SCIENCE IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST -- Aug 4 th

[David Farber <farber () linc cis upenn edu>]

NOTICE


This document includes the policy statement from "Science in the National
Interest." It does not include the examples, sidebars, or illustrations.
The examples include:


"Steering by the Satellites"
"A Key to Cancer"
"A New Chemistry for Carbon"
"Origins of the Information Superhighway"
"Monitoring the Earth"
"A Virtuous Infection"
"Seeing Inside the Body"
"Simulating Reality"
"Plastics that Glow"
"The Human Dimension"
"Bringing the Universe into Focus"




The complete version is available for sale by the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC 20402. Further distribution
information will be posted as it becomes available.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




SCIENCE IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST


RThis country must sustain world leadership in science, mathematics,
and engineering if we are to meet the challenges of today. . . and of
tomorrow.S
                President William J. Clinton November 23, 1993






Science:  The Endless Resource


AmericaUs future demands investment in our people, institutions and
ideas.  Science is an essential part of that investment, an endless and
sustainable resource with extraordinary dividends.  This investment
strategy was clearly articulated fifty years ago in Vannevar BushUs
seminal report RScience:  The Endless Frontier:S


RThe Government should accept new responsibilities for promoting the
flow of new scientific knowledge and the development of scientific
talent in our youth.  These responsibilities are the proper concern of
the Government, for they vitally affect our health, our jobs and our
national security.S


The bedrock wisdom of this statement has been demonstrated time and
again in the intervening half century.  The return from our public
investments in fundamental science has been enormous, both through the
knowledge generated and through the education of an unmatched
scientific and technical workforce.  Discoveries in mathematics,
physics, chemistry, biology and other fundamental sciences have seeded
and have been driven by important advances in engineering, technology,
and medicine.


        The principal sponsors and beneficiaries of our scientific
enterprise are the American people.  Their continued support, rooted in
the recognition of science as the foundation of a modern
knowledge-based technological society, is essential.  The nationUs
investment has yielded a scientific enterprise without peer, whether
measured in term of discoveries, citations, awards and prizes, advanced
education, or contributions to industrial and informational
innovation.   Our scientific strength is a treasure which we must
sustain and build on for the future.


        To fulfill our responsibility to future generations by ensuring
that our children can compete in the global economy, we must invest in
the scientific enterprise at a rate commensurate with its growing
importance to society.  That means we must provide physical
infrastructure that facilitates world class research, including access
to cutting-edge scientific instrumentation and to world-class
information and communication systems.  We must provide the necessary
educational opportunities for each of our citizens.  Failure to
exercise our responsibility will place our children's future at risk.


        Science does indeed provide an endless frontier.  Advancing
that frontier and exploring the cosmos we live in helps to feed our
sense of adventure and our passion for discovery.  Science is also an
endless resource:  in advancing the frontier, our knowledge of the
physical and living world constantly expands.  The unfolding secrets of
nature provide new knowledge to address crucial challenges, often in
unpredictable ways.  These include improving human health, creating
breakthrough technologies that lead to new industries and high quality
jobs, enhancing productivity with information technologies and improved
understanding of human interactions, meeting our national security
needs, protecting and restoring the global environment, and feeding and
providing energy for a growing population.


        The challenges of the twenty-first century will place a high
premium on sustained excellence in scientific research and education.
We approach the future with a strong foundation, built by the wise and
successful stewardship of this enterprise over many decades, and with
an investment strategy that was framed during this AdministrationUs
first month as three interconnected strategic goals:


%       Long term economic growth that creates jobs and protects the
environment;


%       A government that is more productive and more responsive to the
needs of its citizens;


%       World leadership in basic science, mathematics, and
engineering.


The first goal was elaborated in the Administration statement
RTechnology for AmericaUs Economic GrowthS, and the second in the Vice
PresidentUs RNational Performance Review.S  Our policies in these areas
are already working to prepare the future.  The third goal represents a
critical long-term investment, one for which we need both vision and a
sound Federal policy.


A Time of Change


We face change on many fronts, and change characteristically engenders
both opportunity and uncertainty.  The end of the Cold War has
transformed international relationships and security needs.  Highly
competitive economies have emerged in Europe and Asia, putting new
stresses on our private sector and on employment. The ongoing
information revolution both enables and demands new ways of doing
business.  During the 1980's, our Federal budget deficit grew rapidly,
constraining crucial investments for the future.  Our population
diversity has increased, yielding new opportunities to build on a
traditional American strength.  Health and environmental responsibility
present increasingly complex challenges, and the literacy standards for
a productive and fulfilling role in twenty-first century society are
expanding beyond the traditional Rthree RUsS into science and
technology.


                As our institutions anticipate, manage, and respond to
change, we must continue to focus on the enduring core elements of our
national interest:  the health, prosperity, security, environmental
responsibility, and quality of life of all of our citizens.  At the
same time, we must respond to the changing character of the challenges
presented by each of these core elements.  For example, as the nature
of todayUs external security threat has shifted profoundly, we have
come to recognize economic and technological strength as integral to
national security.  Likewise improved science and mathematics education
for all citizens is now recognized as a strategic imperative for our
individual and collective futures.


                We must reexamine and reshape our science policy both
                to
sustain AmericaUs preeminence in science and to facilitate the role of
science in the broader national interest. Each core element of the
national interest requires strong commitment to scientific research and
education:


%       Health requires the understanding, prevention and treatment of
disease and the assurance of an adequate, safe, and nutritious food
supply.  These activities have become more and more dependent on the
discoveries of fundamental biology research, often at the molecular
level.  Knowledge of the molecular basis of genetic diseases, for
example, will permit design of effective new treatments such as gene
therapy.  The importance of broad strength in science is evidenced by
the increasing role in biology and medicine of tools developed in the
physical sciences, such as magnetic resonance imagers whose beginnings
were in nuclear physics, or lasers that originated in fundamental
atomic and molecular physics research, or the accelerators and
instrumentation developed in the quest to understand subatomic
particles. Research is also essential in social and behavioral science
for developing effective public health strategies for preventing
disease.


%       Prosperity requires technological innovation.  Basic scientific
and engineering research is essential for training innovative
scientists and engineers, for many technology improvements, and for
achieving the revolutionary advances that create new industries.
Biotechnology and optical communications are two examples, and others
will follow.  For example, fundamental science and engineering will
yield capabilities, unimaginable only a few years ago, to design and
build new materials whether electronic or biomolecular. Applications
will span areas as diverse as civil infrastructure improvements and
environmental restoration.


%       Our national security has long been based on technological
superiority bred of scientific and engineering innovation and a
strategic commitment to both breadth and excellence in basic research.
This will be even more important with a reduced military establishment
facing new and varied security challenges such as verification methods
for nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  For example,
remote acquisition and rapid analysis of huge data streams and a new
generation of imaging technologies will be essential. These
capabilities will require advances in fundamental science and
engineering, and will have important dual uses in military and civilian
applications.


%       Environmental responsibility requires much better understanding
of the complex interrelationships among components of the biosphere and
among human activities and the world around us.  We must carry out the
necessary fundamental research and develop appropriate technologies to
detect and correct environmental problems, to manage natural resources,
and to sustain the environment.  The levels of population, economic,
and industrial growth suggested by current trends and patterns of
development point to an urgent need to improve industrial processes and
products and to provide food, energy, and natural resources with
greatly reduced environmental impact.  Understanding biological and
physical processes is vital to maintaining biodiversity and healthy
ecosystems.


%        Improved quality of life of our citizens involves all of these
elements, and more. Culture, inspiration, and full participation in the
democratic process are important for our citizens' lives and for
setting directions for America.  Scientific and technical literacy are
crucial for understanding and appreciating the modern world.
Sometimes, the rewards come directly from the leaps of science and
engineering that inspire us as one people and spark the imagination of
our children.  Only months ago, we experienced this with the bold
repair job on the orbiting Hubble telescope and the remarkable clarity
of the resulting images.  Such moments are themselves an important
public benefit of science, helping to satisfy humanityUs age-old drive
to define itself through a better understanding of the world we
inhabit.  At a more down-to-earth level, scientific and technical
literacy will provide the gateway to an increasing number of high
quality jobs.


Thus, science, both endless frontier and endless resource, is a
critical investment in the national interest.  Science and technology
are tightly coupled, for they both drive and benefit one another.  To
address the nationUs science investment strategy, we must reexamine
every element of the enterprise: the research portfolio; the
infrastructure needed for world-class research by world-class
researchers; and the education of our people in science and
mathematics.  Each element must be strong, requiring that optimization
be done within limited resources.  It is essential that we adhere to a
long-range and diversified investment strategy: nurture broadly-based
fundamental research for the decades ahead, conduct research aimed at
todayUs strategic areas, and undertake vigorous development activities
that spring from our accumulated science and engineering Rresource
baseS.


        While we cannot foretell the outcome of fundamental research,
we know from past experience that, in its totality, it consistently
leads to dramatically valuable results for humanity.  We have every
reason to expect that the science investment will continue to yield a
very high rate of return.


"Science reveals new worlds to explore, and by implication new
opportunities to seize and new futures to create."


Vice President Al Gore Forum on Science in the National Interest
February 1994


Setting Our National Goals


This Administration stated in February 1993 its over-arching goal for
fundamental research--world leadership in basic science, mathematics
and engineering.  To sustain the leadership position we now hold, we
must improve the conditions, capabilities, and opportunities for
well-trained scientists and engineers to pursue innovative research, to
educate the next generation, and to apply science in areas of
importance to the health, prosperity, and security of the country.  The
agenda is a broad one, and will require the resources of government and
the creative participation of industry and academia.  Therefore, we set
the following goals for our stewardship of science in the national
interest:


        !       Maintain leadership across the frontiers of scientific
knowledge
        !       Enhance connections between fundamental research and
        national goals
        !       Stimulate partnerships that promote investments in
fundamental science
                and engineering and effective use of physical, human
                and
financial               resources
        !       Produce the finest scientists and engineers for the
        twenty- first century
        !       Raise scientific and technological literacy of all
        Americans.


        While we pursue these goals amidst rapid change, we must not
lose sight of the core values that have enabled our nation to achieve
so much.  Over the last fifty years, the United States developed a
unique and highly successful system for advancing scientific research
in universities, medical schools, and independent research centers and
in Federal and industrial laboratories.  Our system rests on a strong
commitment to investigator-initiated research and merit review based on
evaluation by scientific peers.  This system maintains the emphasis on
excellence and brings new people and new ideas into the research
enterprise.


        A significant fraction of research, particularly fundamental
research, is performed at academic institutions.  This has multiple
benefits.  Research and education are linked in an extremely productive
way.  The intellectual freedom afforded academic researchers and the
constant renewal brought by successive generations of inquisitive young
minds stimulate the research enterprise.  A broad range of disciplines
are represented in our research universities, providing opportunity for
cross disciplinary stimulation.


        Federal support of fundamental science and engineering is
characterized by a healthy pluralism.  All Federal departments and
agencies that depend heavily on scientific and technical knowledge and
human resources support fundamental research and education in these
areas.  This improves their capacity to attain their evolving goals as
new challenges emerge.


        Several illustrations in this and following sections
demonstrate how science has improved and enriched our lives, often in
ways that could not be predicted.  This broad advance of science and
its applications represented in the illustrations originated in the
support of science by a multiplicity of federal agencies.


        The nature of science is international, and the free flow of
people, ideas, and data is essential to the health of our scientific
enterprise.  Many of the scientific challenges, for example in health,
environment, and food, are global in scope and require on-site
cooperation in many other countries.  In addition to scientific
benefits, collaborative scientific and engineering projects bring
nations together thereby contributing to international understanding,
good will, and sound decision-making worldwide.