As President Bush continued to consolidate his cabinet appointments last week,
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called for changes in the way the president
appoints a science adviser. This recommendation is one of several suggested
by NAS in a recent report on how science and technology appointments made by
the federal government.
The crux of the NAS report involves the selection of specialists to serve in
the almost 1,000 advisory committees that convene to advise federal agencies
on diverse issues, ranging from stem cell research to environmental impacts
of mining and coal. "In recent years, the public policy issues that involve
science and technology have become so prominent," says Frank Press, a member
of the NAS committee responsible for the report and a geophysicist who now works
as a consultant for the Washington Advisory Group. "We feel that the importance
of these committees now has grown to exceed the importance in all previous years,"
particularly with regard to homeland security and earth science issues such
as climate change.
"We are all very conscious of a different national security situation,"
including concerns about various types of weapons and anthrax attacks, said
NAS committee member Richard Meserve, president of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington, at a press conference. "All those matters seem to me to
reinforce the importance of having science officials in place," he said,
"and should influence [the report's] impact."
Meserve said that the "thrust" of the report is that "people
selected for advisory committees based on their scientific expertise should
be judged on science and issues related to personal integrity, and that other
matters are not relevant to selection process," including political affiliations.
One of the most important aspects of the NAS report is its call for a "flat
prohibition on asking scientists litmus test questions," says Alden Meyer,
the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which
released several reports over the past year regarding the Bush administration's
stance on science issues. "There are a number of examples we have documented,"
Meyer says, where a prospective committee member has been asked, "'what
do you think about President Bush or his policies?' There's no more justification
than asking their hair color or height if you are being asked to serve on a
technical panel."
The NAS committee did not investigate any of the accusations, Meserve says.
"We were trying to do something that looks forward," to guide future
government activities and guidelines for the selection process.
Part of those guidelines include the immediate appointment of a science adviser
to the president. Press, who served as President Carter's director of the Office
of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), said he lost time in his term in having
to wait through the four-month period it took Congress to confirm his appointment.
Although some presidents have elected not to appoint an adviser, Press said
that doing so "immediately after an election is essential," so that
the adviser is involved in decisions earlier in an administration, such as when
appointments are made to major posts for the U.S. Department of Interior or
other positions that oversee scientific endeavors.
The committee also recommends that the directorship of OSTP and the science
advisory position be held by the same person, as it is now by the current OSTP
director, John H. Marburger. Having the science adviser serve that post would
allow for the president to take advantage of that person's advice immediately,
Press says, instead of waiting out the approval process for the OSTP directorship.
Other suggestions in the NAS report would move to expedite the interviewing
and approval process for the lower-level advisory committees, while also striving
to keep the balance between privacy issues and the need to fully disclose conflicts
of interest. The committee is also concerned that scientists and technology
experts recruited to serve on such panels are from a broad pool. Press specifically
cited the need for more women and minorities to serve. The report also says
that the federal government should make the process more transparent and the
transition from science to policy easier.
This year's report is similar to the NAS report from 2000, but the committee
members said this year, its impact should be greater. "The public interest
has grown, the public involvement has grown" when it comes to science and
technology issues, Press says. "They've become part of political campaigns.
The presidential commissions or the academy has been asked to look into a number
of different issues, and Congress has asked the academy to do more things than
ever before."
Naomi
Lubick
Link:
Download
PDFs of the NAS Report (Science and Technology in the National Interest:
Ensuring the Best Presidential and Federal Advisory Committee Science and Technology
Appointments)
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