0.2 Introduction  (Page 4/6)

Interestingly, it is often the Congress rather than the Executive Branch which has been more consistently interested in a centralized science policy. The single instance of the enunciation of a coherent, unitary science policy was enactment of the Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976 (PL 94-282), which, among other things, created the Office of Science and Technology policy (OSTP) and mandated a President’s Council on Science and Technology (PCST) to revive the presidential science advisory system abolished in January 1973 by President Richard Nixon. However, with the exception of Ford, successive presidential administrations declined to implement what the Congress regarded as significant aspects of PL 94-282, and in some cases exhibited ill-concealed hostility towards many of its provisions.

The committee structure of the U.S. Congress itself militates against attempts to define and implement coherent science policies. If a president were to formulate a coherent science policy, then submit it to the Congress for the requisite budget authority, it would receive no coherent consideration. Rather, thirteen different appropriations committees in the House of Representatives and an equal number in the Senate consider budget requests for the principal agencies concerned with research and development (R&D), including the Departments of Defense (DoD), Energy (DoE), Agriculture (USDA), and Homeland Security (DHS), and NIH, NASA, and NSF. Moreover, within each committee, these R&D organizations must compete for funds with agencies that do not provide appreciable support for R&D. For example, the budget requests of NSF and the Department of Veterans Affairs are considered by the same appropriations committees. A few science advisors, including Bromley, have been able and willing to communicate with key congressional committees and attain some semblance of the president’s budget requests for high priority science-for-policy items. More often, the budgets approved by the appropriations committees and then the full House and Senate have little science policy coherence.

Because of the difficulties inherent in defining a coherent national science policy, a more important issue than whether such a policy can be defined might be whether and how well (particularly in view of congressional fragmentation) the elements of a science-for-policy in a given period of time—for convenience, a presidential administration—can be implemented. That is, how strong and effective is the institutional basis of the U.S. science and technology system?

Since November 1957, with a lapse between January 1973 and May 1976, a presidential science advisory system centered on a presidential science advisor has been largely responsible for overseeing and to some extent coordinating the federal science and technology system, as well as implementing those elements of science-for-policy that have been assigned a high priority by the incumbent president. The presidential science advisory system has also been responsible for trying to assure that an adequate policy-for-science is implemented. Finally, the advisory system, and particularly the president’s science advisor, has in the best of times sought to maintain cordial relations with Congress, the scientific community, and the broader informed public.