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Senator Barbara Mikulski on "Scientific Patriotism" [ for those who dont know Senator Milulski is on
From: David Farber <>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:37:29 -0500
From: fyi () aip org Senator Barbara Mikulski on "Scientific Patriotism" FYI No. 20, February 14, 1994 Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) recently addressed an OSTP Forum on Science in the National Interest. Selected portions of this important speech follow. (Note: in the interest of space, some paragraphs have been combined, with combined paragraph breaks marked as //.) "...my message is a call to arms. // Now we are in a new war -- the war for America's economic future. To win that war, we need strong leadership. To move aggressively to claim the markets of the new world order. And for that, we need a navigational chart to show us how to win jobs today and jobs tomorrow -- with science and technology as the cornerstone of our strategy. "And this change has created a crisis in the science community. Old assumptions about how to organize ourselves and how to spend increasingly limited dollars seem out of step with where we as a new age democracy must move. // Unless we develop a new strategy that fits the realities of the new world order, science and science funding run the risk of being left out and left behind. "Without a national strategy in science and the will to see that this strategy gets implemented, federal science funding is sure to become a continuing target of opportunity for what I call the `cut cruisers' in Congress. // They are my colleagues, who in a desire to cut the deficit, falsely identify science and technology as the new pork barrel spending of the 1990's. And their numbers are growing every year in both the House and the Senate. "I truly believe that there is a new paradigm emerging in how science is conducted and how science policy is organized. It's based upon the principle that science -- should lead to the new ideas and new technologies -- which should lead to jobs, particularly in manufacturing. Because manufacturing is truly the engine of our economy, and our industrial strength. "We must focus our science investments more strategically -- around national goals that are important to economic growth and whose results will ultimately improve people's day-to-day lives. "By strategic research, I mean investments in science that are focused around important national goals. Some of these have been identified already by the FCCSET process: climate change, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, and high performance computing. Others, like research on our civil infrastructure, or magnetic levitation technology, are strategic subjects that involve only one or two agencies. "It does not mean that every NSF or NIH grant must result in six patents and four commercial licensing agreements. Nor does it mean that every proposal must guarantee a private sector payoff in a specific number of years. // It does mean that we should be spending more than half of our basic research dollars in areas we consider strategic. Our investments in science and our science policy will become a new superhighway of ideas and technology to achieve national goals. // And the best federal model I know that outlines what we consider strategic is...the NIH. If you look at how NIH is organized, it is grouped around strategic areas to treat and cure disease and illness -- crucial to our national well-being and which touches the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans. "At the heart of what we seek to do is retrieve the value of scientific activity for the post-Cold War world, without abandoning the very best of scientific inquiry or investigation. Science should continue to be the place where we test new theories, break new ground, and do that which delights scientists and mesmerizes the world -- the surprise of new discoveries. "We must, however, begin to organize scientific activity, at NSF and through the federal government, horizontally. // We must be willing to see the connections between particular disciplines which historically have few links at universities or in our federal labs -- and to structure our agencies and programs accordingly. //NSF's current directorate structure is organized the way science departments are at universities. It's my belief that we need to reexamine that premise...because it is the role of the federal government to be a catalyst to help get the knowledge and technologies created in our academic community into the market place. Federal science institutions need to be more nimble and more agile. // Perhaps it's time for NSF to reorganize -- over time -- into a series of institutes like manufacturing, climate change, high performance computing, or other strategic areas. "The so-called 60 % solution is based upon the Clinton Administration's request for the NSF for 1994 -- which proposed that 55% of NSF's budget should be for research in `strategic' areas. The Congress didn't pick which areas were strategic, NSF did. We simply asked them to increase their focus by 5%. "The implications of this change to a more strategically-driven approach does not mean the end of basic research. We must do far more basic research in strategic areas. Those doing this research must recognize there's a national purpose for their work. "In short, we need to rekindle in the scientific community a new sense of patriotism. That their work is funded by ordinary taxpayers -- the checkout clerk at the grocery store or a machinist on the assembly line at GM. It is not an entitlement, and it is not always guaranteed. // And people will expect to see results -- not necessarily immediately, or so that every idea leads instantaneously to the marketplace. But that their basic research is part of a continuum of excellence to solve problems with new ideas and new theories. // This new scientific patriotism also means having the willingness to collaborate more with industry. "Finally, as we begin to set out on a research agenda that has a strategic focus, we must build in rigorous milestones and evaluation of our efforts. In areas like manufacturing or high performance computing, we need to ask ourselves: what goals do we seek to achieve; what are the specific benchmarks along the way we can measure our progress in achieving these goals; and how do the federal investments we make parallel the priorities we have set in these areas."
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