On June 26, Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences and Chair of the National Research Council, presented what NASEM billed as an inaugural State of the Science Address.
A February press release had publicized the event this way:
“Just as the annual State of the Union address gives Americans a sense of how the nation is doing on key priorities, I hope that the State of the Science address will provide policymakers and the public with a clear picture of the overall direction of the U.S. research enterprise — including its strengths, potential shortcomings, and possible pathways for the future,” McNutt said. “Science has provided the foundation for decades of American prosperity and improved quality of life and well-being. By taking stock of where we are now, we will be better able to steer efforts toward ensuring that our research community can maximize its contributions to our nation and to all Americans.”
Bravo! The event more than lived up to this ambitious billing.
Dr. McNutt, a distinguished geoscientist, gave a crisp, refreshingly data-driven talk. Her summary was followed by a second hour of panel discussion, moderated by Harvey Feinberg, a former President of the National Academy of Medicine and now President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The live event was also webcast and is available online here.
Dr. McNutt began with an overview of societal benefits of science – for the nation’s economy, safety, security, health, and quality of life. She also enumerated the benefits of science leadership versus mere uptake: national security, economic growth and stability, the ability to frame global ethical standards for the advance and use of science; and the accompanying contributions to soft power and diplomacy.
She then worked her way through several metrics revealing clear US worldwide scientific leadership since World War II (her word was “dominance”), juxtaposed with data showing that in recent years the US lead has been declining. China and the rest of the world are catching up – even overtaking the US in some areas.
The last half of her talk laid out six challenges the United States faces if it is to retain (or regain) leadership and/or simply match pace with the rest of the world going forward. She also tabled six opportunities corresponding to the flip side of each (given here in italics and parentheses):
- Build the domestic scientific workforce of the future (improve K-12 education)
- Continue to attract the best talent internationally (reduce red-tape facing would-be foreign students – and the red-tape burden carried by US academic researchers more generally)
- Coordinate existing resources for greater impact – especially across public-private-philanthropic lines, as the relative funding across these sectors is shifting (create a truly national research strategy)
- Modernize university-industry partnerships. This is not simply a matter of funding. Industry profit-seeking objectives differ from the public-good focus of government agencies. Industry is luring away university and government talent, to the long-term detriment of all, especially in the AI-space. (Need to find different forms of university-private sector engagement.)
- Provide access to major science facilities (inter alia, increase US participation in international science facilities)
- Build public support for science (cultivate public trust in science).
She put flesh on the bones of each of these. Dr. Feinberg led a lively conversation among the panelists, who brought diverse perspectives (different academic disciplines, private-sector, philanthropy, science communication) to the issue. One name familiar to geoscientists is Marshall Shepherd, who made insightful contributions throughout – in themselves worth the listen.
Some takeaways.
- NASEM and Dr. McNutt gave the impression that this presentation was not a one-off but instead the first of a series. Though I didn’t see anywhere a commitment to doing this annually, that seemed implied by the comparison to the State of the Union address and is devoutly to be wished. One issue for such a series? The six challenges are inherently multi-year. It will be important to maintain that long-range, big-picture focus and yet show tangible progress (or regress) year-on-year, while keeping the annual occasions fresh.
- There was a welcome emphasis throughout on improving American public education, at all levels, and for all students, as the foundation. In the 1950’s I was a high-school student when Sputnik awakened American interest in prioritizing STEM education. I got to see and benefit from that firsthand. But as Rush Holt and others have since pointed out, those Cold War initiatives had the fatal flaw of focusing on select students deemed to have potential versus making critical thinking and scientific perspective a feature of American culture and values. There’s the opportunity to correct that failing this time around.
- A national strategy for science is a superb idea, perhaps even a sine qua non, but it’s vital that it be made truly national, including not just government-, but also academia and the private-sector (as well as philanthropy and the NGO’s) in its formulation and implementation. And, as Dr. McNutt emphasized, it’s important that such a strategy flexibly accommodate serendipity. (Another lesson of the Cold War was that Russian science suffered because it was monolithic – a top-down, command-and-control straitjacket dictated by a single entity, its Academy of Sciences. Scientists who had the poor fortune to run afoul of that Academy’s politics and powerful personalities were cut off from funding or worse. By contrast, the United States funded science through a diversity of sources, allowing scientists who incurred disfavor at one to move to another.)
- Partnerships work best when they’re not one-sided – when partners pursue common goals, and each brings to the table resources and assets the other partner(s) need. Case in point; it’s not sufficient to note that the private sector is hoovering up the country’s AI workforce, leaving government agencies and academia behind. It’s essential to make a strong case (as Dr. McNutt did) that academic and government work in AI is essential to sustaining private-sector work and focused on that very practical goal – and provide the incentives needed to bring that about.
- In a similar way, US scientists can expect access to major science facilities worldwide only to the extent that the US itself has invested in such facilities that attract comparable international interest in coming here.
- Finally, trust in science is most likely to be achieved to the extent that science is regarded as an open and participatory nationwide activity and not some province reserved for a select few. Ideally, every American would self-identify as a participant in science and innovation, not as a mere spectator. Dr. McNutt captured some of this idea when she gave statistics showing that job growth was most rapid in scientific fields – exceeding the total birthrate (!). In the panel discussion, Marshall Shepherd spoke eloquently about busting up the idea of a workforce “pipeline,” which implies one way in, and one way out, in favor of far more open access to science-based careers for a far broader spectrum of the population. Only to the extent that Americans feel real ownership of science will they truly trust it.
In his benediction to the event, Harvey Feinberg complimented Marcia McNutt for her admirable discipline in “barely asking for more money.” He went on to say “We do, however, need more money invested in science,” adding that any national research strategy “would be an empty promise if it does not have the fuel of resources to make it a reality.”
Amen.
