Recently in Science policy Category

Science students and early-career professionals often contact the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) seeking information about "alternative science careers." A growing number of individuals are interested in employment that allows them to apply their scientific skills and training to the resolution of societal problems.  Whether an individual's interests are in education, health, environment, or the nation's investment in scientific research, a public policy career is one way that scientists can convert their education into action.

AIBS is sponsoring a webinar for those considering a career in science policy. It will be held on Monday, 21 December from 2:00-3:30pm Eastern Standard Time. More information is available at http://www.aibs.org/events/webinar/science-careers.html. You can download a PDF with a little more information here.

Last month I noted that Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced a resolution that would have eliminated funding for political science research at the National Science Foundation. I was delighted to discover this morning that ScienceInsider reported last week that the Coburn amendment was soundly defeated: 36 to 62. I am disappointed that 36 senators voted for the amendment. It's important to note that five Democrats joined 31 Republicans in voting for the amendment.

[I]t wasn't strictly a party-line vote. Five moderate Democrats--Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Jim Webb of Virginia--apparently agree with Coburn's argument that NSF, with a budget of $6.9 billion, is "wasting" federal dollars by spending $9 million a year to support research in the field.

You can find how your Senator voted by clicking here.

I've referred to David Goldston's column in Nature many times over the past few years. (Here's a link to a Google search that will bring up half a dozen links.) I've read every one of the 33 columns he's written. Every one of them was filled with insight and wisdom.

Unfortunately, this week's column was his last. He is becoming director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nature is losing a valued contributor, but the NRDC is gaining a director of government affairs who will help them to become even more effective.

Goldston did leave us with a summary of the themes he's emphasized throughout his columns. I expect to return to this post periodically for a reminder of those themes. They summarize well the relationship between science and policy.

Click through for my summary of the four themes he identified.

Scientists tend to view disagreements as matters of fact and theory that can be settled by data and logic. If the data are consistent with one view and inconsistent with another, that's the end of the story. We often complain when the public doesn't understand or doesn't get it. We figure that if we just explained ourselves more clearly, the facts would speak for themselves.¹

If you've been reading this blog for more than a couple of weeks, you know that I don't buy that view of the world.

The editors of Nature agree. From yesterday's issue:

The public reception of scientific ideas depends largely on two factors: people's ability to grasp factual information and the cultural lens through which that information is filtered.

And this:

The lesson for today's scientists and policy-makers is simple: they cannot assume that a public presented with 'the facts' will come to the same conclusion as themselves. They must take value systems, cultural backdrops and local knowledge gaps into account and frame their arguments accordingly. Such approaches will be crucial in facing current global challenges, from recessions to pandemics and climate change. These issues will be perceived and dealt with differently by different nations -- not because they misunderstand, but because their understanding is in part locally dependent. (emphasis added)

When I've written about dumb ideas from Oklahoma before, they were from James Inhofe, Oklahoma's senior senator. Today's dumb idea comes from Tom Coburn, Oklahoma's junior senator. What is it?

Senate Amendment 2631 to House Resolution 2847. Scroll down the page to find it in context. If you don't feel like clicking through to Thomas (or if the link isn't working), here's the text of the amendment:

At the appropriate place in title III, insert the following:

Sec. __. None of the funds appropriated under this Act may be used to carry out the functions of the Political Science Program in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation.

That's right. Coburn is proposing to eliminate funding for research in political science at the National Science Foundation.

Among the items Coburn cites as an example of misspending by NSF is the funding they provided to support some of Paul Krugman's research. His evidence that the money was misspent? Well, NSF congratulated 2008 Nobel Prize winners who had received NSF funding. Paul Krugman was among those congratulated, and the paragraph describing him mentions that he is "a well-known columnist for The New York Times and one of the country's foremost liberal commentators on economic, political and policy issues", and that's the only thing Coburn cites.¹ He doesn't bother to mention that the preceding paragraph in the NSF statement provides a pretty compelling case for the importance of Krugman's contributions.²

Krugman's work on international trade and economic geography represents a paradigm shift in research on global economics. Beginning in 1979, Krugman proposed a new model that provided a theory for the effects of globalization and free trade. It offered a better explanation than the well-established theory of foreign trade that certain countries have a comparative advantage over others in more effectively producing particular goods based on factors such as climate, natural resources or supplies of labor or capital. Krugman recognized that the traditional theory did not fully explain modern trends that showed international trade becoming increasingly concentrated among smaller numbers of producers and nations. His work shed light on key economic issues such as why countries import and export the same goods, how companies decide where to locate, how people decide where to live and why dense urban areas become centers of economic activity while existing alongside sparsely populated rural areas.

Dan Drezner (a political scientist) sums it up pretty well.

Basic research in the hard sciences or the social sciences is a public good -- these things tend to get underprovided in a perfectly free market.  It's not clear to me at all why Coburn thinks that the $9 million spent on poli sci is a waste but the gazillions from the public trough spent on the hard sciences are not a waste when private corporations, industrial associations, scientific publications, universities, and private citizens couldn't fund this stuff.

I'd say that money spent on learning how to implement public policies effectively and on uncovering the factors that influence the ways in which individual, institutional, and societal preferences and values affect the choice among public policies is money well spent. Coburn's right that

CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the print media, and a seemingly endless number of political commentators on the internet ... pour over this data and provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions.

But by Coburn's logic we could eliminate the National Institutes of Health, because there are thousands of web sites providing "a myriad of viewpoints" on health options. Me, I'm glad we have the National Institutes of Health, and I'm glad that the National Science Foundation funds research in political science (and economics and other social sciences).