The Science of Science Policy

I recently discovered the Science of Science Policy website, affiliated to the United States (U.S.) Office of Science and Technology Policy. The U.S. Congress established the Office of Science and Technology Policy in 1976 with a "broad mandate to advise the President... on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs". The goal of the Science of Science Policy community is to "provide a scientifically rigorous and quantitative basis for science policy. The website provides a central location with news, information and research to help inform the Federal Government's science management decisions".

Closely related, the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program was established at the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2005 in response to a call from John Marburger III for a "specialist scholarly community" to study the science of science policy. The program has three major goals: "advancing evidence-based science and innovation policy decision making; building a scientific community to study science and innovation policy; and leveraging the experience of other countries. A recent Science article highlights some of the issues addressed by SciSIP researchers."

Seventy-five SciSIP awards have been made to date. The awardees include economists, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists as well as domain scientists. Some recent SciSIP awards (full abstracts available) which might be of interest to readers include Applied Visual Analytics for Economic Decision-Making and Universities, Innovation and Economic Growth. A report in the New York Times, from a couple of years ago, highlights a dataset that SciSIP funded jointly with the Kauffman Foundation, noting that it "tracks government-sponsored research for science and engineering and links it with government start-ups, patents, and other data. One goal of the research is to identify the characteristics of star innovators, scientists who are most effective in ushering research advances into the marketplace."

Upcoming Talks on Science, Innovation and the Economy

10th November: Panel Discussion: What's Smart about Ireland's Smart Economy in 2010?
A panel discussion with Dick Ahlstrom (chairman), Science Editor of the Irish Times; Professor John FitzGerald, ESRI; Dr Brian Kelly, CEO of Celtic Catalysts; Karlin Lillington, Technology journalist, Sean O’Driscoll (CEO Glen Dimplex) and Ferdinand von Prondzynski, former President of Dublin City University.

Organisers: Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Times
Admission is free but booking is essential.

11th November: The Long Debate: Debate on the Innovation Taskforce Report
Taking place in the NDRC on the 11th of November, the debate will draw on the findings of the Innovation Taskforce report.

Launched in March 2010, the report sets out recommendations for developing Ireland into an International Innovation Hub. Members of the Taskforce, including some of Ireland’s leading economic commentators, industry and government members, academics, creatives and entrepreneurs will be in attendance to discuss the nature of innovation within Ireland.

Organisers: Inventorium
Debate: 19.00-22.00
NDRC, Crane St, Digital Hub, Dublin 8
Registration for this event is essential.

17th November: Panel Discussion: Can Science be a Business?
A panel discussion with Dick Ahlstrom (chairman), Science Editor of the Irish Times; Professor Luke O’Neill, TCD; Dr Ena Prosser, Fountain Healthcare Partners; Professor Mark O’Malley, UCD; Professor Emmeline Hill (UCD).

Organisers: Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Times
Admission is free but booking is essential.

How science actually gets done

This is a really fascinating, not to say scary, account of how "hard" science actually gets done in the laboratory including the observation that about half of the results conflict with the theoretical expectations and that most such anomalies are ignored. Doesn't sound very scientific, does it?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1

h/t "Robin Hanson: Overcoming bias"

Science policy & tutus

The National Science Foundation is about as likely to become a leader in innovation, says inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, as a sumo wrestler is of fitting into a tutu. Speaking this morning to a distinguished group of scientists and educators, Kamen delivered a blunt message: Don't try to do innovation yourself. Instead, give little guys like me the resources to get the job done, and then get out of the way.
Since SFI is to some extent modelled on the NSF this may have implications for science research policy in Ireland. Thats assuming that vested interests don't get to call the shots.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/08/dean-kamen-tutu.html#more

Toward a debate on Science and Technology Policy in Ireland

There has been a large amount of activity in recent weeks debating the extent to which the government should support science and technology in the universities, and the likely impact that such spending will have on the wider economy and society and through which particular channels.

Some of this debate is a continuation of a long-standing discussion on two government strategy documents, the "Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation" and the "Framework for Economic Renewal" (Smart Economy) document.

Discussion has also likely increased as a result of the opinion expressed in the McCarthy report that there was little evidence of value deriving from R+D activities. The McCarthy report opinion on university research funding is below.

"The two research councils, Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Science (IRCHSS) and Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) provide funding for researchers in the form of post graduate scholarships, post doctoral fellowships, research fellowships and project based research. The Group supports the CEEU recommendation that the industry co-funding ratio should be increased for IRCSET’s enterprise partnership awards. Further, the Group is of the view that the allocation to the research councils to increase Ph.D. outputs should be reduced because of the uncertainty about the absorptive capacity of industry to employ fourth level graduates and the propensity of Ph.D. graduates to emigrate. The fifth cycle of the PRTLI scheme is due to run over the period 2010 to 2014. This scheme has been in operation since 1998 and there is insufficient evidence of the positive economic impact of the programme to date. Subject to any contractual commitments, this cycle should be cancelled. This will lead to savings in future years as spending on earlier cycles of PRTLI winds down without any new funding requirements arising in their place. The cancellation should also have imfor SFIfunding given that SFI researchers are housed in PRTLI funded infrastructure."

A number of economists have written critical articles about the current direction of S+T policy:

Eoin O'Leary

Karl Whelan

Kevin O'Rourke

Richard Tol

MIchael Hennigan

A number of further articles have defended large scale funding of university research

Luke O'Neill

Ferdinand von Prondzynksi

The importance of this debate cannot be understated, not least for people (many of whom read this blog) who have devoted most of their lives to research and teaching in university contexts. The charge of being a "vested interest" is frequently hurled at people who express opinions in this area. But anyone who works in a university or in research has a vested interest in this, and we have to try to deal with that and put forward coherent views that can be debated. If the charge is true that no-one working in research can express an objective view about how it should be funded and structured then we all should stop now.

It has also been agreed by many on both sides of the debate that if you simply start counting direct revenue generated from university patenting and licensing activities, that you are not going to find a good justification for funding research in universities, certainly not a healthy economic return. It seems to me obvious that Ferdinand von Prondzynski's point is correct that indirect rather than direct measures of benefits from research funding needed to be prioritised. To that extent, we need to start talking about issues such as:

- whether research funding in a university improves the quality and return to education in that university. Related to this, do students who are taught by and interact with top researchers become better equipped to work with cutting edge technologies and so on.

- the extent to which having research groups in Ireland that are embedded into international networks has value is something again I want to debate without assumption. many of us here base a huge amount of our working life on the (untested) assumption that working with international colleagues who are excellent in their field improves our work and improves the quality of knowledge in our respective fields in Ireland. the thing that impresses me when I see some of the better SFI-funded programmes is the international networks that such programmes open up to people in Irish universities. I have to admit that I have always viewed this as having huge value and this is my default assumption. having said that, to argue that a huge amount of money should be spent on developing these networks on the basis of an assumption would be silly.

- the extent to which multinational companies based location decisions on factors such as PhD researchers available, ability to draw from local research groups and so on.

- the extent to which indigenous companies can draw expertise and tools from research clusters based in universities. how much is this happening in Ireland at present?

- the extent to which research funding potentially improves non-market outcomes. For example, to what extent does funding Irish health research impact on hospital functioning and on the integration of global technologies into Irish healthcare. Every time this get's mentioned somebody makes a scoffing remark. My instinct (completely open to being tested and just an opinion) is that medical consultants who are conducting leading edge research (even if in specific areas) are constantly thinking about where modern health technologies are developing and are better equipped to integrate global technologies. Testing this in the Irish case would be very difficult but it is certainly a channel that we would be stupid to dismiss without thinking further about it.

From the point of view of economists, our role is not just to shoot down every claim that isn't 100 per cent backed up. It is also to examine potential channels that generate increases in human welfare and to think about testing them. We should try to put all of the chess pieces on the board before getting fully started on this.

Luke O'Neill on McCarthy Report

Professor Luke O'Neill in TCD criticises the McCarthy report in the Irish Times today

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0818/1224252768970.html

His article was picked up by Karl Whelan on the Irish Economy blog

The exchange highlights again the need to get some serious discussion going on the aims of science policy in Ireland and the potential return. Some people are arguing that pure short-term commercial pay-off should be the key metric, which seems ludicrous. For example, we need also to think about the potential return from having more PhD trained people working in the public and private sectors. While the trajectory at present has been for Irish PhD's (and indeed in Europe more generally) to move toward the public sector, we do not know whether this is neccesarily a bad thing. We started in Ireland from a very low base in terms of number of people with PhD qualifications working in the public sector and I dont think we should accept that increasing PhD trained people in this sector is not a good thing to do from a productivity perspective without having a proper debate.

One interesting debate that is beginning to emerge is the extent to which the Irish research funding environment should specialise and the extent to which funding should be conditional on non-academic considerations such as potential commercialisation, policy relevance and so on. In one version, research funding should be allocated to the very best people (say defined by publications) who are willing to locate in Ireland regardless of field or strategic relevance. In this way, we increase the prestige of the universities and put students in contact with leading minds. In another version, the research funders stipulate that certain areas (e.g. in Ireland energy research) are given extra priority because of their strategic relevance. Also, institutions are encouraged to specialise more and in general the funding agencies support increasing the capacities of particular groups in particular areas. This will allow potentially for greater capacity to compete for non-exchequer funds and also increase the likelihood of genuine innovation. Critics in Ireland have argued that the areas chosen are the wrong ones (e.g. Richard Tol has argued that much of the energy research agenda is misdirected). Also, critics have argued against the process by which these priorities are decided. Furthermore, the McCarthy report has argued that there is too much money devoted to administration and that the commercial activity has been too low.

We are not going to solve this issue in one blog post, but I do agree with Shane O'Mara's comment on the Irish Economy blog that we need to consider potential indirect effects (see e.g. paper on earnings effects of going to a good research university http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp4043.html) when assessing the impact of research funding. He also posts to a Welcomme Trust report on the economic value of medical research, which I will comment properly on a later stage - link here

CEP Paper: Doubling Spending on the Physical Sciences: Freeman and Van Reenen

What if Congress Doubled R&D Spending on the Physical Sciences?

Richard Freeman and John Van Reenen

Abstract
Many business, academic, and scientific groups have recommended that the Congress substantially increase R&D spending in the near future. President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative calls for a doubling of spending over the next decade in selected agencies that deal with the physical sciences, including the National Science Foundation. We consider the rationale for government R&D spending in the context of globalization and as an investment in human capital and knowledge creation with gestation times far longer than Federal funding cycles. To assess the impact of a large increase in R&D spending on the science job market, we examine the impact of the 1998- 2003 doubling of the NIH budget on the bio-medical sciences. We find that the rapid increase in NIH spending and ensuing deceleration created substantial adjustment problems in the market for research and failed to address long-standing problems with scientific careers that are likely to deter many young people from choosing a scientific career. We argue that because research simultaneously produces knowledge and add to the human capital of researchers, which has greater value for young scientists because of their longer future career life span than to older scientists, there is reason for funding agencies to tilt their awards to younger researchers.

Keywords: Basic Science, R&D, labor markets for scientists, globalization
JEL Classifications: J23, J45, 030

What motivates scientists to commercialise?

The current edition of "Research Policy" has a number of papers on determinants of scientists moving into commercial activity

The determinants of academic research commercial performance: Towards an organizational ambidexterity perspective
Pages 936-946 Yuan-Chieh Chang, Phil Y. Yang, Ming-Huei Chen

Academics or entrepreneurs? Investigating role identity modification of university scientists involved in commercialization activity
Pages 922-935 Sanjay Jain, Gerard George, Mark Maltarich

What drives scientists to start their own company?: An empirical investigation of Max Planck Society scientists
Pages 947-956. Stefan Krabel, Pamela Mueller

Gerard O'Neill on Smart Economy

It is characteristic of a healthy society when intelligent people from different sectors begin to debate openly using clear language.

Gerard O'Neill's posts attacking the idea that science policy, conceived of as providing large scale funding for basic technology research, are worth reading for an articulate account of this side of the debate. Gerard has been particularly influenced by the thinking of Amar Bhide and argues that more focus and support on basic application and combination of technologies will lead to higher returns for society than major scale investment in basic technology research and training of PhD and postdoc researchers.

link here

A few points on this are worth making:

- The SSTI target is to double the number of PhD's in Ireland. This will eventually lead to about 1,300 people per year receiving PhD's in Ireland. We don't yet have a sense of how large a number this. One sometimes gets a sense from the debate that 50 per cent of the population will be taking PhD's in the future and we should get some perspective on these numbers. Several blogs and newspaper articles (including letters from the Times) have been posting comments from PhD graduates to the effect that they regret taking their PhD and feel hard done by. Personally, I have never once for a minute regretted doing a PhD even when I was on postdoctoral contracts and trying to build a career and the majority of people I know who went this route feel the same. Again, only anecdote but there are two sides to the PhD story that need to be heard and the evidence is certainly not conclusive on either side of the debate as to whether to incentivise more people to pursue PhD education in Ireland.

- Also, the rhethoric around basic research in Ireland disguises the fact that much of even SFI, PRTLI funded research is relatively applied. Is it possible that a lot of what Bhide is talking about already characterises Irish research, which is far more applied in nature than would be the case in the very elite US universities.

- We do not know yet the extent to which training in scientific research groups will provide people with the types of skills to combine global technologies and add value to them to bring them to market. Figures looking at the percentage of PhDs going into industry (such as those cited in the McCarthy report) are interesting but we need to think more. For example, as a basic issue it is not neccesarily a bad thing to have PhD trained people going into the public sector. Also, merely counting the numbers masks an awful lot of the process, particularly with innovation.

- Science advocates are claiming that multinational corporations are coming to Ireland directly on the basis of university based research being conducted here. I'm sure we could fill a blog post with very good examples, but has anyone attempted to estimate this and examine the scope and size of research-contingent investments?

- Gerard argues that Irish universities are ineffective and poorly run. Again, I don't think this is established in any sense. Many people seem to have made up their mind that government policy in this area is flawed and that the universities will not be able to achieve many of the targets even with the resources. Nobody should have reached conclusions yet on any of this.

Sorry that most of the posts for now are of the "more evidence needed" variety but this will change over the next months. If anyone has suggestions for developing further aspects of this debate please let me know.

Science, Technology and Well-Being

A cross-over between many of the debates we have been having is the extent to which science technology will improve well-being. This issue is addressed by John Holdren in his address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science last year, printed in Science magazine. The Irish debate often veers into trying to threaten people to take up science subjects on fear of becoming obsolete. Motivation by fear may or may not be effective, but it has created some unsettling images in the minds of many in the general public. The view that scientific progress will be manipulated by an elite to benefit themselves aided by large-scale government subsidies and redirection of public educational resources is something that has lodged in the minds of many people who comment on various blog forums in Ireland. Going back to the previous discussion, understanding public trust in science and technology institutions may be more important than we think. Part of this process will need to involve a continuous debate about who pays for science and technology and who benefits.

The Holdren article below outlines the tasks that science will address over the next number of years and the importance of the scientific effort. This article gives a refreshing global sweep of the importance of the scientific effort. Much of the discussion is at a very broad level and it is directly intended as advocacy for promotion of science so the usual disclaimer about focusing on the specifics applies. Having said that, it is interesting to think about science and technology in the broad levels set down here, particularly as it pertains to the issues of human well-being. Some of the recommendations (but please read the article as a summary is always wrong in a sense) include the following.

- greater awareness of economic, socio-political and environmental conditions and processes in terms of the link between scientific inquiry and human well-being

- greater focus by scientists on the major threats affecting human well-being

- greater attention on promoting S+T literacy

- better undergrad training

link here