Page 12 - Acoustics Today Spring 2011

STEPPING UP TO THE TABLE:
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE ROLE OF SCIENTISTS IN THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESS
Dahlia L Sokolov1
Washington, D.C.
This is an interesting time, if you will permit me such an under- statement. For the nearly seven years I’ve been on Congressional staff, starting as an American Institute of Physics Congressional Fellow in 2004, I have sincerely believed that, with few exceptions, Members of Congress and their staff strongly support science, respect the scientific enterprise and its practitioners, and believe there is a fed- eral role in supporting scientific research. (It turns out the public is more positive about “scientific research” than it is about “basic research” or even “advanced research.”) The exceptions have been high-profile perhaps, but they have been few and far between.
Of course it is never so black and white. For example, there is a segment of lawmakers who are admittedly selective in their support for science—happy to fund physics and com- puter science, for example, but in search of opportunities to reduce federal support for social sciences. I see that as a chal- lenge to the social scientists to make their case better and to the rest of you to step in and voice your support for this valu- able area of research. There are others who believe that the federal government has no business supporting “applied research” and “development”—that those endeavors are the purview of the private sector alone. I have come to under- stand that the scientific community itself does not make this same clear distinction between “basic” and “applied” research as does the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). To further muddy the debate, the private sector uses yet another set of definitions for “basic” and “applied.” Nevertheless, the definitions handed down by OMB guide federal budget deci- sions and set the tone for ideological divisions about the proper role of government in supporting research.
So I do my best to resist over-generalizing anything. However, if it is reasonable to generalize at all, I would offer that the challenge to building support for research funding across all disciplines and missions has not been willful dis- missal of the importance of these research investments to our society, but rather that most Members of Congress don’t pri- oritize science above other concerns and interests. Members care about what their constituents care about, and they have to explain their funding decisions back home. At the moment, the number one priority for most Americans is jobs. You and I might have no doubt that investment in sci- ence and technology now lead to job creation in the future. There are various estimates about the critical importance of
“I am simply describing one narrow but potentially consequential example of an arguably well-meaning policy proposal that dismissed the science from the outset, and how those of us working on that issue at that time forced the science back to the table.”
research investments to our nation’s eco- nomic growth and they all validate what we take as a given. But drawing a straight line between investments in sci- entific research and job creation is real- ly hard to do, and even if we could do it better, it still wouldn’t address today’s job creation needs. Notwithstanding the President’s recent State of the Union address, with the short attention span built into our electoral system and the pressing needs of today dominating the debates, science funding just doesn’t make for good politics.
What about incorporating science into broader policy decisions? I take it as a given, and not inherently a negative, that science has just one seat at the poli-
cymaking table. And I accept that there are some lawmakers who willfully ignore the science because it contradicts ideo- logically or politically driven positions. That’s nothing new. What concerns me much more is the subset of lawmakers who are open to incorporating the science, but do not under- stand what the science does or does not mean, or what the technology is or is not capable of. They are not scientists, nor are their staff. But more to the point, most of them never developed basic science literacy. And that’s not something even most highly intelligent and educated people can learn on the job, especially people whose attention is pulled in a hundred different directions every day. The lack of basic lit- eracy, the lack of understanding of the scientific process, the often visible discomfort at talking about science, is a failure of course of our education system. We succeed, if anything, in beating any love for science out of the majority of our stu- dents from a young age. So how do you compensate for that, short of fixing the education system and waiting around for the next generation to enter government?
I do not pretend to have all of the answers. There are some very smart people who have spent decades in Washington and are still regularly questioning and reassess- ing their efforts. Nevertheless, I believe there are some basic principles that we all agree on. First, scientists and those who represent scientific consensus in Washington policy debates must learn how to communicate effectively with policy mak- ers. That’s not easy. Scientists are rarely trained to communi- cate to non-technical audiences. Furthermore, scientists have a hard time understanding the non-linear process and cul- ture of politics that help drive decision-making in Washington. But science and engineering disciplinary and professional societies as well as many other science-related
8 Acoustics Today, April 2011