President’s Science Council Urges More Money for Physical Sciences, Engineering

In a speech last February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, John Marburger, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, defended the significant tilt toward the life sciences in federal science funding. Science was within reach of a “frontier of complexity” that “creates far more opportunities in the life sciences,” he said. “Given the new atomic-level capabilities [of biological research], the life sciences may still be underfunded relative to the physical sciences,” he concluded.

Yet there was concern both in the physical sciences community and on Capitol Hill over the disparity in the distribution of federal research dollars. A House Science Committee summary of President Bush’s proposed fiscal year 2003 R&D budget noted that, although NIH would receive a 17% increase, “all other civilian R&D is collectively frozen.” (See Physics Today, April 2002, page 31 .)

When Marburger made the same “complexity” statement before the Science Committee to justify the funding imbalance, Representative Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) said that if scientific complexity were the real standard for funding, astrophysics should get the most money. Marburger didn’t respond.

Now the debate in Washington over the funding disparity between the physical and life sciences has a new participant, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In a cover letter to Bush that accompanies a draft version of the report entitled Assessing the US R&D Investment, PCAST notes that “the greatest concern to the scientific community is the balance between the physical and life sciences,” and goes on to suggest “that Fiscal Year 2004 presents the appropriate opportunity to double federal research investments in physical sciences and four major engineering fields from the FY 2002 levels.”

The final version of both the cover letter and the report were being slightly toned down before being sent to the White House—the call for “doubling” was changed to “parity” at Marburger’s suggestion, for example. The report was expected to be on the president’s desk by the end of October.

Defending NIH increases

Marburger, who as OSTP director is also the cochair of PCAST, said he didn’t see any inconsistencies between his earlier statements on federal science funding and the recommendations of PCAST. “I think you can defend the NIH increases and still be in favor of balance in spending,” he said. “They are not incompatible, but you cannot expect the government to do everything at once.” Beyond that, Marburger said, “the issue is not that physical sciences don’t deserve money, but putting money in one area doesn’t necessarily mean there is an imbalance. How do we know life sciences is not justified in the money they receive?”

PCAST, which consists of 23 members primarily from industry and academia, based its recommendations on a detailed study of the past 25 years of federal R&D investments. The council commissioned the study from AAAS and the Rand Corp’s Science and Technology Policy Institute. PCAST also held several hearings with leaders from industry and the scientific community.

In the report, PCAST defines the imbalance problem by saying, “Today the life sciences receive 48% of federal R&D funding compared to the physical sciences’ 11% and engineering’s 15%. Even if physical sciences, environmental sciences, math and computer sciences are combined, their total share is only 18%.” Addressing arguments similar to those Marburger made to the AAAS and Congress, the report says, “It can be reasonably argued that the increase in funding for the life sciences does not necessarily indicate an underfunding of the physical and other sciences. After all, a major revolution is occurring in the biosciences….”

However, the report continues, the lack of funding in fields other than the life sciences is a concern because

“For all of these reasons it is valid to question whether the unequal support of certain disciplines jeopardizes progress in others in a significant way,” the report says. “These imbalances are not easily rectified, especially not in a constrained budgetary situation. Given the decreases in the physical sciences over the past decade, the focus must be to achieve a rebalance by increasing [funding to] these disciplines and not by decreasing the life sciences.” Although the PCAST report does not mention the dollar amounts needed to achieve parity, the Rand report says about $7 billion in increased federal funding is needed for the physical sciences and four specific fields of engineering—electrical, mechanical, chemical, and metallurgy and materials.

In a 29 August meeting to discuss the draft report, Marburger told PCAST members that they should not try to achieve parity too quickly. Congress is still debating the FY 2003 budget, and the administration’s FY 2004 budget proposal is already being put together “and looks pretty tight,” Marburger said. “It’s going to be a tough year to make up a lot of ground.” The doubling of the NIH budget has taken five years, he reminded the PCAST members.

PCAST member Eric Bloch, a corporate R&D consultant and former director of NSF, told participants at the meeting that the $7 billion figure in the Rand report “doesn’t include increased funding for math and computer science.” Those areas are also underfunded, he said, and “the figure is $10 billion if you include those.”

The report does more than just recommend spending more money on the physical sciences and engineering. PCAST also recommends that a “major program of fellowships should be established to attract and support the advanced graduate studies of US citizens in fields of science and engineering that support critical national needs.” The report’s cover letter notes that, for the past 20 years, there has been a decline in the number of US-born students receiving graduate degrees in the physical sciences and engineering. “This gap at the graduate level has been taken up by an influx of foreign students, but we are facing an overdependence on this talent pool …,” the letter says. “Testimony from both private industry and the federal sectors expressed strong concerns about the pending retirement of a generation of physical scientists and engineers with few options for replacing them.”

The report’s final recommendation is a response to the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of science and the difficulty of coordinating programs that are overseen by several different federal agencies and funded by multiple congressional appropriations committees. PCAST calls for the creation of a classification system to “help assess the patterns of federal investment in R&D against its ability to meet national needs.” The report also calls for more systematic monitoring of foreign science and technology efforts to ensure that the US stays competitive.