Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice and Policy | Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise, Part 2

Calculating the Added Value of Science to Society

In selling science to the public, the department chair, the company recruiter, the congressional staffer, the agency program officer, and the national associations of scientists may have different priorities. But a more general view must prevail: Human resources in science are a national treasure that add value to the world. The issue of "added value" is the critical one. Anyone who understands the process by which the advanced economies of the world have moved from agriculture to manufacturing, and then to the production of knowledge along with goods and services, will agree at least in theory that science as a spur to technology adds value to the economy. But the quantitative measure of that added value is elusive. It is one thing to compute the value of the telecommunications industry in terms of sales and profits, exports, and employment (new wealth); it is quite another to compute the value of its knowledge base as a stimulus to economic growth, the numerous jobs (new sources of wealth) created by the new industries it has spawned, the higher efficiency of business in all sectors that it has made possible-not to mention improved quality of life. Without some measure of "added value" by science and technology to the economy and well-being of this nation, however, the argument for full employment of scientists (and what economists lump under the rubric of "human capital") remains a philosophical one at best.

A first order of business, then, for those who engage in science and technology policy is to attempt to compute, account for, and factor in the added value of science. 17 This involves analyses of the value to the economy of having, for example, the best advanced training in science in the world (affordability and limited access notwithstanding); the benefits to the economy in general that flow from technological innovation; the benefits overall, not just to the industries that profit from them, of advances in computers, lasers, global positioning satellites, automation, transportation, biotechnology, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals, as well as building materials and technologies, and telecommunications; what Jack Gibbons, the president's science adviser, calls in the aggregate science's "social rate of return." 18

Such a calculation may seem daunting. But comparable valuations have been done in the recent past, and one economist (who won a Nobel Prize for the effort) has attempted to quantify (if only retrospectively) the direct benefits of education, research, and development to technological progress and to the economy. l9 The value of a pristine environment, to take an example from another hard-to-measure sector, is no longer calculated in terms of recreation alone. We measure health benefits and costs, along with new measures, such as the long-term availability (whether visited or not) of our nation's wilderness areas and national parks (called by economists their option value"). These have become part and parcel of the nation's land-planning metric.

Selling Science, Selling Scientists

An ideal future for science-trained professionals in the U.S. in the authors' opinion would look something like this - a significantly larger percentage of young people, regardless of race, ethnic background, gender, or disability, would be recruited to the study of science. Like today's ROTC and military academy candidates, they would be supported with tuition waivers, monthly stipends, and paid summer work experience. Those who chose to terminate their schooling with a two-year associate's degree would become technicians; those who continued in science through a B.S. or B.A. would not have to repay tuition waivers, no matter what their profession, because it would be understood by the public that science literacy is valuable in all sectors. Those earning degrees at the master's level would have opportunities to do meaningful science-related work Those earning Ph.D.s would be employed at the bench or in the management of basic or applied research.

Lest this extension of the military-training model to science (mathematics and engineering might also be included) be considered too fanciful or rooted in the cold war, recall Vannevar Bush's original recommendation that 24,000 scholarships be given annually to undergraduates in science. Extending the military-training model still further, graduates in science (at all levels) would be expected to repay their fellowships with some form of science-related service in public institutions (schools, museums, hospitals, national labs), or in the private sector (industry, commerce, banks, environmental clean-up companies, law firms, media organizations).

This scenario assumes a population sympathetic to science, made up of both ordinary people and powerful decision-makers willing to pay for a science infrastructure. Just as the public willingly pays for "readiness" in the interest of national security, so it would greet scientific investigation (Unscientific maneuvers," as it were) and a "science corps of young graduates as investments in national long-term well-being. Some of the vanishing local and regional benefits of military spending (base employment and local contracts) would be resurrected by spending for science. Finally, the media in this ideal future would make science accessible, well-reported, intelligently criticized and, for the most part, celebrated as a national "good." 20

Why does our scenario seem improbable? One answer common among scientists is that science illiteracy is so widespread in the population at large, and anti-scientism so virulent among a vocal few, as to subvert any appreciation that science might inspire. 21 In Washington it is generally believed that, apart from the space program, "there are no votes in science." This makes it even harder to imagine that the nation would happily sustain science-trained professionals in their careers or invest in new employment pathways for them. But how sure are we that there are no votes in science. or that the pubic wouldn't support science if it were asked? Does science illiteracy necessarily produce indifference or hostility to the world that scientists do? Daniel Greenberg, editor and publisher of Science and Government Report, and formerly of Science, thinks not. He recently told a university audience that polling regularly shows that 73 percent of the public consider the benefits of science greater than any of its baneful effects." 22

Indeed, there is some empirical evidence that scientists may themselves, be at fault for not cultivating a support base that already exists. In 1983 sociologist Jon Miller, who reports biennially on public attitudes toward science, studied 287 science policy leaders and found 'a woeful lack of interest in mobilizing the 'science-attentive public.'" 23 This was partly because they were unaware of the size of this group (about thirty million, according to Miller's surveys and calculations), and because during the long postwar period from 1945 to 1983 government was willing to respond to the science elite with generous funding. On those occasions when they needed public support, the major disciplinary societies and professional associations tended to focus on their own membership. There was little or no overt effort to identify and mobilize the millions of private citizens interested in science. 24

Indeed, for 1979 through 1981, only 5% of Miller's self-identified "science-attentive public" reported contacting a public official on a science-related matter in the previous year, and most of these contacts were on resource-related, not research-related, issues. 25 The reason for the public's inaction regarding science, Miller insists, was not lack of concern, but lack of information as to what the science community would have bad them do. The 287 science and technology leaders polled by Miller confirmed this impression. They thought they could go it alone. Given the intense competition for federal resources in the decade ahead (and he saw this beginning in 1983), Miller warned that lack of mobilization of public support would put funding and science itself in grave danger. 26

Miller's findings are provocative on several grounds, first because he departs from the notion that a "science attentive public" need be science literate 27 and second because of his identification of a substantial population (19.5% of all adults) as science-interested citizens. 28 This indicates that our ideal scenario need not be so farfetched as it first appears if steps are taken to educate and mobilize this population. A second provocative element is Miller's identification of an elitist and preoccupied science leadership rendered inattentive to the broader public by decades of federal support. In his survey, only one of five of the leaders queried had attempted to inform the general public on science and technology issues, with leaders from the university sector being the least likely to have done so. 29

Mobilizing Support for Science

It is not as if there are no precedents for informing and influencing a science-attentive pubic. Dorothy Nelkin in her book Selling Science reminds us that, as early as 1919 with the founding of the American Chemical Society, professional science writers were employed to describe research in language the public could understand. 30 The Scripps Science Service was established in 1930 to do the same, and even in their early years, the American Institute of Physics (founded in 1935) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science had wire services. When it has reason to, industry knows how to sell science and scientists. Aside from merchandising consumer products based on new technologies, industry often calls on scientists to help explain science related issues. The chemical industry has used "advertorials" featuring scientists who are "managing chemical wastes." Westinghouse created a Campus America program in 1976 to train scientists for public debate on nuclear power. The use of scientists in public relations is not the same as building positive public relations for science (and may sometimes have the opposite effect). 31 But the "campaign mentality" does provide a model for influencing public attitudes.

Scientists are sometimes ambivalent about the press, but the press is even more ambivalent about science. There are fewer and fewer newspapers employing science writers, and the weekly science sections are disappearing. It is all but impossible to report on serious science either in the print media or on TV, not because writers are reluctant, but because, aside from health and medicine, business offices, editors, and publishers do not value science enough. Indeed, scientists might well be wary. In an article based on their study of anti-scientism among American intellectuals (see footnote 21), Norman Levitt and Paul R. Gross note that the "old respect" in which science used to be held "is being supplanted by hostile criticism . . . arising from the just and understandable desire, shared by many intellectuals, that science be democratized." 32

Of course the extension of a science-trained work force to groups hitherto excluded from science will bring with it some risk to the habits and traditional values of the work, just as popularization may lead to criticism and loss of prestige. But, properly understood, Levitt and Gross are as eloquent as Gerald Holton in making the case that science, in its constant battle against fanaticism and obscurantism, is a critical support for democratic society. 33

Conclusion

Members of Congress and others are calling for a "new social compact" between science and society, one that contributes to solving the next generation of economic and social problems. 34 The COSEPUP (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy) report of the National Academy of Sciences, released in April 1995, calls for a balanced blend of research and preparation for diverse career paths in the training of future science professionals, a goal already adumbrated by study commissions of the American Chemical and the American Physical Societies. 35 And thoughtful scientists from all disciplines have nearly conceded-but as yet mainly in theory-that the "old compact rooted in the cold war and U.S. economic hegemony, in which "science was placed in a special category above politics," 36 cannot be revived.

No less important than the emerging shift in perceptions and expectations will be shifts in the realities that constrain change: how future federal budgets (and budget-cutting) will affect the amount, manner of dispersal, and criteria for funding of research, including the mix between strategic and untargeted (basic or curiosity-driven-driven); how universities will select, train, and direct the next generation of science professionals into certain specialties (and not into others); and whether unrestrained access by foreign nationals to U.S. scientific training and scientific jobs will be allowed to diminish the career prospects of U.S. citizens. In short, the financial support mechanisms and the institutional rearrangements required by the "new social compact need to be hammered out in relentless debate among all who have, or ought to have, a stake in America's scientific future.

Some readers may be tempted to ignore our perceptions and that of our respondents if they think these don't (yet) correspond to their research areas, their students, or their perceptions. But we believe they do so at their peril. The fortunes of other research areas, other departments, and other students will have an impact on research and teaching in all subdisciplines. and any changes in federal policy and budgeting, even those not immediately targeted at them, will affect the way they do business. They are, in short, part of a larger system, even if they don't think of themselves that way. From this perspective, downsizing and so-called academic birth control, while appealing in the short run, can emasculate what's good about the whole system-the community. In science, as in nature, there is an ecology at work. The science community owes it to itself not to generalize from one node or perch but, rather, to raise the caliber, the productivity, and the utility of the whole enterprise.

Nor ought the science community, in our view, continue to do on an ad hoc basis those things that require a sound empiricism. Issues of careers in science need to be dealt with promptly and responsibly, consistent with the best interests of the young professionals involved and the long-term welfare of the nation as a whole. Failure to do so will make science as a career appear even more risky to those contemplating their futures than it does today. So, we end where we began, with these questions:

How will our nation grow the scientists it needs?

How will our scientists get the work they've trained for?

And dare we leave these matters to chance?

Notes

(Bottom of first page.) This article, originally titled "Restructuring Demand", first appeared as Chapter 7 in Rethinking Science as a Career: Perceptions and Realities in the Physical Sciences (Tobias, Chubin and Aylesworth, 1995) published by Research Corporation (ISBN 0-9633504-3-9), W. Stevenson Bacon series editor. Reprinted here with the publisher's permission.

1 This and what follows derives from U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Higher Education for Science and Engineering (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, Mar. 1989), pp. 126-128.

2 Ibid., p. 128.

3 p. 129.

4 Harry Wasserman, personal communication to the authors. See also "Chemists Clean Up Synthesis with One-Pot Reactions" Science 266 (7 Oct. 1994): pp. 32-33.

5 For a contrasting view, see the widely-reported Galvin Report on alternative futures for the DOE national laboratories presented to Congress, Feb. 24, 1995. The commission, led by Robert Galvin. chairman of the board of Motorola, indicated its reluctance to support the dual-use concept as reported in Science 267 (27 Jan. 1995): pp. 446~47.

6 In other countries, such as Germany, national labs are not agency administered or mission dependent, but are engaged in the support of basic research.

7 Preparing for the 21st Century: Human Resources in Science and Technology (Washington, D.C.: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, Jul. 1992).

8 Bellcore is an exception. Bcllcore's contribution over the past few years has been to put more than 400 Ph.D. researchers (physicists and electrical engineers) through an expensive three-week crash course in software and systems engineering. See "In Sink-or-Swim Environment, Physicists Retrain to Survive," Science 261 (24 Sept. 1993): p. 1672.

9 John Armstrong, personal communication to the authors. See also Peter Feibelman's advice to scientists, A Ph.D. is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science (Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1993).

10 Vljendra Agarwal of Moothead State's physics department found it hard to identify the personnel officer to talk to at large companies like Honeywell and 3-M about placement of prospective physics with business minors.' One office handles hiring of scientists, another hiring of marketing and management trainees. Agarwal's graduates would fall between the two.

11 Robert Reich, The Next American Frontier (New York: Viking Penguin, 1983).

12 Lewis M. Branscomb, personal communication to the authors.

13 Harley A. Thronson, Jr., "The Production of Astronomers: A Model for Future Surpluses, " in Publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 103 (Jan. 1991): pp. 90-94.

14 Robert Lichter, executive director. and Harry Wasserman, Dreyfus Foundation board member, personal communications to the authors.

15 Hellmut Fritzsche. personal communication to the authors.

16 The quotations and details come from a memo, written to the authors to answer their queries, and are quoted with Cathy Manduca's permission.

17 For example, see Research Funding as an Investment: Can we Measure the Returns? U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, April 1986). The short answer was 'no.'

18 John H. Gibbons, address to a meeting on "Science in the National Interest," MIT Feb. 7, 1995.

19 According to economist Robert Solow's analysis, for much of the first half of this century, 80% of America's economic growth was due to "capital-independent technical progress"; 34% alone to "growth of knowledge" or what Solow calls "technical progress in its narrowest sense." See Growth Theory: An Explosion, Robert Solow's Nobel lecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 20. A commentator writes: "Solow's 1957 paper on technological progress changed the focus of growth economies from a crude emphasis on savings to a much-better appreciation of the importance of education, research, and development." Avinash Dixit, in Growth, Productivity and Unemployment: Essays to Celebrate Bob Solow's Birthday, ed. Peter Diamond (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 11 .

20 For an opinion on the importance of science writers to science, see William D. Carey, "Scientists and Sandboxes: Regions of the Mind," American Scientist 76 (Mar.-Apr. 1988) : pp. 143-145.

21 Hostility to science may reside in higher quarters than had previously been assumed. See Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994).

22 Taken from a public lecture given at the University of California, San Diego on Oct. 4, 1994. This proportion is fairly stable. See Jon Miller The Public Understanding of Science and Technology 1990 report to the National Science Foundation (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1992).

23 Jon Miller, The American People and Science Policy (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983), pp. 41-43. Miller defines the science-attentive public as (1) having a self-defined interest in science and technology issues; (2) being knowledgeable about science and technology; and (3) engaging in a regular pattern of relevant information acquisition, i.e. reading a newspaper every day, or most of the time, reading one or more news magazines, one or more science magazines, or watching a television show like NOVA.

24 In a compelling "textual analysis" of the testimony of university presidents from the .association of American Universities before congressional committees dealing with research funding over the period 198~1985, Sheila Slaughter finds the same leaders-to-leaders orientation. Sheila Slaughter, "Beyond Basic Science: Research University Presidents' Narratives of Science Policy, Science Technology and Human Values 18, no. 3 (Summer 1993): pp. 278-302.

25 Miller, The American People, p. 132. An exception was the zeroing out of the science-education budget at NSF in 1981 by the Reagan Administration, which generated a substantial citizen protest, largely because the education community joined in. Pressure of the 'mobilized public helped, Miller says, to persuade a sufficient number of members of Congress of the value of science education, though the budget was still decimated.

26 According to Miller's figures, federal support for basic research increased from $234 million in 1953 to $2.8 billion in 1968. declined for most of the 1970s, and reached $2.9 billion again only in 1978, and $3.1 billion in 1980.

27 Depending on the definition, the number of Americans who meet a minimum standard of "science literacy" falls between 3 and 6 percent of the adult population. But "science literacy" may not be as important to support for science as 'science appreciation' (a phrase allegedly invented by Edward Teller).'"Science appreciators" would better correspond to Miller's "science attentive public.' For a discussion of these issues, see Morris H. Shamos, "Science Literacy is Futile;Try Science Appreciation," The Scientist (Oct. 3, 1988): p. 8; and "Causes and Effects of Scientific Illiteracy Defined and Explored," an interview with James Trefil, Chemical and Engineering News (Mar. 14, 1994): p. 26.

28 Miller's surveys are reported in the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 1993 His data sets are archived at the International Center for the Advancement of Science Literacy, Chicago Academic, 2001 N. Clark St. Chicago, ID. 60614

29 Miller, The American People, p. 37

30 Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1987), pp. 133-135.

31 Ibid., p. 146.

32 Norman Levitt and Paul L Gross, "The Perils of Democratizing Science," The Chronicle of Higher Education on (Oct. 5, 1994): p. B1, B2. See also Daryl E. Chubin "Progress, Culture, and the Cleavage of Science from Society" in Science, Technology and Social Progress, ed. S.L. Goldman (Bethlehem, Penn.: Lehigh University Press, 1989), pp. 177-195 .

33 Levitt and Gross, "The Perils of Democratizing," p. B2. Gerald Holton, Science and Anti-Science Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), especially his retort to Vaclav Havel in chap. 6, pp. 145-185.

34 George E. Brown, Jr. put this in writing in his "New Ways of Looking at U.S. Science and Technology," Physics Today (Sept. 1994): pp. 31-35: and in "Common Sense, Science, and a Balanced Budget" (presentation to the NAS, Jan. 1995).

35 COSEPUP report, NAS, Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers (Washington. D.C.: National Academy Press, 1995).

36 John Deutsch, speaking as deputy secretary of the Department of Defense, at a meeting of engineering deans Washington, D.C., Mar. 9 and 10, 1995.

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise
Part 2

Tobias, Chubin, and Aylesworth

Book Contents

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise: Part 2

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise Part 2

Tobias, Chubin, and Aylesworth

Book Contents

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise: Part 2

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise
Part 2