This remarkable fish has an impressive ecological link. Like salmon, it migrates from its saltwater ocean home to fresh river waters to spawn. The shad’s oscillating presence reflects both the health of the water and the accessibility of a river’s passageways. And today’s continuing efforts to protect shad provide a good example of the long-lasting impact of expert studies by the former congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

A voluminous report prepared by OTA on fish passage technologies just before former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich shut its doors in 1995 has gained prominence in the current crisis. The report, titled “Fish Passage Technologies: Protection at Hydropower Facilities,” prepared for the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Oceans, provides the kind of analysis that could potentially help Pennsylvania officials prevent the demise of the shad population, which at the time of its release was quite healthy due to earlier federal efforts to help the shad amid the growth of hydropower plants.

The old OTA often found clarity and presented policy options by gathering up and synthesizing existing studies. Today, no such agency exists to do this.

Today, however, things have taken a turn for the worse. Shad showing up in rivers each spring have mysteriously dropped by more than 90 percent since the mid-1990s. “Although this particular OTA report focuses more on hydropower plants, I would have found this information very useful [today] in our efforts to improve passages here in Philadelphia’s waterways,” says Philadelphia Water Department aquabiologist Joseph Perillo. “Putting these reports online follows a real trend among scientists forming listservs and other online networks to share credible, relevant peer-reviewed reports, like this one.”

Indeed, this particular report is available today for researchers, policymakers, and the public to access for free, alongside 719 other comprehensive, technical analyses originally provided for Congress. Thanks to the efforts of the Federation of American Scientists, more than 100,000 pages of the best available analyses of the scientific and technical policy issues of the 1970s to 1995 are available online in a user-friendly, searchable format at www.fas.org/ota.

It took less than $1,000 for FAS to create an online home for the formally issued reports of the OTA. It evolved from the efforts made by Princeton University to archive OTA’s reports in the late 90’s, and features information about how OTA prepared the reports, and supplemental archival materials not previously available to the public documenting the history and impact of the agency.

On the site, FAS will also track attempts by the scientific community and members of Congress to restore OTA, highlighting policy discussions about OTA taking place today—more than a decade after the office closed its doors. “Its existence brought a healthy balance to the analytical resources available to both the executive and legislative branches of government,” says Michael Stebbins, director of biology policy at FAS.

“By publishing the OTA’s legacy in electronic form, we are preserving the investment made in its work for future users and as a demonstration of the value of the agency,” says Stebbins. “The OTA reports collected here are widely acknowledged to be nonpartisan, objective, and thorough and in many cases, they have also proven to be of enduring interest and relevance.”

From 1972-1995, the Office of Technology Assessment provided comprehensive, technical analysis for Congress on a broad range of policy issues, including addictions, workplace safety, hospital technologies, and technology transfer to China. Efforts are mounting for Congress to appropriate funds to open a revitalized OTA. If it did, the OTA could delve into (among other things) the mystery of the disappearing shad before federal tax dollars are spent on speculative approaches based on perhaps poor science.

So what is happening to Pennsylvania’s shad? It is not at all clear why shad are not spawning. Pollution? An increase in commercial fishing? “Heck, it could even be global warming as it affects ocean currents,” says Scott Carney, another fisheries biologist. “I think everybody’s just speculating now.” Adds Mike Hendricks, a Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission fisheries biologist in trying to account for the recent and alarming decline: “It is depressing.”

The old OTA often found clarity and presented policy options by gathering up and synthesizing existing studies. Today, no such agency exists to do this. Yet despite inconsistent science on the shad’s problems, people are still investing considerable amounts of money and energy in protecting shad and other fish. In Philadelphia, for example, a consortium of local, state, and federal organizations is constructing rock ramps to permit fish, including shad, to pass around river.

“Long-term restoration of recreational fisheries in Pennsylvania has a potential economic impact of $36 million and the potential to change lives,” states American Rivers’ President Rebecca Wodder. What’s more, federal efforts to protect the shad go back a half century. In the 1960s, the number of shad returning to rivers plummeted, sparking a movement to save this fish. With the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972, rivers began to recuperate, dams were removed, and a series of fish ladders and lifts were constructed to help shad navigate around barriers in the rivers and tributaries.

These efforts paid off. In the 1990s record numbers of spawning shad returned from the Atlantic Ocean to their birth rivers. Even though it no longer exists, the OTA’s reports could play an important part in crafting successful environmental policy like this. Congress should ensure a new OTA can make similarly important contributions in the future—before federal tax dollars to save the shad are spent on more speculative approaches.

Darlene F. Cavalier (Darlene@sciencecheerleader.com) is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader who studied the role of citizens in science policy as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Professionally she creates public science programs for Discover Magazine, Disney, Space.com and the National Science Foundation and is the voice of the ScienceCheerleader.com.

Welcome to the world of citizen scientists. Never before in recent history have so many average citizens, untrained in the sciences, turned themselves into amateur researchers. They are not waiting for an invitation or hoping the next generation will improve on the country’s dismal science literacy rates. Instead, they are jumping in now to change the way science gets done. And they may hold the key to the development of a sound national science policy.

“Citizen science” has helped democratize science and helped people to understand they can have an influence on science by being a part of it,” argues Rick Bonney, an education expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY, in the Cyber Diver News Network column, “Volunteer Citizen Scientists Dive in for Sex on the Beach,” (the column, by the way, is about cataloguing fish mating habits on the beach).

Scientists and Congress should trust the public’s capacity to learn, draw conclusions, and contribute.

“Lately, all manner of ways to ‘involve’ the public in science policy and practice have cropped up,” add Rick Borchelt and Kathy Hudson in a recent Science Progress column, “Engaging the Scientific Community with the Public.” “Scientific associations are developing centers devoted to public engagement in science, funding agencies have created sweeping mandates for collecting public input on research, and research-performing institutions are hosting community meetings and science cafes about their work.”

In fact, Congress mandates that federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, among others, fulfill public input and outreach activities. Individually, members of Congress also solicit public input through their websites. And, researchers, looking for ways to stretch limited budgets and secure public support for their work, are starting to pay attention to the lay public, too.

Problem is, Congress is no longer talking to scientists or the public (including our citizen scientists) like they used to. When the congressional Office of Technology Assessment was shut down in 1995, Congress lost its independent experts, which in turn led to less and less thoughtful science policymaking by members of Congress, and more and more partisan squabbling over “sound science.” Citizens interested in science who once relied on their representatives to turn to the OTA for advice were suddenly left out in the cold; today’s budding legions of citizen scientists have no single congressional office to help or make their voices heard.

Without the OTA, special interest groups, researchers, and politicians all rushed in—all of them claiming to speak on the public’s behalf. A crisis of public trust escalated. As Bochelt and Hudson note, “an erosion of public trust that began as a trickle of doubt about radiation safety and pesticides has grown to program-threatening uprisings against emerging new technologies, from genetically altered “Frankenfoods” to concern over “grey goo” in nanotechnology.”

It is time to have a new OTA, but one with citizen participation. Scientists and Congress should trust the public’s capacity to learn, draw conclusions, and contribute. Invite the public to do more, and put a process in place so citizens and researchers can work together to impart sound policy advice to Congress. In short, they should help bridge the divide.

The obvious way to do this is for Congress to appropriate funds to reopen a new Office of Technology Assessment, and include legislative language requiring it to solicit input from a diversity of stakeholders. This is not a new idea. Just prior to the shuttering of OTA, political scientist Norman Vig called for the OTA to hold “public consensus conferences” to broaden the range of people who could influence science policy decisions.[1]

Indeed, other nations have been quicker to recognize the need to listen to the voice of the people. In 1995, for example, the Danish Parliament established a Board of Technology that has consistently employed a number of participatory methods, including jury deliberations, workshops and consensus conferences. Right now, the Danish agency is initiating a “World Wide Views on Global Warming” study. Citizens from all over the world will work with scientific experts, political decision makers and other stakeholders to address key environmental issues in preparation for the 2009 United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.

A set of converging factors call for creating a new, inclusive, forward-thinking Office of Technology Assessment.

In the United States, the idea of bringing back the OTA has never been dormant. In the 13 years since the OTA closed, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have championed several attempts to reopen its doors. Other efforts are mounting. Yet, as noted science journalist Chris Mooney wrote in a Science Progress column titled “Science, Delayed” earlier this year, “the quest to restore dedicated science advice for Congress through a reborn Office of Technology Assessment has proven more difficult than one might have supposed.”

Congress is right not to reopen the old OTA. The name alone strikes a negative chord with partisan detractors who feel the Office took too long to produce reports and duplicated work by other agencies. And we shouldn’t be looking for excuses to reopen the kind of OTA designed in the 1960s, prior to globalization, in a new era of public participation and the Internet, which makes it possible to expedite research and reporting. But a set of converging factors call for creating a new, inclusive, forward-thinking Office of Technology Assessment. Now is the time for Congress to establish a mechanism to combine these forces and produce meaningful, transparent science policy—based on advice that takes into account scientific data, policy implications, and the opinions of citizens.

“Politics always swamps science,” says Michael Rodemeyer, former counsel to the House Committee on Science and Technology who is currently teaching at the University of Virginia. “The argument, I think, is more about transparency and accountability. Congress should have its own accountable experts, rather than having to rely on the backroom briefings of the think-tank-of-the-month.”

There is no shortage of topics the American public can and should weigh in on. In the last two weeks of June alone the House Science Committee addressed climate change, energy-efficient transportation, hurricane research, competitive workforces, and how an Environmental Protection Agency program “fails the public.” Additional discussions with the public should include agricultural technology, alternative fuels, arms control, banking, communications, computer security, economic development, health, natural disasters, nuclear energy, nuclear war and weapons, oceanography, oil, gas, mineral resources, transportation, math and science education, the moon, Mars, and more.

The number of issues is staggering. Congress needs all the help it can get. A revitalized 21st-century OTA can employ the talents of new organizations that have mastered the art of creating and facilitating civic engagement, including America Speaks, Public Agenda, the Loka Institute, and the Jefferson Center.

“After engaging thousands of citizens on complex issues such as the D.C. budget, recovery planning in New Orleans, and California health care policy,” says Evan Paul of America Speaks, “we have seen that when decision makers are committed to authentic engagement, citizens can help them identify appropriate, nuanced, and publicly-supported policy solutions.”

In short, citizen participation works. It can break the special-interest deadlock, connect government to voters and shed light on important public issues. So why aren’t we mobilizing one of America’s greatest resources?

Darlene Cavalier (Darlene@sciencecheerleader.com) is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader who studied the role of citizens in science policy as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Professionally she creates public science programs for Discover Magazine, Disney, Space.com and the National Science Foundation and is the voice of the ScienceCheerleader.com.

Notes

[1] Sclove, Richard. “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” Vol. 40, No. 19 (12 January 1994), pp. B1-B2.