[MUSIC PLAYING]
COHEN: I'd like to
welcome everyone
to the second in the
Karl Taylor Compton
lecture series, the second
lecture by Jack Gibbons.
I'm Josh Cohen, the department
head in political science.
And the department is
pleased and honored
to be hosting Jack
Gibbons's visit to MIT
as the Compton lecturer.
My responsibility today, apart
from doing what I just did,
which is welcoming you here
and introducing myself,
is to introduce the
introducer of Jack Gibbons.
And that is John Deutch.
John Deutch is a Institute
Professor at MIT.
He's served as director of the
Central Intelligence Agency
from May '95 to December '96.
Before that, he was
Deputy Secretary
of Defense, and before that,
Undersecretary of Defense
for Acquisition and Technology.
He's also served as
Director of Energy Research,
Acting Assistant Secretary
for Energy Technology,
and Undersecretary in the
US Department of Energy.
In addition to all of that,
he's been a member of the MIT
faculty since 1970 and
served as the Chairman
of the Department of
Chemistry, the Dean
of Science and the provost.
He's published 120
technical publications
in physical chemistry as
well as numerous publications
on technology, international
security, and public policy
issues.
But John Deutch, his
greatest distinction
is that he was the provost
when I got tenure here.
[LAUGHS] John.
DEUTCH: Thank you, Josh, for
those compelling sentences,
short and clear.
I'm delighted to be here
to introduce Jack Gibbons.
Jack Gibbons is giving his
second of three Karl Compton
Lectures here at MIT.
The third will be given in
the spring at a date yet
to be announced.
This is the second.
I have particular warmth
for Karl Compton lecturers,
as having been a Karl Compton
professor here for many years.
But it's a particular
privilege to introduce
Jack Gibbons to you.
And it's worthwhile to spend
a moment, briefly, at least,
on his career because it is
instructive for those of us who
care about educating
people here at MIT.
Jack has had a
quite broad career.
He began actually
nuclear physics,
where he was for many years
at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
And I believe that's what I
first met him in the late '70s
when I was Director of Energy
Research for the United States
Department of Energy.
And he also spent
considerable time
at the University of Tennessee.
I'll come back to
this in a moment.
In 1979, more or less,
he became a director
of the Office of Technology
Assessment for the United
States Congress.
This is really--
I guess we have to speak
about in the past tense,
don't we, quite regrettably.
This was an experiment,
good government.
It was in fact a successful
experiment, good government.
And that explains why it's no
longer there, more or less.
But the Office of Technology
Assessment was intended
to provide technical and
objective-- two words,
which are foreign to the
patois in Washington--
technical and objective--
advice and counsel
and information
to legislators on a wide
range of subjects that they
had to address on Capitol Hill.
And it did an enormous amount
of extremely useful and valuable
work.
And mostly it was noted for its
honesty and its even-handedness
at every issue
that it addressed.
Jack headed that office, as
I said, from '79 till 1993
when he became President Clinton
in the first term, President
Clinton's Science Advisor.
He served in that
office for five years.
And I think he served in
that office with as much
dignity and as much
honesty and clarity
as any prior occupant
of that office.
Needless to say,
coming from Tennessee,
coming from Oak Ridge, as he
does, he was very close and a,
you might say a lieutenant
of Vice President Gore,
but worked on a
variety of issues
throughout the
first Clinton term,
including what is
perhaps not widely known,
perhaps one of the most
important times of rebirth
of our support for-- federal
support for basic research
in a large number of
departments throughout
the federal establishment,
notably NIH.
But Jack did a
splendid job, and I
had the pleasure of working
with him at that time.
What is special
about Jack Gibbons?
You know, he's here at MIT.
We have lots of people
who are knowledgeable,
lots of people who
have vast experience,
lots of people who have
distinguished careers
and who know stuff
that we should hear.
But there is something unusual
about Jack Gibbons, actually
two unusual features
about Jack Gibbons that's
important for us,
people here at MIT who
care about technology
and society, who
care about how you give
advice, how you give
effective advice to government.
There are two very special
things about Jack Gibbons.
The first is his integrity.
There has never been a time that
I have ever heard in Washington
in over 25 years anybody
say anything but the fact
that Jack Gibbons is clear and
fair and evenhanded in how he
makes his technical judgments.
That is a rare
reputation to have.
I certainly lost my reputation
in that regard a long time ago.
Very important and something
which I admire very much.
But also the second
important thing
is that Jack really
invented a field there
in the early '70s in a
remote area of Tennessee.
And he invented a
field, which we now
call energy
conservation or energy
productivity, if you like.
But he was the first person
in the technical community who
took a systematic
look at the question
about how to use
energy more efficiently
and how to use energy in a way
to accomplish all those things
that we want energy to
do for us with a minimum
of adverse effect
on the economy.
It is hard to realize
how little work had
gone on in the area
of energy conservation
before Jack started his
laboratory and his work
on this area in the early
'70s down in Tennessee,
and has kept it throughout
his time at Oak Ridge
University of Tennessee,
and of course at OTA.
So he has changed the way people
think about important science
technology issue, namely the
area of energy conservation.
And that's something
that I respect about him,
and that all of us should strive
for as a goal of something
we want to achieve
professionally
to change the way people think
about an important technical
or scientific social
and technical matter.
He's going to speak to us today
about a subject that there
is no person better qualified
to speak to us about,
the governance of
science and technology.
He's going to talk about theory.
That section should
be relatively brief.
He's going to talk about myth.
That section should
be rather large.
And he's going to
talk about reality,
about which no one knows more.
I ask you to welcome
my friend Jack Gibbons.
[APPLAUSE]
GIBBONS: John it's a
great pleasure to--
an honor to be introduced by
you to this audience here today.
I've enjoyed many years of
friendship with John Deutch.
And there's never
been a dull moment,
as those of you who
know John can attest.
I do remember-- and I think
I told John this once--
that I was once told
by a friend of mine
about biblical interpretations
of academic appointments.
And the statement was that if
the president of the university
is the shepherd of the
flock, then the provost
is the crook on his staff.
And I'm not sure how
you interpret that.
But that I think is
applicable if you're
careful about the
meaning of words.
My first lecture had to do with
the 21st century and the kinds
of questions about whether
science and technology would
contribute to that century
or scuttle its opportunities.
We talked about the
enormous contributions
that science and
technology have made
in the 20th century, the
regrettable consequences
of as side effects of some
of those accomplishments,
and also the mounting
long-term issues
that now we see in front
of us for the 21st century.
Today, rather than
trying to prognosticate
about the 21st century,
I'd like to talk a bit
about the processes of forming
and carrying out science
and technology policy.
In other words, its governance.
And I will try to enrich
my talk about process
with some examples
as we go along.
And I hope there will
be enough time today
to have a spirited conversation
and dialogue with you
in the audience.
Historically-- and I think
it's important to keep this
in a historical context--
this nation has always
been characterized
by people interested in
exploration and in discovery
and in invention.
You can go back before
that the Declaration
and certainly during the
development of the Constitution
and find full evidence of this.
And it's replete through
the years that have followed
that late 18th century time.
I think of the Bill
of Rights, which
talks about the importance
of protecting and encouraging
the development
of the useful arts
and set up the
process for patenting
as a means of
intellectual property
protection for inventors.
I think of Jefferson sending
his friend Lewis and Captain
Clark to the West to explore
the West for the people
to try to understand
our resources
and therefore be able to make
fuller utilization of them.
I think of around the
1840s when Samuel Morse
went to the Congress
and obtained
a grant from the government
to build a line carrying
a wire from Baltimore
to Washington so he
could demonstrate his new
invention of telegraphy.
That was one of the first
federal direct supports
of the development
of technology.
I think of the land grant
universities being established
again in about the middle
of the 19th century,
not only to train
and educate, but also
to provide for
agricultural research
and ultimately for its
extension out to the users
of that research.
I think of the development
of public health
as a national means to try
to build the protection
and capabilities of
our nation's health.
Obviously, defense came
along even more strongly
in the 20th century.
The support of aviation
through the NACA
and then its
transformation to NASA
and the incorporation of space
exploration and space sciences
as a public adventure.
Of electronics throughout a
variety of the federal agencies
as new means--
electronics and
computers-- new means
to increase our productivity
and our access to information.
And of course, the
development of biotechnology.
All of these are
examples, I think,
of eminently successful
joint ventures
between public and
private interests
in the further
development of our nation
and the development
of the options
for us to achieve
our wants and needs.
So governance of science
in these earlier years
arose out of a time in
which we shared a conviction
that science and technology were
means to ends that were desired
by society, and
therefore, merited support
by society either through the
encouragement and protection
of private activities,
or in fact,
in addition, the incorporation
of public resources
in that process.
But during that time,
science was governed largely
by its own internal processes,
which we still enjoy, respect,
and must covet today,
namely that we have
an internal discipline
that provides
for through our
internal criticism
independent verification, other
means of assuring that science
remains healthy and on target.
I think it's illustrated--
is my mic still on?
Yes, good.
By a cartoon which
you should recognize
as an essay in pictures
of the need for criticism
of one's ideas and for the
insistence of a continuity
of thought when you're
developing an idea,
the continuity of data or
theory or what have you.
John Locke said that basically
the best way to govern
is to govern closest to the
place that needs governance.
And within science, internal
governance by our own capable--
by our own particular methods
has been enormously successful,
and has therefore
enabled us to move ahead
without having a lot
of external governance
applied to the process
of basic science.
It's a good lesson
that we would like
to translate lead
to other things,
but are not as
successful that way.
Now to make sure you watch
me instead of the board,
I'll turn that off for
a couple of minutes.
In technology, it was
a different matter.
As I said, we started early by
trying to encourage and protect
the development of
intellectual property.
We developed, of course,
over the years ideas
of health and safety as an
overpinning to the development
of technology.
But at around World War II,
we came to a great watershed
of influence of
science and technology
that was already
revoluting the country.
But I think the middle
of the 20th century
was a turning point in terms
of the total impact of science
and technology on our
national enterprise.
During the time of
Truman and Eisenhower,
we found that the development
of an office within the White
House and the whole idea
of science and technology
as becoming a more and more
central element in our process
of federal governance.
And MIT of course, has been very
active from that time onward
in the process of national
policy and governance
in science and technology.
Vannevar Bush,
another fellow from up
in this part of the country, by
the invitation of the president
wrote an essay on Science,
the Endless Frontier,
which helped set the case for
science in the post-war period
as a means for achieving a
variety of national goals
in addition to defense itself.
The creation of the
National Science Foundation
and of mission-oriented
agencies came out
of that same period in which
the governance of science
and technology was
taking a full form.
And of course of the appointment
of the science advisor,
a critical step in
the White House.
During the post-World
War II period,
there came a time of questioning
about how total the cornucopia
was of the developments
from science and technology.
Atmospheric nuclear testing
raised a lot of concerns
about whether we were doing
the right thing in that regard,
in terms of radioactivity
in the atmosphere.
Rachel Carson and her
essay on Silent Spring
was concerned about
the extent to which
these long-lived
pesticides were in fact
a net positive for our
society, and for the biosphere.
There were many arguments over
the supersonic transport, which
was a proposed plane to bring
what someone at that time
called the 21st century
sound to America.
Well, there were
some people who felt
that the sonic boom
was not exactly
a desirable 21st century sound.
And there were other concerns
about environmental problems
in the upper atmosphere.
And so there was a rising
concern about whether or not
we were being careful
enough, not so much
with science, but with
the use of science
in various technological
applications.
Max Born at about
that time wrote that--
he said, "Intellect
distinguishes
between the possible
and the impossible.
Reason distinguishes between
the sensible and the senseless.
Even the possible," said
Born, "can be senseless."
So there was this rising
concern about the need
for more careful governance,
particularly of technology,
in the closing decades
of the 20th century.
Out of this came the formation
of the Office of Technology
Assessment, as John
Deutch mentioned
to you, in the early '70s,
as Congress's attempt
to create within its own
house a mechanism for focusing
the debates that had to do
with science and technology,
elevating the level
of that debate,
and providing the mostly
non-technical members
of Congress with a means to
access the kind of information
they needed in
order to carry out
their fiduciary responsibilities
in the governance of science.
In fact, the OTA
found that in order
to do this, to be an accepted
and trusted party to both sides
of the aisle, to both Houses
and to all stakeholders
with respect to technology,
was indeed a great challenge.
And I remember in 1980--
this little thing has
never seen the light a day
before, incidentally--
we held an internal exercise
about how to organize in order
to carry out a technology
assessment that
would be trustworthy
and acceptable to all
the stakeholders, not so
much to tell them what to do,
but what their options were,
and to narrow the debate a bit.
In the process, we tried to
talk about organizations.
And I saved this
sketch because I
thought it's a funny-- it's
a kind of a humorous insight
into the way some of the OTA
people thought about the world.
I hope you can see that.
You will note-- and this is
directly from the original we
sketched one afternoon--
that there are various
ways to organize.
And they reflect different
cultures, different nations.
And you will note
as you scan this,
I think that the boxes
tell you a lot about how
different people think
about organizing themselves
in order to carry out work.
In the middle is
our ultimate sketch
of what we saw as OTA's
organization, namely
the birth, the development, and
the evolution of an assessment.
And you can't read
the fine print.
I can hardly read it myself now.
But basically it entails
recognizing stakeholders
and working back and
forth between analysis
and communication with
Congress and communication
with stakeholders with
constant feedback and review
processes going on.
A lot of feedback,
criticism, and review
until we finally had an output
of a meaningful product.
But I did want to
share this with you
because the whole process of
carrying out an assessment
was something that took a long
time to learn how to develop so
that one could be assured
of not only accuracy,
but also trustworthiness
of the information
and completeness of the
illumination of the issues
so that all stakeholders
could find their best
argument within that document.
And therefore, they could
all use it as a means
for elevating the debate.
And by the time we
really figured out
how to make it work, of
course, Congress killed it.
And I'll get back
to that later on.
About the same time
OTA was created,
the Office of Science
and Technology Policy
was created by Congress to be an
office within the White House.
It's actually a so-called
independent office.
It's not exactly
in the White House,
but it is part of
the White House.
This came about because
the Congress, at the time,
was concerned about the lack
of serious attention being
placed on science and technology
within the White House.
And so they imposed
this office formally
into the White House structure.
And it was meant
by Congress to say
we want some kind
of high level advice
and capabilities
for science analysis
within the White House,
within the Executive
Office of the President.
That later evolved to be
a part of this complex
of the president's Science
Advisor and that office itself.
And I think it's working in
an appropriate direction.
But it is funny, because in
taking the job that I took
and that Allan Bromley
took before me,
we actually had two
commissions-- one as Assistant
to the President for
Science and Technology,
which had begun in earlier
times, and also Director
of the Office of Science
and Technology Policy.
Now in the past
five years, which
I was of course more
familiar with in the years
before in terms of
the White House,
the president re-established
and strengthened
the Office of Science
and Technology Policy.
He enabled it to integrate
across the executive agencies
in a more policy level way by
creating the National Science
and Technology Council, which
gave the office the authority
to develop presidential decision
memoranda and executive orders.
This enabled us to begin to
pull the agencies together
across the executive branch in
a more meaningful way to create,
in a sense, a kind of a
virtual S&T department in terms
of picking out big
programs, interrelating
the relevant pieces
across the agencies,
and having them put together in
a more meaningful way in terms
of the budget and the programs
they were carrying out.
We also were able to integrate
the office across the White
House, the other White
House offices, which
was very important, because the
National Security, the National
Domestic Policy, the National
Economic policy, the National
Environmental policy, and the
Office of Management and Budget
all have interlaced between
them a bunch of science
and technology.
So we had to provide ways to
pull these offices together.
And in the chemist
language, I think
there is negative
Van der Waals forces
between these various offices.
They tend to sort
of separate out
unless you pull them together.
And by this mechanism of the
encouragement of the president,
we were able to make
joint appointments
between senior members
of the Office of Science
and Technology Policy with
other offices of the White House
counsels.
And that made a big
difference in terms
of us working
together on issues,
rather than in separate ways.
The president also
established, or reestablished,
the continued, the work of the
president's Science Advisory
Committee, the
Committee of Advisors
on Science and Technology.
The president broadened
the basis of that committee
by adding a substantial number
of people from private industry
as well as from universities
and the not-for-profit sector.
And that presence of
senior-level representation
from the private sector was very
important in terms of providing
advice to the
president-- advice,
including in the early time,
some principles for the--
recommended to the president
in the way he'd think about--
he would think about science
and technology and the nation's
future, some principles
about the rationale
for the engagement of
the federal government
and its largesse, and in
the support of not only
basic science but
applied science
the development of generic
technologies, as it were,
bridging between the traditional
support of fundamental science
on the part of the government
and the ultimate marketplace
of commerce.
And in between those
two poles, there
was a gap that needed
substantially bolstering.
And the president took the
advice of the Science Council
in that regard.
The effort of the National
Science and Technology Council
transformed to the development
of some strategy papers that
were accepted by the president
and issued over his name--
papers that had to do with
the role of technology
in our economic development
with the science
and the national
interest, another,
as it were review, of the
question of the support
of science itself, of the
role of science and technology
as a key strategy in our
national security in a broader
sense, not just of
military defense,
but also other dynamics that
affect the stress level, which
can lead to deadly conflicts
over the broadening
of the notion of
national security,
and also technology
as a role in providing
for environmental quality,
at the same time having
economic growth
with job creation.
We created new sets of
partnerships between the public
and the private sectors
involved in research.
For instance, in the
so-called partnership
for a new generation of
vehicles, which was a new, very
long, decade-long commitment
on the part of the public
and the private sectors
to a joint venture
in advanced
technologies relevant
to the creation of
an automobile that
would serve in a
number of public goals,
including air pollution and
dependence on fossil fuels
and the likes, as
well as private goals
of staying competitive in a
very, very major industry.
The president also
used other mechanisms
for assuring that science and
technology were appropriately
brought to bear
on public issues.
One was that he, with the
assistance and cooperation
of both Republicans and
Democrats in Congress,
created the National
Bioethics Advisory Commission.
And this took a
while to establish.
But it became as
formally established just
in time for Dolly and the
cloning business to come along,
as well as a number of
other ethical issues
that were beginning to emerge
in this issue of the governance
of science and technology.
And I think it's a good example
of where an attempt that
failed, when attempted
by the Congress--
and Al Gore was wrapped up
in that one and was very much
in favor of trying it again
down in the executive branch--
and create it as
a means to provide
anticipatory
capability, to wrestle
with ethical issues in
science and technology
in a way that was
thoughtful, credible,
and therefore accessible and
usable by the legislators.
The Congress,
meanwhile, of course,
was in the midst of the
post-Cold War rationale.
There was an idea of what do we
do with something that we have
supported in the past,
because it defends us--
it helps us defend ourselves and
the world from the evil empire.
What happens when the
evil empire disappears?
And there was a
concern, therefore,
about the most
fundamental rationale
for major federal support
of research and technology--
science and technology in
that post-Cold War era.
This was highlighted, I
think, and underscored
by the 104th
Congress back in 1995
and '96, which had the mood
of simply cutting government
because anything that could
cut the size of government
was bound to be a
good, not a bad.
And a lot of arguments came
up at that time about what
is the appropriate federal
role for science and technology
in the post-Cold War world.
The memos from the president's
Science Advisory Committee
were very helpful to the
president at that time
in making the defense
and the rationalization
for this continued
support of these
in specifically as appropriate
to a variety of national--
overarching national goals.
Industry came forward
strongly at that time
as another factor or voice
in the governance of science
and technology, in
the form, for example,
of a number of very
large newspaper ads
that were brought out, signed
by a large number of captains
of very diverse
American industries,
urging Congress to support
science, especially--
I was happy-- especially
university-based research as
means to achieve national ends.
The power of the private
sector coming in and not
asking for money, but asking
the federal government
to support university
research and higher education
was a very telling--
made a very telling impact
on the members of Congress
as they delivered
whether or not they
should cut science by
30% or research by 30%
or in that order.
So industry itself
then played a role
in affecting the way
science and technology
were governed, the perspective
of how they should be governed
and in what way.
And academia also came forward.
Your own President Vest
was very effective,
along with a number of
other university presidents,
in trying to clarify with a
Congress that had not really
thought this much
about these issues,
about the importance of
science and technology
as an integral part of
the higher education
process, and the combined
impact of those activities
on the future of
our nation in terms
of developing our options.
Later in not the 104th, but
with the 105th Congress,
the Science
Committee in Congress
decided they should look
again at this issue of science
in the national interest.
And the only PhD
physicist in the house--
Verne Ehlers, a Republican
from Minnesota--
undertook under the direction
of Chairman Sensenbrenner
another analysis of so-called
National Science policy
study, which was completed
earlier this year.
And it essentially
reiterated the earlier
and was very compatible with
President Clinton's own notions
of this public support of
science and technology.
What Ehlers did was
point out that some
of the more underrepresented
groups in our society--
for instance, the
smaller universities,
the rural universities--
merited more support
in terms of research.
But by and large, this document
was accepted by Congress
by resolution.
And we saw that as one key
milestone in the reconciliation
between the great struggles
that the administration had
with Congress in
the 104th Congress
and its coming back around
to the re-establishment
of at least a seemingly full
bipartisan strong support
for research in future years.
A most pleasant seeming
turnaround of events.
At the same time, we saw
conversations in Congress
about--
it's not exactly
esoteric governance
of science and
technology, but the word
was let's double the budget.
Well, that's sort of a
bottom line, isn't it?
Let's double the budget for
science in the Congress.
What they didn't
say was how soon.
Some talked about doubling the
budget in five years, others
10 or 12 years.
So the number was
not-- but the number
was not so important as the
direct explicit implication
that the Congress
had come to terms
with the value of public support
of research and technology
and was committed to
long-term investment
in this direction,
which was very counter
to what had happened
only a few years before.
Tells you another lesson
about the governance
of science and technology.
There are some
long-term underpinnings
of support of this
in our nation.
But they are subject to
near-term shifts of focus
and attention and values.
And that's a clarion call to
those of us in the community
not to assume anything.
One must constantly
reacquaint people
with the relevance of what we
do to the overarching national
goals and needs of our people.
Let's see, I mentioned
the establishment
of the National Bioethics
Advisory Committee
as yet another example
of what we have done.
Now what's happened with respect
to the doubling of the budget
is that there is
a resolution that
says we will double the
budget for research.
The number spoken by some
members urged on early was
let's double it in five years.
Others said 10 years.
I think the final
resolution says 12 years.
And you know what 12
years doubling means.
It's about what,
about 6% per year?
Now that's a good-sized number.
That's twice the
GNP growth rate.
But it's not a massive
change in things.
And let me tell you why that's--
even that, I think is
an important number.
It's an important
number because if you
look at what has to happen
with the federal budget, namely
our agreements to
move toward balance
and the power of the
budget committees to do so.
And if you look at the makeup
of the so-called budget itself,
which is divided between
entitlement programs--
which include Social
Security and Medicare,
a number of the other
programs that are instituted
by Congress--
and then look at the
discretionary programs,
which is really--
you can divide between defense
discretionary and all the rest,
non-military
discretionary budget--
and the federal
interest, payment
on the debt, which, of course
has tripled under in the Reagan
years and is therefore now
a very significant part
of our total budget.
You see that over time
the entitlement programs
and the interest
on national debt
have risen to the
point of competing
with the so-called
discretionary programs,
and that the nondefense
discretionary programs now
have reduced from about
one-sixth of our budget
to about one-seventh
of the budget.
So there is a constant squeeze
on those resources that
have to be taken into account
any time you talk about
change in science policy
or the support of science
and technology.
And now I want to speak a
little bit about the budget.
I almost ought to
leave that up there
so you can memorize it before
the end of the afternoon.
I'll leave it there
a little bit longer.
Because the budget is where the
battle is ultimately joined,
and in the course--
in the Constitution,
the name of the game
is that the president proposes
and the Congress disposes.
It's an old saying,
but nonetheless true,
that that's what the theory is.
In reality, as we look at these
annual cycles of the budget--
let's just go through
that very quickly.
The State of the Union, I
think we're all familiar with.
When does it happen?
What time of the year?
January.
Thank you, Dr. Deutch.
I was looking at the
students, but he knows--
he knows the territory.
The State of the Union is
both the end of a process
and the beginning of a cycle.
And so let's start
a year earlier
than the State of the
Union and see what happens.
In the late winter,
especially in March,
the Office of
Management and Budget
starts sending its initial
marks or a dollars assignment
to the various
agencies, influenced
in detail, at least, by the
president's sense of urgency
and of priority.
Now remember, budgets never
change revolutionary-wise.
They change incrementally.
But they do change.
So in the late winter, we have
these first marks going out
to the federal agencies--
instructions, as it
were, for the agencies
to take this number and
figure how they can spend it
with the highest yield and best
reflection of the president's
prerogatives.
Around April, other
instructions are
sent to the heads of agencies.
For example, we instituted--
when I got in the White House
with Leon Panetta as head
of the awesome
management budget--
an annual memorandum that
went to the heads of agencies
to talk about the
science and technology
parts of their budgets
and to provide them
with a reminder of where
the president stands
on these issues and the
special need for priorities
both for individual
programs as well as
for those programs that
cut across the agencies.
That's around April.
By midsummer, the agencies have
to take all this information
and crank it back through
their own planning process
to develop a submission back
to the Office of Management
and Budget for their
detailed agency proposal.
Typically, the
agencies came back
with budgets that were larger
than the numbers assigned
to them by OMB.
That's almost an
annual ritual, which
later causes the agency
heads to interact
with OMB and with the president.
So the agency submissions come
into the OMB in the summertime.
And whereupon a
number of conferences,
or so-called pass-back meetings,
happen between the agencies
and the OMB.
And the OMB is joined
by, for instance,
members of the Office of
Science and Technology Policy
with respect to
science and technology
parts of these budgets.
And so this is an
interaction of OMB,
the Office of Science
Technology Policy,
the Council on Environmental
Quality, the National Economic
Council, you can name it,
other White House offices
that all co-join in
working with the agencies
to try to make sure that
their budget reflects
the priorities as seen by
the White House offices.
The military, in this
activity, can be seen
as a kind of a place apart.
It has less of the sort
of breadth of involvement
of the White House than the
other so-called domestic
agencies.
But I'll talk about
that more after a while.
In the late fall, we begin to
pull all the pieces together.
And there are appeals
made back and forth
between what OMB and
the White House offices
say on the one hand,
what the agencies say.
And of course, the
cabinet officers
can appeal directly
to the president
if they need to
during that time.
But there's a lot
of horse trading
that goes on during
that period, engaged,
as it moves toward a final
decision about the budget,
begins to engage fewer and fewer
people within the White House.
Because as you get close
to the ultimate decisions
about a budget that has
to be done ultimately
by the president,
it moves from a time
in which a lot of the
White House offices
are deeply involved to
a time in which perhaps
a half a dozen people
or less are involved.
And ultimately,
between the president--
and he uses the Vice-President--
in the case of
President Clinton,
he use it Bob Rubin as Secretary
of the Treasury, Gene Sperling,
who is basically a chief
domestic policy counselor,
and the chief-of-staff as his--
to a degree, the rest
of us, but mostly
of smaller and smaller
group of people
to wrestle with putting
all these pieces together
to find a budget that's going
to be manageable and defensible.
His final decisions
are made basically
during the month of December.
And because by the
end of December,
the budget has to be
ready to be put together,
the pieces are written
for the federal budget,
and in January goes
to the printer in time
for the State of the Union.
And then after the
State of the Union
comes the process of
selling this budget,
defending the budget
before the Congress
as they go through their rituals
of hearings and consideration
of the budget
itself, which in turn
take the spring and the
summer, and sometimes the fall,
and sometimes it goes
right on through the year.
And so you have a
continuing resolution.
You don't even have a budget.
But in the process
of those hearings,
again, the governance of science
and technology is being tested.
The president has proposed.
The Congress disposes.
And remember that the Congress
has other constraints.
They not only hear the
President's budget,
but within the Congress they
start with an overall budget
number.
And then they decide how they
are going to allocate this--
a so-called 602 or
two allocations--
of the whole pie off to the
different appropriations
committees.
Now the committees that have
a lot to do with science--
which in one committee, a
subcommittee of appropriations
has the National Science
Foundation, the NASA, EPA,
the office of-- and little
things like the Office
of Science and
Technology Policy,
and the Veterans Administration,
and the Housing and Urban
Development Administration.
So we have mixtures of
very powerful agencies
like Veterans and Housing and
mixed with science agencies
all having to be squeezed
into one single pot.
In other words, we aren't
trading in this kind of science
for that kind of
science, but we're
trading between housing
and science or veterans
and science.
And other parts of science
are competing again
with other national priorities.
So there's no
bucket for science.
You have to understand
the organization
of these appropriations
committees
in order to understand
the dynamics
of defending the
budget and of trying
to help affect the process.
I think the record for
the past five or six years
is pretty instructive.
First of all, in governance,
the underpinnings, I think,
are pretty constant.
We do have a nation
that supports
research, is
interested in research,
is committed to the idea that
one can have jobs and a growing
economy and that
at the same time,
be secure in an international
security sense as well
as healthy--
and with a healthy environment.
But in practice, we have
to deal with change.
In other words,
governance in this area,
as in all other areas of
governance, is a process.
It's not written in stone.
Well, what lessons?
First of all, I think
one lesson that is--
I'm constantly aware of,
is that our society does
have this enduring optimism
about the rewards of science
and technology.
But increasingly, it's saying
we must not take for granted
that these rewards
are all going to be--
the returns are all
going to be positive,
especially as it has
become more pervasive
in our international lives.
Secondly, as George Brown said
with respect of Verne Ehlers'
paper on science policy, he
said, what's missing here
is the imperative to link
the investments in science
and technology to the social
purposes being served.
And there, he feels--
and I tend to agree
with him, and I know
that President Clinton does--
there, he feels we're
coming up short.
It's important, in
other words, to relate
science and technology
to societal goals.
Now in the private
sector consideration
of science and technology
is a little bit easier.
It has a very strong
market discipline
that acts on its decisions.
And that market discipline
in turn reflects a--
largely reflects
society's concerns.
But the public sector
is more complex.
We don't have the equivalent
of a marketplace discipline.
So we've developed things like
the Government Performance
and Results Act, which
was created by Congress,
to try to constantly
evaluate the value
of our various investments.
The problem of this, especially
with respect to science,
is that you can evaluate the
process of science quite well,
thank you, but only
retrospectively.
You can determine
only by looking
backwards how well you've done.
And it's very difficult,
if not impossible,
to determine looking forward
how you're going to do.
So that's a-- puts it in
a sort of a separate class
of interesting challenges.
How can we evaluate and
persuade our benefactors,
the American people,
about the value
of making these investments in
research if we can't tell them
what's going to happen?
And I don't think we
should try to tell them
what's going to
happen in detail,
but rather look
backward and say,
here's what's
happened in the past
and here's why we are
confident, therefore,
it will happen in the future.
We got a lot of help
from the Council
of Economic advisors
in this regard in which
they, non-technologists
looked backward
at the role of research
in America's economy
and found an extraordinary rate
of return, however uncertain,
but an extraordinary
rate of return,
ultimately, of these investments
in terms of the return
to the public investment.
So that's the second
thing is that we
have to make sure we relate
science and technology
to societal goals.
The third lesson to me is--
and this is multi-factored--
but it's important.
Several things are important.
One is it's really important
to know the territory.
The whole organization,
the whole process,
the whole rhythms
of governance are
important to understand in
order to be able to affect it
in a positive way.
Why, for instance,
is a Department
of Science probably
a very bad idea
when you look at the way
we're organized and do things?
Why is it that there
is no science kitty?
Why is it that that happens and
how can we accommodate for that
or take that into
account as we try
to help affect science
policy and its governance?
How to use that
information, in other words,
to inform the debate
and help evolve
an ever more rational
and productive system
of governance.
The importance of compromise.
I remember one outstanding
senator telling me
when I was at OTA
once, he said, "Jack,
we were going to ask you about
doing this particular analysis
for us.
But now it's too late."
In other words, the
decision hadn't been made,
but the influence of
the scientific analysis
was simply beyond the pail.
It had gone on to the more
overarching political decisions
that had to be made
about the issue
that he was talking about.
In this failure of the
Superconducting Super Collider,
we found another thing.
Namely, not only
know the territory,
but also know the
importance of compromise.
Just like this, "It's too late
for analysis," in this case,
we found that the defense of the
Superconducting Super Collider
was not going to work
for a variety of reasons,
and that it was
going to go down,
even though the administration
supported it in '93.
But as a consequence, we
were able to recognize
the importance of
compromise here, not
try to fight that decision,
but rather to use it as a means
to engender support for both the
B-factory, the B-meson factory
which is being built at
Stanford, and also for the US
joining the European community
in support of the Large Hadron
Collider.
So I think that's the lesson of
where if life gives you lemons
then try to make
lemonade from it.
The Space Station
was another example
that I'm still confounded
with, I believe.
But here is one in which
we were again handed,
as one administration went
to another administration,
we were handed a project
with a lot of momentum to it,
a project that involved
the same sort of problems
of the downscaling
of federal activities
in various regions
of the nation,
and our attempts to try to
help buffer that rate of change
of the federal government
retreating from certain areas,
and the opportunity to bring
Russia in to what once had been
a symbol of standoff between the
free world and the evil empire
to a place in which they
were conjoined in the largest
technical activity or
high technology activity
ever attempted in peacetime.
And so again, a
bunch of compromises
went about in order
to ultimately resolve
the Space Station
decision as it came about.
And I'll be happy to go into
this later if you want to.
The International
Thermonuclear Energy Reactor
is another case where
fusion research, which
is important as a
long-term option,
because we just don't
have that many options,
was focused,
unfortunately, on trying
to build a very large machine as
the next round in thermonuclear
fusion research.
And it was internationalized.
The greatest value of that
whole activity, I think,
was the fact that it was an
internationalized activity.
But we had to
devise a way to move
from an impossible commitment--
politically
impossible commitment
to participate in building
such a big machine
and move it to transform
the activities, keeping
it international, but moving
it toward plasma physics
materials.
Science is relevant to plasma--
high temperature
plasma and the likes.
And that's what we're in the
process of doing now again,
a compromise with the highly
unlikely possibility that we
would build such an enormous
machine at this point in time.
And I would say for instance,
again, that MIT had,
I think, played
an important role
in the government and
the people understanding
that it may well be premature to
try to build a big machine yet
until we know more about the
physics and the chemistry
and the material sciences
related to fusion and plasmas.
So again, I think we
found a budget now--
find a budget that was sustained
for fusion and plasma research,
but with this emphasis shifted
away from a big machine
and more appropriately
toward a broad gauge,
a raging area of research.
And finally, another example of
the importance for compromise
was that the administration was
approached with almost de facto
legislation from the
Farm Belt community,
from the Corn Belt
community, that we
would do a genome
of the corn plant
and undertake that directly.
We were able to
persuade Congress gently
that the way-- if you
really want to get the corn
genome for a good cause,
the place to start
is not with corn but
with the lowly mustard
plant, because that enables
you to build up toward the more
complex plant and probably
get there better and faster
and certainly less expensively.
So by compromising with their
desire to get the corn genome,
we were able to mount
a multiagency program
on plant genome.
It's also important to be
prepared, because government
acts in response to something.
As Adlai Stevenson once
said, "America never
seems to see the
handwriting on the wall
until their back is
up against the wall,"
or at least they perceive that.
And so, I learned
a lesson from a man
from the National Institutes of
Health named Jim Shanon once,
who always, when he was
up with Congress, carried
in his briefcase at least one or
two really good ideas about how
to spend more money at the NIH.
And frequently having that
thoughtful information
immediately available
when a question came up
or a perceived crisis
occurred enabled
Shannon to do a magnificent
job of expanding
the activities of the NIH.
During the Arab oil
embargo in 1973,
which was a sudden
crisis on America,
a lot of foolish
decisions were made.
But we were able over
the course of one weekend
to put together information
we'd been working on,
which enabled us to move quickly
toward passing a speed limit
law on the open highways
and a right turn
on red law in urban areas
so that we could slow down
the very fast traffic, which
was less fuel efficient,
and speed up the
slow traffic which
would help urban air pollution
and the mileage in town.
And we were able to
do it over a weekend.
Had we not had the
crisis or the information
available during that
crisis, it would not
have been able to happen.
Another lesson I
learned from OTA
was what to do in terms of
a very large administration
dramatic recommendation.
In this case, it
was recommended,
I think by Vice
President Rockefeller,
that we have a $100 billion
program for sin fuels
development.
And we developed
at OTA a testimony
over basically over
a weekend based
on what work we had done to
show that this would indeed
be folly to try to commit
to that kind of production
in a technology that was
not that well-developed.
And we were informed
the following week
by the key committee that our
testimony had persuaded them
it was not a good thing to do.
And it helped massively
downscale the so-called Sin
Fuels program.
And finally, we were
asked in one point
about the utility of space-based
ballistic missile interception,
immediately following
President Reagan's declaration
of the so-called
Star Wars program.
And we had anticipated some
of this and had done some work
and were able to deliver to
the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee testimony, which
basically threw very, very
serious questions into
the technical feasibility
of this proposal, which in
turn slowed down the process
and got the White House, of
course, quite mad at OTA.
But again, an ability to respond
authoritatively and quickly
was key in that process.
Well, another important
thing, I think,
is to expect surprises and
deal with them as best you can.
One, two examples.
One is the Mars rock,
which we found out
about when Dan Goldin
met me in the country
and whispered to me
what was going on.
And this was the discovery
of a meteorite in Antarctica
which was very careful
and very fascinating.
Microchemical and
physical examinations
seemed to bear some evidence
of possible early life.
And it was almost for
sure a rock from Mars.
The way we had to
handle that in terms
of having the president
being engaged in it
and saying the right words
about the process of science,
rather than take advice
from at least one
of his more powerful
political advisors--
namely who wanted the
president to announce
that he was going to
decide to send people
to Mars to investigate this--
told us again.
And that took us 24
hours to turn around.
But it tells you, again,
that the name of the game,
at least in the White House, is
not in science and technology
governance, is not so much
hits or runs in the game.
It's saves that keeps
things from happening
that shouldn't happen.
Another, of course, was Dolly.
That sudden announcement
caused a flurry of activities.
And careful work
between Harold Varmus,
the head of the National
Institutes of Health,
and myself and others at the
White House enabled the White
House to take a position, which
was thoughtfully developed,
had just the right
words in it to head off
what would have
been, could have been
some disastrous constraints
put on biomedical research
on the part of an
overzealous Congress trying
to respond to that situation.
So timing is terribly important.
And I think now there's a new
and thorny issue before us, not
only in terms of the relatively
new issues of ethics.
And that is of intergenerational
governance, governance
of science and technology
with intergenerational issues
taken into account.
And I think one only need think
about climate change issues,
global biodiversity,
global population
issues as those things
that are intrinsically
exactly and very importantly
intergenerational in nature
and things that we haven't
really faced substantially
before in this
century, that I think
we're going to have to learn
how to deal with in the coming
decade.
And finally, pick your shots.
I'll give you an example.
Within the White House,
especially post-Jerry Wiesner,
working with respect to
the Department of Defense
is a place where you
have to pick your shots.
It's a very large elephant.
And therefore, you can't try
to tackle the whole elephant,
but rather pick
those things that
are most appropriate to do in
science and technology policy.
Some three things that
happened during my time
at the White House
resulted in-- and I'm
pleased to say all
three worked out pretty
well with the department.
One was the ending of
nuclear weapons testing
and the coupled
decision to support
the idea of our nuclear
stockpile stewardship
program, which in turn
enabled us, we believe,
to convince people that
we knew how to maintain
a trustworthy weapons
stockpile without having
to do a continuation
of nuclear testing.
But the cost of that was
to provide other means,
nonexplosive means for
doing this testing.
That in turn enabled the
US to maintain and take
a leadership in the global push
for the Comprehensive Test-Ban
Treaty.
Second is, with
respect to defense,
was the convergence
process, which
John was very much
a part of along
with some of the rest of us,
namely to find those places
where military and
civil needs could
be merged rather than being
carried out separately
at much higher cost.
And we were able to merge
those interests with respect
to the global positioning
satellite system,
with respect to weather
satellites, and with respect
to space launch capabilities.
Those are but three
areas in which
we are able to co-join that
domestic and military programs
to save a lot of money in the
process, and hopefully succeed.
The final one was in,
and most recent budget
I had to deal with was support
for the basic and applied
research programs in the
Department of Defense
so-called 6.1 and 6.2
programs, in which
we determined fairly late in
the process of the '99 budget
that the department seemed to
be getting ready to come in
with a much lower numbers
for those two areas
because the services were
more interested, especially
certain of the services, were
more interested in acquiring
hardware and other things
related to current readiness
rather than these very long-term
research activities, which
are not that much on the agenda
of the services' generals
who have a relatively shorter
time interest in their future.
It's sort of like a CEO of
a company whose products are
become obsolescent fairly
quickly, but long compared
to their reward,
namely the next quarter
of the value of their stock.
So they're necessary to focus
in the short term and the same
for some of the services.
We were able, from
the White House,
to spot this, to talk with the
Office of Secretary Defense.
And it happened more than once.
And in each case, the
secretary understood
the absolute essential
nature of supporting
the basic and applied
research programs
from within the department.
And those numbers were restored.
And we're very
grateful for that.
So you have to pick your shots.
And if you do so, you
can win most of them.
Well, what's my
final conclusion?
I think science and
discovery enables
us to develop options
that in turn will
enable a desired future
to emerge if we choose it.
Antoine Saint-Exupery
once said that--
I think this is from
The Little Prince--
he said, "You job is not
to predict the future,
but to enable it."
And that, I think, is the task
of the science and technology
community, to enable those
overarching national goals
and needs to be achieved.
And lastly, I think
a conclusion is
that we have a M
found perspective
of the power of
science and technology
in our present and future lives.
Indeed, that power
gives us, as someone
said, both the promises of
heaven and the perils of hell.
And that reality means that
governance will forever
be with us in this
very powerful medium.
But also we must have
eternal vigilance, especially
from within the
community, to assure
that the debate is elevated, is
level, and is one in which we
can participate, not necessarily
as members of Congress,
but as concerned and
informed citizens.
That's the end of my
preaching for today.
I want to thank you
for your attention.
I didn't see a single soul
sleeping, and I'm astonished.
And I'm ready to be attacked.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
Now while I go over here
to turn off my slide,
do you have any
comments or questions?
Anyone want to go into
political science?
Let's start here, and
then you're second.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: How do you
see PhDs becoming
concerned citizens [INAUDIBLE]?
GIBBONS: Well, I think PhDs
have a special requirement
because they have had the good
fortune of not only having
good minds, but also being able
to exercise them and achieve
an advanced degree.
So they have special
responsibilities
inherently incumbent on
them to be full citizens.
And that is to use that wisdom
to help inform the debate
and to help raise the level
of awareness in our society.
Madison said that if we want
to be our own governors,
we have to use the power
that knowledge gives us.
And knowledge gives you a
special amount of power.
And you don't have to wait
till you finish your PhD
to begin to exercise that in
the issues of public policy.
There are other ways
once you finish.
I, for instance, got into policy
not right away, fortunately,
but I did research
for a number of years,
and then I moved toward
policy, because I
had that extra
experience of knowing
what it's like to
be at the bench,
to be a part of discovery.
And it became a
fascinating thing to me,
because it's a lot more
difficult than doing physics.
But there are
postdoctoral fellowships
to work on the
committees of Congress.
There are-- or on the staffs
of some of the members.
We now have two PhD members
of the House instead of one.
That's 100 percent increase.
That's a pretty good start--
on top of George Brown.
So there are a
variety of mechanisms.
But I would say the
first thing to do
is to equip yourself with
not only the technical skills
that you have, but to
constantly think and read
about the relevance of those
skills broadly to the issues
before the public.
And as the president said,
think about a homeowner
and what their
concerns are, and how
did those concerns relate
to the kinds of tools,
of opportunities that science
and technology bring to them.
All too frequently,
they're too separated.
It's easy to do with health.
That's why NIH gets
so readily supported.
It's tougher to do with
some of the other areas
where we're working
in, but nonetheless
valid and important.
In fact, Harold Varmus, in
the Roosevelt Room a year ago,
not even a year
ago, stood up when
we were having a
meeting on the budget
and made a wonderful
defense, not of his budget
but of the National Science
Foundation budget, because he
said we've got to have
that support if we expect
to move ahead in biomedicine.
The president picked up on
this and talked about it
at the 150th
anniversary of the AAAS.
It's that sense of the
importance of all of science
in order to move ahead
on some particular area--
in this case, biomedicine.
But it's a hard sell.
And it's when we
have to continue
to work on and understand
that it's not widely
known about the
relevance of science
to people's individuals'
lives, not as widely known
as we need it to be.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: This question
more has to do with more
of what's the aspect of it.
Why is it like, pertaining to
specifically the Superconductor
Super Collider, is it that when
whatever agency was leading
that, why couldn't they
go to Congress and say,
well, we need $10 billion
or however much we
need over the next five years.
Why can't we have a
guaranteed 10 billion
and just have that given
to us over five years,
instead of having to
come back each year
and asking for $2 billion.
And eventually, well,
as that case was,
they needed a couple billion
dollars and just cancelling
the project.
GIBBONS: Well, there
are precedents to this.
For instance, when you build
a new aircraft carrier,
you commit to the whole thing.
And then you-- and
that sort of puts
the Congress on the line
to say in the succeeding
years we're going
to commit and make
the necessary appropriations.
It's never really
been carried over
to large scientific
projects, in that sense.
But Congress is moving
in the direction
of wanting to budget
by project rather
than by year-by-year things.
The problem on the
SSC was not so much
its total expenditure,
which was large,
but the fact that it
was not on schedule.
They were running
into some problems
with some of the magnets.
And it was a US national effort.
It had not been
internationalized.
And when we got into office,
we couldn't internationalize it
that fast.
And it was esoteric.
I remember defending that budget
in front of a Senate committee.
And I tried to use every
analogy I could think of.
I said, "Look, this
is an accelerator.
But it's really a microscope,
because you're looking
at the smallest particles.
It's also a telescope,
because you're
looking out toward
heavenly bodies
and trying to understand some
of the very energetic events.
It's also a time machine,
because it takes you back
to that very high
energy associated
with the origin
of the universe."
And I got all excited and
that didn't do much good,
because the Congress had decided
that this was big science.
It was a big expenditure.
It was very esoteric.
They didn't see its relationship
to the overarching goals
of health,
environment, security.
And it was too distant,
just too distant.
And it's very sad.
And we could go on on that one.
But if you want a
quick follow-up--
AUDIENCE: I was just
wondering why, I mean, other,
if anyone's ever
gone to Congress
and said, well, use
some other esoteric
and distant, distant
research-based projects that
have, or research
ideas that have
had practical applications,
40 or 50 or 60
years down the line.
I mean, you can go everything
from Einstein's theory
of relativity,
applications using GPS.
He didn't think, or he
didn't know at the time,
well, if I think of
this theory, then
you'll be able to tell
where you are on the plant.
60 years later somebody said--
GIBBONS: You're
absolutely right.
And it's important not to say it
once, but remember of Congress
turns over very frequently.
And there are new faces there.
Some of the staff turns
over about 50% per year.
So it's a constant
education process.
But there are frequent,
not only allegations,
but references to the fact that
if you look at the work done
that leads to Nobel prizes, the
lag time there is typically now
like two decades, with
exceptions, obviously.
But it is important
to understand
that you can't tell now exactly
where things are going to lead.
But remember, the SSC was
very popular with its idea,
with the notion it was
going to be built over time.
There was a great contest
across the country for consortia
of universities and states
to get together and bid
for this accelerator.
All Congress was in favor
of that, because they all
came from at least one state.
As soon as it focused on one
state, namely Texas, forget it.
The rest really weren't
all that interested,
because they didn't
associate that facility
with benefits to their state.
They could have,
they should have,
if they'd understood
that it would
be a place where their
scientists could operate
as well not just a place where
it happened to be located.
But that wasn't done.
And that's an issue of
thinking about establishing
the value of a capital
commitment in one place
to other states within
the whole country.
Now, what's going on
right now, for instance,
I think is a better
shot at it, where
we are trying to build
an Advanced Neutron
Source for a variety of
neutron diffraction stuff.
Cliff Shull here was one of the
early Nobel Laureate engaged
in neutron diffraction.
It's a tool of studying
condensed matter, physics
of studying biological
molecules, all sorts of things.
But you can only build
one of these things.
They're very expensive.
And they finally settled
on both the facility, which
will be an accelerator rather
than a nuclear reactor,
and will be located at Oak
Ridge, not because that's
where the vice president's
from, but because that's
where we have a very large
national laboratory deeply
engaged in this work
over years that--
and it's the only of the
big national laboratories
that doesn't have some
big facility in it.
So here we're trying
to build the case
that this facility,
wherever it located,
has enormous importance
to the nation,
not just in basic research,
but also by industry.
And we hope that by
that means, Congress
will continue to fund
the project itself.
And the most recent vote was
that they intend to do that.
Yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: OK, a
minute ago, you said
that the connection between the
scientists and the homeowner
is not widely known.
And it doesn't
strike well, simply
because I know that
as a scientist,
I'll be a homeowner also.
And I wonder if it's
not widely known
simply because we as scientists
tend to separate ourselves
from the rest of the community,
and that we don't sit
and really think
about what impact
our research and our inventions,
or whatever else that we do,
will actually have on the
society and the community
that we live in.
And I wonder if you see any
way, like through education,
say here at MIT, or at any other
institution, where we could
really encourage scientists
and students to really think
about all of those things
while we're in our research,
because we tend
to kind of forget
about the rest of the community.
And that's why there's a
separation between scientists
and non-scientists.
GIBBONS: I think so.
I think it's a process that
has to go on, like education,
for all of your life.
But I think an
awareness level raising
of the importance of doing
this for our own sake at all--
but it also is a
part of our job--
is something we need to work on.
That's one reason I'm
up here this fall.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: I'm a physicist
turned political scientist.
And for both fields--
GIBBONS: Where did
he go wrong, John?
[LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: We're both,
from both fields
I got the impression
that the OTA was
an agile and efficient pocket
inside of the huge brass
of bureaucratic government.
Now that it's gone,
what do you see
as other agencies that are
agile, efficient pockets
in the brass?
GIBBONS: Well, there
are pockets of agility
here and there, no
question about it.
And I think what
Vice President Gore
has been trying to do is
to maximize those, minimize
some of the rest, by the
so-called reinventing
government.
But OTA fell, not because
it was ineffective,
but for two reasons.
One is Congress needed a
scalp, because they were
cutting budgets everywhere.
And of all of the
congressional offices,
I think other than an
arboretum somewhere,
OTA was the smallest
and politically
the least capable
to defend itself.
Politically, it is capable
because it is science.
And you know, science
is very far away
from most political lives.
Secondly, the other agencies
served all of Congress, not
just committee chairs.
And thirdly, and this, I
think, is probably to a degree
legitimate, though
not wholly so.
There was a
perception, at least,
that OTA's work took
too long, that issues--
they couldn't get an answer
fast enough for their needs
within the pulse
of the Congress.
I think that was wrong.
But that was a perception.
And finally, there was a need--
there was a felt condition on
the part of those conservatives
that OTA was too liberal.
And it mostly relates back
to the Star Wars fight
we got into.
Some people even called
the demise of OTA
as Reagan's revenge.
And I think, again, the facts
of the matter are that it cannot
be labeled as either
liberal or conservative,
because we always gave the
best arguments to both sides.
But that nonetheless was
part of the argument.
Whether one could ever
recreate OTA, I don't know.
I do know that there is a
Republican member of Congress,
Amo Houghton, who used to run
Corning Glass before he ran
for Congress, who has
been desperately trying
to reestablish
something like an OTA,
and they're waiting
for someone to come up
with a good idea about how
to recreate that capability
for the Congress.
It's not going to happen
within the Library of Congress
or the generous accounting--
pardon me, the General
Accounting Office,
because it simply
aren't organized the way you
have to get organized to do it.
AUDIENCE: So nothing out
there currently that's not
[INAUDIBLE]?
GIBBONS: There's, well
there are some attempts.
One is to try to shape the
Academy of Engineering,
the Academy of Sciences,
to do some of this.
Partly possible, but
not wholly satisfactory,
because you have to be, you
need to be a part of the family
in order to be involved in it.
Another is to have
places like MIT that
have enormous capabilities,
at least a latent capability
to rapidly respond
authoritatively to issues, that
could be better
tapped, especially
by those members within
their purview, their region.
And I think that may be a
great hope for the nation is
for the university community
to somehow organize
itself to be able to be
more responsive to queries,
to get a little
closer to the members.
And if you're closer to the
members and the senior staff,
you're more likely to
get asked those questions
or be brought into
the arguments.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: On the
subject of predicting
the long-term benefits
of science funding,
the US has a reputation
for having the best,
or among the best international
programs for research
and education at
the highest levels,
but a reputation for having
comparatively poor science
education in the primary
and secondary school levels.
I'm wondering if anybody, any
of the advocates of science
funding in Congress are
thinking that far ahead.
GIBBONS: Yes, very much
so, both in Congress
and in the administration
and in the state houses.
I think we do have a woeful
situation in our K-12 system.
And the nation, we're obviously
working very hard at that
now, in capable
teachers as well as
bringing in capabilities
such as access to information
technology access, to improve
the process of learning,
the effectiveness of
the learning system.
And we have a long way to go.
It is by the skin of our
teeth that somehow magically,
despite this woeful, woefully
inadequate preparation,
we still manage to
do very well when
we get to the undergraduate and
especially the graduate years.
So we need to hold
on to the best
and not take it for granted,
like MIT, but at the same time
focus hard on K-12.
I was very dispirited the
other day when the president
the National Academy
of Sciences told me
that his daughter had finished
a PhD in biochemistry.
And to the great angst
of her department,
faculty that she
had graduated from,
she decided to go into high
school teaching of science.
And her father,
Bruce Alberts, was
furious at the department
for denigrating the idea
that a fresh PhD might
deign themselves to try
to teach high school science.
I say she ought to have a medal.
I've kept you longer
than we should've.
We're going to have a
reception, is that right?
And I know John Deutch is
out of sick bed to be here.
And I think the rest
of you deserve a break.
So I want to thank you
for inviting-- for coming
to hear me for the second time.
We'll do one more
time in the spring.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
