and risks. His travels demonstrate that the public and policy battles over agricultural biotechnology and other scientific and technological marvels cannot be stopped by scientists telling Congress to “trust us” or by Ph.D.’s berating people for their lack of science literacy.

In the high-stakes realm of science policy and corporate profits, Winston discovers that emotion, money, politics, religion, self-interest, and popular perceptions will always trump science. His book correctly observes that this food fight is not about potentially adverse health or environmental impacts from GM crops. It’s a battle over worldviews and over who decides winners and losers: in agriculture, consumer choice, environmental protection, business, and global trade.

Winston attempts to explore the full complexity of the GM controversy. He carefully dissects citizen and nongovernmental organization resistance, especially in Europe, to what most scientists see as beneficial herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant crops. He meets many of the key players in this food fray, and he peels away all the main layers of their arguments.

What he rightly finds are serious flaws in the way society deals with scientific debate and new technologies. What he fears most is that the major actors in the GM debate do not have the foresight or resolve to improve the situation. And the real losers in this food fracas are the 800 million people currently suffering from hunger and malnutrition who consume less than 2,000 calories a day and who could benefit from biotech crops that promise to grow more food using less land, water, and pesticides.

Shouting match

Winston describes a highly polarized dialogue and dance of the deaf and blind. On one side sit arrogant companies who see only the advantages of GM food. Corporate executives will let nothing threaten or stand in the way of their hoped-for profits. He particularly faults industry for lobbying vigorously to maintain what the book calls a “regulation lite” approach to agricultural biotechnology: a patchwork system of lax government oversight that favors corporations and undermines public trust in the government’s ability to protect consumer and environmental interests.

Business resists any attempt to make what Winston sees as reasonable and, in the long run, self-interested regulatory reform. He is upset by corporate resistance to mandatory labeling for GM food and by industry opposition to shifting research about potential environmental safety and human health effects from company scientists to the public sector or independent laboratories. Winston believes such actions would shore up consumer confidence in the large-scale use of this new technology. Such reforms also would help lessen the cacophony of arguments by environmentalists that GM products are not sufficiently tested for hazards, such as the possibility that genes could jump from GM crops to wild plants and reduce biodiversity or create new superweeds.

Winston is equally hard on the community of nongovernmental organizations that sits on the other side of this unproductive shouting match. Although he acknowledges that protest groups have raised some important issues about GM crops, he faults them for often rejecting even the most rigorous regulation. He also accuses them of combating industry hype with “exaggerating risks, warping facts, and latching on to bad science.”

All sides, in his view, fail to deal with the scientific data objectively, and they foist on citizens a relentless barrage of sound bites and public relations stunts rather than a necessary platform for civil and informed dialogue and debate. He laments that in this environment it is impossible to decide what level of side effects from GM crops are worth the benefits. Winston feels that the negative impacts thus far range from nonexistent to slight to moderate. He notes that none of these effects are any worse than those caused by conventional agricultural practices, and that the reduced pesticide use possible with GM crops may be a plus for both the environment and human health.

In the middle of this free-for-all are well-intentioned scientists, employed by industry, regulatory agencies, and universities, who Winston nobly credits with wanting only to use their talents and skills selflessly in the pursuit of new knowledge and new technologies that will benefit humankind.

Too naively, in my view, Winston asks why all parties can’t just sit down and seek some middle ground that is guided by the facts and by the overriding public interest and common good. Why can’t each faction relinquish their shortsighted and destructive self-interests and opposing views for more rational civic discourse?

Democracy and capitalism are intrinsically messy, loud, and imperfect systems. They may be better than any of the conceivable alternatives, but they are never going to offer the rational utopian deliberation Winston is seeking. Human society is never going to operate like the highly focused and cooperative beehive Winston is more at home working with.

In looking for solutions to agricultural biotechnology’s dilemma –and to the public acceptance challenges facing any new scientific and technological development–Winston lets scientists off the hook too easily. He portrays scientists as well-intentioned pawns in white coats out of their depth in the halls of Congress, corporate America, and the media melee.

In my view, the science community is at the core of improved scientific debate and policymaking. Without greater involvement by scientists, there can be no solution to the GM debate or any reasonable management of contentious issues such as xenotransplantation, stem cell research, or nanotechnology.

According to a recent Sigma Xi and Research!America survey, 74 percent of scientists say they don’t have time to become involved in changing or supporting public policy, and 49 percent contend that they don’t know how to become involved. And although 41 percent maintain that their involvement makes no difference, only 14 percent affirm that they are happy with the policy-influencing job currently done by other scientists.

Scientists need to heed the long-proffered advice of leaders such as former presidential science advisor Neal Lane or the late Congressman George Brown. They must roll up the sleeves on their lab coats and become more involved in public policy and outreach, especially by pushing for some of the sensible regulatory change Winston advocates and holding politicians accountable for using science as a political football.

The regulatory problems Winston highlights are systemic and go beyond agricultural biotech: overreliance on corporate safety research, inadequate environmental impact testing, a jumble of multiagency oversight and responsibility, and often voluntary versus mandatory government compliance standards. No group has a bigger stake than scientists in developing an adequate regulatory framework and the independent research support capacity that will enable 21st-century science to move forward, yet at the same time address public concerns and put in place the safeguards necessary to mitigate or avoid potential risk.

As former House speaker and science champion Newt Gingrich called for in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science: “Scientists must act as citizens. It is ridiculous to say that because what they are doing is noble and interesting that they should not also function actively as part of our society … If scientists truly believe that they are on the cutting edge of the future, they have a double burden because not only do they have self-interest, they also have the moral obligation of educating our democracy into creating a better future. Yes, citizenship is frustrating, but it is a privilege we must exercise. Yes, it means occasionally scientists will be involved in controversy. Yes, they have to learn communications skills such as speaking in a language everyone else in the room can understand. But these are doable things. They also are vital not only to the survival of this country, but to the future of the human race.”

Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone is a better book than Alan McHughen’s Pandora’s Picnic Basket (Oxford University Press, 2000), which presents the GM debate largely as a controversy created by popular ignorance of the science and facts behind GM food. But Travels is a less colorful and engaging book than National Public Radio technology correspondent Dan Charles’s Lords of the Harvest (Perseus Publishing, 2001), the other recent book tracing the development of agricultural biotechnology. But Winston is clearer and more explicit than either McHughen or Charles about some of the regulatory reforms necessary to create the kind of science and technology policy that will maintain public support for scientific and technological progress and allow important research to continue.

Winston is trying to go deeper into his subject than most. But he falls somewhat short of providing a true roadmap for what’s needed to bring about what British writer John Durant calls “socially sustainable” science and technology policy in the future.

Suppressing fire was the stated policy of the U.S. Forest Service for much of the past century and still dominates the thinking of most voters and legislators. Its consequence has been to increase the amount of fuel (incendiary plant material) in forests, preventing minor fires but making huge ones like those that were in the news during the summer of 2002 more likely.

In the 1970s, budgetary pressure provoked serious rethinking of U.S. policy toward forest fires. Although the government’s investment in suppressing fires had spiraled with advances in the technology of firefighting, outbreaks of catastrophic forest fires persisted. When the federal Office of Management and Budget advised land management agencies to develop more cost-effective strategies, the concept of managing fire gained precedence among foresters over preventing it. This shift was buttressed by research, which increasingly pointed to the benefits of natural disturbances in forests; not just fire, but also disease, pests, and wind. The notion that fire is a critical part of forest ecosystems began to emerge.

The dry forests of the western United States, in particular, came to be seen as home to a diverse array of species, each adapted to different growing conditions and different frequencies and intensities of fire. These forest communities developed over at least the past 11,000 years, after the last ice age. They were shaped by fire, researchers contended, and fire plays a major role in their ecological health and stability.

The argument that suppressing wildfires is not only expensive and perhaps unachievable in the long term but also ecologically counterproductive is no longer new. Today, few professional foresters and forest ecologists would dispute it.

If this perspective is so well accepted, then why does the goal of suppressing wildfires continue to lead our actions and public policy? According to the authors of Flames in Our Forests, bureaucracies tend to have lives of their own. The science may have been updated, but career bureaucrats and legislators may not know or care. Budgets for suppressing fires are normally large and are easily increased in times of emergency. When big fires make headlines, most legislators support additional funding to prevent them. In contrast, the routine calls of professional foresters for funding to pay for firebreaks and controlled burns and petitions to expand logging as a means of reducing fuel loads are less compelling. Such measures are especially hard for politicians to justify to the vast majority of U.S. citizens, who are largely unaware that the antifire message of Smokey Bear has been seriously amended.

In addition, over the years many laws and procedures have been put in place under the premise that forest fires need to be suppressed. Steps to manage fuel loads by means of controlled burns, logging, and firebreaks often conflict with existing laws and/or procedures, making such activities much more difficult. Appeals and litigation have plagued attempts to reduce fuel loads. A Forest Service report, not cited in this book, states that nearly half (48 percent) of the Forest Service’s plans in recent years for getting rid of hazardous fuels have been appealed or litigated by outside groups.

Controlled burns in populated areas are difficult for several reasons. For example, the optimal time for such burns is during windless periods. However, under such conditions air pollution problems are the greatest. Thus, although winds reduce the potential for air pollution, they increase the probability of a controlled burn “escaping” and becoming a wildfire, as occurred in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 2000.

Additionally, the credibility of the Forest Service, the agency primarily responsible for reducing fuel loads in the nation’s forests, is low these days. During the 1980s, while the forest industry tugged at the Forest Service from one side to try to increase timber harvests on public lands, environmentalists were tugging from the other side to reduce harvests. By the 1990s, confidence in the Forest Service had reached all-time lows, and its discretion to harvest timber had become severely limited by antilogging campaigns. The period from the late 1980s through the 1990s saw a decline of more than 80 percent in timber harvests from the national forests. Environmentalists opposed pleas for logging to reduce forest fuel loads, fearing that this might in fact be simply a covert strategy for maintaining the profits of timber companies.

The authors recognize that not all environmentalist groups react this way. Environmentalist groups based in communities potentially threatened by wildfire often favor fuel-reducing management, including limited logging. National groups tend to oppose such approaches in favor of a hands-off policy, because they lack trust in the forest industry and the Forest Service to pursue logging only when its benefits to forest ecosystems are clear. Also, some oppose all logging on ethical grounds.

Burning down the house

Flames in Our Forests presents an excellent overview of these issues that can be the basis of a more sensible policy. Such a policy would consist of updated science, a reoriented Forest Service, an informed public, and fewer legal and bureaucratic constraints on the decisionmaking power of forest communities.

However, some important questions are not addressed. For example, forests with large developments inside their borders cannot be approached in the same way as forests with little development. From a cost-effective perspective, it is probably sensible to minimize the expense of fire-suppression activities in areas with limited development. Marginally developed areas could be left to the vagaries of natural disturbances. It is surely much less expensive to lose a few houses to wildfire than to spend tens of millions of dollars fighting fires in places of low economic productivity or value. Also, as the experience of the past few years has shown, it may be cheaper to evacuate a population and simply let a fire burn, even if some buildings and businesses are destroyed in the process. Although this often happens by default, to be fair and consistent the practice should be affirmed by public policy.

Another question the book doesn’t explore is who should pay for efforts to reduce fire hazards in the forest. Should the costs associated with both fire prevention and fire suppression be the responsibility of local, state, and federal government? Or should a greater share of the costs be borne by property owners, who, after all, have chosen to undertake development inside forests, despite the risk?

One way to reduce the costs of interventions to minimize damage from forest fires is to allow private contractors who undertake the activity to sell useable timber removed from the area. With suitable supervision and control, such an arrangement need not become a proxy for traditional logging. Such an approach could dramatically reduce the costs of fuel-load control and, in some cases, generate positive receipts to the U.S. Treasury.

Why should the loss of property to forest fire be compensated from the public purse? If compensation for losses of development due to wildfire in high-risk areas were left to the operations of the insurance market, with premiums reflecting the risks, then developers might reconsider the wisdom of siting their projects in forests, thereby making it easier for foresters to let the cycle of fire and regeneration run its course.

These questions are beyond the book’s stated scope, but their answers are necessary to an appropriate political response to the “flames in our forests.” If we can muster the political will to accept prescription burns and to let natural fires in less-developed areas burn unimpeded, then large sections of the nation’s forests will gradually return to a more natural state. Over time, fire suppression costs will gradually be reduced, fires will pose less of a threat to local communities, and the total cost of forest management and firefighting to society will probably decline.

What type of advice are political leaders looking for?

Science advisory committees are being dissed by the Bush administration according to recent stories in Science, the Washington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Several committees that provide scientific input to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been disbanded or completely repopulated with new members. Some committee members and observers see ideological foul play. They argue that the administration is seeking advice that fits better with its already formulated positions on topics such as genetic testing, environmental hazards, and protection of human research subjects. A few jaded observers yawn that no one listens to these committees anyway, Casablanca fans exclaim that they are “shocked” that politics could enter into the choice of members of science advisory committees, and professional wrestling aficionados argue that the best fights are fixed. Certainly the Clinton administration would have considered nothing but scientific reputation in choosing its advisors. As I used to say as a teenager: Rrrrright!

One group that has been disbanded is the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing, a creation of the Clinton administration in the wake of a government report that warned that some “home-brew” genetic tests could provide misleading information to consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the Clinton administration had argued that it had the authority to regulate these tests but did not do so because it lacked the resources. The Clinton-appointed committee agreed that these tests could pose a danger to consumers and encouraged FDA to exercise its authority over the tests. Today’s FDA apparently is not confident that it has the authority to regulate the tests. The committee’s two-year charter recently expired, and the administration has decided not to renew it. HHS spokesman William Pierce told the Post that the administration has plans to create a new advisory committee that will address this question as well as a broad range of other concerns about genetic technologies.

How shocked should we be? The committee may well be right that these tests need to be regulated, and the administration might simply be looking for a way to protect these companies from regulation. But the administration did not express an opinion on that scientific subject. It questioned FDA’s authority to regulate. That’s a policy question that science advisory committees can’t answer. If action is called for, we may have to take the long road through legislation to establish unambiguously that FDA can and should regulate the tests.

Clinton also created the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee to look into charges that human subjects were not being afforded adequate protection in research studies. This committee is also being disbanded and supposedly replaced with a new committee with a broader mandate. Theories to explain the demise of this group are proliferating like political fundraisers. One view is that industry groups did not like the committee’s recommendation to tighten conflict-of-interest rules. Another explanation is that the committee resisted the administration’s desire to have human subject protections extended to fetuses–a backdoor attack on abortion. Fueling this rumor is the statement by HHS officials that they would like physician Mildred Jefferson, a cofounder and former president of the National Right to Life Committee, to serve on the replacement committee. Abortion is obviously a hot-button issue for the Bush administration, and many scientists are concerned by the efforts of abortion foes to block federal support of research into embryonic stem cells. If the committee becomes an avenue for restricting research in areas that scientists believe are important, that’s a problem. The restrictions on the use of human research subjects are more ambiguous. Many scientists who feel strongly about the need to protect the people who participate as research subjects are also worried that excessive and poorly designed regulations could hinder research without enhancing protection. The question does not divide neatly along political lines.

A third committee attracting attention is one that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health. This group recently learned that 15 of its 18 members are being replaced, and that the outgoing chair was not even asked to recommend new members. Critics of the action complain that the new members include the former head of an industry-funded research institute, a vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and two experts who regularly provide expert witness testimony to support chemical industry positions in court. They see this as appointing the fox to guard the chickens.

If this was truly a science advisory group, the industry connections should not matter. If these are experts who publish in the scholarly literature and are respected by their colleagues, we should be encouraging them to share their expertise in the courtroom no matter whose case it supports. I can’t speak to the credentials of the new committee members. Would I be surprised if some were chosen for their conclusions rather than the quality of the research that led to these conclusions? No. Is this part of the general confusion that surrounds the use of science in public policy? Yes.

When committee members are being selected for federal advisory committees, the temptation to root for the home team–not your office colleagues, but those who share your opinions on controversial questions–is very powerful. When your candidate wins the election and follows his ideological muse, the committee members, seen through the right glasses, seem eminently qualified and fair-minded. If their views on upcoming debates are a tad predictable, at least their consistency is admirable. The problem occurs when the other candidate wins, and the appointment muse sings a different song.

Wouldn’t we all be better off if the committees were composed of reputable experts with a variety of political perspectives who were able to acknowledge scientific consensus and uncertainty and to separate that from political consensus and uncertainty? Such committees would rarely provide a simple rubber stamp for a predetermined policy. They would help define what aspects of a policy decision are scientific and what are political. A group of climate scientists could agree that carbon emissions from automobiles make a significant contribution to global warming, but they could admit that they are not qualified to say whether a carbon tax or fuel-efficiency standards are the best way to control carbon emissions. A group of medical researchers could evaluate the likelihood that research with embryonic stem cells could lead to useful medical applications, but they would leave the discussion of abortion politics to others. Actually, in each of these cases, the scientists should form opinions on the political questions, but they should express them as independent citizens, not as members of an expert advisory committee.

OK, it’s not the most practical solution, but it could be a useful standard. It is too soon to pass judgment on the Bush administration’s use of scientific advisory committees. We can expect politics to play a role in the creation of committees and the selection of members. Nothing new there. But when we assess the administration’s performance, we should not compare what he did with what we think Al Gore might have done. Our standard should be an advisory committee structure that delivers clarity and insight, not a score for the home team. Do we want to see the naming of scientific advisory committees follow the path of judicial appointments?

Dealing with terror

I was a member of John Hamre’s Commission on Science and Security, and he does an outstanding job in his article of explaining what we were about and why we made the recommendations we did (“Science and Security at Risk,” Issues, Summer 2002). However, we worked in a more innocent, pre-9/11 age. Our issue, balancing science and security in the Department of Energy’s laboratories and nuclear weapons complex, was much simpler than achieving a proper balance regarding bioterror weapons in the name of homeland security. Nuclear weapons are complex devices whose science is well known; the secrets are in the engineering and technology. Terrorists without a large-scale technical infrastructure would find it infinitely easier to buy or steal a nuclear weapon than to construct one based on breaches in our security.

Bioterror, after the anthrax letters, has raised justifiable fears that great damage can be done with biosystems that are much easier to make. Of all the potential weapons of mass destruction, bioweapons generate the most fear. At the time of this writing, universities are coping with the first attempts at controlling what biomedical research is done and who does it.

Physicists had to cope with a similar problem before World War II, but in a far simpler world. When the Hahn-Meitner paper on nuclear fission first became known, the nuclear physics community in the United States, which by then included many refugees from the Nazis, informally decided that it would be best not to publish work on fission so as not to advance Germany’s efforts any faster than U.S. scientists could move. The ban was voluntary and for the most part effective. Because the community was so small, word of mouth was sufficient to keep the entire community informed. Eventually, when the United States began a serious weapons program, the work became classified.

The biomedical community is too big and too dispersed to do the same thing effectively with potentially hazardous bioagents. Although biotechnology has the promise to advance our well being (and to make some people a great deal of money), the concern about bioterror is real, and I think it is likely that more controls will be imposed if the biology community does not take some action itself.

Such things as the recent synthesis of polio from its basic chemical constituents and a successful effort to increase the virulence of a smallpox-like virus raise a red flag to those concerned with limiting the potential for bioterror. I have to confess that I also wonder what was the point of these two programs other than sensational publicity. Might not the same science have been done with some more benign things?

I’m not a biologist, and so I have no specific answers on what to do. Once before, with recombinant DNA, biologists themselves devised a control system. It was not totally satisfactory, but it did block more draconian regulations while a broader understanding of the real dangers of recombinant DNA was developed. They need to do something like it again.

BURTON RICHTER

Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences

Director Emeritus

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Menlo Park, California

[email protected]

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Transportation security

Layered security measures and curtains of mystery are keys to success in deterring and preventing terrorists, and they are also keys to restoring faith in and profitability to our nation’s transportation systems.

In “Countering Terrorism in Transportation” (Issues, Summer 2002), Mortimer L. Downey and Thomas R. Menzies wisely warn against trying to eliminate or defend every vulnerability in our systems, and they perform an important service in developing systems approaches. The analysis of single-point solutions and an overreliance on regulations is right on the mark.

I am more dubious than the authors about data mining and data matching as useful deterrents, although I believe trusted traveler and trusted shipper programs are important steps to take quickly. I am far more dubious about the ability of the new Transportation Security Agency (TSA) to accomplish the strategic role the authors envision. Their description of the creation of the agency by Congress is an all too familiar example of government responding to a crisis by cobbling together yesterday’s solutions and then issuing impossible and unfunded mandates for implementation. That’s no way to deal with tomorrow’s problems.

Immediately after the events of September 11, a group of us from RAND met with senior people in the Department of Transportation to offer without charge our research and analytic capability. We were told, “We aren’t yesterday’s DOT.” We left hoping they didn’t believe that; even more we hoped they didn’t think we believed it.

The point of the story is that government has never demonstrated an ability to put into place recommendations that would guard against tomorrow’s almost certain problems and thereby prevent their birth. For example, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security (for which I was the staff director) made recommendations that might well have prevented one of the September 11 hijackings and deterred the others.

I believe that the strategic role the authors propose for the TSA cannot be accomplished by the current organization with the current staff and under the existing legislation. Departmental R&D programs are hijacked by appropriations committees at the behest of lobbyists, and departmental researchers have their conclusions overridden by policymakers whose minds are already made up.

An independent national laboratory for transportation safety and security seems to me a wiser solution. I propose that a university or university consortium run such a laboratory under the aegis of DOT rather than the TSA, which has its hands full implementing a very unwise piece of public policy.

The authors implicitly recognize the TSA’s shortcomings at the end of the article, where they place their faith in systematic and foresighted analysis in the yet to be created Department of Homeland Security. Again, I would argue that although everything the authors argue for and more needs to be done, it is unlikely to be done well within government. The new department will have its hands full simply organizing itself to do its immediate jobs, much less have the time and resources to look into the future.

There is a role for government, but it is not in keeping in house the analytic and research capability; it is rather in orchestrating the flow of resources to public and private researchers pursuing the most promising technologies and practices.

GERALD B. KAUVAR

Special Assistant to the President

George Washington University

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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Safety performance and quality of security have long been important level-of-service variables for transportation systems. Safety considerations typically relate to errors in operations, judgment, or design of the transportation system, with no malice aforethought. Security considerations deal with overt, purposeful threats by human agents and have, of course, come into the public eye in the wake of September 11, 2001. Mortimer L. Downey and Thomas R. Menzies lay out a useful approach to dealing with this new level of concern with security issues. They recognize that “our failed piecemeal approach to security” has to yield to a more systems-oriented approach, built around the concept of layering. As they note, “A more sensible approach is to layer security measures so that each element, however imperfect, provides back-up and redundancy to another.” Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, not the next war, we often respond disproportionately to the most recent security threat without explicitly recognizing the systems approach that should be used in dealing with security issues. It is understandable that political impetus can push us to respond with zeal to the most recent event, but we must try to resist that if resources are not to be frittered away in what the authors call a “guards, guns, and gates” approach.

Ensuring a secure transportation system in the face of terrorist threats is a daunting task, and, of course, the devil is in the details. Translating the useful philosophy of layered security into an action plan is a far from trivial undertaking. Designing a layered approach against terrorists who have shown themselves to be quite willing to die in the process of their acts is a job of extraordinary complexity. Downey and Menzies have laid out the framework for approaching these issues through collaboration, research and development, and information sharing. But, of course, the specifics will be critical to a successful approach.

Finally, a view beyond the scope of the Downey and Menzies paper: Any approach to antiterrorism must have a component that deals with destroying the ability of terrorists to operate. Our best minds may produce a layered system of greatly enhanced security, but unless we greatly reduce the capacity of terrorists to carry out their violence in the first place, we will be dealing with only part of the problem. A systems approach should necessarily include terrorist capacity reduction; in a sense, it is one more layer.

JOSEPH M. SUSSMAN

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts

[email protected]

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Memories: True or false?

As remarkable as Elizabeth Loftus’s evidence of memory fallibility is, I find even more remarkable the utter lack of evidence for memory repression: the pathological inability to remember something that otherwise could not be forgotten (“Memory Faults and Fixes,” Issues, Summer 2002). I am open to the possibility of its existence, but I urge its proponents to follow the following 10 rules–four “do’s” and six “don’ts.”

The do’s are straightforward, if often ignored: prove the event occurred, prove the subject witnessed the event, prove the subject lost memory of the event, and prove that only repression could explain the forgetting. In doing this, avoid the following six traps.

Do not claim that truth does not matter. Psychoanalyst Michelle Price once wrote, “Although the need to determine the truthfulness of claims of child abuse may appear rational and reasonable in a court of law, it becomes highly suspect in a psychotherapy/psychoanalytic context.” Truthfulness is much more than “rational and reasonable” in both law and science.

Do not rely on fiction as scientific evidence. Although fiction is a great illustrator of truth, it is rather poor evidence of truth. One repression advocate referred to Hitchcock’s Spellbound as if it demonstrated repression. Psychiatrist Harrison Pope observed that the idea of repression did not occur in literature until shortly before Freud began to write about it.

Do not accept evidence as proof of repression unless other explanations are ruled out. Psychologist Neal Cohen described Patient K, who was electrocuted while repairing his oven. When K regained consciousness he thought it was 1945 instead of 1984 and could not remember anything occurring in between. Cohen attributed K’s amnesia to psychological stress. Seems to me a physical explanation was more likely. (The man was fried!)

Do not vilify skeptics. Psychiatrist Richard Kluft once wrote, “In this series, there were no allegations of alien abductions, prior lives, or similar phenomena that inspire knee-jerk skepticism in many scholars.” Knee-jerk skepticism? How else should we respond to tales of alien abductions?

Do not distort clinical reports. A recent treatise on memory repression and the law described a patient who recovered a repressed memory of his mother’s attempted suicide. The original report, however, includes several facts making the anecdote much less compelling. The patient was schizophrenic, with a lifelong history of memory dysfunction. It is not clear from the report that he really witnessed the attempted hanging or, if he did, that he ever forgot about it.

Do not omit material details. A clinical psychologist reported “a verified case of recovered memories of sexual abuse.” The patient was sexually abused by her father in childhood, as corroborated by her older sister. The clinical report suggests that as an adult the patient repressed her memory of the abuse (which, we should observe, would have been several years after the trauma occurred). But in subsequent correspondence with the author I learned that she discussed the abuse with her husband before marrying him. This sounds much more like a memory that waxes and wanes in salience than a case of verified repression.

ROBERT TIMOTHY REAGAN

Senior Research Associate

Federal Judicial Center

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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Elizabeth Loftus describes her interesting research on the malleability of memory and details the practical consequences of this work for several contentious issues in society in which the veracity of memory reports is of crucial importance. My own research on memory illusions, as well as the work of other cognitive psychologists, leads to similar conclusions. However, Loftus has been the foremost public spokesperson on these issues and frequently speaks out in the courtroom as well. She is to be congratulated on her public stands, in my opinion, although they have caused her personal grief.

One criticism frequently leveled at Loftus’s research is that it occurs under “artificial” (that is, laboratory) conditions and may not apply well to the real-world settings to which she wishes to generalize. After all, the argument goes, Loftus usually tests college students; the materials used in her experiments are not the life-and-death scenarios of the outside world; and the experiments lack many emotional elements common for witnesses to cases of child abuse, rape, etc. These arguments are all true, as far as they go, but I have come to believe that they are all the more reason to marvel at the powerful findings Loftus obtains.

Many critics fail to understand that the nature of experimental research is to capture one or a few critical variables and manipulate them to examine their role in determining behavior, while holding other variables constant. The crucial point is that Loftus shows her strong effects on memory under the relatively antiseptic conditions of the psychology laboratory and by manipulating only one or two of many possible variables. For example, in her studies on the effects of misleading information given after witnessing an event, participants usually are exposed to the erroneous information only one time, yet large effects are obtained. In the real world, such misleading information may be given to a witness (or retrieved by the witness) many times between the occurrence of a crime and later testimony in court. Similarly, the manipulation of other variables in the lab is often a pale imitation of their power in the outside world. In realistic situations, many factors that are isolated in the lab naturally co-vary and probably have synergistic effects. Thus, a witness to a crime may repeatedly receive erroneous information afterwards, may receive it from several people, and may be under social pressure from others (say, to identify a particular suspect). These and other cognitive and social influences that are known to distort memory seem to increase in power with time after the original episode. As retention of details of the original episode fades over time, outside influences can more easily manipulate their recollection. All these influences can operate even on individuals trying to report as accurately as possible. If anything, Loftus’s laboratory studies probably underestimate the effects occurring in nature.

Another criticism sometimes leveled at Loftus and her work (in some ways the opposite of the previous one) is that it is unethical: She is manipulating the minds of her participants by using memory-altering techniques. However, she does so in situations approved by institutional review boards, using manipulations much weaker than those existing in nature. Nonetheless, she still produces powerful effects on memory retention. It is ironic that some therapists who criticize Loftus on these ethical grounds may themselves produce much more powerful situations to encourage false recollections in their practice, and with little or no ethical oversight.

Loftus’s research, like all research, is not above reproach, and astute criticism can always improve research. However, the questions of whether Loftus’s research can be applied to outside situations and whether it is ethical can, in my opinion, be laid to rest.

HENRY L. ROEDIGER III

Washington University in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

[email protected]

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False confessions, false accusations, malingering, perjury, problematic eyewitness perception, and fallible memory are not new to society or law. They are human problems that we impanel juries to resolve with the aid of expert testimony and with the requirement that a person making an assertion has the burden of proving it. Elizabeth Loftus is correct in saying that we should always be vigilant against mistaken claims. For that reason, we must examine her own position for errors. Unfortunately, there are many, only a few of which can be addressed here.

Loftus believes that what she calls “repressed memory” is a dangerous fiction, and she believes that science supports her view. In fact, it does not. Approximately 70 data-based scientific studies have appeared in the past decade, using a variety of research designs, specifically addressing the issue of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and there are more studies addressing dissociative amnesia for other disasters, such as war trauma, rape, and physical abuse. Although most people remember trauma, and indeed are afflicted with those intrusive memories, in some people the mind walls the memories away from consciousness as a defense mechanism until a later period of time. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV, which sets the standard of care for all psychiatrists and psychologists, recognizes the legitimacy of repressed memory under the term “dissociative amnesia.” Logicians tell us that to prove the existence of a class, you need only demonstrate the existence of one member of that class. Ross Cheit has documented many cases of dissociative amnesia and childhood sexual abuse, including corroborated criminal cases involving priests (see www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/Recovmem/Archive.html). The Oxford Handbook of Memory (2000) is surely correct in stating that although “the authenticity of discovered memories was originally treated as an either/or issue . . . , recent discussion has become more balanced by promoting the view that while some discovered memories may be the product of therapists[‘] suggestions, others may correspond to actual incidents . . . A number of cases, documented by the news media and in the courts, have provided compelling corroborative evidence of the alleged abuse.”

Loftus’s sole emphasis on memory error masks the stronger evidence regarding memory accuracy for the gist of events. She points to her numerous studies on the “post-event misinformation effect,” but what she does not report is that in her studies, which use a research design most favorable to her conclusion, more than 75 percent of the subjects resist her efforts to alter their memories of peripheral details. Studies with more sophisticated research designs have found a memory alteration rate of only 3 to 5 percent. Thus, for peripheral details, which are easier to influence than the “gist” of an event, the overwhelming majority of test subjects resist memory alteration (false memory implantation). Furthermore, Loftus’s laboratory experiments do not mirror real-life trauma, and, for obvious ethical reasons, they only involve attempts to implant false memories of minor details that have no emotional significance to the subjects. There is a marked difference between whether a person saw a stop sign or a yield sign and whether a person experienced sexual molestation.

Loftus treats hypnosis at arm’s length and with distaste. In fact, however, she makes several logical errors and does not accurately reflect the science. First, she generalizes from the fact that hypnosis can be abused to the conclusion that it will always be abused. Second, she confuses the use of a technique with the misuse of that technique. Third, she addresses the wrong problem. With memory retrieval, the contaminating factor is whether the interviewer is supplying suggestive misinformation. The problem is not whether the subject has been hypnotized. In fact, numerous studies, some by Loftus herself, clearly show that the same suggestive effects occur without hypnosis. In one such experiment, she reported that she was able to alter a memory in some people by asking how fast were the cars going when they “smashed” as compared with when they “hit.” No hypnosis was involved, simply the use of a leading question. If the hypnotist does not use leading questions or suggestive gestures and does not supply the content of the answers, pseudomemories cannot be created. Fourth, she provides no evidence, because there is none, that hypnotically refreshed recollection is more apt to be in error than memory refreshed in other ways. Fifth, the studies most frequently cited to condemn hypnosis have involved the very small percentage of the population who are highly hypnotizable. Even with this most vulnerable population, however, implanting false memories of nonemotional details is rejected by about 75 percent of the subjects. It is not hypnosis that may contaminate memory; it is any interviewer who supplies suggestive misinformation.

There are many horror stories recited in Loftus’s paper about false memories and/or false accusations. It is equally possible, however, to recite many instances of true memories and true accusations from real sexual abuse victims. There are also many true stories about therapists whose lives have been harmed by lawyers trying to make huge profits using false memory slogans. But reciting cases is not the important point. Emotional stories and selective citation may be rhetorically persuasive, but they are the enemies of science. Loftus concludes that the mental health profession has harmed true victims of childhood sexual abuse. But she does not explain how her rejection of repressed memory and strong emphasis on why memories of abuse should not be believed helps them. Indeed, as she is well aware, survivor groups do not view her as their friend.

When prosecutors seek to obtain an indictment, they must present their evidence to a grand jury without the defense having an opportunity to state its case. Several years ago, a man summoned to grand jury duty asked to be relieved of that responsibility because he could only hear in one ear. The judge denied the request, wryly observing that the man “would only be hearing one side of the case anyway.” Loftus has told only one side of the case, leaving out all of the evidence and science that disagrees with her. In the very brief space I have been allotted, I have tried, in the words of radio commentator Paul Harvey, to tell “the rest of the story.”

ALAN W. SCHEFLIN

Professor of Law

Santa Clara University School of Law

Santa Clara, California

[email protected]

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Universities and national security

In “Research Universities in the New Security Environment” (Issues, Summer 2002), M. R. C. Greenwood and Donna Gerardi Riordan discuss the need for “the free flow of information” in research, the involvement of more U.S. students in science, and greater breadth in national research priorities.

The fundamental principle of science is the free interchange of information. The open (and hence peer-reviewed) nature of U.S. science is a reason for its preeminence internationally. Thus a shift, as the authors point out, from a “right to know” to a “need to know” violates this prime directive of openness. A second advantage of the traditional openness of U.S. universities is the attraction to them of many international science and engineering students. Current events require a tempering of this influx, which will require care. America’s closest recent attempt at scientific suicide has been our unwillingness to put sufficient resources into educating our own citizens who might enter science and engineering. Our ethnic minorities are underrepresented in science and engineering; they are overrepresented in the U.S. military by 50 percent (source: Department of Defense report on social representation in the U.S. military for fiscal year 1999). Through national indolence, we have not adequately attracted this obviously loyal pool of U.S. citizens into science and engineering. One could couch the authors’ suggestion for a revival of the earlier National Defense Education Act as a way to produce the science warriors needed for the post-9/11 world.

The authors dub the current federal support of science as “missiles and medicine.” Vannevar Bush’s 1945 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt included health, wealth, and defense as the targets for federal support. The omission in current federal policy is a key one. As Lester Thurow points out, “Put simply, the payoff from social investment in basic research is as clear as anything is ever going to be in economics.” An obvious example of the omission of “wealth” and of Thurow’s point is in the computer field, where defense concerns caused the creation of large mainframe computers, but an emphasis on wealth enabled the creation of personal computers and the World Wide Web.

The key word in this article is “collaboration.” Large societal problems require big research teams, which are perforce interdisciplinary. A largely ignored aspect of post-9/11 is the crucial role of social science. As Philip Zimbardo, president of the American Psychological Association, said at the November 2001 meeting of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, “Terrorism is a social phenomenon.” How can social scientists best be included with engineers, linguists, theologians, and others in post-9/11 efforts?

The authors point out the need for many types of collaborations in areas such as addressing large societal issues and bringing academia and the federal government together to set research priorities. Effective processes are needed to enable these collaborations. At the University of Kansas, our Hall Center for the Humanities is creating a series of dialogues between representatives of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures,” with the goal of encouraging large-scale collaborations for academic research. How can large-scale multidimensional projects be carried out? What are enabling processes to this end?

ROBERT E. BARNHILL

President, Center for Research, Inc.

University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas]

[email protected]

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M. R. C. Greenwood and Donna Gerardi Riordan address three areas of great importance–information access, balance in our research investments, and foreign students–and present a proposal for action. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I came to this country as a foreign student in 1956.)

The article is an important contribution to the lively debate about such issues that has arisen after 9/11. In addition to hearings in Congress and meetings arranged by the administration, the debate has involved such important constituencies as the National Academies (a workshop, a report, and planned regional meetings), the Council on Competitiveness (including a forthcoming national symposium), a number of professional societies (notably the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology), educational associations (including the American Association of Universities), and much of the rest of the research university community.

The debate needs to focus on increasingly specific questions. We cannot answer with generalities the intricate questions of priorities, balance, tradeoffs, and cost effectiveness that present themselves as we define the nation’s research agendas, long-term and short-term, and grapple with how to ensure appropriate security.

One point that was made with considerable force at the National Academies’ workshop on post-9/11 issues in December 2001 was that we must build on existing structures and processes to the greatest extent possible. To be sure, we need to continue to assess the needs and weaknesses in our system that 9/11 revealed, and take remedial steps. But this is not a time, as was the case during World War II, when we need to establish a whole series of new crash programs to meet the nation’s needs. It is incumbent on us in the higher education community to be as specific and persuasive as possible in making the argument for the need for, and effectiveness of, specific investments rather than speaking in general terms about the need for greater investments. We have to be prepared to participate in a vigorous debate about priorities and means.

The authors make the important point that we need to develop the nation’s linguistic and cultural competencies as well as its scientific ones. This is one area where the higher education community has the responsibility for making the case. It would be useful to think about this issue in terms of three different needs, even though the programs required in each case may well intersect.

First, the nation needs to develop a much larger group of experts with linguistic and cultural competency for specific government tasks. Most of this group will likely be government-trained in government programs.

Second, and at the other extreme, we need to greatly enhance the effort devoted in K-12 and undergraduate education to provide our citizens with better knowledge and understanding of the linguistically and culturally diverse world in which we live and about the complications that entails, even extending to deadly results. A heavy responsibility rests on us in the higher education community to do this, regardless of government investment, and certainly without having the government tell us how to do it.

Third, there is a need for an expanded category of academic specialists in many languages and cultures who can do research and teach in such specialties.

The authors propose the establishment of a counterpart to the National Defense Education Act prompted by Sputnik. Maybe we need such a framework to address needs both in the sciences and in the humanities, but creation of such a program will depend on the demonstration that meeting each need is a critical aspect of an overall security whole. In any case, I think we need to address the issues in something like the terms I just outlined. Such specificity should help us make the points we need to make.

On the information access issue, I wholeheartedly endorse what the authors have to say. The widely recognized effectiveness of the U.S. system of higher education and research is due in considerable measure to its openness. But since there are legitimate security concerns, we need to continue our debate in very specific terms to ensure that the restrictions that may be necessary are both reasonable and effective.

NILS HASSELMO

President

Association of American Universities

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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Control mercury emissions now

For over a decade, the utility industry and regulators have actively debated whether it is appropriate to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, and if so, to what extent. Matt Little’s recent article, “Reducing Mercury Pollution from Electric Power Plants” (Issues, Summer 2002), neatly frames the debate by describing the myriad of issues that will likely affect its outcome. One point, though, warrants emphasis: that reducing mercury pollution nationwide is not only the right thing to do to protect public health and wildlife, it is feasible.

A vital part of our food supply is contaminated with mercury, and in 2001 we learned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention its effect on the U.S. population: One in 10 women of childbearing age is eating enough mercury-contaminated fish to put their newborns potentially at risk for developmental harm. Such compelling evidence should have automatically translated into a national call for action to reduce all human sources of this toxic contaminant. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened.

Although the federal government has moved forward with regulating several major sources of mercury pollution, efforts to further delay controls on power plants are ongoing. State governments, on the other hand, are cracking down on mercury pollution much more comprehensively by targeting consumer and commercial products, including cars; the health care industry, including dentists; and electric utilities.

All the evidence is in hand to make an informed decision with respect to regulating mercury emissions from electric utilities. 1) Mercury poses a real, documented threat to our future generations and to wildlife. 2) It is technically feasible to control mercury from coal-burning plants (even from plants that burn subbituminous and lignite coals, as has been recently demonstrated by utility- and government-funded studies). 3) Control is cost effective, with estimates likely to continue their downward trend as the demand for control technology increases. 4) Control is essential if we anticipate burning coal in the coming decades to meet our electricity needs, which we do.

Electric utilities should not be allowed to continue to shield themselves behind false claims that there is neither adequate scientific evidence of harm nor the technical know-how needed to set strict standards. Mercury pollution is pervasive in the United States and globally, and efforts need to be made on all fronts to eliminate this problem. The time is long overdue.

FELICE STADLER

National Policy Coordinator

Clean the Rain Campaign

National Wildlife Federation

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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Matt Little’s excellent and comprehensive article on mercury pollution exposes one of many weak points in the Bush administration’s so-called “Clear Skies” proposal. The legislation would be a giant step backward in air pollution control and would enable irresponsible corporations to continue to evade pollution controls. Indeed, so bad is this industry-friendly legislation that it was very quietly introduced on the eve of the congressional summer vacation by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who quickly slinked out of town rather than try to defend the plan to reporters.

Regarding mercury, the current Clean Air Act will require each electric power plant in the nation to curb mercury emissions by as much as 90 percent by 2008 and then to further limit any unacceptable mercury risks that remain. The administration bill would repeal these requirements, substituting a weak national “cap” that would not be fully implemented before 2018 and would allow at least three times more mercury pollution. [In the fine print, the legislation would require that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work closely with the coal-friendly Department of Energy on a cost-benefit analysis to see if EPA should require more than a minimal amount of mercury reduction.] There is little question that the electric power industry can meet the 90 percent mercury reduction standard in the competing legislation drafted by Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.). Jeffrey C. Smith, executive director of the Institute for Clean Air Companies, testified before Jeffords’ committee in November of 2001 that the 90 percent standard could be met even by plants that burn low-sulfur coal.

The real question here is whether coal-state politics–the Bush administration’s desire to keep such coal states as West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee in the “red” column in 2004–will triumph over public health protection. Public health concerns were exacerbated in late July 2002, when a Food and Drug Administration panel recommended that pregnant women limit their consumption of tuna fish because of the mercury threat to fetuses.

Will our lawmakers choose to protect coal and power industry profits or public health?

FRANK O’DONNELL

Executive Director

Clean Air Trust

Washington, D.C.

[email protected]

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Matt Little’s article hits the nail on the head. Not only is mercury pollution control becoming increasingly affordable and efficient, but recent research also indicates that we would benefit from stricter controls sooner.

Our public health is at stake. Recent Food and Drug Administration action added tuna to their consumption advisory for women of childbearing years and children. When toxic pollution reaches levels requiring people to limit their consumption of a normally healthy, commonly consumed food, it’s obvious that action is overdue.

Mercury’s toxic effects go further than direct human health effects. Mercury’s effects start with mammals, birds, fish, and even soil microbes. Recent peer-reviewed research links mercury pollution to increasing antibiotic resistance in harmful pathogens. This and other recent research indicate we have an incomplete but sufficient understanding of mercury’s toxic effects on the world around us to warrant action.

Utilities remain the largest source of uncontrolled mercury emissions. Yet there are workable options to reduce this pollution. Technology taken from other pollution control applications combined with an understanding of combustion chemistry makes mercury control feasible and affordable. As Little points out, the Department of Energy is years ahead of its schedule to find cost-effective reductions in mercury emissions at levels exceeding 90 percent of those currently emitted.

We are making progress on issues raised by utilities regarding the contamination of the waste stream due to mercury control. The use of waste heat, in a process similar to retorting, holds promise for removing mercury from potentially marketable products as is done with wallboard produced from lime used in sulfur control. Also, by moving mercury control processes to follow particulate controls, we’ve resolved the problem of carbon content in ash. When we sequester mercury from ash and other by-products, not only do we ensure this mercury won’t come back to haunt us, we also offset pollution control costs by creating safe, saleable products.

We need to look at multiple pollutant approaches that help solve our current and potential future problems. Although no single technology has yet been developed that totally controls mercury, coal-fired power plants don’t produce mercury pollution as their only air pollutant. Everyone, including utilities, agrees that we eventually need to reduce carbon emissions. Increasingly, utilities realize that pollution control, when aggregated and considered in the context of multiple pollutants, is affordable.

As a courageous start, Sen. Jeffords’ Clean Power Act (S.556) recognizes solutions. Coal use will continue for years to come as we increase energy supplies from cleaner, cheaper, and safer sources. While this occurs, we need to protect our families and our future from mercury’s toxic legacy. With the understanding of control technologies, the knowledge about mercury’s effects, and the free market to drive results, the capacity for solutions is evident.

ERIC URAM

Midwest Regional Representative

Sierra Club

Madison, Wisconsin

[email protected]

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Needed: Achievement and aptitude

In “Achievement Versus Aptitude in College Admissions” (Issues, Winter 2001-02), Richard C. Atkinson discusses the SAT I and II tests. But to say whether aptitude or achievement should be used as the criterion for university admission is too simplistic.

As an Admissions Tutor in Britain 15 years ago, I had a very simple aim: to admit students who had the capability to succeed in the course. To do this, we tutors looked at available evidence, including but not limited to examination results, using strategies that were adjusted to the subject.

In my particular case, chemical engineering, I looked for people who had knowledge of chemistry and aptitude in mathematics. The former was necessary so that they could understand the lectures from day one. The second was so that they could learn new tricks. At that time, school subjects were done at O (ordinary) and A (advanced) levels. When a student had not taken a subject at A level, the O-level grade could be used as some guide to aptitude but was a much lesser achievement.

Other subjects were different. Law basically required high grades at A level in any subjects. The degree assumed no prior knowledge but required clever people. To take a degree in French, you had to be fluent in that language (via A level or any other means). You could start studying Japanese or Arabic, providing you had already learned another foreign language (Welsh was acceptable).

In general, A level grades were found to be a fair predictor of success for some subjects studied at both school and university and a poor predictor when the degree was very different in style and/or content from the school subject.

For most subjects, motivation was important. People who had visited a chemical plant, attended law courts, been on an archaeological dig, done voluntary work in hospitals, published articles in the school newspaper, or had any other involvement in their chosen subject: These were the ones who demonstrated an interest.

Things are no longer so sensible for British Admissions Tutors. Government interference and the power of information technology have pressured tutors to offer places only according to grades on standard examinations. Woe betide the tutor who makes allowance for a student who was ill or came from a deprived background. Damnation upon the tutor who refuses a place to a student with the right number of points but lacking other essential qualities.

Students in higher education need some achievement, some aptitude, and some motivation for their course. These can be traded off to some extent: I have seen hard work overcome both lack of ability and lack of prior knowledge, but never simultaneously. However, the balance is likely to vary significantly from subject to subject.

MARTIN PITT

Chemical and Process Engineering

University of Sheffield

United Kingdom

[email protected]

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New approach to climate change

“The Technology Assessment Approach to Climate Change” by Edward A. Parson (Issues, Summer 2002) deals with an extremely important issue that has direct implications not only for the mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also for adapting to climate change. However, I think it is overstretching the point to say that policy debate on global climate change is deadlocked because the assessment of options for reducing GHGs has been strikingly ineffective. Surely, if there is a deadlock, it is due to a much larger body of reasons than the single fact identified by the author. Perhaps Parson has a point in saying that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has failed to draw on private-sector expertise. At the same time, the analogy that he draws with the Montreal Protocol is, by his own admission, not entirely valid. Take, for instance, the case of the transport sector. Undoubtedly, the widespread use of technology that is being developed today for private vehicles and the possible enlargement of a role for public transport in the future would have a major impact in reducing emissions. But is industry in a position or willing to provide an assessment of the evaluation of future technology, the costs associated with specific developments, and how their use would spread in the economy? We are not dealing with the narrow issue of finding replacements for ozone-depleting substances. The changes required to reduce emissions of GHGs would involve changes in institutions, the development of technology at prices that would facilitate change, and perhaps some changes in laws and regulations and their implementation.

I also find it difficult to reconcile the certainty that Parson seems to attach to the assessment of technological and managerial options with his contention that “future emissions and the ease with which they can be reduced are much more uncertain than the present debate would suggest.” He goes on to explain that this uncertainty stems from imperfectly understood demographic, behavioral, and economic processes. If such is the case, then certainly the assessment of future technology, which is necessarily a function of demographic, behavioral, and economic processes, also suffers from a similar level of uncertainty. The assessment of technology, particularly as it relates to future developments, is not as simple as implied in the article. Nor can the analogy between the implementation of the Montreal Protocol and mitigation options in the field of climate change be stretched too far.

Having said so, I would concede the point that the IPCC and the assessment work it carries out would benefit greatly from interaction with industry. There is no denying the fact that the understanding of technology and the factors that facilitate or inhibit its development are areas that industry understands far better than any other section of society. No doubt, several members of the academic community who study technology issues can carry out an objective analysis of the subject without the undue influence that may arise out of narrow corporate objectives and interests. This community of academics, however, is generally small, and smaller still is that subset which works closely with industry and is qualified to provide advice to industry in shaping corporate policies for technology development. There is, therefore, much to be gained by interacting closely with industry on technology issues, because even if one does not get direct inputs that can go into IPCC’s assessments, there would be much to gain through a better understanding of technology issues, which industry is well qualified to provide.

The suggestion made by the Parson, therefore, about the IPCC following a technology assessment process similar to that used for ozone-depleting chemicals is largely valid. Should industry be able to spare the time of people who have the right knowledge and talent, a substantial body of material can become available for the authors involved in the IPCC assessment, which can help improve the quality of sections dealing with technology. It would, of course, be of great value to involve industry experts extensively in the review process for the Fourth Assessment Report. Through this letter, I would like to express the intention of the IPCC Bureau that Parson’s article will receive a great deal of attention, and the spirit of his suggestions will be implemented; even though the precise details of his critique and advice may be difficult to incorporate in practice.

RAJENDRA K. PACHAURI

Director General

Tata Energy Research Institute

Delhi, India

Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

[email protected]

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Edward A. Parson is to be commended for identifying the many lessons from the Montreal Protocol Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) that can improve the important work of the comparable Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC WG3).

By the time the first IPCC technical review was organized, TEAP had been in operation for more than five years and had earned a reputation for consistently reporting technical options allowing the Montreal Protocol to go faster and further. As insiders in the Montreal Protocol and TEAP, we can confirm Parson’s key conclusions, offer additional insight and emphasis, and suggest a way forward.

Parson correctly describes TEAP membership as respected industry experts guided by chairs who are primarily from government. Over 75 percent of the 800 experts who have served on TEAP are from industry, whereas 80 percent of IPCC WG3 members are government, institute, and academic scholars.

Critics of a TEAP-like IPCC approach argue that a majority of industry experts could manipulate the technical findings. Parson debunks these skeptics by showing that TEAP’s technically optimistic and accurate findings speak for themselves. Balanced membership, clear mandates, strenuous ground rules, personal integrity, decisive management, and proper committee startup achieve objective assessment.

Legendary United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Mostafa Tolba created TEAP and nurtured it to strength before it faced governments. Tolba knew that the best scientific experts are in academia and government programs such as the British Antarctic Service, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the World Meteorological Organization. But Tolba also knew that the best technical experts on alternatives to ozone-depleting substances are in businesses such as AT&T, British Petroleum, Ford, Nortel, and Seiko Epson, and in military organizations. Industry participation in TEAP makes the reports more accurate, more visionary, and more credible, while government and academic members ensure that the reports are not biased.

So what is the way forward? We suggest reorganization and collaboration. Reorganization to welcome industry participation and allow technical panels to write reports based on expert judgment and cutting-edge technology. And collaboration of TEAP and IPCC on topics of mutual interest, such as hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons, which are important alternatives to the ozone-depleting substances controlled by the Montreal Protocol but are included in the basket of greenhouse gases of the Kyoto Protocol.

If your appetite is whetted, consult our new book Protecting the Ozone Layer: The United Nations History (Earthscan, 2002) for the “‘what happened when,” Parson’s new book Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy (Oxford University Press 2002) for the “‘what happened why,” and Penelope Canan and Nancy Reichman’s new book Ozone Connections: Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance (Greenleaf, 2002) for the “what happened who.”

STEPHEN O. ANDERSEN

K. MADHAVA SARMA

Andersen ([email protected]) is a founding co-chair of TEAP and pioneered voluntary industry-government partnerships at the U.S. EPA. Sarma ([email protected]) was executive secretary of the Secretariat for the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol from 1991 to 2000.

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It is sad to see serious academics such as Thomas C. Schelling (Issues, Forum, Winter 2001) defending President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. The crucial point is that Bush refused to give any consideration to the problem of global warming and made it clear that the United States would do nothing to control the emission of CO2. He even refused to accept the conclusions of the scientists studying the issue, thus resembling the president of South Africa, who denied the relation of HIV to AIDS.

It is suggested that September 11 changed everything and now Bush is a great leader in the war against terrorism. Unfortunately, as Bush prepares an attack on Iraq, more and more people realize that whether it is the issue of “terrorism” or the Kyoto Protocol, the one thing of importance to Bush is oil.

LINCOLN WOLFENSTEIN

University Professor of Physics

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

[email protected]

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Managing our forests

I have little argument with the idea that we should test new approaches to decisionmaking for the national forests. However, I find Daniel Kemmis’ arguments (“Science’s Role in Natural Resources Decision,” Issues, Summer 2002) less convincing, and they do nothing to justify his faith in collaboration.

Kemmis implies that the 19th century Progressive movement made science the alpha and omega of Forest Service decisions. That was not so in the agency’s early years, nor has it been since. The agency’s first chief, Gifford Pinchot, was a pragmatic and masterful politician; he knew when to compromise. For example, he explained his decision to allow grazing on public lands this way: “We were faced with this simple choice: shut out all grazing and lose the Forest Reserves, or let stock in under control and save the Reserves for the nation. It seemed to me but one thing to do. We did it, and because we did it . . . National Forests today safeguard the headwaters of most Western rivers.”

On July 1, 1905, Pinchot sent employees the “Use Book,” describing how the national forests were to be managed. It said that, “local questions were to be settled upon local grounds.” He hoped that management would become science-based, and he established a research division. He knew that all management decisions were political acts and that all decisions were local.

I served in the Forest Service for 30 years, including 3 as chief, and never knew of a management decision dictated solely by science. Decisions were made in the light of laws, regulations, political sensitivities, budgets, court decisions, public opinion, and precedents. However, using science in decisionmaking is both wise and mandatory. Using science implies ensuring the quality of the science involved. Certainly, courts insist that their decisions meet the tests of application of science and public participation.

Collaboration is neither a new concept nor a panacea. Kemmis might have noted that, unfortunately, many collaborative efforts of the past decade have failed, wholly or in part, and others remain in doubt.

As an ecologist and manager, I define ecosystem management as nothing more (relative to other approaches) than the broadening of the scales involved (time, area, and number of variables), the determination of ecologically meaningful assessment areas, and the inclusion of human needs and desires. To say that ecosystems are more complex than we can think (which is true) and are therefore not subject to management (which is not) makes no sense. We can’t totally understand ecosystems, but we manage them or manage within them nonetheless, changing approaches with new experience and knowledge. So, management by a professional elite based totally on good science is a straw man that has never existed.

Kemmis would replace the current decisionmaking process with collaboration, in which he has great faith. Faith (“a firm belief in something for which there is no proof”) is a wonderful thing. I suggest that, in the tradition of the Progressive movement, such faith is worthy of testing and evaluation. We agree on that.

JACK WARD THOMAS

Boone and Crockett Professor of Conservation

University of Montana

Missoula, Montana

Thomas is a former chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

The next time you reach for a bottle of spring water, consider that it may have come from a well that is drying up a blue-ribbon trout stream. The next time you dine at McDonald’s, note that the fries are all the same length. That’s because the farmers who grow the potatoes irrigate their fields, perhaps with groundwater from wells adjacent to nearby rivers. The next time you purchase gold jewelry, consider that it may have come from a mine that has pumped so much groundwater to be able to work the gold-bearing rock that 60 to 100 years will pass before the water table recovers. The next time you water your suburban lawn, pause to reflect on what that is doing to the nearby wetland. And the next time you visit Las Vegas and flip on the light in your hotel room, consider that the electricity may have come from a coal-fired power plant supplied by a slurry pipeline that uses groundwater critical to springs sacred to the Hopi people.

These and countless other seemingly innocuous activities reflect our individual and societal dependence on groundwater. From Tucson to Tampa Bay, from California’s Central Valley to Down East Maine, rivers and lakes have disappeared, and fresh water is becoming scarce. Groundwater pumping–for domestic consumption, irrigation, or mining–causes bodies of water and wetlands to dry up; the ground beneath us to collapse; and fish, wildlife, and trees to die. The excessive pumping of our aquifers has created an environmental catastrophe known to relatively few scientists and water management experts and to those who are unfortunate enough to have suffered the direct consequences. This phenomenon is occurring not just in the arid West with its tradition of battling over water rights, but even in places we think of as relatively wet.

As a country, we have dramatically increased our reliance on groundwater. This increase has dried up rivers and lakes, because there is a hydrologic connection between groundwater and surface water. Yet the legal rules governing water use usually ignore this link. This disconnection between law and science is a major cause of the problem. So too is our refusal to recognize the unsustainability of our water use. Significant reform is necessary if we are to prevent further degradation of our rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands, and estuaries.

Groundwater use and consequences

Groundwater pumping in the United States has increased dramatically in the past few decades. For domestic purposes alone, groundwater use jumped from 2.9 trillion gallons in 1965 to about 6.8 trillion gallons in 1995, or 24,000 gallons for every man, woman, and child. But domestic consumption is only a small fraction of the country’s total groundwater use, which totaled almost 28 trillion gallons in 1995. Farmers used two-thirds of that to irrigate crops; the mining industry, especially for copper, coal, and gold production, pumped about 770 billion gallons. Groundwater constitutes more than 25 percent of the nation’s water supply. In 1995, California alone pumped 14,500 billion gallons of groundwater per day. Groundwater withdrawals actually exceeded surface water diversions in Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, and Mississippi. In the United States, more than half of the population relies on groundwater for their drinking water supply. Groundwater pumping has become a global problem because 1.5 billion people (one-quarter of the world’s population) depend on groundwater for drinking water.

Groundwater is an extraordinarily attractive source of water for farms, mines, cities, and homeowners because it is available throughout the year and it exists almost everywhere in the country. During the various ice ages, much of the country was covered with huge freshwater lakes. Water from these lakes percolated into the ground and collected in aquifers. Unlike rivers and streams, which are few and far between, especially in the West, aquifers exist below almost the entire country.

The legal system has fostered our increasing use of groundwater by developing two sets of rules for allocating rights to divert water from rivers and lakes. In the East, the riparian system allows owners of property on rivers or lakes to divert water for a variety of purposes. In the West, the prior appropriation doctrine–the essence of which is “first-in-time, first-in-right”–gives superior rights to the earliest diverters. However, the legal system developed a completely different set of rules for controlling groundwater use. When U.S. courts developed groundwater law in the 19th century, hydrology was an infant science. In 1850, the Supreme Court of Connecticut explained that the movement of water beneath the surface of the earth moved according to principles that could not be known or regulated. “These influences are so secret, changeable, and uncontrollable, we cannot subject them to the regulations of law, nor build upon them a system of rules, as has been done with streams upon the surface,” the court said. This reasoning made sense in 1850; since then, however, the law in most states has not kept pace with advances in the science of hydrology. As a consequence, the legal rules have failed to conform with physical reality. Principles of either riparianism or prior appropriation govern surface water, whereas the “reasonable use” doctrine governs groundwater pumping. Under this doctrine, an owner of land may pump as much water as he or she desires so long as it is for a “reasonable use,” which is essentially no restriction whatsoever.

Overdrafting or “mining” groundwater creates serious problems. Because water is heavy, about two pounds per quart, more energy is needed to lift water from lower levels. The costs of this energy may be substantial: In Arizona, the electric energy to run a commercial irrigation well may cost $2,000 per month. The drilling of new and deeper wells may be required, which is often a considerable expense. Pumping from lower levels may produce poorer quality water because naturally occurring elements, such as arsenic, fluoride, and radon, are more prevalent at deeper levels in the earth, and the earth’s higher internal temperature at these levels dissolves more of these elements into solution. As the water deteriorates in quality, it may violate U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, requiring either that the water be subject to expensive treatment processes or that the well be turned off, thus eliminating that source of water. Along coastal areas, overdrafting may cause the intrusion of saltwater into the aquifer, rendering the water no longer potable. This problem is quite serious in California, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. Another consequence of overdrafting is the prospect of land subsidence, in which the land’s surface actually cracks or drops, in some cases dramatically. In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the land surface dropped between 25 and 30 feet between 1925 and 1977. Land subsidence has damaged homes and commercial structures and reduced property values. Pumping north of Tampa Bay in Pasco County has cracked the foundations, walls, and ceilings of local residents’ homes, resulting in lawsuits, insurance claims, and considerable ill will.

A final consequence of groundwater pumping is its impact on surface water, including lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks, streams, springs, wetlands, and estuaries. These consequences range from minimal to catastrophic. An example of the latter is the Santa Cruz River in Tucson. Once a verdant riparian system with a lush canopy provided by cottonwood and willow trees, groundwater pumping has lowered the water table, drained the river of its flow, killed the cottonwood and willow trees, and driven away the local wildlife. The river has become an oxymoron–a dry river–a pathetic desiccated sandbox.

How does a river go dry?

Fueled by the energy of the sun and the force of gravity, water continually moves through a succession of different phases, called the hydrologic cycle. The sun’s energy evaporates seawater from the oceans’ surface, leaving behind the salts and circulating the water into the atmosphere. After wind currents carry the moisture-laden air over land, the increase in relative humidity eventually causes the water to condense and produces precipitation. When the water falls to earth, some of it immediately evaporates into the sky, another portion runs off the land to creeks, streams, and rivers, and some infiltrates the ground, in a process known as recharge. A portion of the groundwater near rivers and streams eventually emerges from the ground, in a process called discharge, to augment the surface flows of rivers or streams. Groundwater pumping essentially interrupts this cycle by removing water, directly or indirectly, that would otherwise discharge from aquifers to rivers, streams, and other surface water bodies.

Groundwater and surface water are not separate categories of water any more than liquid water and ice are truly separate. The designations groundwater and surface water merely describe the physical location of the water in the hydrologic cycle. Indeed, groundwater and surface water form a continuum. In some regions of the country, virtually all groundwater was once stream flow that seeped into the ground. The converse is also true but not obvious. Consider the following puzzle: Where does water in a river come from if it has not rained in a while? The water comes from groundwater that has seeped from the aquifer into the river, in what’s known as base flow.

Whether water will flow from the river to the aquifer or vice versa depends on the level of the water table in the aquifer and on the elevation of the river. If the water table is above the elevation of the river, water will flow laterally toward the river and augment the flow in the river. In most regions of the country, this is the process that occurs. But as groundwater pumping lowers the water table, the direction of the flow of water changes. Once the water table is below the elevation of the river, water flows from the river toward the aquifer. This is what groundwater pumping did to the Santa Cruz River. It dried up the Santa Cruz by lowering the level of the water table below the elevation of the river. Groundwater pumping literally sucked water from the river and produced horrible environmental consequences. First, of course, the flow in the river disappeared, as did water-dependent species. Then, the trees and shrubs died as groundwater pumping lowered the water table below the root zone of the vegetation.

In Arizona, groundwater pumping has dried up or degraded 90 percent of the state’s once perennial desert streams, rivers, and riparian habitats. Some marvelous habitat remains healthy but faces an uncertain future. For example, the San Pedro River is southeastern Arizona supports an estimated 390 species of birds (almost two-thirds of all species seen in North America). The area is so special that Birder’s Digest, the Nature Conservancy, the American Bird Conservancy, and the National Audubon Society have given the river special designation. However, the population of the city of Sierra Vista and Cochise County is exploding, and all of this growth is dependant on groundwater. Local politicians and developers fear that environmental issues may retard growth. It is possible that the San Pedro River will suffer the same fate as the Santa Cruz.

Not surprisingly, some developers maintain that groundwater pumping has not caused the lower flow levels in the San Pedro River. To be sure, there will always be a problem of determining the causal relationship between groundwater pumping and environmental degradation. Scientific uncertainty attends many disputes over the impact of pumping on a particular river or spring. Some of this debate is in good faith, an honest disagreement about what the evidence suggests and the computer models predict. Other positions seem animated by gross self-interest. With so much money at stake, developers pay consultants handsome fees to help obtain lucrative permits to pump.

In considering other examples of environmental problems caused by groundwater pumping, the first thing to note is that the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment is not confined to the arid West. Consider Florida. One of the wettest states in the country, with an average of more than 54 inches of rain a year, Florida has always had a problem with water. Historically, the problem was too much water. In a state surrounded on three sides by ocean and with enormous aquifers and extremely high water tables, the problem was how to get rid of the water. Although that story is relatively well known, another version of Florida’s water woes is not.

Florida’s population jumped from 2.7 million people in 1950 to 16 million in 2000, making Florida the fourth most populous state. A region that is experiencing particularly explosive growth is Tampa Bay. In search of additional supplies during the 1970s, Tampa Bay Water (the local water utility) purchased large tracts of rural areas in adjoining counties and drilled a huge number of wells. By 1996, groundwater withdrawal had risen to approximately 255 million gallons per day, a 400 percent increase over 1960 levels. When lakes and ponds began to dry up–one study found that fewer than 10 of 153 lakes in the region were healthy–Tampa Bay Water knew it had a public relations disaster on its hands. Homeowners who had bought lakefront property only to watch it dry up were not amused. In response, Tampa Bay Water began to dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day into the dry lakebeds. Where did Tampa Bay Water get this additional water? From groundwater pumping. Yet this additional groundwater would inevitably drain back into the ground in search of the water table. It was like trying to keep water in a colander.

Tampa Bay is not the only area where officials have tried to mask the consequences of groundwater pumping. In San Antonio, Texas, Paseo del Rio, or River Walk, has become the city’s most popular tourist attraction. A 2.5-mile section of the San Antonio River that flows through the heart of downtown, River Walk anchors a $3.5 billion-per-year tourist industry. Most tourists would be surprised to learn that the river they enjoy is the creation of dams, floodgates, and groundwater pumped from the Edwards Aquifer and dumped into the San Antonio River above River Walk. The San Antonio River was once navigable though the River Walk stretch, but it dried up because of groundwater pumping. In short, the city of San Antonio pumps millions of gallons a day of groundwater into the river in order to create an economically useful fiction. As San Antonio has continued to expand, the San Antonio Water System began to search for new sources of water and to look for ways to reuse existing supplies. In 2000, the system began to dump treated municipal effluent into River Walk as a substitute for groundwater. The water creating the illusion of a real river is still groundwater, but it has been used before.

Americans use groundwater to grow all kinds of things, even when there is no need to do so. Until rather recently, many U.S. farms were “dryland” farmed, meaning that the farmers had no irrigation system. However, Americans’ love affair with processed foods caused some potato farmers to shift from dryland to irrigation farming. The problem with dryland potatoes is that their size, shape, and texture depend heavily on seasonal weather patterns. During the growing season, potatoes need constant moisture or they will have knobs and odd shapes. A misshapen or knobby potato is perfectly edible, but it is not an acceptable potato for the fast-food industry. In 1988, McDonald’s began to offer consumers “super-sized” meals with larger portions of french fries served in rectangular boxes with flat bottoms. Only potatoes grown through irrigation produced a uniform length fry that would jut out of the super-size box just the right amount so that the consumer could grasp the potato between index finger and thumb and dip it in ketchup. The desire for the perfect fry is felt by the trout in north central Minnesota, where potato farms rely on groundwater that is very closely connected hydrologically to blue-ribbon trout streams. Increased pumping to support additional potato production threatens the survival of trout.

For a final example, consider the country’s newfound fascination with bottled water. Sixty percent of Americans drink bottled water, which is now the fastest growing product among the top 50 supermarket categories. Between 1978 and 2001, consumption rose 1,300 percent to 5.4 billion gallons, or about 43 billion 16-ounce bottles. A major beneficiary of the bottled-water craze is the Perrier Group of America. Most consumers know Perrier as the importer of green bottles of spring water from France. But Perrier also sells bottled spring water under 14 other brand names, including Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Zephyrhills, Poland Spring, Ozarka, and Ice Mountain. Indeed, Perrier has become the largest U.S. bottler of water (ahead of Pepsi and Coke) with a 32 percent market share. To supply its needs in the United States, Perrier relies on approximately 50 locations around the country, yet it must relentlessly search for new sources to satisfy the growing demand.

One place where Perrier looked was the Mecan River in Wisconsin. A blue-ribbon trout stream, the Mecan has been carefully protected by the state. Beginning in the 1950s, Wisconsin acquired more than 6,000 acres on the Mecan and surrounding tributaries. In 1999, Perrier proposed building a bottling plant and drilling wells on land near Mecan Springs. Environmental groups were aghast at the prospect, for they knew that the cool, underground spring water was critical to the fragile ecology of the river. But under Wisconsin law, the state could not halt Perrier’s commercial operation unless the pumping would interfere with the municipal water supply, and it would not. Perrier proposed to pump 720,000 gallons per day from a well located immediately adjacent to the springs. In the end, Perrier decided not to proceed with this plant, in part because of substantial opposition from local residents. However, the problem of the impact of pumping spring water has not gone away. It has simply changed locations. In 2001 and 2002, Perrier opened bottling plants in Tennessee, Michigan, and California.

The urgent need for reform

In the United States, the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment is an example of what biologist Garrett Harden called “the tragedy of the commons.” The legal rules governing groundwater use encourage exploitation of the resource: They reward rational economic individuals by permitting them to pump enormous quantities of groundwater, regardless of the environmental impact. Most states have failed to eliminate the gap between law and science. In lieu of legal reform, Americans have shown limitless ingenuity in devising technological fixes for water supply problems. These so-called solutions have altered the hydrologic cycle in order to sustain existing usage.

As our water use spirals upward, we must begin to rethink the economic structure by which we value (and usually undervalue) our water resources. At the same time, we must act to protect our rivers, springs, wetlands, lakes, and estuaries from groundwater pumping. There is considerable urgency. Because groundwater moves so slowly, it may take years or decades of groundwater pumping before the effect on the environment is apparent. The hidden tragedy and irremediable fact is that groundwater pumping that has already occurred will cause environmental damage in the future.

We must reform the system. A cure will not come quickly or easily, but nature has enormous regenerative capacity. The solution involves charting a new course for the future based on wise policies, then making a commitment to stay the course. It can be done. In the process, state and local governments must play a critical role.

To control the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, we must combine a command-and-control model of government rules and regulations with the market forces of transferable rights and price incentives. Any meaningful reform must do two things: protect the rights of existing users by creating quantified water rights that are transferable and therefore valuable; and break free of the relentless cycle of increasing use by placing restrictions on individual freedom to pump groundwater.

States should foster a market in water rights by allowing the easy transferability of rights from existing users to newcomers. Enormous quantities of groundwater are used for extremely low-value economic activities. State law must facilitate the movement of water from these uses to higher-value ones by establishing a water rights market as the mechanism for accomplishing this shift. But water markets are not the only solution.

Government rules and regulations deserve a prominent place in our reform efforts as we attempt to protect the environment. The states should undertake a number of very specific reforms. First, states should carefully craft water conservation standards. A water conservation program seems, intuitively, like a good idea: Let’s save water. However, the experience of some western states with conservation standards sends a mixed message. If the states attempt to impose elaborate and detailed conservation standards, the regulated groups will fight tooth and nail over every sentence in the proposed regulation. This process can consume enormous amounts of time, energy, and money. The lesson for states is that it is better to embrace simple conservation standards that are easy to administer and implement. They are likely to have the most practical effect in terms of actually saving water and will avoid prolonged political struggle. In other words, it is easier to pick low-hanging fruit.

Second, states should establish minimum stream flows and protect those flows from pumping of hydrologically connected groundwater. Through a combination of statutes, judicial decisions, and administrative rules, the state of Washington has developed a system that other states should emulate. The legislature authorized the State Department of Ecology to establish minimum water levels for streams and lakes to protect fish, game, other wildlife resources, and recreational and esthetic values. The minimum levels become appropriations within the prior appropriation system and offer protection against subsequent groundwater pumping.

Third, states should prohibit the drilling of new wells in areas that are hydrologically connected to surface flows. Generally speaking, the farther a well is from a watercourse, the less significant the impact of groundwater pumping from that well will be. States have two options for this problem: They can make the ban on wells near watercourses turn on a hydrologic analysis of the particular region, or they can use a bright-line rule that simply prohibits drilling wells within, for example, a mile of the river. Oregon has moved in this direction.

Fourth, states should impose an extraction tax on water pumped from any well within a certain distance of a river, spring, or lake. This tax would have two benefits: It would encourage existing pumpers to conserve water, and it would create an incentive for new pumpers to locate wells farther away from watercourses.

Fifth, states should require any new pumper to offset or mitigate the impact on the environment. It makes no sense to allow developers to drill new wells in an aquifer already under stress. Arizona has a mitigation program that requires developers to demonstrate an “assured water supply.” One way to do so is for the developer to purchase and retire agricultural rights.

Sixth, states, especially through local governments, should use financial incentives as a significant part of water policy. Quite simply, we are not paying the true cost of water. When homeowners or businesses receive a monthly water bill from the utility, that bill normally includes only the extraction costs of drilling the wells, the energy costs of pumping the water, the infrastructure costs of a distribution and storage system, and the administrative costs of the water department or company. Water rates, with rare exceptions, do not include a commodity charge for the water itself. The water is free.

Even though water is a scarce commodity, most Americans have not yet faced the condition that economists call scarcity, which occurs when people alter their consumption patterns in response to price increases. Our habits of water use will not change until the cost of water rises sufficiently to force an alteration. Therefore, we must increase water rates so that all users pay the replacement value of the water, which includes not just the cost of drilling a new well but also the cost of retiring an existing user’s well.

Economists agree that significant price increases would create incentives for all users to conserve. All farmers, homeowners, businesses, or industrial users could then decide which uses of water to continue and which to curtail. Rate increases would encourage the elimination of marginal economic activities and the movement of water toward more productive uses.

Seventh, whenever a water rights transfer occurs, the states should require that a small percentage of the water be dedicated for environmental purposes. States should not get too greedy with this environmental dedication, however, or it will be self-defeating. The prospective parties to a transfer will, of course, consider the economic consequence of the dedication on their proposed transfer. If the dedication is too onerous, the sale or lease will not take place. But a modest dedication program has great potential for environmental restoration.

Eighth, both the state and federal governments should commit resources to purchasing and retiring groundwater rights to protect critical watersheds and habitat. Some might argue that the federal government should preempt the area, given how poor a job the states have done. However, Congress has historically deferred to the states with respect to water laws. Proposals for federal regulation of groundwater will give rise to a chorus of howls from states’ rights advocates, especially those in the West, who, as author Wallace Stegner once observed, conceive the role of the federal government as “Get out! And give us more money!”

Congress certainly has constitutional authority to impose federal regulations on groundwater pumpers, yet there are two good reasons why it should not do so. First, it would provoke a bruising political battle. The political capital expended to win that fight could be better spent elsewhere. Second, the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment is nuanced and site-specific, depending enormously on the particular hydrologic characteristics of an aquifer. Imposing a uniform federal template on the nation is likely to exclude some pumping that should be regulated and to include some pumping that poses no serious risk of harm. Offering the carrot of federal funds is a far better approach than wielding the stick of federal regulation. Under its taxing and spending power, Congress should create a program funded by federal tax dollars to reward states that protect their environments from groundwater pumping (a gentle form of coercion). A host of federal programs, such as highway funding, give the states money but attach conditions.

The impact of groundwater pumping on the environment is enormous. And it is getting worse. As the drought that is gripping the country continues, cities, farmers, and individual homeowners are scrambling in search of additional water supplies. They have often focused on groundwater; indeed, well-drilling businesses around the country are booming. The drought has prompted the media to pay remarkable attention to water issues. In the summer of 2002, the New York Times ran a four-part front-page series, and U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and National Geographic ran cover stories. Yet none of these stories, or any others to my knowledge, mentioned that groundwater pumping has environmental consequences.

S&T given big boost in homeland security department

Both the House and Senate would create an undersecretary for science and technology (S&T) in the proposed Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The House approved legislation creating the DHS on July 26. The Senate initially expected to approve its version in September, but an alternative bill introduced by Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Zell Miller (D-Ga.), as well as the inability of the Senate to pass a cloture vote to limit debate, has delayed action. Differences in the bills will have to be worked out by a conference committee, which is expected to happen by the end of the year, at the latest.

Under the House bill, the new undersecretary for S&T would coordinate the department’s S&T programs and oversee its research and development (R&D) funding. In addition, an advisory committee would be established and be charged with making recommendations with respect to the activities of the undersecretary, including identifying research areas of potential importance to the nation’s security.

The House bill would also create a Homeland Security Institute as a federally funded R&D center. Its work would include simulation and modeling to determine the vulnerabilities of the nation’s critical infrastructure; economic and policy analysis to assess enhancing security; and the identification of common standards and protocols to improve interoperability and the effective use of tools developed for first responders.

The Senate bill would create an undersecretary for S&T with broader responsibility for setting homeland security R&D goals and priorities, coordinating homeland security R&D throughout the federal government, facilitating the transfer and deployment of technologies for homeland security, and advising the DHS secretary on all scientific and technical matters. The Senate would create a Homeland Security Science and Technology Council of representatives from all federal agencies involved in counterterrorism R&D to advise the undersecretary and coordinate government-wide R&D activities. The Senate bill would also create a number of offices under the undersecretary, including an Office of National Laboratories, an Office of Risk Analysis and Assessment, an Office for Technology Evaluation and Transition, and an Office of Laboratory Research.

Rather than endorsing the House’s Homeland Security Institute, the Senate legislation would create a new research agency, the Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (SARPA), to fund high-risk high-payoff R&D. SARPA, modeled on the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, would manage a portfolio of extramural research. SARPA would also have responsibility for managing a $200 million Acceleration Fund for Research and Development of Homeland Security Technologies. The fund would be more development-oriented than the rest of SARPA and be aimed at facilitating the rapid transfer of research and technologies to working products.

President Bush’s original June 6 proposal for the DHS would create a $3.4 billion R&D portfolio (according to an estimate by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) out of a $37.5 billion budget, making it the sixth largest R&D funding agency. However, both the House and Senate versions of the legislation would include less than $500 million, because both would keep bioterrorism R&D programs within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) instead of transferring them to the DHS.

The new department would be divided into four divisions, corresponding to its four main missions:

Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. Although R&D would not be a large part of this division, the administration, House, and Senate proposals would transfer the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) to the DHS. NISAC is a partnership between DOE’s Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. NISAC has a budget of $20 million in fiscal year (FY) 2002 and performs R&D to analyze critical infrastructures and their vulnerabilities and simulate infrastructure- or biological-attack scenarios. An unresolved issue is whether to transfer the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Computer Security Division to the DHS. The House would retain this division within NIST, whereas the latest Senate legislation would go along with the administration’s proposed transfer.

Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Countermeasures. This division would have primary responsibility for setting research priorities and conducting an integrated R&D program to enable the United States to respond to attacks made with weapons of mass destruction. The Senate legislation would name this division the Directorate of Science and Technology.

Both the House and Senate bills would follow the administration proposal for DOE programs, including the transfer of Lawrence Livermore’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Intelligence programs to the DHS. In addition, the Biological and Environmental Research program’s microbial pathogens activities and the national security and nuclear smuggling and other programs within Nonproliferation and Verification R&D would move to the DHS. Because these programs are embedded within larger programs, it is unclear how large these transfers would be, but combined they could total around $100 million.

The House and Senate have both rejected the administration proposal to transfer to the DHS the civilian biological defense research programs within NIH and CDC. The House-approved legislation and the latest Senate version of the legislation would keep bioterrorism R&D funding and priority setting in the Department of Health and Human Services, specifying only that the DHS would have a strong role in setting the research agenda.

Finally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Plum Island Animal Disease Center, with a budget of $25 million and 124 federal employees, would be transferred to the DHS under the administration and House proposals. The Senate, so far, is silent on the Plum Island transfer. The House version of the legislation would also transfer some activities of DOD’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program to the DHS.

Border and Transportation Security. This division would be by far the largest of the four in terms of budget and personnel and would integrate federal government operations aimed at securing U.S. borders and transportation systems. It would fold in the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of USDA, and the recently created Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This division would inherit these agencies’ small R&D programs, including those of the Coast Guard ($24 million in FY 2003), the TSA’s aviation security R&D (a preliminary estimate of $47 million in FY 2003), and APHIS’s R&D portfolio ($29 million in FY 2003). The House and Senate would go along with these administration proposals.

Emergency Preparedness and Response. This division would coordinate all federal assistance in response to disasters, including natural disasters, and domestic attacks. It would not do R&D.

House votes to double NSF budget; is DOE next in line?

On June 5, the House of Representatives passed by a 397-to-25 vote the “Investing in America’s Future Act” (H.R. 4664), which would launch the National Science Foundation (NSF) on a path to double its budget. A similar bill (S. 2817) has been introduced in the Senate and was favorably reported out of two committees. Meanwhile, a bill has been introduced in the House that would put DOE on a doubling path. These moves come in the wake of budget increases that have doubled the budget of NIH during the past five years.

The House legislation would provide annual 15 percent increases for NSF over the next three years, boosting its budget from $4.8 billion in FY 2002 to $7.3 billion in FY 2005. If the budget continued on this trajectory, it would reach $9.6 billion in FY 2007, twice the total for FY 2002. The Senate bill would be slightly more generous, providing a budget of $9.8 billion by 2007.

The bill to increase DOE’s budget, the Energy and Science Research Investment Act (H.R. 5270), was introduced by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), whose district includes the Argonne National Laboratory. Its cosponsors are Reps. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), a physicist, and Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), whose district includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It would authorize $3.5 billion in FY 2003, $4 billion in FY 2004, $4.6 billion in FY 2005, and $5.3 billion in FY 2006 for general research activities, nanoscience research, advanced complex-simulation computing, and the Genomes-to-Life program, as well as for new construction. The bill would also create an undersecretary of energy research and science at DOE and would elevate the existing director of the Office of Science to an assistant secretary of science.

In a statement made when introducing the bill, Biggert noted that “science-driven technology has accounted for more than 50 percent of the economic growth in the United States” during the past half century. “Scientific research may not be as politically popular as health care and education,” she said, “but it is as important to progress in these two areas as it is to ensuring America’s economic, energy, and national security.”

A major concern driving the DOE doubling initiative is that federal spending on research in engineering and the physical sciences, including astronomy, chemistry, and physics, has stagnated at the expense of increases for medical research. The need for a balanced federal R&D portfolio has been a priority in the scientific community since the push to double the NIH budget was set in motion five years ago.

Such concerns were raised when the Senate Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee conducted its first NSF reauthorization hearing on May 22. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the subcommittee chairman, supported doubling NSF’s budget, saying that “math and scientific achievement cannot stagnate at the expense of national security.” Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) concurred, noting that innovation in the technology sector has been lagging and that the capacity of universities to conduct R&D and educate a scientifically literate workforce is critical to turning the economic tide.

John Marburger, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, defended the administration’s budget request for NSF, noting that the September 11th terrorist attacks dramatically changed the FY 2003 budget outlook. He said the administration continues to place a priority on multidisciplinary research initiatives such as nanotechnology, information technology, and medical research, adding that the administration recognizes that there is an imbalance between medical research and other nondefense disciplines.

Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that the administration’s proposed increase of $8.9 billion for R&D in FY 2003 would be devoted entirely to the budgets of NIH and DOD. He stated that it was important “to maintain progress simultaneously across all of science and technology. In the 21st century, science and engineering fields are so interdependent that lags in one field inevitably will delay progress in others.”

Leshner argued that “NSF grossly underfunds every single grant that it makes, because it’s trying to maximize the number of grants . . . You could literally double every grant, double the budget instantly and consume all the money in an extremely productive way . . . When we’re funding, at most, 20 to 30 percent of the excellent proposals that come in, the array of opportunities lost is tremendous.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another witness at the hearing, said the challenges facing the United States today require a major expansion in our investments in science and technology. He predicted that “the knowledge breakthroughs of the next 20 years will equal the entire 20th century. In other words the rate of change is accelerating and in the next two decades will be about 5 times as fast as the 20th century. The rate will continue to accelerate, and we will match the 20th century again between 2020 and 2035.” His solution: triple the NSF budget to an annual level of $15 billion.

Gingrich also said that Congress should not reestablish the defunct Office of Technology Assessment but continue to contract out assessment projects to the National Academies.

Legislation on human cloning stalls in Senate

The Senate in June put off any debate, most likely until 2003, on competing bills involving human cloning. A bill proposed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) would impose a comprehensive ban on human cloning, whereas a bill introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) would ban cloning for reproductive purposes but allow it for doing research. The Bush administration supports the Brownback bill, and the House has already passed a similar bill.

The cloning debate has closely divided the Senate, with each bill garnering about an equal number of supporters and about 10 senators undecided.

In 2001, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) promised Brownback a floor vote on his bill. In June 2002, Daschle said he would bring Brownback’s bill to the floor for a yea-nay vote, followed by an up or down vote on the Feinstein-Specter measure, an arrangement that Brownback believed would have put his legislation at a disadvantage. However, it also appeared that some of the crucial undecided senators were leaning toward the less restrictive Feinstein-Specter bill. Thus, Brownback rejected Daschle’s offer, releasing the Senate majority leader from his pledge.

Brownback has since vowed to introduce portions of his bill as amendments to other legislation. However, his attempt to attach an amendment prohibiting the patenting of a human embryo to a terrorism reinsurance bill backfired by angering some of his supporters, including Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

House bill would bolster protection of humans in clinical trials

The highly publicized deaths in 1999 and 2001 of two volunteers participating in clinical research trials brought attention to what some consider weaknesses in the federal oversight of biomedical research using human subjects. After numerous hearings and congressional promises to correct this problem, legislation pertaining to human research subject protection has been introduced in the House and is expected in the Senate.

The boom in biomedical research means that an increasing number of human participants will be needed for clinical trials. Currently, however, there is no single federally mandated system for regulating, monitoring, and safeguarding human volunteers.

The federal guidelines now in use for the protection of human subjects in research are widely known as the Common Rule. They are followed by 17 federal agencies and apply only to research conducted or financially supported by a federal agency. The Common Rule outlines the formation and duties of institutional review boards (IRBs) in reviewing research proposals and studies. It stipulates that a potential human subject must give informed consent before participating in a study and describes the necessary elements to be included in such statements.

In June 2000, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transferred its human research protection functions from the NIH Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) to the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), located within the Office of the Secretary.

Several groups have pointed to inadequacies in current federal policy. In particular, they cite the lack of protection for people undergoing clinical trials at private institutions that do not receive federal funds. In addition, the current oversight system consists of sometimes redundant and confusing regulatory standards, and the degree and nature of human subject protection can vary from institution to institution. Even among federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and NIH, separate offices are responsible for managing the oversight of clinical trials.

In June 2000, the Association of American Universities published the results of its Task Force on Research Accountability, which essentially recommends that the university community strengthen existing systems of human subjects protection via enhanced voluntary accreditation programs. The task force also urged the OHRP to “develop a handbook of all federal rules and regulations, as well as specific departmental and agency contacts for questions that may arise during the IRB review of protocols.”

In August 2001, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), in a report entitled Ethical and Policy Issues in Research Involving Human Participants, recommended, among other things, that “a unified, comprehensive federal policy embodied in a single set of regulations and guidance should be created that would apply to all types of research involving human participants,” whether the research is publicly or privately funded. The commission also called for creating a new, independent federal agency outside of HHS to head the oversight process.

Currently, the Common Rule requires the same review standards regardless of the level of risk to the subject a particular study might generate. For example, a study testing an experimental drug is subject to the same rules as one that merely uses a patient’s medical history to gather data. The NBAC recommended creating a federal policy that would “distinguish between research studies that pose minimal risk and those that pose more than minimal risk.”

The NBAC proposal to create a new federal agency has been opposed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which believes that the executive branch already “has sufficient authority to address problems of inconsistency in interpreting and applying the Common Rule, and that the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Committee on Science of the NSTC should be directed to bring the representatives of the 17 federal agencies together to resolve these matters as expeditiously as possible.”

On May 9, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) introduced the “Human Research Subjects Protections Act of 2002” (H.R. 4697), which is designed to address many of the criticisms of the NBAC and others by extending Common Rule compliance to all institutions, both private and public. In addition, it gives oversight authority to the OHRP.

The bill requires that patients be able to clearly understand the wording of an informed consent document. In addition, through modification of the informed consent form and IRB responsibility, the bill proposes steps that would minimize potential conflicts of interest between research sponsors and investigators that may adversely influence the outcome of clinical trials. The bill proposes specific rules for forming IRBs, which include increasing the number of members required and ensuring that an IRB is representative of proposed research subjects in terms of race and gender. In order to streamline the process of clinical trial approval in the case of collaborative research projects, the bill allows for IRB review at the institution heading the collaboration. Finally, the bill distinguishes between research with higher and lowers risks and stipulates stricter regulations for monitoring high-risk trials and reporting any unexpected adverse events.

Neither the NBAC recommendations nor H.R. 4697 address in great detail FDA’s role in overseeing clinical trials within the private sector. Questions remain regarding possible effects of the proposed changes on FDA’s monitoring of private research.

Senate energy bill would create new OTA-like service

A provision of the Senate’s 977-page energy bill would create a “Science and Technology Assessment Service” within Congress to “coordinate and develop information for Congress relating to the uses and application of technology.” The service would be similar to the defunct congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which lost its funding after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. However, the proposal for the new service is not included in the House energy bill, and House Republicans continue to oppose the resurrection of OTA or the creation of a similar organization. The House and Senate are currently trying to merge their respective energy bills into a bill that can pass Congress.

The prime mover behind the new assessment service is Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. With science and technology playing a key role in many of the most important issues facing policymakers, Hollings and others have expressed concern that Congress does not have a good enough source of timely, reliable, nonpartisan advice on technical issues.

The importance of accurate scientific information to informed policymaking has been demonstrated emphatically in recent months. Debates over human cloning, nuclear power, climate change, and the fight against terrorism all rest on technical knowledge. Although many of these issues may ultimately be decided on political and moral grounds, Congress, in order to make good decisions, still must examine them within a framework of accurate and complete scientific information.

Congress currently receives much technical information and analysis from federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations such as the National Academies, as well as from its existing support agencies, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), and the General Accounting Office (GAO). However, many in Congress and the scientific community believe that an institution with substantial scientific expertise that answers only to Congress itself is needed. Federal agencies sometimes have a stake in the outcome of a policy debate, and the Academies, although chartered by Congress to advise the federal government, are nonetheless answerable to their members, who at times also have a stake in important decisions. The CRS and GAO are set up primarily for other purposes.

The assessment service would be governed by a board of 12 members of Congress, evenly split between the two parties and the two chambers. It would undertake assessments on its own initiative and when requested by a congressional committee. It would receive administrative support from the Library of Congress and would be required to report annually to Congress on its activities and on technological areas ripe for future analysis.

The Hollings proposal follows a small pilot program set up last year at the GAO to create such a service. The GAO pilot was included in a Senate-passed version of the fiscal 2002 legislative branch appropriations bill. The House opposed it, however, and as a compromise, the language specified that the program was to advise the Senate only. Also, it was placed in the conference report, rather than the bill itself. The report earmarked $500,000 for the project, which has been directed toward a study of border security issues.

Despite the proposed new assessment service, some in Congress support simply reactivating OTA. Because the legislation authorizing OTA was never repealed, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) have proposed a bill (H.R. 2148) that would simply reauthorize OTA at $20 million per year for five years. The bill has attracted 84 cosponsors.

Also supporting such an approach is Ellis R. Mottur of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, whose report Technology Assessment in the War on Terrorism and Homeland Security: The Role of OTA, has been distributed by Hollings. It concludes that, “To fulfill its constitutional responsibilities in pursuing the War on Terrorism and ensuring homeland security, Congress urgently needs to reactivate OTA.”

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“From the Hill” is prepared by the Center for Science, Technology, and Congress at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (www.aaas.org/spp) in Washington, D.C., and is based on articles from the center’s bulletin Science & Technology in Congress.

The introduction of harmful, non-native, invasive species–terrestrial and aquatic–has received heightened recognition because of the threats this form of “biological pollution” poses to ecosystem health, endangered species, economic interests, and even public health. Much of the incalculably valuable native biological diversity of North America eventually could be virtually replaced by aggressive invaders, as already has occurred across large areas of Hawaii and other vulnerable islands. Nevertheless, government funding for responding to this threat remains woefully inadequate. And despite the widespread and massive effects of invasive species, the industries that cause the majority of the problems have resisted tougher policies.

Confronted with the need to have funds available in the event of an oil spill, the government decided to levy a fee on all oil shipments to raise revenue for an emergency fund. A similar approach could work to create a fund to pay for rapid response to biological pollution problems, or better yet to prevent them in the first place. Concerted action by the National Invasive Species Council (NISC), the administration, and Congress can make dramatic policy improvements, just as dramatic improvements were made in the nation’s oil spill response capabilities.

Several new invasive species could compete to be the “poster child” for the campaign to raise funds to stop these threats. The voracious Asian long-horned beetle, with its menacing two-inch-long antennae, tops the list. It came into New York and Chicago in the 1990s in wooden packing materials imported from China and thrives inside hardwood trees such as maple, elm, locust, and horse chestnut. Virtually undetectable until they kill a tree from the inside, the beetles then fly on to the next one. The government has felled and burned more than 10,000 trees so far in a still-unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the beetle. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has proposed a $365 million plan to try to wipe out the beetles, but funding might not be approved. Failure to act quickly could be catastrophic. Left unchecked, the beetle could over a couple of decades destroy approximately one-third of all urban shade trees in the country. The replacement cost of the trees could be as much as $600 billion, an astounding figure.

The coqui, a Puerto Rican frog, has invaded formerly frog-free Hawaii, probably having arrived in imported nursery stock. Not only does it disturb fragile Hawaiian ecosystems, which already have many of their inhabitants on the endangered species list, but it also makes an incredible racket that presents a serious long-term threat to Hawaii’s attractiveness to tourists, retirees, and locals. Each coqui emits a croak described as “a car alarm going off.” There are thousands, perhaps millions, there. The responsible officials say that when they first discovered the frogs they should have eradicated them. But by the time they got the needed funding, the coqui was out of control. Peaceful Hawaiian nights are the victim.

In March 2002, Science reported on a rare victory in California over Caulerpa taxifolia, a seaweed native to the tropics. Dubbed “green death” in Europe, where it has covered 60,000 acres of the Mediterranean shoreline in a life-killing monoculture, it likely was imported by a tropical fish shop and dumped into San Diego Bay by some aquarium owner who quit the hobby. Divers discovered it before it had spread very much, and an eradication blitz using herbicides pumped under tarps draped over the infestations appears successful–so far. But according to Science, “funding will dry up at year’s end, and the team is still looking for the $1.5 million a year needed to sustain the eradication effort.”

The point of the above examples is that releases of invasive species are compelling large additional expenditures of public funds. In essence, taxpayers are subsidizing economic globalization by paying to clean up the biological messes it leaves behind. And when government agencies cannot afford to clean them up, our forests, waters, and other resources suffer long-term damage. Each of the above examples is a recent invasion resulting from the carelessness of a particular company or individual whose identity is now lost to obscurity. Why should these disasters continue, when the industries whose activities are the originating cause of them could fund the needed prevention and control efforts?

What’s being done

Not all non-native species are harmful; indeed, much of our agriculture, nursery, and pet industries relies on them. Nevertheless, many thousands of non-native species are now invasive in the United States: that is, they are weeds, pests, and pathogens that are having tremendous economic, ecological, and public health effects. Experts consider them second only to habitat loss as a threat to native biological diversity, and they are a leading factor in listings under the Endangered Species Act. Whether they arrive intentionally as did kudzu or as unseen stowaways on planes and ships, they all have the potential to become serious problems.

Congress became aware of the danger of invasive species more than a decade ago with the devastating invasion of the zebra mussel into the Great Lakes, and commissioned a major study by its Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). That 1993 study, Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in the United States, gave a detailed map of the biological, economic, legal, and policy maze. Since then, former President Clinton issued Executive Order 13112 in 1999, which directed federal agencies to take stronger steps, including the creation of the interagency NISC. The council adopted a management plan that seeks to push the agencies along, but implementation has been spotty at best.

A key reason for the continuing parade of horror stories about invasive species is that when a new unwanted release occurs and is detected, the responsible federal and state agencies typically must scramble for money while the invader is spreading into new territory. Despite a well-meaning executive order and a glossy management plan, “too little, too late” reactions are too common. The General Accounting Office’s 2001 report Invasive Species–Obstacles Hinder Federal Rapid Response to Growing Threat, includes these points from the agencies involved: “A major theme running throughout their comments was the impact of inadequate resources on the ability of agencies to respond to new infestations . . . Officials from USDA, Interior, Commerce, and Defense have reported that many rapid response needs have not been and are not being adequately met. Many unmet needs stem from inadequate resources or attention to the problem . . . Agencies’ inability to fund accelerated research on emerging threats has limited the availability of effective control methods.”

Outside experts say the same. A highly respected marine biologist, Jim Carlton of Williams College, in a special report for the Pew Oceans Commission, Introduced Species in U.S. Coastal Waters, concludes with a plea for a $50 million annual increase in federal expenditures on marine aquatic invaders. Further, he proposes: “Industries that play a fundamental role as vectors transporting non-native species should bear more of the costs of prevention, control, and research. Congress should establish a national bioinvasions reparation fee, which will significantly help to recoup federal-funding costs for management, research, and development programs.” Similarly, the landmark report Safeguarding America’s Plant Resources, prepared by the National Plant Board, which represents the agricultural, nursery, forestry, and other plant industries, calls for $50 million in additional funding to prevent and control invasive plant pests.

These two reports, which do not even cover the full range of invasive species, call for a combined increase of $100 million in federal spending to control invasive species. If we extrapolate these suggestions to cover all threats, we would need about $200 million. Although this is a very rough estimate of what is needed, it at least gives us a benchmark figure for discussion. As a point of reference, in fiscal year 2000 the federal government spent $631.5 million combating invasive species, with almost 90 percent of the total spent in USDA. This level of spending is dwarfed by the estimates of the damage that could be done by invasive species, which range from the tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars. OTA’s 1993 report reviewed several case studies and found that, on average, every dollar spent on early intervention prevented $17 in later expenses. In short, targeted expenditures on prevention and control provided solid economic returns. In spite of this, Congress has been unwilling to appropriate funds for early response efforts except in the case of a few high-profile invasions. Meanwhile, the national assault by dozens of new varieties of biological pollution continues each year.

This appropriations-based approach also fails to send the right price signals to the marketplace. The costs associated with imported goods and incoming travelers, the two primary pathways into the country for biological pollution, are not being borne by those directly benefiting from these activities. Policymakers worried about where to find the money to pay for prevention efforts should look to those who benefit from the activities that bring invasive species into the country. Put simply, they should charge the trade and travel sectors for the funds needed to prevent biological invasions, to compel global industries and their customers to take some responsibility for the side effects of their operations, and to increase consumer awareness of the problem so that they make more informed choices. This is a smart trade, not an antitrade, agenda.

The past eight years have seen a dramatic 82 percent increase in U.S. imports, and there is no reason to think that the arrival of harmful invasive species has not increased apace. What has not kept up with the growth in trade is government spending to protect the country against invasive species. Future funding mechanisms, to be effective, must increase at least as fast as trade and travel increase. In short, we need to move to the “polluter pays” principle. This well-respected strategy, which has demonstrated its effectiveness in raising funds for oil pollution cleanup, could also work for biological pollution.

Making it work

At least six policy tools can serve to make the polluter pay for necessary government actions: insurance requirements, bonding requirements, civil fines, criminal penalties and fines, fees, and corrective taxes. However, the first four of these tools suffer from a time lag problem. New non-native species can in many cases take years or even decades to manifest themselves as weeds, pests, or pathogens, by which time the party at fault may be indeterminable or long gone. Even without this time lag problem, the precise cause of an introduction (perhaps just two opposite-sex non-native beetles flying off a ship in a port at night) often is impossible to determine accurately. Relying on civil and criminal liability systems to recoup damages after the fact has not proven effective. Too many biological polluters can escape financial responsibility altogether, which appears unfair for the very few (if any) unlucky enough to be detected and ultimately held liable. Besides, a liability-based system produces delayed and uncertain revenues. This reactive approach cannot generate the reliable level of funding necessary for government to be able to respond quickly and to meet the challenge of growing trade and travel.

The current system of too little congressional appropriations and too late liability-based payments should be replaced by activity-linked anticipatory funding. The key is to apply the economic policy tool at the time and scale at which the potentially damaging activity occurs. That leaves only two broadly helpful policy tools: fees and corrective taxes. Indeed, many economists assert that fees and taxes targeted to internalize externalized costs to the polluter are the best way to achieve environmental goals, instead of relying on enforcement of command and control regulations.

In considering who should pay these fees or taxes, bear in mind that ultimately the consumers of the goods and services affected would pay, because businesses normally pass on such costs to consumers. Fair play dictates that consumers should bear the bulk of social and environmental costs resulting from goods and services they want. High corrective taxes on retail tobacco products, for example, reflect the high cost society must pay in treating the medical problems that result from smoking, and they are intended to discourage people from smoking. In this case, we should not be considering corrective taxes; there is no serious political constituency that wants to discourage trade and travel.

The goal, then, is to impose a fee that is not a disincentive for trade and travel but would produce adequate revenue to support inspection, monitoring, prevention, and quick response efforts. In the case of oil, policymakers decided to levy a fee only on bulk shipments of oil, even though there are also a large number of secondary sources, because bulk shipments are the primary cause of damaging oil pollution. These oil fees and taxes are not corrective. The United States still has low retail prices and unrestrained oil consumption. But the charges do increase industry awareness of spill risks and thus promote the goal of reducing pollution as well as paying for quick responses when spills occur.

In the national matrix of economic and ecological threats, biological pollution now poses more pervasive and insidious risks than oil spills. Yet almost no comparable response funds exist. Of course, the oil production and shipping industries are more defined sources than the numerous import and travel industries whose activities lead to biological pollution. But just because there are more of the latter doesn’t mean they cannot be identified. That identification process requires making some reasonable distinctions.

The fair targets for fees aimed at biological pollution are the intercontinental, not international, import and travel sectors, together with the consumers and passengers who provide demand for them. This intercontinental focus gets at the pathways for the vast majority of harmful invasions: movements originating from the other six continents. Although some intracontinental invasions have occurred within North America over the centuries, these have been of much less magnitude than invasions originating from the other continents. The import of goods and arrival of passengers into the United States that originate from other North American countries, predominately from Canada and Mexico, pose significantly less ecological, economic, and public health risk. Also, charging a fee at the intercontinental trade and travel level is much more practical administratively than charging a fee on the huge volume of arrivals from Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Imports from each of these, except the Caribbean, generally arrive by truck or train, which present daunting difficulties for fee imposition and collection as compared to ship and plane arrivals. The key point is that North America is in many ways an ecological island, so there is a scientific as well as an administrative reason to distinguish between inter- and intracontinental activities when charging the proposed fees.

Fairness also dictates that we seek contributions from those responsible for pathways of unintentional as well as intentional introductions. Although it usually is not possible to trace an unintentional invader to a specific ship or plane, we know from experience that invaders often enter the country this way. The ship and plane operators know very well that by moving among continents every day they are repeatedly introducing non-native species into the U.S. environment. Single events can be considered unintentional, but in this case the repetition of the activity makes it intentional. Making these operators responsible for foreseeable harms makes broad sense in the invasive species context. California has already demonstrated that this approach can work. The state’s Ballast Water Management and Control Program charges a $200 fee for each ship that enters its ports. This money is used to support state inspections to make sure that ship captains comply with state ballast water rules and to the California Exotic Species Control Fund, which supports research, monitoring, and education to improve prevention efforts.

I propose to borrow from innovations such as the California ballast water fee and Carlton’s proposed “bioinvasions reparation fee” and to scale them up to address all of the main invasion pathways comprehensively. Ideally, the federal government should adopt this new approach. But if the federal level fails to act, states that want better prevention and control programs, as California did in the case of ship ballast water, should adopt the fee proposal below either singly or, preferably, on a regional basis.

Collecting fees

A fair approach is to charge “biological pollution risk reduction fees” on the three main economic categories of intercontinental introduction pathways. Appropriate administrative bodies, pursuant to legislative direction, must detail exactly what is covered and what is excluded and set fair fee values for items in the fee categories. To prevent diversion of funds, the money should be deposited in a designated account similar to the existing federal and state oil spill trust funds or the California Exotic Species Control Fund. The new account could be designated as the Invasive Species Prevention, Quarantine, and Control Trust Fund. Fees could be charged in the following categories:

Live goods. A fee would be levied on any live animal or plant that is imported originally from another continent. This would include what are mostly nonessential products, such as non-native ornamental plants, pets, and aquarium species, which as a group represent a high invasion risk category. Seeds and other plant and animal products should not be charged, even though they might be viable, to avoid arguments over questionable products, most of which pose significantly less in the way of pest/pathogen risks than do whole organisms. Besides, some products such as fruits with viable seeds are intended for human consumption, and additional charges on basic foods are difficult to justify. Nonprofit uses such as academic or governmental research should be exempted.

People. Passengers arriving from another continent by an airplane or ship must pay a fee. As with the first category, this is a generally nonessential activity, composed primarily of tourists and visitors. People are readily countable upon their first arrival as intercontinental passengers; airlines and passenger ship companies can be directed to collect and hold the fees for the government. Virtually no rail or vehicle passengers come directly from South America, the sole connected continent, so these modes can be ignored.

Cargo ships and airplanes. A fee will also be charged to the operator of any cargo ship or cargo airplane that arrives from another continent, with or without cargo. These “first calls” from other continents are readily enumerated and serve as the major remaining pathways for unintentional but foreseeable introductions. Two reasons exist for charging arrivals even without cargo: The ships and airplanes themselves can carry invasive species, especially in the case of empty ships weighted with ballast water; and it simplifies administration by avoiding the need for inspections and monitoring to determine whether cargo is present. No appreciable train or truck cargo comes into the United States originally from another continent, so these can be disregarded.

This proposal does not accuse every person or company in these three fee categories of contributing to the invasive species crisis. Rather, it assigns some prevention responsibility to these intercontinental sectors, which benefit from global activities. A finer-grained approach to identifying responsible actors would present administrative obstacles and break down into endless arguments.

These intercontinental trade and travel pathways on the whole amount to huge generators of economic activity. The value of all goods imported into the United States from the other six continents in 2001 was approximately $800 billion, according to the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative. Virtually all of these imports were carried in cargo ships and planes. More than 40 million airline passengers are estimated to arrive in the United States annually from the other continents. Although precise figures are lacking, these arrivals likely represent in the range of $10 billion in industry ticket revenues annually. Arriving ship passenger ticket revenues probably account for well less than $1 billion more. The estimated $200 million goal for additional federal funding from the proposed fees represents a tiny 0.025 percent of this total. Some states could also decide to impose their own fees, but these would be even smaller. California collects about $1.6 million per year with its fees. To simplify the process, states should work with the federal government to set and collect the fees together.

Nothing in this fee proposal requires changing or eliminating the existing user fees for certain items such as agricultural quarantine-inspection user fees, but in cases where redundancy might exist, adjustments may be needed. Detailed legislation would be needed to define procedures for assessing and setting the fees and for collecting, holding, and using the funds. Suggestions for how this might be done can be found at www.icta.org/resources/biopolluterlaw.htm.

Comparable charges such as the oil shipment taxes and ballast water fees have withstood legal scrutiny and proven administratively feasible. Nondiscriminatory laws aimed at achieving an adequate level of safety from the biological risks inherent in trade and travel activities, such as longstanding state quarantine laws, are recognized under federal and international trade law as legitimate.

The fees proposed here are an efficient, fair, practical, and desperately needed way to make biological polluters pay more directly to fight the flotsam left in their wake. Concerted action by NISC, the administration, and Congress is called for to turn this proposal into reality. Without these additional reliable sources of funds, the taxpayers, the public, and our natural resources will suffer mounting costs and damages from invasive species, and agency response resources will remain chronically short.

The government has gone too far in its efforts to shift the costs of federally funded academic research to the universities. This transfer has reduced researcher productivity, led to inadequate research management, and has almost certainly prevented access to research universities by qualified students who happen to be poor. In spite of these negative side effects, there are some who advocate additional constraints on reimbursement of facilities costs, constraints that would make universities reluctant to do research in critically important fields where the facilities are expensive.

Instead of shifting research costs to the universities, government officials should be sitting down with university leaders to develop an indirect cost reimbursement system that is fair and creates the most productive environment for research. The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) has already begun this work, but the government needs to expand the scope of this effort and begin implementing its findings. The system for indirect cost reimbursement must be equitable if the research universities are to meet the nation’s expectations that they will continue to lead the world in basic and long-term applied research, respond to new national needs associated with homeland security, and fulfill their fundamental responsibility of educating our nation’s most capable young people.

The distinction between direct and indirect research costs is codified in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-21. Direct costs are those associated with a specific research project. They include salaries for scientists and wages for project team members, as well as materials and supplies, travel, project-specific equipment, and subcontracts to other organizations. Indirect costs, referred to as facilities and administrative (F&A) costs, are those that cannot be associated with a specific project. Facilities costs include the operation, maintenance, and depreciation of buildings used for the research, research equipment for which the university has paid, interest on debt associated with buildings placed into service after 1982, and library expenses. Administrative costs include the central office of the university president, financial management, departmental administration (including clerical assistance associated with the research), and activities related to meeting environmental, safety, and health standards. In 1991, reimbursement of administrative costs was capped by OMB at 26 percent of total direct costs. At the same time, OMB declined to permit faculty to classify secretarial and clerical salaries as direct costs, even those directly related to the research.

In the United States, indirect costs are reimbursed because the structure for performing basic and long-term applied research differs markedly from that in most other industrialized countries. In those countries, a large fraction of the basic and long-term applied research is performed in national laboratories and universities that are funded directly by government. It pays not only direct research costs, but also for construction, operation, renovation, and maintenance of buildings and laboratories, as well as for the research projects’ administrators and clerical support. That is, government pays up front for virtually all the research costs, both direct and indirect.

In the United States, research universities are either private or funded by the 50 states. The universities put up their own money for construction, operation, and maintenance of almost all buildings in which the research is performed. In addition, they take primary responsibility for faculty salaries and administrative services. They are reimbursed for the portion of the facilities costs associated with federally funded research, but they get this money only after they have invested in the facilities and hired staff. Also, they receive money to defray the costs of facilities and research administration only when their faculty members are successful in competing for research funds. Thus, universities take on a significant financial risk when they decide to pursue an area of research.

The United States’ unique system accounts, in large measure, for this country’s leadership in almost every research field, as well as for the exceptional quality of U.S. graduate education. The combination of funding from the states and from private sources has built a research infrastructure and a graduate education system unmatched anywhere in the world. It is unlikely that the federal government would have paid for the development of such a system. Indeed, as will become clearer, the federal government has not even been providing its negotiated share of the indirect costs of research. In spite of that, there are frequent calls for further cuts in indirect cost reimbursement.

For example, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Authorization Act of 1998 requested the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to analyze indirect costs, including “options to reduce or control the rate of growth of the Federal indirect cost reimbursement rates, including options such as benchmarking of facilities and equipment cost, elimination of cost studies, mandated percentage reductions in the Federal indirect cost reimbursement…” OMB had already proposed benchmarking of facilities in the Federal Register in September 1997. In that proposal, indirect costs associated with buildings that cost less per square foot than a mandated amount would be reimbursed readily, whereas significant justification would be required for those that cost more.

OMB’s intention was to decrease the cost of constructing university research buildings and, consequently, indirect cost reimbursement rates. But in 1998, OMB recognized that benchmarking is likely to lead to undesirable changes in the types of research performed in universities. Buildings that cost less than average tend to be ones that provide electrical outlets for computers and not much else. Research in areas such as semiconductor processing or biomedical research–areas that require extensive environmental, safety, and health safeguards because of the toxic materials under study–require buildings that cost significantly more than the average. A likely consequence of benchmarking would be to build fewer of the costlier types of buildings because reimbursement would be uncertain. Given the importance of research and student training in fields such as semiconductor processing and biotoxins, these buildings are vital. Reimbursement policies should not discourage that construction.

Finding Facts

OSTP engaged RAND’s Science and Technology Policy Institute to perform a preliminary study in response to Congress’s 1998 request. The findings in RAND’s mid-2000 report were striking. In sum:

• “What evidence we have indicates that the underlying cost structures in universities have lower F&A costs than federal laboratories and industrial research laboratories. Because of specific limitations on university F&A reimbursement, such as the administrative cap, the actual amount awarded to universities for F&A costs is likely to be even lower than what cost structure comparisons would indicate.”
• University F&A rates in total have remained stable for at least a decade, but those for administration declined and those for facilities increased. The decline in administration rates was likely due to OMB’s 26 percent cap.
• RAND estimated “that universities are providing between $0.7 and $1.5 billion in facilities and administration costs that would be eligible for reimbursement based on their negotiated F&A rates. We estimate that universities are recovering between 70 and 90 percent of the facilities and administrative expenses associated with federal projects.”

In short, not only was there no evidence that the government was being overcharged for indirect costs, the evidence suggested the opposite: that the universities were being prevented from recovering a significant percentage of what they had spent.

In its July 2000, response to Congress, which built on the RAND report, OSTP found no acceptable method for reducing indirect cost rates, except for cooperative analysis by the government and universities to reduce unnecessary indirect costs caused by less-than-thoughtful policies and procedures. The FDP, which has representatives from the government and the universities, is performing this analysis at present. It is vital that OMB and OSTP participate actively in this endeavor and ensure that the partnership’s recommendations are implemented.

Since the RAND report was written, much has happened to influence considerations of F&A cost reimbursements. The need for university investment in research buildings has increased dramatically. Fiscal year (FY) 2002 appropriations were consistent with the plan for doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in five years, by 2003. It seems likely that the FY 2003 appropriations will complete that process and initiate corresponding increases, perhaps as much as a doubling, for research in the physical sciences and engineering. These increases will necessarily increase the number of academic researchers, which will, in turn, dramatically increase the need for research space. Yet, early in the NIH doubling process, a 1998 NSF report stated: “Sixty-five percent of institutions with existing or needed research space in the biological sciences and 52 percent of institutions with existing or needed research space in the medical sciences reported that the amount of biomedical research space they had was inadequate to meet their research commitments . . . In order to meet their current research commitments, the biomedical institutions reported that they needed an additional 9.0 million net assignable square feet (NASF) of research space in the biological sciences or 23 percent more than they currently have. At the same time, they reported that they needed an additional 7.1 million NASF of research space in the medical sciences or 21 percent more than they currently have.”

It is unlikely that universities have acquired even the additional 16.1 million NASF required to meet their 1998 commitments, let alone that implied by the subsequent NIH budget doubling. At a very conservative $150 per NASF, the cost of the space needed in 1998 would be $2.4 billion. Since most of that money is not being supplied by the federal government, it is vital to adopt federal policies and practices that encourage, rather than discourage, universities to construct or renovate research space. Among the most important steps would be clear statements by the administration that it has no intention of introducing arbitrary limitations or caps on reimbursement for facilities and that it will discourage Congress from mandating them. The government must recognize the enormous task the universities face in providing research space.

Even with such assurances, the universities will have a hard time providing the space, because the economic downturn and the stock market decline have led to decreased endowment yields, decreased state tax income, and decreased contributions from donors. The assurances will, however, encourage some universities to borrow construction money, taking advantage of low interest rates and the potential for reimbursement of the interest via indirect cost recovery.

Since I returned to Stanford’s faculty in 2001, the impact of both the 26 percent cap on administrative reimbursement rates and the prohibition on direct charging of the salaries of administrative and clerical staff supporting faculty in their research has become painfully evident to me. Because most research universities are spending more than 26 percent on administrative endeavors related to federally sponsored research, the net result of the cap and the prohibition has been a significant reduction in clerical support throughout these institutions. Faculty at research universities spend a considerable amount of time on clerical and administrative tasks directly linked to our research. This is an inappropriate use of faculty time. These tasks do not require our special expertise; they could be performed much more effectively by clerical staff with special skills. OMB should eliminate the A-21 restriction against direct charging of clerical and administrative support that is linked to specific research projects.

Similarly, it is difficult to accept the voluntary nature of environment, safety and health (ES&H) responsibilities resulting from the 26 percent cap. For example, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are supposed to be protecting human subjects in federally sponsored biomedical research. If these IRBs are to perform their work properly, they need large amounts of attentive faculty and clerical time. In limiting administrative cost reimbursement to 26 percent, which is below existing costs for most research universities, the federal government has walked away from cost of clerical and faculty time. We appear to be relying on faculty volunteerism and university largesse to carry out the extremely important work of protecting research subjects. NIH has attempted to fix this problem with a temporary allowance of a direct expenditure. IRB costs, however, are just one example of a significant, mandated, indirect ES&H expenditure that should be documented and included in an administrative cost reimbursement structure–one that is not capped arbitrarily.

Shifting Costs

Perhaps the most troubling conclusion of the RAND report is this one: “universities are providing between $0.7 and $1.5 billion in facilities and administration costs that would be eligible for reimbursement based on their negotiated F&A rates.” Recent statistics from NSF indicate that the proportion of academic R&D expenditures deriving from the funds of the institutions themselves has risen from 14 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 2000. During the same time, the fraction provided by the federal government has declined from 67 percent to 58 percent. Thus there is no question that federally mandated cost sharing and limits on indirect cost recovery have shifted academic R&D costs from the federal government to the universities.

The total amounts are significant and have ramifications far beyond the research enterprise itself. In 2000, the academic institutions’ expenditures for R&D were $5.6 billion. Of these, approximately one-half of the institutional funds, or about $2.8 billion, were used to pay for unrecovered indirect costs and cost sharing. Most of these funds were provided by Carnegie Institution Type Research I and II universities, which in 1997 had a combined enrollment of 2.7 million students. Thus, the average year 2000 expenditures for unrecovered indirect costs and cost sharing at these institutions were on the order of $1,000 per student. That’s about one-quarter of typical tuition at selective public research universities.

Over the same 1980-2000 time period in which the costs of federally funded research have been shifted to the universities, these universities have become less accessible to those who might use that education to break out of the lowest income stratum. The recent report of the National Center For Public Policy and Higher Education, Losing Ground, states: “Increases in tuition have made colleges and universities less affordable for most American families.” In particular, the share of family income required to pay tuition at public four-year institutions has increased from about 13 percent in 1980 to about 25 percent in 2000 for families in the lowest income quintile. The report also stated that accessibility is decreased still further because “Federal and state financial aid to students has not kept pace with increases in tuition.” The $1,000 per student of unrecovered indirect costs and cost-sharing amounts to more than one-half these average tuition increases.

Some university administrators contend that these expenditures do not play a role in tuition increases. Yet it seems likely that cost sharing has a direct effect. This money frequently comes from discretionary university funds that could be used in many different ways, among them a halt to tuition increases. Given the importance of accessibility to public research universities, all federal agencies that fund academic research should adopt the NSF Cost-Sharing Policy of 1999 that limits severely the circumstances in which cost sharing is expected.

Making the case that the failure to recover indirect costs leads to tuition increases is more difficult. In many states, indirect cost reimbursement goes directly to the state treasury, not to the university. Thus, one could argue that these funds would not be available to the universities to prevent tuition increases. There is evidence to the contrary, however. Losing Ground noted that: “The steepest increases in public college tuition have been imposed during times of greatest economic hardship,” a disquieting conclusion. For example, average public tuitions grew more than 12 percent in 1991, when there was a marked economic downturn. In the same year, however, outlays by academic institutions for R&D rose by 8 percent–with public institutions presumably providing the major portion. Thus, at the same time that states were using large tuition increases to offset their income problems, R&D expenditures increased significantly. It is hard to avoid the hypothesis that tuition increases could have been smaller had the public institutions been able to recover a greater fraction of their indirect costs and provide fewer cost-sharing dollars.

The decreasing availability of four-year colleges to talented and accomplished students who lack only money is a fundamental societal problem. Part of the American dream is the knowledge that hard-working and capable people can improve their economic status through a college education. That mobility helps maintain our society. There is good reason to believe that this mobility is threatened by indirect cost reimbursement and cost-sharing policies and practices. The federal government should change its view of them. Rather than seeking to shift R&D costs to the universities, it should fully fund the cost of the academic research that it sponsors. Public research universities should join their private counterparts in seeking full indirect cost recovery.

In summary, there appears to be little merit in federal policymakers’ efforts to drive down indirect cost recovery and mandate cost-sharing. Instead, OMB, OSTP, and university representatives should ensure that a revised A-21 leads to full indirect cost recovery, including allowing researchers to charge secretarial and clerical salaries that are directly related to their research. The NSF Cost Sharing Policy of 1999 should be adopted by all research-sponsoring agencies. These actions would enhance the universities’ abilities to construct and renovate research space for both basic and long-term applied research, as well as to provide the student training the nation needs. Researchers could then concentrate on research and education instead of clerical work. It would enhance the institutions’ abilities to meet their fiscal, property control, environment, and health and safety responsibilities, as well as safeguarding human subjects. It is likely at least to slow the rate of tuition increases and perhaps could even lead to tuition decreases and easier access to college.

These actions should be accompanied by continued analysis of both federal and university policies and practices that drive up indirect costs, with a goal of achieving more cost-effective approaches. Government and university officials should, therefore, ensure the continued effective functioning of the FDP.

Economists have long advocated using the market to achieve environmental objectives. Possible policies include taxes on waste emissions and programs through which the government limits pollution by issuing emission permits that can be traded among companies. Unlike “command and control” regulations that specify which technology companies must use, market approaches such as these allow companies flexibility to choose their own ways to reduce pollution at lowest cost.

But which market-based instruments are best? Research suggests that the economic costs of tradable permits can be much larger than those of emissions taxes if the permits are given out free or grandfathered to firms. Emissions taxes provide revenues that can be recycled in tax reductions that increase employment. In addition, tradable permits can result in disproportionately high costs for the poor, whereas the revenues from emissions taxes can be converted into tax cuts that help the poor.

Policymakers are currently debating proposals to implement nationwide tradable permit programs for nitrogen oxide and mercury and to strengthen the existing allowance trading program for sulfur dioxide. The tradable permits approach pioneered by the United States is also receiving a great deal of attention throughout the world as a possible tool in managing greenhouse gas emissions. Before proceeding further down this path, policymakers should acquire a better understanding of the full implications of each of their policy options.

Measuring economic effects

To understand how environmental policies interact with the broader fiscal system, start with the so-called “double dividend” argument. Revenues generated from environmental taxes (or auctioned emissions permits) can be used to pay for cuts in labor taxes, such as income and payroll taxes. At first glance, these measures appear to increase employment while simultaneously reducing pollution, thereby producing a double dividend. The argument is particularly appealing for climate change policies, where the revenue potential is so large.

Suppose, for example, that the United States were to recommit to its Kyoto agreement pledge to reduce annual carbon emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. This might be achieved by a tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels of anywhere between $50 and $150 per ton of carbon, depending on whether the United States could buy credits for carbon reductions overseas. Setting a hypothetical carbon tax at $75, revenues would be around $90 billion per year–about one-sixth of the entire federal receipts from personal income taxes.

But the effect of a tax would not end there. Environmental taxes raise the cost of producing products, acting as a tax on economic activity. This means that (before tax revenue recycling) the levels of production and employment are lower than they would be in the absence of the emissions tax. The increase in government revenue would make it possible to reduce income taxes for workers, which would boost employment somewhat. Although this would soften the effect of the carbon tax, most studies find that the net result would be a decrease in jobs. This doesn’t make the carbon tax bad policy, but it does undermine the argument of those who claim that a carbon tax with revenues recycled into income tax reductions would increase employment.

The effects of tradable permits are similar to those of emissions taxes. They raise production costs and reduce economic activity. If a polluting company increases production, it must either buy permits to cover the extra emissions or forego sales of its own permits to other companies. Either way, it pays a financial penalty for producing emissions. Permits that are distributed to firms for free have adverse effects on employment in the same way that emissions taxes do, but without the potential offsetting benefits of recycling government revenue in other tax reductions. This has two important policy implications.

First, if permits were auctioned off by the government rather than given away for free, then society would be better off, as long as revenue from permit sales would be recycled into other tax reductions. Tax economists have estimated that for each dollar of revenue used to reduce income taxes, there will be a gain in economic efficiency of around 20 to 50 cents. Lower income taxes increase employment, and they also reduce distortions in the pattern of expenditure between ordinary spending and “tax-favored” spending such as owner-occupied housing and employer-provided medical insurance. In the carbon example above, the United States might be better off to the tune of $20 billion to $45 billion per year if it had a carbon tax or auctioned permits policy rather than grandfathered permits.

Second, the economic cost of grandfathered permits can be substantially higher than previously thought. According to an estimate by Roberton Williams, Lawrence Goulder, and myself, the cost to the United States of meeting the initial Kyoto target by a system of grandfathered permits imposed on fossil fuel producers rises from roughly $25 billion per year (in current dollars) to around $55 billion when their effect on reducing employment and compounding labor tax distortions is included.

In fact, taking account of fiscal interactions might compromise the ability of grandfathered permits to generate overall net benefits for society. Suppose that global environmental damage from carbon emissions (for example, economic damage to world agriculture from climate change and the costs of protecting valuable land against sea level rises) was $70 per ton. (This is actually on the high side compared with most damage studies, although the estimates are subject to much dispute.) The initial Kyoto target for the United States would have reduced carbon emissions by around 630 million tons in 2010, implying annual environmental benefits of around $45 billion in current dollars. Using our cost figures and ignoring fiscal interactions, the grandfathered permit scheme would produce an estimated $20 billion in environmental benefits. But include fiscal interactions, and the policy fails the cost/benefit test, because costs exceed environmental benefits by $10 billion. Only the emissions tax/auctioned permit policies pass the cost/benefit test, producing net benefits of between $10 billion and $35 billion.

Fiscal interactions do not always have such striking implications for the economic performance of environmental policies. Consider the sulfur dioxide program of grandfathered permits, which has reduced power plant emissions by about 50 percent, or 10 million tons. Annual benefits from the program, mainly from reduced mortality, have been measured at more than $10 billion per year. Estimates of the annual cost of the program, including fiscal interactions, are only $1.7 billion under the existing grandfathered scheme or $1.2 billion if the permits are auctioned rather than grandfathered. Regardless of whether permits are auctioned or not, estimated benefits swamp the costs of the sulfur dioxide program.

Who benefits?

Of course, there is no guarantee that the revenue from environmental taxes or permit auctions will be used wisely, but evidence from Europe indicates that it can be. Denmark recently introduced a package of taxes on sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, fossil fuels, and electricity. Revenues, which amount to about 3 percent of gross domestic product, have mainly been used to lower personal and payroll taxes.

One potential obstacle to green tax shifts, however, is the conflicting objectives of different government agencies. An environmental agency would typically be concerned about setting rates to meet a particular environmental goal without regard to revenue. The treasury department might be more concerned about revenue, regardless of whether the taxes lead to under- or overshooting environmental objectives.

But suppose tax cuts don’t happen? Suppose that in the United States revenue from environmental taxes or auctioned permits were used to reduce the federal budget deficit instead? This implies that taxes could be lower in the future and still cover debt interest and repayment of principal. There would still be an economic gain from lower taxes, although one that is deferred to the future.

What if the revenue were used to finance additional public spending? The bulk of federal spending consists of transfer payments, such as Social Security, or expenditures that effectively substitute for private spending, such as medical care and education. Loosely speaking, the private benefit to people from a billion dollars of this type of spending is a billion dollars. But the benefits to society might be greater if the spending is achieving some distributional objective such as a safety net for the poor. If instead the revenue financed cuts in distortionary taxes, households would receive the billion dollars back, and on top of this there is a gain in economic efficiency as the distortionary effect of taxes on employment and so on are reduced. Thus, the social benefits from extra transfer spending could be larger or smaller than the benefits from cutting taxes, depending on the particular spending program.

Governments also provide public goods (such as defense, crime prevention, and transport infrastructure) that private companies usually do not. People may value a billion dollars of this spending at more than a billion dollars. If they do, the benefits from this form of revenue recycling may also be as large as (or larger than) benefits from reducing taxes.

Policymakers might also be concerned about the effects of environmental policies on different income groups. Unfortunately, environmental and distributional objectives often appear to be in conflict. A number of studies suggest that the burden on households from environmental regulation imposed on power plants, refineries, and vehicle manufacturers is moderately regressive. The increase in prices as producers pass on the costs of regulations tends to hurt lower-income groups disproportionately, because they spend more of their income on polluting products than better-off households do.

But distributional concerns should not be an excuse for avoiding action on serious environmental problems. Pollution control measures should be evaluated mainly by weighing their environmental benefits against their economic costs for society as a whole. Distributional objectives are much better addressed by altering the income tax system or providing a safety net through the benefit system.

It still makes sense, however, to avoid environmental policies that increase income inequality. That is a major drawback of grandfathered emissions permits. When the government gives away rights to pollute for free, companies acquire an asset with market value. This enhances their net worth. The increase in company equity values in turn leads to more profits for shareholders, either directly through higher dividends and capital gains or indirectly though their holdings in retirement accounts. Stock ownership is highly skewed toward the rich; the top income quintile owns about 60 percent of stocks, whereas the bottom income quintile owns less than 2 percent. Using annually allocated grandfathered permits to meet the original U.S. carbon pledge under Kyoto could transfer more than $50 billion each year in pretax income or larger retirement assets to the top income quintile. Thus, higher-income groups can benefit greatly from grandfathered permits, with their windfall gains easily outweighing their income losses from higher product prices. Poor households, by contrast, are worse off. According to a study by the Congressional Budget Office, grandfathered permits to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 15 percent would cut the annual real spending power of the lowest-income quintile by around $500 per household, while increasing that for the top income quintile by around $1,500 per household.

Auctioned emissions permits and emissions taxes do not create windfall gains to shareholders. Instead, the government obtains revenue that can be returned to households in a distributionally neutral manner, such as proportional reductions in all marginal income tax rates, or in ways that disproportionately benefit the poor, such as increasing personal allowances.

Making choices

One reason why emissions permits (whether auctioned or not) might be preferable to an emissions tax is because the emissions reduction that a given tax rate will induce may not be known in advance. Suppose, for example, that an environmental agency wishes to prevent a lake from being polluted beyond a certain threshold that will harm aquatic life or make the lake unsuitable for recreation. If companies must obtain permits for each unit of emissions they put into the lake, the agency can limit pollution below the threshold with certainty simply by limiting the number of permits. Under an emissions tax, where the amount of pollution abatement that will be achieved is initially uncertain, the agency will be in the uncomfortable position of having to adjust and readjust the emissions tax to ensure that the pollution target is attained.

On the other hand, an emissions tax puts a ceiling on program costs. If abatement is very costly, companies will avoid it and instead pay a larger tax bill. Under a permit scheme, companies are forced to reduce pollution by the limit on permits, no matter how costly the required abatement turns out to be. These considerations have led some economists to recommend a hybrid policy, or “safety valve.” Under this scheme, a limited number of permits would be issued with the aim of hitting a desired environmental goal, but the government would sell additional permits if the permit price reached an unacceptably high level. That way, the stringency of the environmental goal is relaxed somewhat if abatement costs turn out to be particularly large.

Although environmental policies that raise government revenue are appealing (so long as the revenues are not used for pork-barrel spending projects), the political reality is that interest groups in the United States do not eagerly hand money over to the government. It is no accident that grandfathered permits have been more common than taxes or auctions. We can expect a battle over how much if anything should be extracted from the regulated industries. Political compromise will often lead to lower tax rates or a tax that applies to only a limited number of activities. That’s politics.

But what if the choice is between grandfathered emissions permits or nothing? In the case of the sulfur dioxide trading program, grandfathered permits appear to be a good idea in spite of the drawbacks emphasized here. But even in the context of climate policies, I believe that a system of grandfathered carbon permits, appropriately scaled, would be preferable to doing nothing. For one thing, tradable permits provide incentives for the development of cleaner production methods. This offers hope that the next generation of Americans will be substantially less dependent on fossil fuels than the present one. Moreover, as people become more receptive to the idea of tradable permits, it is conceivable that the government may hold back an increasing portion of the annual carbon allowances for auctioning. This is a gradual approach that could at least put us on the path away from the idea that pollution permits should be bestowed freely, with the nation getting nothing in return.

Who should control the human genes used in research? (a) George Bush, (b) Leon Kass, (c) corporate America, (d) Kofi Annan, (e) you? If you said (d) or (e) you are in tune with the views of the general public, according to a recent poll. If you guessed wrong, you may be in for more surprises. Science policy experts assume that they have a pretty good understanding of where the public stands on current science-related debates. But sometimes it makes sense to ask.

The Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO), a Columbia University think tank based in Washington, D.C., commissioned a poll of a representative sample of 1,000 geographically dispersed U.S. residents over the age of 18. The poll focused on core questions such as who should control science and who benefits from science, but also included more specific questions about scientific research issues, especially in areas of medical research and biotechnology. The results of the poll are surprisingly diverse. About most issues there is no “public mind” but rather “demographic group minds.” The respondents do have opinions about science and technology (S&T) issues but those opinions are neither simple nor predictable.

Who benefits most and least from the ways science and technology change the world?

The most striking result from this question is the broad consensus on who benefits least from S&T change. According to 70 percent of people with incomes less than $20,000, as well as 70 percent of those who earn more than $100,000, the poor benefit least. The idea that everyone gains from the S&T cornucopia seems to be an unsustainable myth. It is also a point that deserves more than passing notice from policymakers. When making research funding decisions, they might want to ask not only “for what?” but also “for whom?”

Would you be interested in slowing down or halting your own aging process, if the technology were to become available?

The first goal listed in Healthy People 2010, the National Institutes of Health’s strategic guidepost, is “to help individuals of all ages increase life expectancy and improve their quality of life.” Who could argue against slowing down the aging process? Apparently, most of us. Only 40.3 percent of those polled indicated that they would be interested. Even among those over 65, fewer than half were interested.

Is quality of life likely to be improved or harmed by research into cloning to provide cells that could be used to treat various diseases?

With this question, the variance in views among demographic groups is revealing. Among persons with incomes over $100,000 per year, 76 percent expect quality of life improvements, whereas only 45 percent among people with incomes under $20,000 share this expectation. Similarly, whereas 65 percent of those aged 18-34 expect improvement, only 43 percent of persons over 65 expect to have quality of life improved by cloning research. There is also a cloning gender gap: 66 percent of men, but only 49 percent of women, think cloning research will lead to improvements.

Who should have control over genes used in research?

Although distrust of international organizations is relatively common among Americans, in this case they seem to be more comfortable with international control than with their own government or corporations.

How much input should the public and the government have over technological change?

We apparently should spend more time polling the public about their views on S&T, because they clearly believe that they should be consulted. In fact, they are yet to be convinced that the government should have a prominent role.

International ecosystem assessment now under way

In “Ecosystem Data to Guide Hard Choices” (Issues, Spring 2000), I discussed the rationale for a new international scientific assessment focused on the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and described the proposed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The assessment is motivated by the great changes humans are making in global ecosystems, along with the growing demands for goods and services from these ecosystems. To meet these demands and to prevent and eventually reverse ecosystem degradation, we can no longer manage biological resources sector by sector but must instead consider the consequences of actions on the multiple goods and services provided by ecosystems. Decisionmakers increasingly require integrated and forward-looking information to help guide the complex choices that they face.

The MA was a proposed response to these information needs. Modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the MA was designed to help meet decisionmakers’ needs for information on ecosystems and human well-being and to build capacity within countries to undertake similar assessments and act on their findings. The MA received the endorsement that it needed from governments, as well as significant financial support in 2000, and in June 2001 it was formally launched by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. The MA has been authorized by three international conventions–on biological diversity, wetlands, and desertification–as one source of their assessment input. A distinguished 45-member board represents the various users of the MA. An assessment panel of 13 leading social and natural scientists has been established, along with four working groups, each involving 30 to 80 coordinating lead authors. More than 500 lead authors are now being invited to join these working groups, and an independent review board is being established. The first product of the assessment, Ecosystems and People: A Framework for Assessment and Decision-making, will be published early in 2003, with the main assessment and synthesis reports planned for release in late 2004.

Major financial support for the MA has been provided by the Global Environment Facility, United Nations Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme, and the governments of Norway and Saudi Arabia. Significant in-kind contributions have been made by China, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In addition, the U.S. government has made nearly $5 million worth of Landsat-7 images available to the MA. These images will provide governments and researchers around the world with invaluable baseline information on land cover at the turn of the millennium.

Now, one year into the assessment, three aspects of the process are proving to be particularly interesting. First, the multiscale structure of the MA has attracted considerable interest in countries around the world and promises to be one of the most influential components of the process. The MA is not just a global assessment but a variety of assessments being conducted at every geographic scale, from local communities to subcontinents to the globe, with methodologies being developed to link these into a multiscale framework. Assessments at subglobal scales are needed because ecosystems are highly differentiated in space and time and because sound management requires careful local planning and action. Local assessments alone are insufficient, however, because some processes are global and because local goods, services, matter, and energy are often transferred across regions.

Considerable interest exists around the world in taking part in these subglobal assessments, even though the MA is able to provide only modest seed money for these activities. Subglobal assessments (local, national, regional, or multiscale) are now underway in Norway, western China, southern Africa, Southeast Asia, India, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, and in a network of tropical forest sites through the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Additional subglobal assessments are being designed in Chile, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada, and eastern Russia. The European Environment Agency will also be using elements of the MA methodology in its upcoming European environment report, so that it too can contribute to the overall MA process.

Second, the MA will be the first global assessment to incorporate traditional local knowledge and western scientific knowledge in its findings. The importance of local knowledge in informing management choices for ecosystems is clear, yet the standard protocols for scientific assessments make it difficult to incorporate this type of information into assessment products. In addition to the development of methods for linking assessments across scales, the MA is also attempting to develop methods for linking different epistemologies within each scale. These two issues will be the focus of an international conference planned for 2003 in Kunming, China: Bridging Scales and Epistemologies: Linking Local Knowledge and Global Science in Multiscale Assessments.

Finally, drawing on the findings of research conducted by the Global Environmental Assessment project at Harvard, the MA is striving to maintain a high level of engagement and interaction with its various audiences. Experience from past assessments has shown that the incorporation of scientific findings into decisionmaking processes is aided through a process of continuous dialogue between the assessors and the users of the findings. This ensures that the assessment is responsive to user needs and strengthens the legitimacy of the process.

The MA faces a daunting challenge in this regard, because it seeks to meet the needs not just of three different conventions but also of users in the private sector and civil society, who often have as much influence on ecosystems as government policymakers. In order to reach these diverse stakeholders, the MA is working with institutions in a number of countries to establish user fora at a national scale. Working with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and with industry associations and individual firms, the MA is now planning a series of workshops in 2003 to fully engage the private sector in the process. And to strengthen the engagement with the scientific community, more than 15 of the world’s national academies have now become partners with the MA to help with the review process and the outreach of the final products.

The impact of the MA will depend in part on whether it improves decisions, stimulates action, and builds assessment capacity. But it also depends on whether a mechanism for regular integrated assessments can be institutionalized within the intergovernmental framework after the completion of the MA. Governments, the private sector, and civil society will have growing needs for information and guidance from science as we pursue the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty, improving health, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Sector-by-sector assessments such as the IPCC must continue, but it may now be time to build on the experience of the MA and establish an assessment mechanism that can bring the findings of sustainability science to bear on the critical, synthetic, and complex challenges that must be solved to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Walter V. Reid

Advanced Technology Program survives challenge

In “The Advanced Technology Program: It Works” (Issues, Fall 2001), I argued that the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) had proven its success. The research carried out under the National Research Council (NRC) review of government-industry partnerships had found the program to be well conceived and well managed. Reviews of the awards made suggested that this highly competitive program was successfully addressing an important aspect of the U.S. innovation system. Despite the inherent risk associated with high-risk, high-payoff technologies, the program had established a record of achievement. Indeed, one of the effects of the political debates surrounding the program in the mid-1990s was the development of a widely acclaimed evaluation program.

At the time the article appeared in Issues, the program’s future seemed to be in doubt. The incoming administration had suspended new awards and recommended a $13 million budget, sharply down from previous year’s funding of approximately $146 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee responded with a recommendation for a $204 million appropriation. (The final 2002 budget was about $185 million.) The committee found that extensive rigorous assessments had revealed that the ATP does not fund projects that would have been financed in the private sector but focuses on “valley of death” projects that the private sector is unlikely or unable to fund on its own. The committee also endorsed the principle that the government should play a role in choosing promising technologies to fund.

The second major development concerned the decision by the Department of Commerce to review the program. In a February 2002 report entitled Reform with a Purpose, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans proposed six program reforms for Congress to consider. In so doing, the department endorsed continuing the program, albeit with less money than the Senate Commerce Committee recommended, thus putting to rest any fears that the program would be eliminated. A number of the reforms recommended by the administration, such as increased program emphasis on cooperation with universities, corresponded with recommendations made in the NRC assessment. One problematic recommendation called for recipients of ATP awards to “pay an annual royalty to the federal government of 5 percent of any gross revenues derived from a product or an invention . . . created as a result of ATP funding.” This “recoupment” proposal met with a chilly reception on Capitol Hill.

As noted by one critic, it suffers from the “one invention/one product myth,” which seriously understates the complexity of the innovation and commercialization processes. Implementing the program would be an accountant’s nightmare, and it would likely drive away many of the businesses that now participate. Perhaps the key point is not just that it would be hard to implement, but that it is unnecessary. We already have a recoupment program; it’s called the tax system.

The good news is that the program has at last been recognized for the quality of its operations and its rigorous assessment activities. In fact, officials from other governments have been coming to study the program, looking for lessons they can apply at home. And here at home, Congress has mandated that the nation’s other major award program, the $1.3 billion Small Business Innovation Research Program, should be subject to similar independent assessment, suggesting that ATP has not just funded innovators, it has become an innovator.

Charles Wessner