Changes Big and Small

Issues has made very few changes in its format or appearance since a major overhaul in 1987. We created the Real Numbers section in 1990, added art to the cover in 1991, and introduced the From the Hill section in 1995. Cartoons started appearing sporadically in 1995. It doesn’t add up to much.

Beginning with this issue, we plan to pick up the pace. We will be adding more visual interest, more timely information, and more intellectual stimulation. First, we intend to follow through on earlier efforts by making Real Numbers and cartoons a part of every issue. We will also be looking for more provocative articles for the Perspectives section. These articles Perspectives were intended to be more speculative and far-reaching than the features. What they lacked in comprehensiveness and detail, they were supposed to make up for in novelty and ambition.

We have sometimes failed to live up to that vision. We want to publish more pieces like the one from Robert Cook-Deegan in this issue, which challenges the hegemony of peer review at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Pointing to the success of staff-directed funding at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, he proposes that NIH experiment with this approach in some areas of research. The sanctity of peer review is about as close as science gets to a religious principle, but a little heresy is useful to test the rigor of the faith. We hope that others will challenge the conventional wisdom in Perspectives. And remember that brevity is a virtue. Perspectives have tended to be about 2,500 words (or four magazine pages). We’d like to see shorter, sharper pieces. If you have something particularly provocative to say, don’t bury it in words. Be brief and straightforward.

The purpose of Real Numbers is to let the data do the talking. Jesse H. Ausubel does just that in this issue by tracking long-term trends in a number of critical environmental indicators. The numbers tell a story that calls into question the widely held belief that the environment is on the express train to ruin. Anyone can have an opinion. Issues authors have opinions that rest on a foundation of data and expert knowledge. We will be encouraging all authors to include supporting data in tabular or graphic form in their articles.

The Archives is a completely new feature that will tap into the rich history of the National Academy of Sciences. Each issue will include a photograph of a distinguished scientist from the NAS Archives that will be accompanied by a brief description of a significant event from the person’s life. We are delighted to be able to begin with J. Robert Oppenheimer speaking at a celebration of the Academy’s centennial in 1963.

Over the course of the coming year, we will be introducing more changes. Illustrations will be added to the Forum section, and new graphic elements will be introduced elsewhere. One editorial addition that we are particularly excited about will be a section that reports on what has happened after the publication of an article in Issues. We often hear from authors about policy changes and other developments that occur as a result of an article in Issues. We want to share some of this information with you to help you keep up to date with the topics you read about in Issues.

Beneath the surface

We hope that these changes will make Issues livelier and more appealing, but that is not enough. We are also recommitting ourselves to Issues central mission of making a significant contribution to the intellectual and political life of the country. That is becoming more difficult because of a growing malaise in the science policy community. One of the repercussions of the end of growth in federal support for science and the prospect of significant reductions in funding is that those who manage and influence science policy are having a lot less fun. After five decades of directing a growing enterprise, the science policy establishment must now confront a shrinking pie.

The past few years have witnessed a number of symposia commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Vannevar Bush’s Science, the Endless Frontier, which marked the beginning of rapid growth in federal research funding. Any number of individuals and organizations have aspired to produce the visionary blueprint that would provide a beacon for the next 50 years. None have succeeded, but that should not be surprising. Bush sat down in front of a virtually blank page, because the government had done so little for science before World War II. And though he couldn’t have predicted it, Bush’s vision was pushed forward by the tailwind of one of the greatest periods of economic growth ever experienced by any country. The existing infrastructure of federal science stands in the way of the visionary imagination, and we are not likely to see a repetition of postwar economic growth. But that is not an excuse for fin de siecle pessimism.

The malaise of science policy is not a malaise of science. John Horgan’s musings about the “end of science” have not struck a chord with scientists. The thirst for knowledge and the fertile ground of human imagination will continue to push science forward. The public continues to hold scientists and the scientific enterprise in high regard. Scientists, however, will lose some of their respect for those of us who have helped distribute the federal bounty. We can no longer be the rich uncle from the Beltway and will more often be the unwanted bearer of bad news.

So let’s give up the Vannevar Bush dreams and the rich-uncle fantasies. Today’s challenges and opportunities are different and in many ways more difficult. During the final years of the Bush administration, it seemed that the bitter debates about technology policy had suddenly dissolved into consensus. That harmony lasted for a year or two before the Clinton administration found many of its technology policy innovations under attack as corporate welfare. More hard work will be required to hammer out a practical national agreement on Washington’s role in promoting technological innovation. For the moment, biomedical research enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress, but the looming storms over various economic and ethical issues related to health care could soon cloud its prospects.

The easy days are gone. Rereading Vannevar Bush won’t bring them back. Somebody is going to have to step up to make the tough decisions. Those who do will not win any popularity contests–at least not right away. But if you want to have a symposium in your honor 50 years from now, you’ll have to sacrifice a few friends along the way. This is a new era in science policy, and the door is open to creative thinking.

Having witnessed the enormous power that science unleashed in the atomic bomb, the world’s leaders turned to scientists for help at the end of World War II. Today, scientists are less likely to be courted in the corridors of power, but science has become even more important to the fate of humanity. Science policy has become more difficult and more important. That’s not a cause for malaise; it’s a challenge to action. And Issues can be one place to act.