The Art of Selling Science in a Political World

University of Chicago astrophysicist Michael Turner was hustling through the Washington, DC, power structure in mid-April with the fervor of a lobbyist with a hot issue. As the driving force behind the just-released National Research Council report Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century, Turner had the critical task of championing the study. After more than two years of overseeing the writing of the report, Turner was charged with convincing the Washington officials who control the federal science purse strings that the study was worth supporting.

The report, an assessment of science at the “intersection of astronomy and physics,” offers seven recommendations that form a strategy for achieving specific scientific objectives through coordinated planning involving NASA, NSF, the Department of Energy, and the physics and astronomy communities. The first three recommendations—measuring the polarization of the cosmic microwave background to detect the signature of inflation, creating a new class of wide-field telescopes to understand the nature of the dark energy, and developing a very deep underground laboratory to determine neutrino mass and look for proton decay—involve an assortment of partnerships between the science funding agencies.

Physicists and astronomers worked together to write the report, so their cooperation isn’t an issue, Turner said. The real problem is reorienting the thinking in government agencies that have different cultures and missions. The report notes that “no one agency currently has unique ownership of the science at the intersection of astronomy and physics; nor can one agency working alone mount the effort needed to realize the great opportunities.” To achieve the scientific objectives, coordination and joint planning by NASA, NSF, and DOE will be essential, the report says. “In some instances, two of the agencies, or even all three, will need to work together. In other cases, one agency, by closing the gap between the disciplines of physics and astronomy within it, may be sufficient.”

Getting federal agencies to work together is notoriously difficult, but beyond that, Turner also has to convince both the Bush administration and Congress that the new blend of astronomy and physics detailed in the report deserves support.

In the days just before the report’s 21 April release, Turner was on Capitol Hill, briefing staff members from the House and Senate science committees in separate meetings. He was at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), two blocks from the White House, briefing director John Marburger and his staff. He was in the fortress-like DOE building meeting with Ray Orbach, the head of the agency’s Office of Science. There were also meetings with officials from NASA, NSF, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

“The response we’ve gotten everywhere is enthusiastic,” Turner said in the wake of his Washington blitz. “The support we’re seeing is necessary to moving forward,” he said, but there needs to be more political and agency support to turn the recommendations into actual programs. “We haven’t hit support sufficient to do that,” he said, “but the enthusiasm has us excited.”

One of the key science issues being debated throughout the federal government is the heavy tilt in funding toward the life sciences at the expense of the physical sciences, and Turner used that issue in his presentation. “Part of solving the imbalance problem is making our case that there are exciting things to do [in the physical sciences]. This report is a piece of making that case.” The other pieces, he said, are astronomy’s decadal survey and planning documents in physics. “We were very careful [in developing the quarks-to-cosmos report] that we were fitting in very nicely with what is already being done in physics and astronomy,” he said. “When you put all of these pieces together, you can show that we’re not just an entitlement program.”

Selling science

Turner’s exercise in selling the science report to politicians and government policy-makers is critical if astronomers and physicists hope the study will do more than sit on a shelf, said Kevin Marvel, a public affairs specialist in the Washington office of the American Astronomical Society. “Scientists work hard on reports like this, and then assume people will do what they recommend. It doesn’t work like that. These reports have to have a champion, and it usually is the chair of the study who does it.” Turner, as evidenced by his aggressive briefing schedule, was “perfectly suited to go up on the hill to make the pitch for this,” Marvel said.

How successful Turner has been as a salesman won’t be known for some time. In the short term, members of the House and Senate science and appropriations committees will wait to see if and how the executive branch and the science agencies respond to the report. Although Marburger and the OSTP staff, as well as OMB staff members, seemed enthusiastic, Turner said, it is impossible to know if that enthusiasm will translate into funding in the administration’s next budget request.

Anne Kinney, director of NASA’s astronomy and physics division, said the timing of the report was “very good” for the space agency because it will help guide the “road-mapping team” that is setting priorities and developing plans for missions not yet funded. The road-mapping group meets every three years “as part of our natural planning cycle,” Kinney said.

As for working with other agencies, she said, “we’re all trying to do better than we do today.” But the culture and mission differences among NASA, DOE, and NSF are real, she said. “These are three very different cultures. DOE empowers science centers to do their work. We at NASA have much more of a management approach.” NSF is different in that it funds proposals from researchers based on merit and doesn’t initiate its own research projects. There are examples in which the agencies coordinate work on specific projects, but what Turner is hoping for is a deeper interagency relationship to carry out the recommendations in the new report. “I saw enthusiasm for working closer together at NSF, DOE, and NASA,” Turner said after his round of briefings. “I think that may happen. We want to get something done.”