NCST/PCAST

PCAST has stressed the need for improvement in STEM education, particularly at the precollege levels.

This emphasis is consistent with the scientic community's decision to rise to the president's challenge with a nationwide Educate to Innovate campaign,²⁰ which is supported by several professional science and engi-neering societies, including the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The objective is to draw attention to STEM subjects, boost student interest in these elds and see thousands of volunteer scientists enter classrooms and work with educators. The highlight of the campaign was a National Lab Day during the rst week of May 2010, which brought volunteer scientists and engineers to schools to demon-strate STEM concepts, donate or repair lab equipment, arrange or host eld trips, and develop and oversee hands-on learning supplements.

At its May 21, 2010, meeting, Science Advisor Holdren characterized the current PCAST as the most active and productive PCAST in history.²¹ At that same meeting, PCAST announced that it was working on a report on inuenza vaccinology, and had briefed the president on its progress during March.

16.11 Assessment

Whether Obama's commitment to science policy as demonstrated by his scal year 2010 budget request and his obvious understanding of essential science programs would translate into eective use of the presidential science advisory system at his disposal was still an open question in the summer of 2010. Many in the scientic community welcomed Obama's election and, as expected, his administration has been more friendly to scientic and engineering research and education than was his predecessor's, and his policies on such hot-button issues as stem cell research and global climate change are science-friendly rather than ideologically driven. With the exceptions of President Ford and the rst President Bush, presidents have rarely come into oce with an understanding or appreciation of the science policy tools at their disposal. At this writing, the Obama administration, less than two years old, seems poisedelectoral politics permittingto amply justify the expectations of those in the scientic community who welcomed his election.

20Ibid., No. 140 (November 24, 2009).

21FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News (June 2, 2010).

However, these supporters recognize that the president will continue to wrestle for some time with the eects of the economic downturn he inherited. Even some of these supporters are becoming skeptical about whether his much-vaunted economic stimulus package will bring about the full economic recovery that would allow for greater progress in his science-policy initiatives.

Chapter 17

Afterword

The premise of this book holds that the concept of a national science policy derives from three goals: that science be an eective tool for governance; that science serve the public good; and that science help provide national defense. The rst was stated denitively by the Delano Committee in its 1938 report, Relation of the Federal Government to Research; the second by Sciencethe Endless Frontier and the public and congressional debates in the aftermath of World War II; and the third by considerably less-than-public debates and planning.

Governance, science, technology, and national defense have all grown signicantly more complex since World War II. Although the New Deal signicantly expanded the scope of issues in which the federal gov-ernment could claim a legitimate stake, the scope of issues has further expanded since then. Additionally, debates about how and when the federal government should participate in scientic work have become more contentious.

How then, with an endless pattern of reversals, a rigorously inconsistent application of political philosophy to science policy, can science be used as an eective tool for governance as rst suggested by Relation of the Federal Government to Research?

Although most scientists believe that science isor at least should befree from politics, this is not the case with science policy. Science policy has, from Roosevelt's time on, been enmeshed in domestic politics. Yet it is an oversimplication to suggest that science policy has progressed better under liberal presidential administrations than under conservative ones. It is true that science policy ourished during the Civil War era, when southern conservatives were sitting in the Confederate Congress in Richmond.

Likewise, the progressive Roosevelt administration did far more than its conservative predecessor, the Hoover administration. A similar progressive reversal of conservative policies is under way as this book is going to press, with the Obama administration reversing Bush administration policies shutting down stem cell research and work on global climate change.

Still, eective science policy hasn't necessarily equated with liberal politics. Dwight Eisenhower created and made eective use of the presidential science advisory system. Gerald Ford worked closely with the scientic community and both houses of Congress to enact the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization and Priorities Act of 1976 (PL 94-282), the most far-reaching piece of science legislation in American history. The politically liberal Carter administration ignored the features of this legislation deemed most important by Congress. It was a Republicanthe rst President Bushwho rst took seriously both the substance and the spirit of the act. In appointing D. Allan Bromley as his Assistant for Science and Technology, Bush selected and supported a scientist who was arguably the most eective science advisor since the position was created in 1957.

There is no question, however, that science policy changessometimes even reverseswith the political environment. A given presidential administration might conceivably formulate a coherent national science policy, but elements subject to congressional approval might be watered down or eliminated; and the next

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administration, particularly if from the opposite party, tends more often than not to undo the work of its predecessor.

Still, although science policy has moved along in ts and starts since the Constitutional Convention and particularly since the New Deal, it has, in general, progressed. For the past forty years, there more often than not has been bipartisan agreement on the core idea that the federal government should support research in universities and nurture the next generation of scientists and engineers. This book has tried to demonstrate that although there have been numerous set-backs, the body politic has shown remarkable adaptability in making eective use of science in the service of governance. This is not to say that it will ever be possible in our democracy to formulate and implement a coherent, long-term science policy; but it is to say that science will be used to increasingly good eect in addressing the nation's signicant challenges.

In the opinion of this author, the quest for a coherent national science policy (not to be confused with a rigid policy that takes no account of changing national and international circumstances) is worth pursuing, even though it may persistently prove elusive. Research, as Franklin Roosevelt wrote in 1937, is one of the Nation's very greatest resources and the role of the Federal Government in supporting and stimulating it needs to be reexamined. That reexamination willand shouldremain a feature of American politics as long as there are changes in presidential administrations.