Among other things, the JOBS Act provides for “crowdfunding” under Title III, “Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure Act of 2012.” Crowdfunding occurs when a large number of people pool small sums of money and other resources to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Such pooling of money and resources typically occurs via the Internet for any variety of purposes, including funding political campaigns, disaster relief, small loans (microcredit), artists, and even startups. In the United States, this has largely been done on a donation basis (IndieGoGo; Kickstarter) or a loan, where the lender can only expect to be repaid principal. The JOBS Act contains two titles that attempt to make it easier for companies to crowdfund by offering equity.

Far from the simplistic vision of crowdfunding initially contemplated by earlier bills brought before Congress, in an effort to reduce fraud and protect investors and companies, Title III of the JOBS Act layers on regulatory requirements well beyond the information that is often delivered in connection with the funding of a startup under existing exemptions available under the U.S. securities laws, such as for private offerings to accredited investors or to a limited number of investors.

Where Title III looks like an exercise in overregulation, with few bells and whistles, Title II of the JOBS Act, “Access to Capital for Job Creators,” provides for crowdfunding conducted by accredited investors with few regulatory requirements. Title II requires the Securities and Exchange Commission within 90 days of enactment to revise its rules to lift the ban on general solicitation and advertising in offerings, where the purchasers in the offerings are all accredited investors (high-net-worth or high-income investors), which essentially permits crowdfunding by accredited investors without a lot of regulation.

Proponents of crowdfunding argue it has the promise to increase access to capital for traditional startup companies, and particularly for businesses not typically considered attractive to venture capital investors (non-tech companies, companies with modest aspirations for growth, or limited exit event potential). Some of these businesses are the type that socially responsible investors would like to invest in, such as a neighborhood coffee shop in need of new equipment. Further, crowdfunding has the possibility of opening up a previously off limits market, the startup market, to average middle class investors.

That said, opening up the startup market to the public at large could cause harm by allowing the least sophisticated investors to invest in the most risky businesses. Most startups fail. Investing in a startup, particularly at the very early stages, might be thought of almost like playing the lottery or casino gambling. Potential investors will need to understand that there is a reasonable chance that they will lose their entire investment.

There is also a concern that the general public (as opposed to investors versed in the risks associated with investing in startups, such as angel investors or venture capitalists) will select investments based on products or services instead of the business plan, model, and team. Permitting crowdfunding without regulation would make the U.S. capital markets start to look like the Wild West with rampant fraud.

What the JOBS Act does for middle-class investors

The JOBS Act seeks to balance these risks with the potential upsides of crowdfunding by capping the allowable size of investments made by investors in Title III offerings. Specifically, the Act permits crowdfunding of private U.S. companies, provided that:

(1)   The aggregate amount of equity sold to all investors by the company does not exceed $1,000,000

(2)   The aggregate amount sold to any investor does not exceed:

a. The greater of $2,000 or 5 percent of the annual income or net worth of an investor, as applicable, if either the annual income or the net worth of the investor is less than $100,000
b. 10 percent of the annual income or net worth of an investor, as applicable, not to exceed a maximum aggregate amount sold of $100,000, if either the annual income or net worth of the investor is equal to or more than $100,000

(3)   The transaction is conducted through a regulated crowdfunding intermediary (broker or funding portal)

(4)   The company complies with certain information delivery requirements

 Furthermore, nonaccredited investors seeking to participate in crowdfunding a company will need to:

 (1)   Review investor-education information

(2)   Positively affirm that he or she understands that the investor is risking the loss of the entire investment and that such investor could bear such a loss

(3)   Take a quiz demonstrating an understanding of the level of risk generally applicable to investments in startups, emerging businesses, and small issuers and the risk of illiquidity

 Companies will be required to make available to potential investors and the SEC certain company information, including an anticipated business plan and, most significantly, a description of the company’s financial condition, including, scaled disclosure depending on the offering amount, with offerings in excess of $500,000 requiring audited financial statements.

What the JOBS Act does for accredited investors

While the ability to crowdfund a company for equity is novel, the real news in the JOBS Act comes in Title II, which requires the SEC by July 4, 2012 to make it easier for companies to raise money from accredited investors.  Specifically, the JOBS Act requires the SEC to revise its rules to lift the prohibition on general solicitation and general advertising for offers and sales of securities where all of the purchasers are accredited investors, and the company has taken reasonable steps to verify that purchasers are accredited investors.  Lifting the ban on general solicitation to accredited investors greatly increases the potential capital to which companies have access and the investing opportunities of accredited investors.

Further, the JOBS Act increases the opportunities for online group funding of startups by exempting platforms, co-investors and those providing ancillary services (due diligence, provision of standard documents) from the requirement to register as brokers or dealers with respect to securities offered and sold under Title II. This is in contrast to Title III platforms which either need to register with the SEC as broker or a funding portal.  While the SEC has yet to promulgate rules regulating Title II platforms and Congress provided few details as to what those regulations should look like, potentially Title II platforms will be a lot less regulated than Title III platforms.

Finding balance

The low dollar amounts permitted to be raised together with the heavy information delivery requirements of Title III may make crowdfunding by the public at large only likely to be taken advantage of by a few companies.  This is despite what appears to be an enormous appetite on the part of the American public for investing in startups, since people are already crowdfunding product development without the possibility of participating in an equity upside.

Between the absence of investment caps either per investor or in the aggregate and, at least for now, the minimal information delivery requirements, Title II seems to be where the action will be.  If more money can be raised while complying with fewer regulatory requirements on Title II platforms, Title III platforms run the risk of becoming a ghetto filled with companies that would not be able to withstand the scrutiny of angels or venture capitalists, which means that the startups that the average middle class investor would have access to will be even more risky investments than the startup market on average.

This splitting approach—allowing the public at large to gamble small dollars and private U.S. companies to take in money from the crowd up to 1 million dollars at a time and allowing wealthy individuals to invest large dollar amounts in public, private, domestic, and foreign companies—may seem elitist; in other words, only the wealthy know how to evaluate the growth potential of startups. And, who is to say that the University of Chicago M.B.A., someone versed in evaluating businesses, is less qualified to determine whether or not to invest in a startup than someone who inherited a lot of money with no prior business experience?  Accredited investor status alone does not translate into the ability to evaluate the investment worthiness of a startup, but may be a proxy for determining how much money an investor can afford to gamble.

What it means for American startups

Getting funding from a large number of shareholders in small amounts raises some potential challenges. Imagine a startup run by two founders out of a garage that wants to raise $500,000 through crowdfunding, and they raise the money from 5,000 shareholders with an average investment of $100. Now this startup went from a girl, a guy, a garage, and a dream to a girl, a guy, a garage, a dream—and 5,000 shareholders.

Imagine the record keeping implications. Further, a large number of shareholders may have state corporate law implications, for example, some state corporate laws may require increasing the number of directors of a company as the number of shareholders increases. These shareholders will also have various rights under state law and may be able to compel an annual meeting, block certain transactions, or hold up a possible exit event because of the large number of appraisal rights, and be able to institute shareholder derivative suits.

For startups that are typically funded by founders (cash, credit, ability to finance their house, or sweat equity) at first and then once the business gets going by friends and family, having a large number of unacquainted shareholders may prove to be an administrative and liability nightmare.

The use of selective offerings, under the pre-JOBS Act rules, allows startups to have control over who their shareholders are and ensure that they are not selling their shares to a competitor. Once startups are seeking investors beyond their friends and family, they are looking for angels and venture capitalists that come not only with cash, but with experience. Startups need supportive shareholders to help them grow their businesses. Selling their shares through a general solicitation on a platform open to the public may add new layers of risk to an already risky situation, unless, for one thing, startups are given some control of who gets to be a shareholder.

Since Title II allows for higher dollars to be invested and companies can achieve offering targets from fewer investors, concerns around large numbers of shareholders dwindle compared with Title III rules. And with fewer potential investors, companies will have greater ability to do due diligence on such investors before they allow them to invest.

Because people just want to say that they participated in cool ideas or supported a good cause, Internet-enabled crowdfunding in recent years has seen great success in providing capital to funding artists, creative productions, nonprofit ventures, and even some companies (though not through equity). Given this success, one cannot help but assume that crowdfunding equity will only increase in popularity.

Still, this represents a significant shift in how American investors are accustomed to investing and how companies are accustomed to raising capital. There will be growing pains. Investors will lose money and companies will get in over their heads. The JOBS Act opens up the opportunity, but seeks to limit the damage that can be done to investors and companies, alike.  It is yet to be seen whether crowdfunding is a passing trend that will leave us with lessons learned or a dominating force in capital-raising only in its infancy.

Kristen A. Young is a corporate associate in the Boston office of Sullivan & Worcester LLP, where she represents clients in a broad range of general corporate matters, including corporate formation, venture capital financing, crowdfunding, mergers and acquisitions, securities law compliance, public and private offerings, and other commercial and financial transactions. Image courtesy of Reset San Francisco.

The CJEU ruling held that all processes, excluding those applied for the benefit of the embryo itself, requiring the prior destruction of human embryos, or their prior use as base material, cannot enjoy patent protection. This holding applies even if—as is the case with Oliver Brüstle’s patent on neuronal precursor cells generated from human embryonic stem cells, or hESCs—the patent application describing the process does not explicitly refer to the use of hESCs. CJEU decisions are binding on all EU member states. There is no avenue for appeal.

As expected, immediate responses to the ruling were negative. Research on hESCs, like all scientific research, relies on funding. Despite the growing promise of therapeutic treatments with hESCs, funding is not easy to obtain. Without the promise of patent protections, opponents of Brüstle contend, where is the incentive for investors to fund hESC research in the European Union?

This particularly affects academic institutions and smaller research companies, both of which do not generally take their research to the market themselves, but instead rely on securing licensing deals from investors after reaching the proof-of-concept stage. Moreover, hESC researchers are perplexed by the funding paradox Brüstle begets. It seems odd, researchers aver, that Brüstle allows funded research on established cell lines, but will not reward their ultimate efforts with patent protection. Some have even questioned whether, absent such protections, researchers will relocate to the United States and Asia, where patent protection is available, thus creating a European “brain drain.”

Many, however, argue that funding worries have been exaggerated. Chiefly, Brüstle only affects hESC patents obtained in EU member states, so EU researchers can simply apply for patents in the United States or Asia, where similar restrictions do not exist. As opponents note, however, some researchers may be unwilling to apply for patents abroad because they would have to disclose information that could otherwise be kept as trade secrets in the European Union. Importantly, Brüstle does not affect patents on related hESC technologies. Consequently, researchers may still obtain patents in the European Union for, for instance, mechanisms or devices for delivering cells. By shifting the focus to related technologies, researchers may still be able to secure investor funding for their efforts, despite Brüstle’s effects. Some have even suggested that Brüstle might actually accelerate hESC research because the ruling eliminates potential worries over unintentionally infringing on other researchers’ patents.

While these practical concerns are important, the enduring worry with Brüstle is its affect on moral issues surrounding stem cell research. In interpreting the meaning of “human embryo” in the Directive, the CJEU relied on the Directive’s legislative intent of preventing patentability where respect for human dignity could be harmed. The CJEU, therefore, adopted a wide definition of “human embryo,” which includes: 1) any fertilized human ovum; 2) any nonfertilized human ovum into which the cell nucleus from a mature human cell has been transplanted; and 3) any nonfertilized human ovum whose division and further development have been stimulated by parthenogenesis, i.e., the process by which an oocyte develops into an embryo without being fertilized by a spermatozoon.

There are two problems here. First, although the CJEU stressed that it must only offer a legal interpretation of the Directive, not broach ethical questions, it has unwittingly weighed in on the moral debate. Conservatives, progressives, and transhumanists have widely divergent viewpoints on the concept of human dignity. The Directive seems to embody a conservative approach to patentability of biotechnology. By blindly relying on the Directive’s approach, the CJEU has implicitly adopted this stance in Brüstle. Second, by adopting a particular stance on human dignity, the CJEU has undercut its efforts toward uniformity in the European Union. Member states do not all share the same cultural and religious values and, hence, do not share the same stance on human dignity. How can uniformity be maintained when Brüstle places the CJEU on one side of the debate?

The second issue in Brüstle is whether the challenged patent violates the Directive, which bars the patenting of an invention where its commercial exploitation is contrary to morality or ordre public (public policy). This, roughly, is the commodification argument, which comprised Greenpeace’s primary challenge to Dr. Brüstle’s patent. The CJEU noted that the aim of scientific research is distinguishable from industrial or commercial purposes. Because granting a patent by definition entails industrial or commercial application, however, the use of human embryos for purposes of research that constitutes the subject matter of a patent application cannot, the CJEU held, be separated from industrial and commercial use.

Entertaining the commodification argument, however, is worrisome because the argument is not well defined. An appeal to commodification is often used for its rhetorical force, rather than for sound reasoning. Most people likely oppose commodifying humans, but the argument itself rarely goes beyond this initial appeal. The CJEU conflates hESC research with commercial intentions in a way that plays on this rhetorical force. This issue is emblematic of the ambiguity that plagues Brüstle. Not only is “commodification” employed vaguely in the ruling, but we are also left uncertain of the meaning of other terms, such as “human dignity” and “morality,” upon which the CJEU relies. This confusion is highlighted by some researchers, who do not understand how the CJEU can deem their research immoral when member states’ governments do not. Moreover, embracing a consequentialist viewpoint on morality, some have questioned how their research can be immoral when it has such promising therapeutic possibilities.

Brüstle, ultimately, is worrisome because this ambiguity comes with a lack of future guidance, both legally and ethically. Stem cell research is a rapidly changing field, particularly considering recent advancements with induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. The CJEU’s definition of “human embryo” begs the question: Will iPSCs have the same fate as hESCs under EU patent law? Ethics has always had trouble pacing scientific discovery. The law, too, suffers from similar difficulties. Brüstle only further muddies the waters.

Nicholas J. Diamond, a lawyer by training, is currently finishing graduate work in bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Today drone pilots operate thousands of miles away from the battlefield. They must manage vast amounts of data and video images during exceptionally intense workdays. They are scrutinized by superiors for signs of stress, and to reduce such stress the Air Force is attempting shift changes, less physical isolation on the job, and more opportunities for rest.

Yet even as this remarkable new form of war fighting is becoming more widely recognized, there are at least two more possible technological transitions on the horizon that have garnered far less public attention. One is using brain-machine interface technologies to give the remote pilot instantaneous control of the drone through his or her thoughts alone. The technology is not science fiction: Brain-machine interface systems are already being used to help patients with paralytic conditions interact with their environments, like controlling a cursor on a computer screen.

In a military context, a well-trained operator, instead of using a joystick for very complicated equipment, may be able to process and transmit a command much more rapidly and accurately through a veritable mind-meld with the machine.

There are enormous technical challenges to overcome. For example, how sure can we be that the system is not interpreting a fantasy as an intention? Even if such an error were rare it could be deadly and not worth the risk.

Yet there is a way to avoid the errors of brain-machine interface that could change warfare in still more fundamental and unpredictable ways: autonomous weapons systems combining the qualities of human intelligence that neuroscience has helped us understand with burgeoning information and communications technologies.

Even now there are defensive weapons systems on U.S. naval ships that routinely operate on their own, but with human monitoring. A new automated weapons system has been deployed at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. This robot sentry is said to be the first that has integrated systems for surveillance, tracking, firing and voice-recognition. Reportedly it has an “automatic” mode that would allow it to fire without a human command, but that mode is not being used.

Robot warriors, proponents argue, would not be subject to the fatigue, fear and fury that often accompany the chaos of combat—emotions can result in accidental injuries to friends or even barbaric cruelties motivated by a thirst for revenge and a sense of power. Others say the proponents of robot warriors are naive: What would inhibit dictators or nonstate actors from developing robotic programs that ignored the laws of war?

Moreover, some security analysts already worry that remote control unacceptably lowers the bar for a technologically superior force to engage in conflict. And will their adversaries, frustrated by their lack of opportunity to confront an enemy in person, be more likely employ robotic terror attacks on soft targets in that enemy’s territory? Will this be the death knell of whatever ethos of honor remains in modern military conflict?

Another technology is even more radical. Neuroscientists and philosophers are exploring the parameters of “whole brain emulation,” which would involve uploading a mind from a brain into a non-biological substrate. It might be that Moore’s Law (the idea that computing capacity doubles about every two years) would have to persist for decades in order for a computer to be sufficiently powerful to receive an uploaded mind. Then again, the leap might come by means of the new science of quantum computing—machines that use atomic mechanical phenomena instead of transistors to manage vast amounts of information. Experiments with quantum computing are already being performed at a number of universities and national laboratories in the United States and elsewhere.

Robotic warriors whose computers are based on whole brain emulation raise a stark question: Would these devices even need human minders? Perhaps, if we’re not careful, these creatures could indeed inherit the Earth.

[...]

This article is excerpted from the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Online subscribers can read the rest of the article here. A version of this article appeared May 12, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Robot Soldiers Will Be a Reality—and a Threat.

Dr. Moreno is a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress. He is the author of “Mind Wars: Brain Research and the Military in the 21st Century” (Bellevue, 2012). 

Science Progress Editor-In-Chief Jonathan Moreno discussed these and other questions addressed in his updated book, Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21^st Century at the Center for American Progress on May 8. The discussion was moderated by PJ Crowley, a former State Department official who now leads an effort at Penn State University and the U.S. Army War College to enhance the civilian-military dialogue.

The two discussed the past, present, and future of brain research in the military and counterintelligence —a field Moreno has dubbed neurosecurity. Central to the discussion was a review of efforts to achieve not only therapeutic results, but even making warfighters “better than well,” and emerging ethical questions around new discoveries in genetics, remote warfare, and brain-machine interfaces could affect soldier selection and readiness, interrogation tactics, and the size and scope of the battlefield.

Enhanced interrogation

National security agencies began experimenting with psychoactive chemicals, such as LSD, in the 1950s to ascertain their effectiveness as a “truth serum” or to cause disarray among enemy combatants. As technology has advanced, so too have the ethical questions raised.

Today research on oxytocin—a brain chemical involved in forming trusting, emotional bonds and feelings of love and affection—raises questions about its use in artificially boosting trust in targets of interrogation. Though oxytocin is a naturally occurring chemical in the body, would its use against suspected terrorists during interrogation violate human rights law?

“Better than well”

Militaries have experimented with ways to enhance soldiers’ cognitive function for more than 100 years, noted Moreno. Sustained alertness was one of the first objectives of such research, and the Prussian army experimented with cocaine as far back as the late 1800s. Caffeine and nicotine were used for this purpose during the World Wars, and in Vietnam methamphedamine (speed) became the stimulant of choice for many.

In the 1980s a new drug, modafinil, entered the scene. Approved for the treatment of narcolepsy, the drug has been shown to extend alertness for as long as 60 to 70 hours among some people with normal sleep-wake cycles. The drug, branded as “Provigil,” has recently gone off patent, meaning that cheap generic versions of the drug will become available. Last year the People’s Liberation Army of China announced that it had developed its own “anti-sleep” pill.

In the new edition of Mind Wars, Moreno addresses new attempts by the Defense Department to improve soldier performance beyond alertness. One such area is in preventing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, using beta blockers—drugs that diminish the brain’s uptake of stress hormones.

While research in this area is young, some have suggested that giving this drug immediately after or even before stressful combat situations could help prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. But such tactics raise the possibility of also reducing potentially healthy feelings of shame, regret, and remorse. While some soldiers might prefer to avoid all of the negative emotions associated with combat, the reintegration of “guilt-free soldiers” into society comes with its own set of social questions and risks, Moreno and Crowley concluded.

Brain-digital interface, or “jacking-in”

On the horizon is the expanding field of brain-digital interface. Devices have already been built that use brain activity to control basic machinery, such as a prosthetic limb.  This can be achieved either through implantable devices that directly interface with the brain, or external neuro-modulation, perhaps integrated into a helmet.

As this technology improves, military commanders, or even smart computer algorithms, may one day be able to digitally monitor soldiers’ cognitive function. Such algorithms could potentially even intervene under certain circumstances, for example, by down regulating stress pathways for operatives in tense and isolated settings. With soldiers’ very minds being controlled to some extent by a digital device, the question of where we draw the line between man and machine becomes blurred.

Looking ahead: A human arms race?

These new neuroscience options raise the question of whether the traditional idea of a warfighter’s individuality and honor will have a place in the conflicts that lie ahead. And as military technologies have a tendency to bleed into society at large, how do we deal with their implications for civilian life? To answer this, Moreno and Crowley proposed two basic principles: First, the individual should have control over the contents of his or her mind. Second, the individual gets to decide who gets access.

As innovation in this field proceeds, Moreno also wondered whether we risk entering a human arms race, with militaries competing to have the most highly enhanced super soldiers. Such an arms race would have profound ethical implications, both for test subjects of the research and for how we view the balance between soldier as citizen and soldier as tool.

You can learn more about these questions by reading the new paperback edition of Mind Wars and by watching the event video.

The Obama administration saw the opportunity early in its tenure to meet these needs and reform the management of federal science agencies to protect science. The March 2009 presidential memorandum asked the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop guidelines to establish badly needed reforms, including protections for whistleblowers who witness abuses of science in agencies, guidelines for hiring based on scientific merit, and procedures to keep political appointees from interfering with agency scientists.

Thus began the long and ongoing process to implement a comprehensive and cohesive scientific integrity policy throughout the executive branch. (see the interactive timeline below for details) A story of broken deadlines, ensuing lawsuits, and overblown “scandals,” the process became controversial, at times even appearing to be at a halt. More than three years after President Obama issued the order, the vast majority of agencies that focus on science and technology have put in place strong new guidelines, some of which have had measureable impacts, but there remain a handful of agencies that have yet to finalize their policies and make them public.

The executive branch has 15 departments containing dozens of agencies, as well as dozens more independent agencies. Paring down which departments and agencies had science and technology as core parts of their mission and figuring out how to have uniformity across the departments while also allowing policies to adequately fit the needs of each different department or agency was a continually evolving process. The different internal organizations of the agencies—how they relate to outside research organizations, unions, and other stakeholders—made a one-size-fits-all policy impossible to imagine, much less implement.

Dr. Holdren, in an update on the White House’s science policy blog, noted: “Decisions had to be made about how to apply the new policies—whether, for example, they would cover contractors, grantees, and other categories of scientists and engineers not employed full time by the Federal government.” The daunting task at hand was to develop specific guidelines to which all agencies would be beholden but that were sufficiently flexible so each of the more than 20 federal agencies—from the Department of Agriculture to the Intelligence Community—could craft individual scientific integrity policies compliant with those requirements, yet customized to meet the unique organizational needs of each.

Drafting the initial guidelines

The ultimate goal President Obama declared was that “The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.” First, the president set a deadline for Dr. Holdren to “recommend a plan to achieve that goal throughout the executive branch.” Science Progress reported in October 2011 on the slow speed of the process, which was under pressure from presidential orders, inaugural promises, and the previous administration’s fudging of science. More than a year into the process, Dr. Holdren admitted that the process to create guidelines “has been more laborious and time-consuming than expected at the outset,” but he defended the process as being an “unprecedentedly open, Web-based process [that has] accept[ed] detailed input from stakeholders inside and outside government.”

Some groups however, seem to disagree. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility was the first to begin making requests for more information, eventually suing the Office of Science and Technology Policy for the release of documents showing the progress on scientific integrity guidelines. The office encouraged and accepted input in the initial phase of creating the guidelines. The public comment window for office guidelines was from April 23, 2009, to May 13, 2009, but the guidelines were not released until December 17, 2010, more than 18 months after the comment date ended.

When the guidelines were finally released, agencies got to work on crafting individual policies. The guidelines were received with mixed fanfare from the science policy community but were overall touted as having what it takes to make real progress in cleaning up integrity issues. The guidelines set out a number of core assurances that all agencies must incorporate into their policies, including:

1. Political officials shall not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings.
2. Selection of candidates for scientific positions shall be based primarily on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity.
3. Data and research used to support policy decisions will undergo peer review by qualified experts as appropriate.
4. Federal scientists may speak to the media and the public about scientific and technological matters based on their work.
5. Whistleblower protections will be enforced.

Each agency went about incorporating these guidelines differently, and some were more open and expeditious than others. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, meticulously poured over more than 25,000 public comments to one of its draft policies, while the Department of Defense has yet to release a publicly available set of policies as of this writing. The Union of Concerned Scientists has persistently called for the interim drafts of all agencies to be made public. National Public Radio went so far as to request the policy from the Intelligence Community through a Freedom of Information Act request. The public’s clamoring for a transparent process is understandable, given the violations that went unpunished under the Bush administration and Obama’s inaugural promise to restore scientific integrity.

Putting the new policies to the test

The need for strong scientific integrity enforcement policies and codes of conduct was underscored by the Department of the Interior’s botched response to a false controversy about polar bears in 2011. Under pressure from climate science denial groups, the department suspended a staff climate scientist named Dr. Charles Monnett, though there was no real evidence of misconduct. In response, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a complaint using the Department of the Interior’s “newly minted” scientific integrity policy on Dr. Monnett’s behalf. As the first agency to implement a scientific integrity policy under the Obama administration, it would be a good test run.

Suspecting Dr. Monnett’s suspension had been for political rather than scientific reasons, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility requested that the agency either specify specific allegations of scientific misconduct or reinstate Dr. Monnett. After determining there was no evidence of scientific misconduct, the Department of the Interior reversed Dr. Monnett’s suspension. Though the entire process needlessly cast suspicion upon climate science and embarrassment upon Dr. Monnett—thanks to the department’s aggressive implementation of the Office of Science and Technology Policy scientific integrity guidelines—science ultimately trumped politics. The case demonstrated the real necessity to develop and institutionalize these scientific integrity policies in a way that lasts now and into the future.

The “FDA Nine” case is another example of the need for such policies. As President Obama was taking office, the “FDA Nine” sent a whistleblowing letter to John Podesta, then co-chair of Obama’s transition team, that made it clear that there was “corruption within the FDA device review process, managerial misconduct, dangers to public health, welfare and safety, and retaliation against whistleblowers.”

All but two of the “FDA Nine” have been fired, presumably in retaliation for their whistleblowing. Six of the fired nine have since filed a lawsuit, claiming their private email was hacked so that allegedly corrupt Food and Drug Administration officials could spy on them and subsequently fire them in retaliation for whistleblowing. The Food and Drug Administration released its scientific integrity policy a week after the lawsuit was filed. While this case has yet to be decided, it makes all the more clear the need for permanent, consistent, and institutionalized scientific integrity policies.

The slow but real progress of scientific integrity policies

Coordinating the interests of agencies with diverse functions and management structures, the scientific community, the labor unions that represent federal science workers, and outside interest groups to produce a unified set of policies in every federal agency is a daunting task. But notwithstanding some criticism leveled at the process, the Office of Science and Technology Policy did offer a chance for the public to give input on what the guidelines should include and further encouraged the agencies to invite public comments on their draft policies. The Department of the Interior quickly released a draft policy for the public to comment on and soon after, the National Science Foundation, National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, and National Institute of Standards and Technology all followed.

Under the hot lights of subsiding scandals without resolution, concerned citizens were drawn to the idea that science could be used as a guide for smart policy and not as a political cudgel. And though the process has been messy, the task was immense. It has been made no easier by a political environment in which the very idea of scientific integrity itself has been co-opted by those who wish to promote an ideological agenda or make money through the exploitation of science. For instance, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)—who chairs the subcommittee on investigation for the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—used the slow pace of the initial process to send politically fueled letters to the Office of Science and Technology Policy asking for progress updates while awkwardly attempting to link the Obama administration to “climate gate.” In one of the letters, Rep. Broun “commend[ed] the President for taking proactive steps to ensure scientific integrity and transparency in the government,” but then went on to inappropriately link Obama administration policies with the hacked emails stolen from climate scientists in the United Kingdom.

Ultimately, though progress has been slow, history will judge the scientific integrity policies, not by the speed with which they were developed but by their quality and the lasting impact that they make. As of this writing, nearly every agency has publicly released finalized scientific integrity policies using the guidelines developed at the White House.

As President Obama declared more than three years ago, “It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

With the important role science plays in so many public policy decisions, keeping the scientific process above the fray is important. Considering the seeming ease with which science or scientists can be enveloped in conspiracy and the relative difficulty in undoing disinformation or damage wrought by kneejerk reactions, stakes for strong scientific integrity policies have never been higher.

Jason Thomas is an Intern with Science Progress and will be attending the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona in the fall. Image courtesy Michael Stebbins/SEforA.org.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Satellites show how bad polar ice melting is
A video that combines images from two different type of satellite technologies gives a unique view of the polar melting.

BIOTECHNOLOGY
Corporations of all stripes gather to discuss the buzz about bio
The Bio World Conference brought together many major corporate representatives, from the airline industry to the beverage industry. These diverse groups are all looking to bio-renewables to cut their petrochemical costs. When the cost of gas goes up a penny, United Airlines annual fuel spending goes up by $175 million, a major reason to be excited about potential bio-fuel market increase to stabilize prices.

ENERGY REGULATION
New fracking rules released
The Department of Interior released new “fracking” rules that now require drilling companies to divulge their carefully guarded chemical mixture used, after they have used it.

CYBERSECURITY
Stopping cyberattacks matrix style
A team of researchers at the University of Tulsa want to slow your internet down in order to send hyper-speed signals to “get in front” of an attack. By slowing internet traffic by a few milliseconds the researchers believe they can protect critical infrastructure targets before they are even attacked.

CLEAN ENERGY
Managing renewable expectations
Two Stanford energy experts have asked America to change its expectation toward renewable energy technology. Untangling investments in renewables from the measure of their success by how many jobs they initially create is important if we are going to ever drive down the manufacturing costs of these technologies, the authors argue.

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Your cellular service may soon vastly improve
If you live in a rural area and get little to no service, a FCC $300 million dollar incentive program for wireless providers may provide you with relief. The auction of the contract, set to end in mid-July, will target cellular tower construction and upgrade in sparsely populated areas based on the most recent census data.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
It’s not in your head, your allergies are worse
Buckle-up if you have had increased seasonal allergy symptoms because as global average temperature increases likely will exacerbate your allergies, research shows. The longer pollination season has led to higher pollen counts, with New Jersey recording record highs this February.

This Jason Thomas’s last edition of Science Progressing. He will be matriculating to the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona in the fall. 

A new report from the prominent global consulting firm McKinsey shows why solar photovoltaics have hit a tipping point.

As the economics of solar PV continue to improve steadily and dramatically, McKinsey analysts conclude that the total “economic potential” of solar PV deployment could reach 600-1,000 gigawatts (1 million megawatts) by 2020.

In the year 2000, the global demand for solar PV was 170 megawatts.

That doesn’t mean 1 million megawatts will get by 2020; it’s just an estimate of the economic competitiveness of solar PV. When factoring in real-word limitations like the regulatory environment, availability of financing, and infrastructure capabilities, the actual yearly market will be closer to 100 gigawatts in 2020.

As the economics of solar PV continue to improve steadily and dramatically, McKinsey analysts conclude that the yearly “economic potential” of solar PV deployment could reach 600-1,000 gigawatts (1 million megawatts) by 2020.

In the year 2000, the global demand for solar PV was 170 megawatts.

That doesn’t mean 1 million megawatts will get built per year after 2020; it’s just an estimate of the economic competitiveness of solar PV. When factoring in real-word limitations like the regulatory environment, availability of financing, and infrastructure capabilities, the actual yearly market will be closer to 100 gigawatts in 2020.

That could bring in more than $1 trillion in investments between 2012 to 2020.

The McKinsey report, appropriately named “Darkest Before Dawn,” highlights three crucial factors that are giving the solar industry so much momentum — even with such a violent shakeout occurring in the manufacturing sector today.

1. Because solar mostly competes with retail rates, the economic potential for the technology in high resource areas is far bigger than actual deployment figures would suggest. McKinsey predicts that the cost of installing a commercial-scale solar PV system will fall another 40 percent by 2015, growing the “unsubsidized economic potential” (i.e. the economic competitiveness without federal subsidies) of the technology to hundreds of gigawatts by 2020.

2. The most important cost reductions in the next decade will come not through groundbreaking lab-scale improvements, but through incremental cost reductions due to deployment. The McKinsey analysis shows how the dramatically these cumulative cost improvements can change the economics of solar. (For more, see: Anatomy of a Solar PV System: How to Continue “Ferocious Cost Reductions” for Solar Electricity.)

3. Solar is already competitive in a variety of markets today. As the chart below illustrates, there are at least three markets where solar PV competes widely today: Off-grid, isolated grids, and the commercial/residential sectors in high-resource areas. Of course, the competitiveness of the technology varies dramatically depending on a variety of local factors. But this comparison shows just how steadily the cross-over is approaching.

Wait, solar is actually competitive? Didn’t the death of Solyndra mean the death of the solar industry? Addressing the solar skeptics, the McKinsey analysts counter the notion that the solar sector is down for the count:

“Those who believe the solar industry has run its course may be surprised. Solar companies that reduce their costs, develop value propositions to target the needs of particular segments, and strategically navigate the evolving regulatory landscape can position themselves to reap significant rewards in the coming years.”

The short-term picture for solar is extraordinarily challenging, particularly for manufacturers trying to figure out how to make a profit with such a massive oversupply of panels on the market. But this is not an industry in its death throes; these are natural pains for a disruptive, fast-growing industry. The tipping point is upon us.

Stephen Lacey is Deputy Editor of Climate Progress.

Marian was one of many young women to attend the science fair, where young scientists of both genders showed off their science and engineering projects to President Barack Obama and members of the White House staff. This past Tuesday, the White House Council on Women and Girls released a video highlighting the young female scientists’ projects at an event featuring accomplished female science leaders. The event and video are small examples of the Obama administration’s continued support for the advancement of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, careers.

As President Obama said in remarks at the event, America “belong[s] at the cutting edge of innovation,” and innovation in science, engineering, and technology has been a historical driver of our nation’s economic success. It’s therefore critical to address the gender gap in STEM jobs, not only to advance equality and provide more career opportunities for women but also to maintain our competitive advantage with other countries in an increasingly globalized world. If half of American students feel discouraged from entering STEM careers, then economic competiveness becomes a whole lot harder. As the White House stated in a press release, “increasing the number of women engaged in … (STEM) fields is critical to our Nation’s ability to out-build, out-educate, and out-innovate future competitors.” Marian’s project is a prime example.

Public support for women in STEM careers is particularly important in light of a recent report showing that the timeline for STEM career advancement often harshly conflicts with women’s family goals. Early career advancements that are crucial for later success often take place when scientists are in their late 20s and early 30s, a time when many women are seeking to start their families. Generally, women’s disproportionate role in family caregiving puts them at a disadvantage compared to their male colleagues. As we noted in an earlier post, this leads to “smaller salaries and lab spaces on average, scanter resources, and stunted advancement through the STEM career pipeline.”

While women in STEM fields earn 33 percent more than their female counterparts in non-STEM careers, the lack of workplace flexibility remains a major barrier to women’s entrance and advancement in the field. To build upon their support of STEM women and ensure America’s continued global competitiveness in science and technology, the Obama administration must advocate for policies that allow women to balance their career goals with their family lives.

The emerging clean energy economy market is an excellent place for the Obama administration to push for flexible, family-friendly policies. As the Center for American Progress reported earlier, the Clean Energy Education and Empowerment initiative—of which the United States, Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom are members—seeks to “encourage women to join clean energy disciplines” through a variety of means. This past week the initiative announced a new partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which will delve into the details of how the partnership would work. The joint MIT-Clean Energy Education and Empowerment program will sponsor senior female energy ambassadors, create awards to recognize female leadership and innovation in clean energy, and host a symposium at MIT in September. Hopefully, this initiative can be a model for ways to support and advance women’s careers in STEM professions and help keep the United States on the cutting edge of the global innovation economy.

Alexandra Scheeler is the Special Assistant for K-12 Education Policy at American Progress.

But a just-released poll from the Yale and George Mason climate change communication programs reveals the lie in this claim. In the poll 63 percent of respondents said the United States should move forward to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do, compared to 3 percent who said we should await action by industrialized countries, 8 percent who said we should wait for both industrialized and developing countries to move, and 5 percent who said we shouldn’t bother reducing emissions.

In the same poll the public supported, by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent, requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if that would cost the average household an extra $100 per year.

The poll also found 65 percent of Americans supporting an international treaty to require a 90 percent cut in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Clearly, reports of the death of public support for action on global warming are overblown. Contrary to conservative assertions, that support is alive and kicking.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. To learn more about his public opinion analysis, go to the Media and Progressive Values page and the Progressive Studies program page of our website.

CYBERSECURITY
House passes cyber security bill
In the face of a White House veto threat, The House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, in a 248-168 vote on Thursday. The White House criticized the bill for lacking strong privacy protections. The bill has readily been compared to the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, for its threat to civil liberties but it has very different aims than SOPA’s concern with intellectual property theft. The bill is instead a House version of the Senate Republican SECURE-IT Act. The White Housetting minimum network security standards for critical infrastructure. In the batch of recent cybersecurity legislation the CyberSecurity Act contains the strongest privacy protections.

CLIMATE COMMUNICATION
Yale study shows bipartisan support for climate and energy policies (PDF)
When 52 precent of Republicans report that global warming “should be a priority,” it just might be time for GOP leaders to listen to their scientists, let alone their constituents. The Yale study also found that 92 percent of Americans favor developing sources of clean energy.

BIOTECHNOLOGY
White House releases National Bioeconomy Blueprint
The 43 page document lays out an analysis of how a focus on sustaining innovation in the bioeconomy benefits the nation in a competitive global market. From sustainable  energy sources to medical treatments, the administration is signaling future commitment to expanding biotechnology investments.

GREEN ENERGY
DOD shows going green saves lives
Not necessarily spurred by climate change, the DOD is interested in sustainability to reduce risk to personnel. The University of Kansas professor of journalism, Simran Sethi, says that the “apolitical” military “changes the whole perspective on what it means to engage in sustainability.”

INVESTING IN EDUCATION
California’s nets positive return on college investments
The University of Berkley completed a study that has shown 12 billion in annual economic revenue to the state is produced by investments in college graduates. The authors conclude that the economic benefit-cost ratio of California’s higher education investments exceed 3-to-1. With innovation in science and technology fueling much economic growth in California and across the country, this study holds as further argument to increase investments focused on graduating more STEM educated students.

CLIMATE CHANGE
Urban heat islands spur tree growth
Columbia University researchers have found that tree seedlings grew 8 times faster in urban centers than they did in cooler suburbs. ScienceDaily asks if the rise in temperature caused by heat islands is a peek into the future caused by overall temperature increases from global warming.

STEM CELLS
New stem cell found in brain
The new brain stem cell is able to form into several other cells including new brain cells. Similar cells in muscle, bone, cartilage and adipose tissue have previously been discovered and have been used to promote regeneration of damaged tissue in those areas. The discovery promises similar regenerative therapies for brain injuries of degenerative brain disorders.

NANO TECHNOLOGY
New nano regulations
Amid studies that have found nanoparticle can dramatically affect nutrient uptake, the FDA has issued tentative regulations for manufacturers using the particles. The non-binding drafts of the regulation is open for comment for 90 days, but encourages manufactures using nanoparticles in food or packaging to contact the FDA as their products may soon require additional safety testing.

ENVIRONMENT
Russian arctic oil spill
Oil flowed unimpeded from a well in the arctic for 37 hours beginning last Friday. The spill is believed to have gushed at some 500 tons per hour and covered some 8,000 square meters of land.

Jason Thomas compiled and summarized this week’s news.

Today, the Obama Administration announced its commitment to strengthening bioscience research as a major driver of American innovation and economic growth.  The National Bioeconomy Blueprint outlines steps that agencies will take to drive the bioeconomy—economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences—and details ongoing efforts across the Federal government to realize this goal.

The bioeconomy emerged as an Administration priority because of its tremendous potential for growth and job creation as well as the many other societal benefits it offers. A more robust bioeconomy can enable Americans to live longer and healthier lives, develop new sources of bioenergy, address key environmental challenges, transform manufacturing processes, and increase the productivity and scope of the agricultural sector while generating new industries and occupational opportunities.

A growing U.S. population requires increased health services and more material resources including food, animal feed, fiber for clothing and housing, and sources of energy and chemicals for manufacturing. Recent advances in the biological sciences are allowing more and more of these needs to be met not with petroleum-based products and other non-renewable resources but with materials that are quite literally home-grown. Indeed, the convergence of biology with engineering and other sciences—including physics, chemistry, and computer sciences—is proving to have tremendous power to generate new scientific discoveries, new products,  new markets, and new high-skilled jobs. The benefits can be seen in every sector of the economy, from agriculture to healthcare and from energy production to environmental monitoring and stewardship. Biobased materials are also proving to be excellent and sustainable substitutes for hydrocarbon-based raw materials in a number of industrial and manufacturing processes.

Research is a key component, but it’s not enough to ensure a successful American bioeconomy. In the biomedical domain, public-private partnerships can help the Nation achieve the twin goals of improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. Updated bioeconomy-related education and training efforts can better equip a 21^st century workforce with the skills needed to succeed in an increasingly competitive global arena.

And unnecessary or overly burdensome regulatory barriers must be removed to accelerate the advancement of bioinventions from laboratories to marketplaces while ensuring adequate attention to environmental and health concerns that may be raised by scientists’ new facility with biological systems. The Bioeconomy Blueprint outlines five strategic imperatives for a bioeconomy with the potential to generate new markets and economic growth:

1) Support R&D investments that will provide the foundation for the future bioeconomy.
2) Facilitate the transition of bioinventions from research lab to market, including an increased focus on translational and regulatory sciences.
3) Develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health.
4) Update training programs and align academic institution incentives with student training for national workforce needs.
5) Identify and support opportunities for the development of public-private partnerships and precompetitive collaborations—where competitors pool resources, knowledge, and expertise to learn from successes and failures.

Although progress is being made in all of these areas, the Blueprint calls upon Federal agencies to accelerate their efforts to harness the biological sciences for the benefit of the Nation.

Looking forward, it will be important to assess the impact of these efforts and apply any new metrics for measuring changes in investment, infrastructure, jobs, and more.  We will continue to collect comments on the Bioeconomy Blueprint and welcome new ideas for how we can wield America’s leadership in biological innovation toward spurring economic growth and solving critical challenges in manufacturing, energy, health, agriculture, and environment. Please email comments to bioeconomy@ostp.gov.

Mary Maxon is Assistant Director for Biological Research and Elizabeth Robinson is a Student Volunteer at OSTP.

With Lance Armstrong retired and most of the other top riders expelled for illegal drug use, Landis had become one of the favorites. He was leading when in stage 16 he fell to eleventh place. Then, just as his chances of winning seemed dashed, Landis won the next stage going away and went on to ride the Champs-Élysées in the winner’s yellow jersey.

A few days later, Landis’s team announced he had failed a test for banned steroids. Landis appealed the ban, raised an estimated $1M for his defense, and wrote a 300-page book titled, “Positively False: the Real Story of how I won the Tour de France.”

After years of denial, in 2010 Landis reversed himself and admitted that from 2002 through 2006 he had used a grab-bag of banned substances and methods. Why did he finally have to give up his denial? Because the carbon isotope test proved beyond reasonable doubt that he had doped with synthetic testosterone.

Testosterone is mostly carbon. Synthetic testosterone is made entirely from plants, which have a different carbon isotope ratio than our environment overall. The carbon in Landis’s body had the distinctive plant ratio, proving beyond reasonable doubt that he had doped with synthetic testosterone.

So how do scientists use the method to confirm that humans are causing global warming?

Since 1800, CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere has risen 40% and because of the greenhouse effect, warmed the planet. The obvious source of the added carbon is the 330 billion tons of carbon that burning fossil fuels has added to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Yet global warming deniers deny this obvious fact. Well then, let’s prove it.

First, coal, oil, and natural gas also come from plants and also have the distinctive carbon isotope ratio of plants. As CO2 in the atmosphere has built up steadily, its isotopic composition has shifted just as steadily in the direction of plant carbon. That tells us the added carbon is coming from plants. But what kind of plants? That question we can also answer.

One carbon isotope, C14, is radioactive and dies away to undetectable levels in 50,000 years or so. Fossil fuels, being millions of years old, have no C14 left. Adding ancient carbon should have lowered the proportion of C14 in the atmosphere—and it has. For the last 50 years, as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has increased, its C14 ratio has fallen steadily.

Just as the carbon isotopes prove that Landis doped his body, they prove beyond reasonable doubt that humans are doping the atmosphere with ancient plant carbon, carbon from fossil fuels.

Unlike people, isotopes do not lie.

James Lawrence Powell is the author of The Inquisition of Climate Science. Powell is also the executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, a partnership among government agencies and laboratories, industry, and higher education dedicated to increasing the number of American citizens with graduate degrees in the physical sciences and related engineering fields. This article is cross-posted with permission with the Columbia University Press blog.

The recently passed House budget resolution would reduce discretionary spending dramatically, and many are concerned about the potential impacts of these cuts on federal R&D, especially in light of the looming across-the-board cuts known as the sequestration; yet it has not been clear exactly what the impacts might be. To try to answer this question, we’ve produced an estimate that gets at some actual dollar figures and percentage changes, organized by R&D category. The estimate is based on House (PDF) and Administration (PDF) spending proposals, analyses of the automatic spending cuts in the Budget Control Act, and current R&D spending patterns, and additionally relies on a couple reasonable assumptions explained below.

What have we found? In short, the impacts of the House budget on the federal research enterprise could be substantial, especially when coupled with the sequester. The budget could reduce total baseline spending in key budget accounts by 15 percent below the President’s budget request, amounting to a three percent cut in total R&D from FY 2012 and a five percent cut in nondefense R&D, without accounting for the sequestration. Factoring in these additional cuts, the House budget could yield reductions in total R&D of up to 12 percent below the current year, with nondefense R&D receiving a disproportionate share of the cuts. Over the next decade, the House budget could reduce nondefense R&D by up to 27 percent, or $161 billion, below the President’s request. While most research areas would be hard-hit, some would fare worse than others.

The Basics: What’s a Budget Resolution?

A budget resolution is not law, and it does not actually allocate funding to federal agencies. What it does do is set an overall framework that Congress must follow during the appropriations process, by establishing the overall spending level for the year. The Senate is unlikely agree to the budget passed by the House, so the House’s budget resolution will act as the guide for the House alone. Budget resolutions also recommend spending levels by budget function, for the next year and for each year over the next decade. Budget functions are simply categories of spending: there’s one for agriculture, one for defense, one for Social Security, and so on. There are 20 functions in all, though 98 percent of federal R&D funding is contained in only eight functions. These are the eight we focused on (see the full brief for the complete list).

It’s important to remember that no one can actually say how the House budget might really impact R&D funding, because budget resolutions are simply not that detailed. Their numbers only address broad budget categories, and not specific agencies or programs. However, even these broad numbers can say quite a bit about overall spending priorities in key areas. We used the House’s proposed spending in these broad categories, coupled with earlier analyses of the automatic spending cuts and current R&D patterns, to infer potential impacts.

Data and Some Key Assumptions

There are a few pieces of information that went into the analysis. First, of course, were the broad categorical spending levels proposed by the House and the Administration, tabulated by budget function. Second, we looked at the ratio of R&D funding within each budget function. For instance, spending in the “defense” budget function is quite high, but only 14 percent of it actually goes to R&D; for energy, the R&D ratio is much higher. We assumed that these ratios would hold steady in future years, even as total spending might change. This is a fairly safe assumption, as the ratios have been surprisingly stable over the past decade.

Lastly, we included Congressional Budget Office estimates of the automatic spending cuts required by the Budget Control Act. These spending cuts require certain amounts be reduced from defense and nondefense spending over the course of the decade. There are actually two versions of these cuts: the version passed by Congress and contained in current law, and an alternative version proposed in the House budget. This alternative version basically shifts future cuts away from defense and onto nondefense categories, but is unlikely to be accepted by the Senate. We compared the impacts of both of these versions on federal R&D; to do so, we made the working assumption that the nondefense cuts would be distributed proportionally across most agencies.

What We Found

There are a few different ways to slice the findings, since we compared multiple scenarios. We’ll take them one at a time.

Baseline spending (no sequestration). If we just look at baseline spending between the President’s budget and the House budget—without worrying about the sequester for now—it appears the House budget would reduce total discretionary spending by 5 percent, or about $39 billion below the President’s request. This is not distributed evenly, as nondefense would actually be cut by 15 percent, or $43 billion (defense would get an increase relative to the President’s budget). This works out to about 8 percent less for nondefense R&D than the President’s budget, and 5 percent less than in FY 2012.

But not all research areas would be effected evenly: clean energy and energy efficiency R&D would be effectively cut in half. R&D at general science agencies (like the National Science Foundation or NASA) would receive a 6 percent cut from their current budget. Environmental research at places like EPA or the U.S. Geological Survey could see a 4 percent cut. Health research—primarily the National Science Foundation—would receive only a 1 percent cut. See the below table for more detail (click to enlarge).

But this doesn’t factor in the sequestration, which is where the real cutting will begin. Remember again that there are two versions of the sequestration: they both would achieve about the same overall reduction, but the House version would be much worse for nondefense R&D.

Current Law Sequestration. Under the sequestration as currently written, across-the-board cuts (of around 8 percent in nondefense and 10 percent in defense, give or take) would take effect in January 2013. Applying these automatic cuts to the House budget could yield around 12 percent reductions to R&D (16 percent in nondefense) below the President’s budget in FY 2013, and around 10 percent reductions over the next decade. This works out to around $17 billion less in FY 2013, and about $132 billion less over the decade.

Alternative Sequestration. The alternative sequestration opens the door to shifting all of these automatic spending cuts onto nondefense programs over the long term, allowing the defense budget to continue to grow steadily. It would also roll back the first year of the sequestration. It should be noted again that this alternative is unlikely to pass the Senate. Applying this unlikely alternative sequestration to the House budget would produce a much better result than the current-law sequester in FY 2013: R&D would only be cut by 3 percent (nondefense by 8 percent), since there would actually be no automatic cuts to apply next year. The long-term outlook could be similar: 10 percent reductions to total R&D over the decade. There is one very important difference, however: nondefense R&D could be cut severely, by 27 percent or $161 billion over the decade. Conversely, defense R&D would rise slightly, by about 3 percent. The graphs on this page show the differences in defense, nondefense, and total R&D under the different scenarios through 2017 (click to enlarge).

Download the Brief (PDF)

Matthew Hourihan is the Director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at AAAS. This article is reposted with permission from the AAAS website.

Science Progressing is your weekly guide to the science and technology policy news you should not have missed. Did we leave anything out? Tweet or facebook us and let us know.

ENVIRONMENT
BP Creatures
Two years after the BP oil spill, severely deformed fish and shellfish are increasingly found in along the Gulf Coast. Shrimp with large growths and no eyes, crabs with rotting or partial shells and fish with lesions and missing eye sockets are some of what fishermen are pulling out of Louisiana waters.

INVESTING IN SCIENCE
NIST set to gain 10 percent
Close to the $857 million NIST requested and Obama proposed, it looks like the National Institute of Standards and Technology will clear the chopping block with $830 million. The 10 percent increase from 2011 is a sizable gain considering the flat or cutback proposals for other science budgets.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Large majority of Americans connect extreme weather to climate change
A Yale University poll has found that by 2 to 1, Americans believe weather is getting worse in recent years. This detailed study even asked about “several high profile extreme weather events” and found a large majority of Americans attribute global warming to making them “worse.”

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE
Buckyballs nearly double lifespan of lab rats
A study carried out in France administered olive-oil infused with spherically arranged carbon molecules called buckyballs to test for toxicity. Instead of being toxic the buckyballs extended the life of lab rats from 22 to 42 months.

FUNDING SCIENCE
NIH budget looks to gain 3.3 percent
The total is $100 million less than what Obama proposed in his budget but is still a gain from over last year. The budget still needs approval by the appropriations committee. The bill being considered left Obama’s funding level intact for education, major research facilities, and operating expenses.

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE
Print Your Drugs
Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created polymer gel vessels, “action-ware,” that can be used in commercially available 3d printers to literally print different pharmaceutical drugs. The technology is at a very early stage, but the implications of scaled possibilities are endless.

STEM EDUCATION
2012 Great Moonbuggy Race Winners
The annual NASA sponsored event challenges students to create a human powered buggy that can traverse a course that resembles the lunar surface. First place in the college division went to racers from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and first place in the high school division went to Petra Mercado High School of Humacao, Puerto Rico.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Albedo effect: white roofs and light pavement
A new study by the University of Concordia, Canada has found that a city can help to increase the reflectivity of sunlight back into space- the albedo effect, by painting roofs white and using light colored pavements. If done worldwide it would have the same impact as taking all vehicles off the road for 50 years.

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE
Quantum Improvement on Biosensors
University of California, Santa Barbara researchers have designed a biosensor that utilizes quantum mechanics. The sensors can be programed to detect specific biomolecules like screening for certain blood borne cancers or other pathogens and give results instantaneously.

Jason Thomas compiled and summarized this week’s news.

For the United States and the international community, this region is critical because of its potential for future instability. The proximity of Algeria and Morocco to Europe, Nigeria’s emerging role as one of Africa’s most strategically important states, and Niger’s ongoing struggles with governance and poverty all demand attention. Northwest Africa’s porous borders and limited resources, which allow Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to flourish there, suggest that there is no time to waste in developing better and more effective policies for the region.

The climate, migration, and security nexus is a key test case because it is likely to exacerbate all of these existing risk factors. Climate change alone poses a daunting challenge. No matter what steps the global community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is inevitable. The effects are already being felt today and are projected to intensify as climate change worsens. All of the world’s regions and nations will experience some of the effects of this transformational challenge.

Changing environmental conditions are likely to prompt human migration, adding another layer of complexity. In the 21st century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by the slow or sudden onset of climate change. While experts continue to debate the details of the causal relationship between climate change and human migration, climate change is expected to aggravate many existing migratory pressures around the world. Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian crises in areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.

Conflict and insecurity present the third layer of the nexus. This final layer is the most unpredictable, both within nations and transnationally, and will force the United States and the international community to confront climate and migration challenges within an increasingly unstructured security environment. The post-Cold War decades have seen a diffusion of national security interests and threats. U.S. security is increasingly focused on addressing nonstate actors and nontraditional sources of conflict and instability. The potential for the changing climate and associated migration to induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability is now recognized in national security circles.

This paper tracks how the overlays and intersections of climate change, migration, and security create an arc of tension in Northwest Africa comprising Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco. These four nations, separated by the Sahara Desert, are rarely analyzed as a contiguous geopolitical region. Yet they are linked by existing international migration routes, which thread up from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean coast, moving people and cargo into Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and onward to Europe. Within the region, seasonal labor migration is widespread, particularly in areas vulnerable to rainfall fluctuations.

We seek to examine what will happen when the effects of climate change interact with internal and transnational security challenges along these well-traveled routes, and connect those questions to the strategic interests of the United States, Europe, and the transatlantic community.

Why we must engage in this arc of tension

Why should the U.S. and international policymakers be concerned about this nexus linking climate, migration, and security in Northwest Africa? Challenges related to the mitigation of carbon emissions as well as disaster risk management and economic and human security in the region alongside the need for a secure and stable global economy require strong partners and substantial capacities. Relatively minor investments can create significant progress toward improving security and preparing the region for worsening climate conditions and increased migration. The costs of livelihood security, irrigation, improved migration monitors, and regional water cooperation pale alongside the likely future costs of humanitarian disaster, long-term security gaps, and conflict.

Further, among these particular countries, climate and migration patterns complicate a difficult political terrain. The United States and Europe are already involved in ongoing counterterrorism activities to help stem the growth of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (found in Algeria, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and potentially in Nigeria and Morocco as well) and its possible linkage to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula through this corridor. The ongoing conflict in the oil-producing Niger Delta and the increasing violence of the insurgent Boko Haram movement in northern and central Nigeria, punctuated by the August 2011 suicide bombing of the U.N. building in Abuja, further underline the potential for instability, as does the Tuareg insurgency in northern Mali.

The United States and other countries have a vested interest in helping ensure that areas with weak or absent governance structures—where poverty, environmental degradation, and grievances over central governments and energy production coincide—do not become future recruiting grounds for extremists. The possible impacts of climate-related migration in such fragile situations could be destabilizing.

At the same time increased U.S. involvement in counterterrorism activities holds the potential for a serious backlash. Western involvement in its many forms could serve as a recruitment tool for those who see such efforts as a pretext for American military hegemony and establishing a forward presence in the region to secure future energy supplies and natural resources. Furthermore, geopolitical calculations of Western interest must acknowledge the added dimension of the uprisings in the Middle East and Maghreb. By focusing too narrowly on counterterrorism, U.S. policy risks being at odds with democratization movements. Maghreb states are also wary of how their cooperation with NATO on the Mediterranean Sea appears to domestic groups concerned with independence from the West.

This new pressure for transparency, both within the region’s governments and regarding U.S. policy, puts a premium on nontraditional approaches to security—especially with regards to human security as defined by the United Nations to ensure the security of the individual as opposed to the state. This approach aims to mitigate threats to human conditions—including socioeconomic, political, food, health, environment, community, and personal safety—and maintain social stability.

Major U.S. imperatives in the region, including counterterrorism and reform, would be served by supporting, for example, Morocco’s efforts to peacefully settle the Western Sahara dispute or Nigeria’s efforts to quell ethno-religious violence. Establishing effective governance in Western Sahara and domestic stability in northern Nigeria will allay economic uncertainty in the region and reassure other states confronting North-South and Christian-Muslim divides. Periodic attacks on oil pipelines and facilities in the Niger Delta have already affected world oil prices, while widespread bank robberies blamed on Boko Haram undermine Nigeria’s economic growth. Improving human security will lead to economic improvement.

Economic stability will in turn allow industrialized countries to cultivate greater investment in the region, which is sustaining 4 percent to 7 percent growth (with the exception of Niger at 2.5 percent), despite the lingering consequences of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. While U.S. foreign direct investment in these four countries remains predominantly in the oil and mining sectors, the region represents a significant future market for goods and services. Two-way trade between the United States and Nigeria totaled more than $34 billion in 2010, and American foreign direct investment reached $5.4 billion in 2009, making the United States the largest foreign investor in Nigeria.

Moreover, Nigeria is already a critical partner in advancing U.S. humanitarian goals. The nation’s involvement in six U.N. peace operations in Africa significantly reduces the burden on the United States in responding to regional crises.

As these countries’ economies grow and diversify, they will be in a much stronger position to manage slow- and sudden-onset climate disasters, associated migration, and potential conflict. U.S. policy supporting these efforts in the region will have to balance the need for security and reform, such that these aspects are mutually reinforcing; too great a focus on either aspect will risk instability undermining reform or loss of credibility rendering security impossible.

The arc of tension begins in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous state. Nigerians are already seeing early signs of climate change in a rising sea level, more frequent flooding, and outbreaks of disease in the southern megacity of Lagos, home to more than 10 million people. In the northern part of the country, expanding desertification—which refers to the degradation of land productivity in dry land areas—has caused 200 villages to disappear.

These opposing pressures, driven by climate change, are expected to push internal migrants toward the center of Nigeria. At the same time a rapidly growing and increasingly urban population is seeking greater economic opportunities. The combination of these demographic trends and economic aspirations spur many Nigerians to move north. Existing international migration routes link people leaving Nigeria to Niger, where they cross into the Maghreb states and potentially Europe.

Human mobility and climate change in Nigeria occur amid serious threats to national and local governance. The southern Niger Delta has supported an insurgency since the 1990s, driven in part by anger with corruption and the mismanagement of the profits from the region’s booming oil industry. In the northern part of the country, religious tensions have turned violent, with more than 800 people having been killed in the central Nigerian city of Jos since January 2011. Boko Haram has undertaken attacks of increasing violence, including the U.N. bombing, and is behind a string of more than 100 armed bank robberies targeting lenders in north. A Christmas Day 2011 bombing outside Abuja killed more than 40 Christian worshippers, provoking a brutal police crackdown.

Although the unrest in the Niger Delta and the violence in the north are geographically distinct, they both have their roots in underlying dissatisfaction with a government that has failed to sustain an inclusive, accountable, and transparent state. As the effects of climate change worsen, even more will be demanded of Nigeria’s limited governance capacity.

Migrants from Nigeria and other sub-Saharan states who reach Niger, the second link in the arc of tension, enter one of Africa’s most desperate states. Niger has the world’s second highest fertility rate and a median age of only 15 years. Most of the booming population is dependent on rain-fed agriculture, but acreage of arable land has decreased dramatically over the past 50 years, and frequent droughts have impoverished and indebted many Nigeriens. In 2010 a severe drought left 7.1 million Nigeriens without adequate food. Climate change is expected to make the country hotter and more prone to drought, erosion, and loss of forested land, exacerbating already difficult conditions.

Niger also faces ongoing international and internal migration. Due to pressures from desertification and drought, some Nigerien pastoralists have shifted their migratory routes southwards into Nigeria in search of animal fodder and better grazing. In addition, unusual flooding in 2010 damaged many homes and farmland, creating an internal refugee situation and prompting other Nigeriens to seek shelter and employment in Nigeria, Libya, and the Ivory Coast.

Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger, is a key waypoint for sub-Saharan migrants moving north, and a hotspot on the arc of tension. While estimates of the number transiting the country on this path are scarce, some research indicates that at least 65,000 Sub-Saharan migrants passed through Niger toward Algeria and Libya in 2003 alone. About half of these migrants are thought to come from the underdeveloped central and southern parts of Nigeria.

Niger also faces a difficult security situation, including conflict over rangeland and water wells in the southeast and the north (especially near the Malian border), mineral-related conflict in the north, and the pervasive threat of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In northern Agadez, home to the world’s second-largest uranium mine, a 2007 drought-driven rebellion by the Tuareg people led the government to dispatch 4,000 troops.

Additionally, Niger is within the range of operations of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which is known to engage in kidnapping and drug trafficking in the broader region. Agricultural and pastoral livelihoods have been made more difficult by the effects of climate change; this has translated to increasing numbers of disenfranchised youth, who security experts believe are more easily recruited to assist Al Qaeda in return for money and food.

Furthermore, some of the effects of climate change, such as desertification and flooding, are thought to benefit Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb by depopulating rural areas in which the group can then operate more freely. The Nigerien government has reorganized its security services in the hope of encouraging Nigerians not to engage in violent acts; however, the government has been accused of being incompetent or even unwilling to take action even when information about Al Qaeda is received.

Algeria is the third link in the arc of tension. Like much of the Maghreb region, Algeria faces a future made increasingly difficult by the effects of climate change, including increasing temperatures, decreasing rainfall, and a rising sea level. Water is of particular concern—the country already ranks second among African states in terms of water scarcity—as is desertification.

Additionally, climate variability in sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to indirectly affect Algeria by contributing to migration along the arc of tension and other migratory paths. The southern spread of the Sahara Desert is already thought to contribute to seasonal migration from sub-Saharan Africa toward Algeria and the Maghreb.

Algeria experienced a decade of internal violence in the 1990s. This conflict gave rise to the terrorist organization that eventually became Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Although violence has declined significantly since the early 2000s, Algeria has still experienced close to 1,000 incidents of political violence since the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington, including kidnappings and high-profile bombings. Large ungoverned spaces and poor border controls allow migrants to move north from Niger, but also create space in which groups such as Al Qaeda can operate. Tamanrasset, a major way station for migrants in southern Algeria, is the new home of a joint military command center between Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, which is meant to confront the threat from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The arc of tension ends in Morocco, historically one of Africa’s most stable states. Like Algeria, water shortage due to climate change is a serious concern in Morocco. Rainfall is projected to decrease by roughly 20 percent by the end of the century, according to a range of projections. The country faces a rising sea level along the coast, including in agricultural areas in the north, which may lead to increasing salinity in freshwater aquifers. With 44 percent of the country’s workforce engaged in agriculture, this development poses a fundamental challenge to the current Moroccan economy. Ultimately, the shifting climate may result in internal migration, forcing rural populations to move in search of more fertile land and eroding the geographic separation of ethnic groups.

Morocco is also under pressure from existing flows of international migrants, many of whom enter the country in an attempt to continue on to Europe. Two Spanish enclaves on the Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, are key destinations for Africans seeking to enter the European Union. In 2005 efforts by hundreds of migrants to break through the fences surrounding the enclaves led to several deaths and resulted in the erection of more sophisticated border fences. While the impetus for migration into Morocco is difficult to determine with precision, researchers focused on the country point to decreasing rain and lower crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa as a factor in the decision to migrate.

The same enclaves that have attracted migrants seeking a chance to enter Europe have also drawn the attention of Al Qaeda. In 2006 Ayman al-Zawahiri, then Al Qaeda’s second in command, called for the liberation of Ceuta and Melilla. Thus far the terrorist network has reportedly not been successful in carrying out an attack in Morocco. An April 2011 café bombing, however, bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation. In January 2011 the Moroccan government arrested 27 alleged Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb members along the border with the Western Sahara.

What policymakers can do about this arc of tension

The overlapping challenges of climate change, migration, and security in these four nations pose a critical and complex problem for policymakers. While it is difficult to draw a direct line of causality from specific climate change hazards to the decision to migrate or to a particular conflict, the interrelationships between these factors mean that viewing and addressing them in isolation is no longer sufficient.

Indeed, this particular nexus demands policy solutions that cut across levels of governance and drive the U.S. government to synthesize traditionally distinct fields such as defense, diplomacy, and development. These new, complex challenges will force the United States and the international community to finally break from a Cold War-era understanding of security and move toward a more individual-based concept of human security.

At a policy level, the Obama administration’s first National Security Strategy document in 2010 prioritized conflict prevention, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, access to markets, and the protection of “carbon sinks” (places in nature that absorb carbon out of the atmosphere) in Africa, while the 2011 National Military Strategy emphasized security partnerships in the Trans-Sahel region. These current efforts are limited and not yet institutionalized, and still do not fully incorporate the environmental realities underlying the challenges to the region.

Overall, U.S. foreign assistance to the region is approximately $668 million. Nigeria receives $614 million, primarily for health and police training; Algeria $2.5 million, for counterterrorism and military training; Niger $17 million, mostly for food aid; and Morocco $35 million, for military and development assistance.

Internationally, the International Monetary Fund currently has no loans to the four countries. Algeria has accepted equity investments and loans totaling $82 million from the International Finance Corporation, the equity investment arm of the World Bank, but no loans from the World Bank itself. Nigeria has $4 billion in outstanding loans to the World Bank, including its cheapest lending arm, the International Development Association, with 2011 loans close to half a billion dollars aimed at stoking economic growth and employment in non-oil sectors.

The World Bank maintains a total commitment of $1.5 billion in Morocco and plans to disburse $200 million more in 2012 in investment lending. In addition, the bank has disbursed nearly $1.6 billion to Niger, including $70 million in 2010 and $41 million in 2011. And the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is currently mobilizing $1 billion in insurance capacity for the Middle East and North Africa, including Morocco, to ensure that foreign direct investment in the region does not suffer because of the nearby Arab Spring revolutions.

Lastly, the U.S. military’s counterterrorism commitment to the region was bolstered by the creation of African Command, or AFRICOM, in 2008, tasked with developing the region’s professional military capabilities. In 2006 the United States allocated $500 million for the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership to train and equip African armed forces, including the four states in this report.

These are the traditional instruments of development and security, but the conversation about national security and military strategy in the United States is changing. With the U.S. government facing at least several years of austerity budgets, defense and foreign affairs spending will not escape the cuts unscathed. If properly executed, budget cuts could pare down unnecessary spending in the United States’ massive defense budget (now larger than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War buildup), while protecting the core defense, diplomacy, and development capabilities needed to confront complex crises.

If mishandled, though, the cuts could have a dramatic impact on nonmilitary international affairs funding. Rebalancing and reorienting these capabilities will help the United States create more effective and efficient programs in countries like Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco. The United States cannot hope to encourage stable, fair, and effective governance if we continue to understaff and underfund our civilian aid and foreign-affairs capabilities. Thus, a thorough review of the relationship between defense, diplomacy, and development is required. The division of labor between these three branches of our foreign and security policy establishment must be adapted to a new and rapidly changing post-Cold War environment.

This report examines the arc of tension to understand how prepared we are to achieve this new balance. Through analysis of the climate, migration, and security factors outlined above, it lays out a series of recommendations to reorient U.S. and international policy. These recommendations are also intended to inform the transatlantic and multilateral conversation on the climate, migration, and security nexus. Briefly, we recommend a new approach.

Niger and Nigeria are rarely discussed in conjunction with Algeria and Morocco. The first two countries are usually considered separately, as part of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, respectively. The United States pursues very different forms of engagement, development assistance, and diplomacy with each of these countries, despite existing migratory flows that link all four nations. We argue that this practice is outdated.

Secondly, the nexus of climate change, migration, and conflict produces pressure points that need comprehensive regional approaches. From a regional perspective, and based upon four case studies, we highlight priority issues facing the United States, the international community, and regional policy actors in addressing this unprecedented challenge and provide recommendations to shape the future of U.S. and international foreign assistance.

Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at the American Progress, where his work as member of the National Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and emerging democracies, especially Turkey, Mexico, and Brazil. Laura Conley is a graduate student in international relations at the University of Chicago. Previously, she was a Research Associate for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. This article is republished from the Center for American Progress website. Download the PDF of this report here, and of the introduction and summery here. 

Today, critics dismiss clean energy as “too expensive,” or “unreliable.”

Some of the most successful innovators and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are shaking their heads at this characterization.

Deriding new technology is as old as innovation itself. In 1876, Western Union said the telephone was “inherently of no value to us.” Fifty years later, a radio pioneer called television “commercially and financially…an impossibility…of which we need waste little time dreaming.”

But Stephan Dolezalek, a leading Silicon Valley tech investor, argues in a new paper that companies—or countries—ignore disruptive technologies at their own peril. Kodak went bankrupt because it missed the boat on its own invention: the digital camera. Dolezalek gives voice to those who worry that America faces a “Kodak moment” if it treats the emerging $2.3 trillion clean energy market the same way.

Dolezalek’s paper captures what’s being said in Silicon Valley—among technologists, investors and clean tech titans. We’ve brought his argument to Washington in “An American Kodak Moment.”

In a little-noticed announcement last fall, the PLA proclaimed that it has developed an anti-sleep pill called Night Eagle.  Apparently the putative communists/state capitalists haven’t mastered the Madison Avenue branding arts: “Night Eagle” seems better suited for an erectile dysfunction treatment than an aid for pulling all-nighters.  (Though one could imagine a functional connection.)

The little blue pill’s unveiling came as part of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences’ 60^th anniversary celebration, but with no word on its ingredients.  Nonetheless, the formulation is almost certainly less revolutionary than it might seem within loyal party cadres.  In the U.S. a drug called modafinil (marketed as Provigil), has been around for decades, approved by the Food and Drug Administration as effective in the treatment of narcolepsy.  Controlled studies have shown that modafinil not only helps patients with sleep disorders but can keep people with normal sleep cycles awake and alert for days.  Physicians have long prescribed modafinil “off-label” for insomniacs, shift workers, long-haul truck drivers and travelers who have to cross time zones.  However, the risks of long-term use are unknown.  One would surely be ill-advised to routinely try to forego the body’s fundamental need for sleep.

Of course warfighters have good reason to seek help in staying awake.  Fatigue is a principle source of error in combat zones, where long periods of boredom are punctuated with seconds of chaos.  Extending the period of useful wakefulness among soldiers has long been a dream of military commanders.  The Prussian army experimented with cocaine (but then so did everyone else), and 20^th century armies have relied on nicotine, caffeine and, more recently, amphetamines.  A number of armed forces use modafinil, including the U.S., British and French.

Reading between the lines, the PLA’s pride in Night Eagle suggests a desire to demonstrate China’s capacity in pharmaceutical development.  However, The People’s Republic’s aggressive industrial policy is frequently accused of violating intellectual property rules by deconstructing and re-engineering products developed elsewhere. It happens that as of last month the generic drug giant Teva has been granted exclusive rights to modafinil, which has just gone off-patent, and the company is trying to capture part of the rapidly growing Chinese market for all medications.  Night Eagle might fly into competition with modafinil, and it is almost certainly a remarkably similar formula.

Of course, the great irony in all this is the urgency of the competitive relationship between the two countries, which might soon be battling over a sleep gap.  No less a prophet than Karl Marx himself would be surprised at the easy availability of sleep suppressants for the laboring classes.  Certainly his great work, Das Kapital, predicted no such thing even as it foretold the inevitable collapse of capitalism.

Workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but a good night’s sleep!  And a world of wakefulness to win.

Jonathan D. Moreno is a the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Ethics at The University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and the editor-in-chief of Science Progress.This article was republished from Psychology Today with permission of the author.

What lesson can be gleaned from these seemingly disparate story lines? One is this: science is asking more precise questions but the answers are harder to get.

A core concept of the Enlightenment was that the more that reasoning is based on experimentation the more we can learn about the world. Manipulation of variables, recommended in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, proved to be a turning point in the history of science. By uncovering previously invisible truths and giving human beings novel and effective ways to manage their environment, the scientific method gave the idea of progress a whole new meaning. Until then it wasn’t at all clear that civilization wasn’t in some kind of steady state, or even that we weren’t in decline from some “golden age.” But it turned out that the golden age was still ahead of us, if we were smart enough to invest in it and wise enough not to misuse the knowledge being gained.

By the late 19th century, some philosophers theorized that, given enough time and money, the scientific community would be able to come up with a unified system of knowledge of the whole of reality. That end point may never actually come, of course, but it was the product of a thought experiment about the demonstrated power of actual experiments, a kind of ideal terminus of knowledge. Certainly the Darwinian revolution gave reason to believe this could be done in the biological world, and even today physicists are aiming for a unified theory of the cosmos.

But what we seem to be discovering is that, as we dig into the weeds of the nature of reality, reality is ever more stubborn about giving up its secrets. Nowhere is this recalcitrance more apparent than in genetics and neuroscience. The more we’ve learned about the human genome the more important proteins have turned out to be, and the more we’ve learned about brain cells the more we’ve realized how important the connections between brain cells are (something the philosopher and psychologist William James told us in 1890!).

In a way, we’ve already plucked much of the low-hanging fruit. Though it took tens of thousands of years to get on track, once we got there, we learned fast. How low-hanging the fruit of new knowledge is depends in part on how we approach it. We seem to be in a transitional period from a marvelously rich era of discovery in the last 30 years to an era in which new concepts and methods will be required to gain access to another range of powerful discoveries.

However, this transitional period is frustrating. Just to take the case of neurological disorders like autism, it’s quite clear that like cancer the conditions brought under that large rubric have diverse biological roots. A couple of years ago a well-known geneticist told me that he is sure Asperger’s Syndrome is genetically quite distinct from the spectrum of autism disorders, for example. So, again, it’s often the case that the next step gets harder and more expensive. At the same time, the external variables that can cause multiple genetic switches to be turned on and off are so numerous, subtle and hard to control that few disease risks can be confidently predicted. Even “designer babies” wouldn’t change that.

Now we come to the heart of the problem: the basic science is more promising than ever but the opportunities to monetize the value of that science are, for the moment at least, fewer than they were even 20 years ago. The headwinds into which investors must now sail are not simply due to easy answers like “over regulation” but reflect the nature of the science waiting to be done. America is out of the new supercollider business. The pharmaceutical pipeline is running dry, and especially in neurological disease the big players are leaving the field.

All is not lost. Government agencies like the National Institutes of Health are developing new models for data collection and empirical studies. Regulatory reforms are in process. Industry is looking to smaller and more flexible corporate arrangements. Gradually, drug testing will be liberated from the limitations of animal models by more in vitro processes, analytical devices will be improved and more powerful computers will develop superior algorithms.

But in an increasingly competitive international science marketplace, who will take the lead? For the United States’ future in medical research, this set of factors calls on a virtue that is not prominent in the American character: patience. Our famous “can do” attitude has tended to devolve to a “do it now” culture. Investors and corporate boards have come to expect annual, semi-annual, or even quarterly rewards. The political system—and perhaps crucially the national security science establishment—will have to play a key role in providing leadership and incentives to keep this country in the front ranks of discovery. As the nation that can most readily lay claim to be the child of the Enlightenment, this will be an especially provocative challenge.

And the answer is “both.” If we try.

Jonathan D. Moreno is a the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Ethics at The University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and the editor-in-chief of Science Progress.This article was republished from Psychology Today with permission of the author.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, has asked for comments on what issues should be addressed through a privacy multistakeholder process. Based on my experience in privacy law and policy, I believe an early and prominent candidate should be the definition of what counts as “de-identified” information. As discussed below this topic has multiple advantages, including heightened protection for consumers, positive effects on innovation and the broader economy, and likelihood of concrete, enforceable success for the process itself.

These comments provide background for the discussion and then explain the importance of the topic of de-identified data. The comments explain how the recent Federal Trade Commission privacy report provides a new and useful set of proposals for how to handle de-identified data, and concludes with an analysis of why the topic of de-identified data is a good candidate for early consideration in a multistakeholder process.

Background

As background for these comments, I am the C. William O’Neill Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law of the Ohio State University, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Future of Privacy Forum. Under President Bill Clinton I served as chief counselor for privacy in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Under President Barack Obama I was special assistant to the president for economic policy in 2009 and 2010. Further information is available at www.peterswire.net.

This February the administration issued its white paper, “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” This privacy framework defined a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. To implement this bill of rights, the framework called on the Department of Commerce to foster the development of enforceable codes of conduct for consumer privacy. These codes of conduct will be developed through multistakeholder processes, so that the range of relevant stakeholders can convene and develop codes of conduct even in the absence of binding legislation or regulation. Consumer privacy legislation has been difficult to enact in the United States, so consumer protection will advance more quickly through initiatives, such as the multistakeholder process, that do not depend on passage of such legislation.

Along with the administration’s framework, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has continued its vital role in U.S. privacy policy and enforcement. On March 26, 2012, the FTC issued “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: Recommendations for Businesses and Policymakers.” This report reflected intensive FTC efforts on a wide range of privacy topics. The comments here, building on a short previous statement, focus on the FTC’s recommendations about how to approach the important issue of de-identified data.

The importance of de-identified data

The title of the administration’s white paper reflects two principal goals for policy concerning the data of individual consumers: “A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation.” This title reflects the risks to individuals if privacy is not protected effectively. It also reflects the importance of creating good information rules in order to foster innovation and growth in our information economy.

The issue of de-identified data creates a vital opportunity to meet both goals—use data for innovation and growth while also protecting privacy. At least in theory, de-identified data allows us to have our cake and eat it, too. With de-identified data, we strip out the name and other information that reveals identity, but we nonetheless can process the data, do research, discover patterns, and innovate in how we respond to the information.

In any statute or other legal obligation, such as a company’s enforceable promise to protect privacy, the most important definition is what counts as covered by the law or obligation. Defining what counts as “de-identified” is crucial because it draws the line between what data is covered by privacy protections (still “identified”) and what data is not (“de-identified”).

In U.S. law de-identified data was first defined as part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, medical privacy rule drafted in the late 1990s. I was very involved in drafting the proposed and final HIPAA rule and paid particular attention to defining what counted as “de-identified.” In HIPAA “identified” data is considered personal health information, subject to the full range of privacy protections. If the data is scrubbed hard enough, however, then it becomes de-identified data and no longer subject to the regulatory requirements.

The final HIPAA medical privacy rule provided two ways to show that data was de-identified. First, the holder of the data could remove a list of at least 17 data fields that could identify a person, such as name, address, or Social Security number. Second, a statistical expert could certify that the risk is very small that the information could be used, alone or in combination with other reasonable available information, to re-identify the individual. Since HIPAA went into effect nearly a decade ago, health care entities have been able to publicly release health data if it has been scrubbed well enough to meet the regulatory requirements for de-identification.

Finding a Goldilocks solution for de-identified data

Since the HIPAA de-identification provisions were proposed in 1999, we have learned a lot about when and how it is possible to “re-identify” data—to link a person’s name with the supposedly de-identified data. Two big trends have made it harder to keep information de-identified. First, search on the Web has gotten much better. Google was not incorporated until 1998, and today’s search engines let anyone link together tidbits from previously hard-to-link data sources. Second, the amount of information on the Web about a typical person has grown astronomically, including all of the personal details on a person’s blog or Facebook page.

The combination of efficient search tools and lots of data means that there is a higher likelihood today that a person’s medical or other records can be re-identified even if the name and other traditional identifiers are deleted. For instance, the de-identified medical record might state that a person in Ohio had minor hand surgery on April 3. In the past, it would have been difficult or impossible for an outsider to figure out the name. Today, online search might turn up a social network thread about the hand surgery—there are multiple such surgeries in Ohio each day, but not that many. A bit of follow-up research, using the rest of the supposedly de-identified information, might easily pinpoint the person who had the surgery.

As academics have analyzed these facts about re-identification, some have concluded that the entire effort to de-identify data has failed, because of the risk of linking information back to the individual. Others have emphasized the limited actual success of re-identification efforts in practice, and found that the benefits to research and innovation are so great that they outweigh the privacy risks.

The preliminary FTC report, issued in 2010, received strong criticisms from both of these perspectives. The earlier report would have applied privacy protections to “consumer data that can be reasonably linked to a specific consumer, computer, or other device.” The debate centered on what the FTC meant by “reasonably linked.” Consumer groups correctly emphasized that it is easier now to search on the Web and re-identify data, at risk to privacy. Researchers and other users of data focused on the problems that come with an over-broad definition of “reasonably linked,” which could extend privacy rules to an almost unlimited range of data processing, if enough effort is put into tracking down and re-identifying data.

Responding to these critiques, the FTC looked at the technical de-identification issues, and found what I believe is a Goldilocks solution for the problem of de-identified data. The FTC provides what amounts to a safe harbor where: “(1) a given data set is not reasonably identifiable; (2) the company publicly commits not to re-identify it, and (3) the company requires any downstream users of the data to keep it in de-identified form.”

The FTC approach responds to the technical experts who correctly say that it is easier today to find data on the Web that helps us re-identify data. To address the privacy concerns the FTC approach first requires a company to make a data set reasonably de-identified. We can think of this as “good but not foolproof de-identification.” Then, in addition, the FTC requires administrative protections. The company has to commit publicly that it won’t re-identify the data. The company also has to get similar promises from anybody downstream who receives the data. These promises are enforceable because Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits deceptive practices, such as broken privacy promises. Privacy is protected through the combination of technical measures, having reasonably de-identified data, and backup administrative measures, so that the only people who receive the data have made binding promises not to re-identify.

The FTC approach also responds to those who want to study data for research, innovation, and related purposes. Data must be scrubbed pretty hard but not incredibly hard—the dataset need merely not be “reasonably identifiable.” That data should still often be detailed enough to be useful for a variety of purposes, protected by the enforceable promises not to re-identify.

I have long believed that technical controls alone are not enough to protect consumers against possible re-identification, as shown in a 2009 report by the Center for Democracy and Technology and my December talk on de-identified data. The best path is to have reasonably strong technical protections, supplemented by the sorts of enforceable promises that the FTC report supports.

You can read more about why defining de-identified data is a good fit for the multistakeholder process in the full comments at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Peter Swire is the C. William O’Neill Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Further reading

The cuts—which will go into effect January 2—are the result of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction’s failure to come up with a plan that would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The debt limit deal, which created the committee, established a backup “sequestration” procedure as a mechanism to encourage compromise. Sequestration is a form of automatic budget cuts that are applied across the board.

Military programs are also on the chopping block, and the defense establishment has made it clear that it will fight these cuts to the bitter end. Supporters of domestic programs, however, have been silent. Thankfully, advocates for the NIH refuse to remain quiet and complacent. We believe there is simply too much at stake.

United for Medical Research, or UMR—a coalition comprised of the American Heart Association, other patient and health advocates, research institutions, and private industry—has made it its mission to educate Congress about the short- and long-term consequences of this budget “sequestration” and the devastating impact it will have on the nation’s economy. A new UMR analysis, “Engine Stalled:  Sequestration’s Impact on NIH and the Biomedical Enterprise,” projects that a 7.8 percent cut would mean a loss of 33,000 jobs across the United States in 2013 and a staggering $4.5 billion decline in economic activity. According to NIH Director Francis Collins, cuts of this size will reduce the number of NIH grants by 2,300.

Few Americans realize that roughly 85 percent of NIH grants support laboratories and research centers in every state. These laboratories function like small businesses that create positive economic ripples throughout their communities. They buy equipment and supplies from a variety of local companies, and they employ researchers and their support staff, who in turn buy goods and services. A reduction of this magnitude would have a chilling effect on this economic progress.

Furthermore, this dramatic decrease in federal funding has long-term implications for our nation’s status as the world leader in medical research, for the next generation of researchers, and for research advances never realized that could vastly improve the health of all Americans and ultimately lower our nation’s health care costs.

Each year the American Heart Association hosts Scientific Sessions, a gathering of scientists and health care professionals from around the globe who focus on cardiovascular disease and stroke. Because of flat NIH funding over the last few years, I have observed an increase in conference presentations from scientific investigators outside the country compared to those submitted by U.S. scientists. China, India, the European Union, and Russia have declared their intentions to increase their research investment despite their fiscal challenges. China is boosting its research efforts by 26 percent while India is increasing research funding by double digits. Europe is hoping to ramp up their research investment by 40 percent and even Russia has planned a 65 percent increase. Meanwhile, in the United States, research funding has not kept pace with inflation and sequestration could reduce NIH funding to 2004 levels. In other words, we are not only falling behind, but we are completely reversing our progress to this point.

I see the impact of these cuts every day on the next generation of young, promising investigators. The best and brightest are unwilling to settle for a lifetime of rejected grant applications. Consequently, we lose many of these gifted individuals to other careers, and along with them, immense talent that could contribute to scientific breakthroughs.

As a practicing cardiologist, scientist and president of a voluntary health organization, I am also concerned about the impact of these cuts on patients—now and in the future. Research has made a real difference for the diseases that I treat. Sixty years ago, heart disease and stroke were a virtual death sentence. But research has helped reduce the mortality rate from heart disease by more than 60 percent and from stroke by 70 percent since 1940.

Nearly all of the research breakthroughs that contributed to this amazing success story came from fundamental science. Among them were heart transplantation, anticoagulant and antithrombotic therapy, cardiopulmonary bypass, and the links between dietary fat, cholesterol, and atherosclerosis.

Cardiovascular disease, however, remains America’s No. 1 killer and new projections show that by 2030, 40 percent of the population will have some form of the illness. The epidemic of obesity in our youth is already beginning to have an effect on the burden of cardiovascular disease and is slowing and reversing the favorable trends in mortality. Moreover, with the Baby Boomer generation aging, it’s no surprise that congestive heart failure and stroke are the fastest-growing forms of cardiovascular disease. These are highly debilitating conditions and progress made towards an effective treatment or cure in my lifetime is critical. Unfortunately, NIH cuts may make that improbable even for my own children.

Put simply, research is an investment in our nation’s future. We have an obligation to our country, our patients, and future generations to fund medical research at levels that will improve health, spur innovation, and grow our economy. The NIH has been referred to as the “Crown Jewel of the Federal Government.” Members of Congress that hold this view—including the 212 Republican and Democratic members who signed letters of support for the NIH—must find ways to protect this investment from the devastating impact of the sequester.

Gordon F. Tomaselli, M.D., is president of the American Heart Association and chief of the division of cardiology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Image courtesy of Baltimore Sun/Amy Davis.

TRADE AND INNOVATION
Bi-partisan request of FTC to protect American manufacturing
Bipartisan members of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that the FTC use all their tools “to fight the theft and use of stolen American manufacturing information technology and intellectual property, or IP.” The widespread theft of IP undermines America’s ability to manufacture and innovate at home.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Small business common application bill in the works
Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) proposed a bill that would streamline the paperwork burden for small businesses applying for federal assistance. An idea developed and first proposed right here at CAP, a common application program for federal small business assistance would allow small businesses to focus on growing their business instead of redundant forms across multiple federal agencies. It would also facilitate new  interagency coordination around complementary programs.

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
17 science agencies publish integrity policies
After three years in the process, Director of the Office of Science, Technology Policy, John Holdren, has said only four agencies failed to meet his March 30 deadline to make public their scientific integrity policy drafts. About half of the executive agencies have finalized drafts. Under increasing pressure Dir. Holdren says “crafting of these policies has not been easy.”

INVESTING IN SCIENCE
University R&D spending floated by stimulus
Universities spent 6% more on R&D in 2010 than they did in 2009. Largely attributed to the stimulus, the bulk was spent on basic research in the life sciences.

STEM EDUCATION
97 percent say improvement of science education vital
A new survey shows the overwhelming support for scientific education reform. 56% of those surveyed believed that the United States ranks behind most other countries in science education, which gives further support for President Obama’s decision in his 2013 budget to fund National Science Foundation and Department of Education programs to develop new science education methods.

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
DOI’s new policy put to use, again
The Department of Interior was the first agency to implement a scientific integrity policy in accordance with President Obama’s orders. The policy is once again being used for the second time in 6 months. Dr. Paul Houser is claiming he was fired in retaliation after he raised integrity issues of department bureaucrats for their misrepresentation of a scientific study.

RETHINKING SCIENCE
Undirected research questioned
Is the pace of innovation and scientific knowledge owed to the researcher’s ability to conduct undirected research? Is undirected research the best method of solving the most pressing issues? Never settling for status quo, finding ways to increase scientific efficiency can only add value.

OCEANS
3,000 Dolphins dead in Peru
About 1,000 dead dolphins per month have washed ashore in Lambayeque, Peru. Experts are pointing to new offshore drilling exploration in the area as the likely cause of the unexplained mass die-offs

INNOVATION
Business finance rules to relax
The JOBS Act signed by President Obama yesterday included “crowdfunding” provisions among its business and investment law reforms. Crowdfunding will allow small startup companies to sell proposed stock to the general public to raise capital. If implemented effectively, these changes hold the promise of getting innovative startups off the ground and to market faster.

This week’s news compiled and summarized by Science Progress intern Jason Thomas.

Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

Although the bill is written to seem benign, as it neither specifically authorizes the teaching of creationism nor permits teachers to do more than criticize scientific theories “in an objective matter,” the practical impact of this bill will be to intimidate all but the heartiest of school administrators against disciplining teachers who preach the most outlandish junk science in their classrooms. Because the bill provides little guidance as to what constitutes an “objective” criticism of a scientific theory, any principal who reigns in teachers who force creationism or Pastafarianism upon their students risks finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.

In reality, of course, there are few, if any, “objectively” valid objections to the theory of evolution (or, for that matter, to global warming). Rather, as Travis Waldron explained when this bill passed a legislative committee nearly a year ago, “Scientists have reached a consensus that evolution is ‘one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science,’ and as such, it is ‘a core element in science education.’”

This post was originally published at Think Progress.

The final data is in for the unprecedented March heat wave that was “unmatched in recorded history” for the U.S. (and Canada).  New heat records swamped cold records by the stunning ratio of 35.3 to 1.

This ratio is almost off the charts, even with the brutally warm August we had, as this chart from Capital Climate shows.

For the year to date, new heat records are beating cold records by 22 to 1, which trumps the pace of the last decade by more than a factor of 10!

I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming. A 2009 analysis shows that the average ratio for the 2000s was 2.04-to-1, a sharp increase from previous decades. Lead author Dr. Gerald Meehl explained, “If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even.”

Meteorologist Jason Samenow points out just how extreme the heat wave was: “More than 7,700 daily record high temperatures were set (or tied, compared to just 287 record lows), in some cases by mind blowing margins and over multiple days. In several instances in the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest region, morning lows even bested record highs and high temperatures soared above mid-summer norms.”

This ratio is almost off the charts…

Many of the countries leading climatologists and meteorologists have looked at the data and concluded that like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace.

Weather Channel meteorologist Stu Ostro calls the current heat wave “surreal” and explained that “While natural factors are contributing to this warm spell, given the nature of it and its context with other extreme weather events and patterns in recent years there is a high probability that global warming is having an influence upon its extremity.”

Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters has said, “this is not the atmosphere I grew up with.” He published a detailed statistical analysis concluding, “It is highly unlikely the warmth of the current ‘Summer in March’ heat wave could have occurred unless the climate was warming.”

Climate Central pointed out that given the intensity, duration, and geographical breadth of the heat wave, “this may be an unprecedented event since modern U.S. weather records began in the late 19th century.” They interviewed several top scientists who explained global warming’s likely role in helping to make this extreme event so unique.

University of Utah’s Jim Steenburgh blogged that he is convinced global warming has played a role:

Welcome to the new climate in which heat waves are pushing farther outside the envelope of what has been observed previously during the historical record.  To quote Hansen et al. (2011), “Today’s extreme anomalies occur because of simultaneous contributions of specific weather patterns and global warming.”  I’m usually very cautious about linking weather events to global warming as there is considerable natural variability in the system, but these are jaw-dropping records and such events are more likely today than 60 years ago.

NBC News has a very good story about the cause of the extreme weather. Their chief environmental correspondent Ann Thompson interviews NOAA scientist, Dr. David Easterling:

Thompson:  But scientists say ping-ponging between weather extremes may be an indicator of a much bigger problem: the heat trapping gases of climate change

Easterling:  The warming that we’ve seen actually increases the chances, kind of loads the dice that were going to see these kinds of events more often.

Thompson: Dr. David Easterling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a co-author of United Nations report out this week that points to climate change as leading to extreme weather events since 1950.

Easterling:  The unusual warm days and nights, and to some extent heat waves, you can actually begin making that link between climate change and those events.

Watch it:

Since the science of attributing extreme events to global warming is still emerging, scientists still disagree to what extent a specific event like this heat wave is driven by global warming. But two of the  leading experts explain at RealClimate why even small shifts in average temperature mean “the probability for ‘outlandish’ heat records increases greatly due to global warming.” Furthermore, “the more outlandish a record is, the more would we suspect that non-linear feedbacks are at play – which could increase their likelihood even more.”

The really worrisome part is that we’ve only warmed about a degree and a half Fahrenheit in the past century.  We are on track to warm five times times that or more this century.

In short, we ain’t seen nothing yet!

This article was originally published at Climate Progress on April 3.

It was hard for some to not get caught up in the excitement. “Can you believe Bill Gates is sitting in the next row?” gushed my seatmate, as America’s wealthiest person prepared to take the stage. An hour later, following a coffee break, my friend beamed, computer-phone in hand. “He let me take his picture!”

Past summits of DOE’s highest-profile unit have been similarly staged as extravaganzas liberally spiced with star power, and this year was no exception. Some very heavy hitters—including FedEx chief Fred Smith, former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, and former President Bill Clinton—joined Gates in offering their wit and wisdom on the energy challenges facing America to grad students, principal investigators, lab users, and venture capitalists. All testified to the growing stature of ARPA-E and the salutary power of innovation to quickly cure America’s energy and economic ills.

Charging the innovation blunderbuss

If the summit had an organizing principle, it was “All of The Above,” or AOTA—the capacious maxim introduced by President Barack Obama in his 2012 State of the Union address. It is shorthand for developing all forms of energy in ways that satisfy practically every policy objective you care to name: job creation, energy independence, and preserving the American energy lifestyle while halting global warming.

While the “silver bullet” approach implies a single solution can be found to our climate and energy challenges, “silver buckshot” more realistically asserts that solutions will be found through a range of approaches.

Actually, AOTA is largely a continuation of the longstanding de facto national policy of supplying plentiful cheap energy from all readily available sources. Sustainability is a relatively recent addendum to this 1945 imperative, and to energy R&D policy falls the task of squaring the circle: securing plentiful, cheap energy while reducing global warming emissions. Where does ARPA-E fit in with what could charitably be described as a Herculean agenda? Aristides Patrinos, a former DOE manager now working for J. Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, provided one of the catchiest one-liners in a summit awash with innovation metaphors. Speaking of the biofuels sector but capturing the zeitgeist, Patrinos held that what the community of researchers sought was not a silver bullet but a “silver buckshot.”

Taking a page from the Pentagon

Skeptics might point out that a shotgun is no smart weapon. At any rate, ARPA-E’s business model of lean, public/private cost-shared, collaborative R&D is widely admired. The formula goes something like this: A handful of program managers empowered to solicit proposals and circumvent peer review work closely with applicants and awardees, using dollops of seed money to develop high-risk, high-payoff ideas for breakthrough power and energy technologies that, for whatever reason, have not been pursued by industry but that, in innovation-policy parlance, are potential “game-changers.” In short, these technologies are intended to reshape the market without benefit of public subsidy beyond an initial push.

This model was lifted from the playbook of the Pentagon, whose Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has garnered fame for its contributions to the IT revolution, among other innovations. The origins of this plan date back to 2005, when a group of powerful academics, captains of industry, and bureaucrats (including Steven Chu, then director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) studied ways the academy, industry, and government could mobilize science and technology in producing jobs and cheap, clean energy. One idea was to create a DARPA in the DOE.

Legislated in the American Competes Act of 2007 and enabled with Recovery Act money in 2009, ARPA-E has in many ways become the energy agency’s public face. With a permanent staff of less than 30 people and a budget of $275 million in FY 2012, this tiny office signifies a much-cherished ideal: technocratic expertise that can sidestep sclerotic partisan politics and intelligently deploy federal resources in nurturing entrepreneurship without picking winners—anathema in a nominally free-enterprise society.

In the non-nuclear alternative energy sector, however, the practical result is what I’ve elsewhere referred to as “quasi-” or “semi-planning.” Evolving as a tacit compromise between the progressive impulse of the liberal tradition and the small-government impulse of the Republican tradition over the past three decades, quasi-planning in the energy sector allows for limited support of certain kinds of early-stage R&D but not the sort of sustained support (in the form of tax breaks, direct subsidies, infrastructure construction, foreign policy initiatives, and procurement) that helped build the existing, largely fossil-fuel-based energy regime over the past century. It is in this highly planned energy economy that the mainstreams of the Democratic and the Republican parties has been and remains heavily invested. On numerous occasions, this inconvenient truth would emerge to temper the encomiums lavished on the spirit of innovation during the energy summit.

History as a guide

In keeping with the penchant of late-modern American political discourse for fall/redemption parables, Chu used the narrative arc of the early aviation industry to illustrate politically correct government intervention and ARPA-E’s role in it: An early lead (the Wright Flyers, “unpicked winners”) lost to European competitors was regained thanks to mild state support in the form of R&D (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and regulation (Kelly Air Mail Act of 1925, Air Commerce Act of 1926).

Analogies are always imperfect, and simple ones can be deceiving when used to illustrate complex dynamics. There is a good deal of difference between the aviation industry and the energy industry, a vast and variegated set of enterprises spanning practically every economic sector. And this fossil-fuel-centric industry is not exactly suffering these days. Its constituent enterprises are among the world’s largest and richest. What Chu was alluding to was the tiny U.S. renewable energy sector (8 of 98 quads of energy consumed in 2010) and the trend that has seen the manufacturing of homegrown innovations (the photovoltaic cell, for example) shift overseas.

And therein lies the rub. Deriving from traditional Democratic “big tent” political discourse, All Of The Above implies peaceful coexistence among competing energy interests. Sixty years of AOTA energy policies, however, have produced vast amounts of sunk investments that energy R&D policy will be hard-pressed to quickly alter.

It would be an understatement to say that ARPA-E has an ambitious mandate. The agency typically does not support basic research, instead engaging projects in relatively advanced stages of development, usually at the level of component validation at laboratory scale—what, in bureaucratic argot, is known as Technology Readiness Level 4, or TRL 4. With programs lasting two or three years, ARPA-E can probably shepherd them not much higher than the level of pilot-scale prototype, or TRL 6. So the agency’s position in the innovation chain is relatively high upstream.

The message to the venture capitalists and executives appeared to be “We’re doing our part; are you?”

A key problem, as with DARPA, is finding partners to accept partly completed projects. Here, ARPA-E is handicapped in a way its namesake is not. Whereas DARPA has the advantage of a mother agency—the U.S. Department of Defense—that drives the serial manufacture of innovations through fleet procurement, ARPA-E cannot get similar support from DOE. And innovation works quite differently in the energy sector, as Bill Gates observed (though Gates neglected to mention that he supports research in a kind of breeder nuclear reactor, a complex technology controversial for its production of plutonium). Lead times for innovation are measured in decades, not five-year cycles, much less ARPA-E’s narrow window.

No surprise, then, that in their invocation of the traditions and culture of American innovation, DOE officials seemed to be appealing to patriotic potential suitors. Arun Majumdar, ARPA-E’s director, warned that unless we acted now, many of the innovations his agency gestated would be manufactured overseas. The message to the venture capitalists and executives in the audience appeared to be “We’re doing our part; are you?”

Energy ecosystem breakthroughs and setbacks

Matchmaking was probably a premier intent of the ARPA-E summit planners. Whether the requisite connections can be built out of three days of intensive networking remains to be seen. For the most part, summit keynotes tended to avoid a direct frontal approach to such questions, preferring to dwell instead on the principle of interinstitutional and interdisciplinary collaboration. A key meme was the “energy ecosystem,” with its connation of perfect balance between organizations responsible for basic research (academic and government labs) and organizations responsible for applying it (industry). One got a sense of a more complex reality in the panel sessions. The case of Envia Systems, an ARPA-E poster child, was instructive. The advanced battery startup company based in Newark, California, used the occasion of the summit to announce the highest energy density yet achieved in a lithium ion battery—more than 400 watt hours per kilogram—doubling the power of the best existing designs. When commercialized, claimed the company, the technology will slash the price of existing lithium ion battery packs by 50 percent.

By any standard, this is an impressive achievement. But Envia faces challenges that go well beyond ARPA-E’s purview. CEO Atul Kapadia cited high capital costs and the difficulty of finding qualified electrochemists—a long-neglected discipline in the United States. If the goal of energy R&D policy is to create jobs in America—and ARPA-E officials repeatedly reminded summiteers that it was—Envia faces a difficult road ahead because its biggest competitors are established Asian and European firms. With few comparative advantages in the United States, Envia was compelled to cleave manufacturing from R&D, package it with an IP firewall, and offshore it to China.

The Solyndra affair illustrated the difficulties of building industrial sectors from scratch based on leapfrog technologies.

The difficulties of attempting to build industrial sectors from scratch based on leapfrog technologies were graphically illustrated in the Solyndra affair. Nurtured with government loan guarantees beginning in 2009, the Fremont, California, startup developed its unique-but-expensive copper indium gallium (di)selenide thin-film photovoltaic technology during a period when the price of conventional silicon-based solar panels was falling, thanks to a combination of slackening demand brought on by the recession, the decision of some European countries to phase out subsidies, and the decision of Asian manufacturers to further rationalize production of existing lines of photovoltaic technology. Ultimately, cost trumped performance, and Solyndra was unable to compete.

Refereeing the game change

How does silver buckshot work in practice? The DOE approach to energy systems for transportation is instructive. The federal government has long supported research in a range of technologies, including battery electric, fuel-cell electric, and alternative “drop-in” liquid fuels that can easily be introduced into the existing infrastructure, as well as more exotic substances such as hydrogen that would require significant modification of production and distribution networks. But all of these systems, even drop-in fuels, present considerable and disparate infrastructure challenges, whether on the upstream production or downstream distribution sides. Concurrent development would seem to significantly complicate investment and planning.

Take ARPA-E’s liquid fuels research program, for example. Its main effort in 2010 involved the so-called electrofuels. Predicated as a superior alternative to photosynthetic biofuels, which are limited by the low efficiency of photosynthesis (ranging from 0.1 percent to 8 percent), electrofuels are made from renewable feedstocks, including water and carbon dioxide, in processes enabled by electricity from silicon-based industrial photovoltaic technology (anywhere from 8 percent to 20 percent efficient) and nonphotosynthetic organisms or cheap metal catalysts. In 2011, however, ARPA-E began supporting photosynthetic-based biofuels in its Plants Engineered to Replace Oil, or PETRO, program. The casual observer can’t help but wonder if this strategy doesn’t pit programs against one another.

“Isn’t that the point of the system?” remarked Sally Adee, the New Scientist feature editor. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and see which ones survive. And why can’t different approaches be complementary in certain circumstances? FedEx chief Smith revealed that his company was experimenting with hybrid electric and saw lithium battery electrification as the way forward, although he suggested that the cheaper, short-term solution would involve converting the ground delivery fleet to natural gas. With the path to the post-fossil-fuel world opaque, one could argue that it makes good strategic sense to hedge.

In the quasi-planned alternative energy sector, however, the investment community will doubtless play a similar game. Given that ARPA-E’s raison d’être is to exploit ideas ripe for commercialization—not to determine their technical feasibility—one could argue that supporting concurrent high-risk projects dilutes scarce resources, especially during a recession.

The elephant in the room is that, on a playing field (or firing range) tipped heavily in favor of fossil-fuel interests, even a few pellets from a cone of silver buckshot can reinforce the status quo. One frequently cited game-changing product of collaborative R&D is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technology developed with DOE assistance that enabled unconventional plays in shale gas. Sen. Christopher Coons (D-DE) insisted that in supporting this technology, the government did not pick a winner. This is true, in a narrow sense: Fracking did not benefit one specific company. But it is of far greater value to established integrated operators, which can use cheap natural gas to build market share, than it is for capital-poor independents.

Inexpensive gas will also make the growth of certain renewable energy fields that much more difficult. This case underscored the political barriers to the quest for sustainability—a reality surely known to innovators and entrepreneurs but one they probably don’t much care to mull on. Oddly, in a summit committed to celebrating their culture, renewable energy researchers were often obliquely reminded of this fact. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for example, boasted of the remarkable quadrupling of active rigs in the oil patch that occurred under President Obama’s watch.

In citing this nugget Pelosi doubtless had one eye on rising gasoline prices, perceived as a political millstone in an election year. But new wells won’t bring quick relief at the pump for rather obvious reasons, not least of which is that refining capacity in the United States has hardly grown in 30 years and that refiners have increasingly looked to export markets as domestic demand has waned in the recession. In this audience, Rep. Pelosi likely caused more anxiety than relief. She could well have taken a page in situational awareness from headliner former President Clinton, who correctly predicted that the summit would likely not make the front page of the Washington Post unless he said something to embarrass the secretary of state.

Risk, accountability, and the politics of sustainability

At the event Clinton kept it clean, dwelling entirely on domestic politics. And in fairness to Pelosi, practically none of the other (mainly Democratic) political keynotes directly acknowledged the ways AOTA undermined the alternative energy sector. Most chose to highlight the intransigence and bloody-mindedness of the opposition on questions of energy and climate science. With conservatives long playing the spoiler in energy R&D politics, resisting state involvement in “soft” technologies based on wind and sun, Democrats like Sen. Jeff Bingaman (NM), chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, calculated that shifting the discursive locus of energy policy from “renewability” to “low and zero-carbon” would bring Republicans with interests in “harder” energy systems such as natural gas and nuclear power into the congressional clean energy fold. But this did not happen, observed Sen. Bingaman. Clean energy, he chided, should not be a partisan issue.

Failure is a natural and even necessary part of the creative process; discouraging risk-taking would undermine the American system of innovation.

And yet it is, with consequences that are as much a limiting factor in technoscientific progress as the physical qualities of materials. The Solyndra case well illustrated the weaknesses of the technocratic approach of using energy R&D policy to shape energy policy. When moderator John Podesta raised the issue with Gates and Chu, the energy secretary noted that when the Democratic-controlled Congress directed DOE to invest in new energy companies in 2009 at the height of the recession, it also made a $10 billion loss provision. Chu’s message was that failure is a natural and even necessary part of the creative process, and that discouraging risk-taking would undermine the American system of innovation.

Not all in the audience were impressed by this explanation. “That was a bit glib,” sniffed my mustachioed seatmate, a gentleman with an aura of venture capital. Yet such reasoning is popular in influential science, industry, and government circles. Naturally, Republicans sought to exploit the Solyndra affair, although they showed little appetite for a thoroughgoing inquiry into the fundamental premises of energy R&D policy.

But was Solyndra really a victim of market forces? After all, the federal government expressly intervened on the company’s behalf to overcome “market failure” at a time when the broader dynamics of American deindustrialization—the shift by manufacturers to countries offering low wages, low taxes, and low-cost inputs—were only too well-understood. There is a good deal of difference between risk in basic research and risk in industrial technology development. In not paying attention to trends in conventional silicon manufacturing and backing a company whose leapfrog strategy was optimized for pre-recessionary times, it could be argued that the federal government did not make a sober, informed guess but rather a reckless bet. The edification of risk has become a hallmark of late capitalist policymaking, but cynics might wonder whether this has become a convenient way of rationalizing poor industrial intelligence and bad management.

Is it unfair to judge the government’s alternative energy program in light of a single failure, however spectacular? (Actually there have been several.) One would have expected the administration and the Democratic congressional leadership to have been acutely aware of the fact that in the legislative realm, with its regularly shifting balance of forces, failure could be interpreted much differently than it was in R&D culture. The proximate effect of the Solyndra affair may be the complication of the stimulus efforts of DOE and ARPA-E. Energy officials have placed even more stringent terms on loans disbursed under its Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, assistance that was already restricted to “financially viable” companies and, hence, inaccessible to Chrysler and GM. As a result, many alternative energy startups are shutting down.

But big companies are also having trouble introducing sustainable energy/power systems, for reasons that go beyond innovation policy per se. Chevrolet recently idled production of the Volt hybrid for five weeks due to low demand. This speaks to the broader problem with the Obama administration’s stimulus effort. The Recovery Act kept many Americans working in the worst days of the recession, but it didn’t provide a basis for future growth. Federal money for R&D will continue to find its way to researchers. But with austerity being the new watchword on Capitol Hill, it will be increasingly difficult for ARPA-E’s fledgling entrepreneurs to find partners when they are nudged from the nest.

Markets, myths, and change we can believe in

What the summit made clear was that, for all its perceived political efficacy, AOTA cannot “change the game” in the energy sector. Various groups will interpret the dynamics of the energy economy through the lenses of their own interests and are not likely to agree on the best way of renovating the current energy regime or even on how it actually functions.

Energy independence is a case in point. It is a favorite cause for energy technologists, executives, and politicians who, under disparate rallying cries, frame the issue in terms of national security when mobilizing support. But it is many years since the United States has been beholden to politically unreliable sources of energy. It is true that the country has grown more dependent on energy imports of all kinds, which comprised 19 percent of total consumption in 1973 and about 30 percent in 2010. But non-OPEC countries provide most U.S. petroleum imports (around 58 percent in 2010) and the largest suppliers are staunch allies Mexico and Canada (10 and 20 percent respectively). Of OPEC suppliers, only one (Venezuela) is currently considered potentially hostile, and it provided only about 8 percent of U.S. imports. Our frequent rival Iran, of course, has long been shut out of the U.S. energy economy.

No country has shown an inclination to use energy to blackmail the U.S. since 1973. Political conditions have changed drastically since the Arab oil embargo, and in today’s market there are too many suppliers eager to sell for such a strategy to be feasible even in principle. For these reasons, energy independence and the protectionism it implies is a political nonstarter. Although America has an energy deficit, energy of all sorts, especially refined fuel, has become an increasingly valuable export as demand has dropped at home. According to the Energy Information Agency, the United States exported nearly $128 billion of energy in 2011; indeed, the country exported slightly more energy than it produced from renewable sources in 2010 and was on track to do the same in 2011. Despite some rather wishful thinking to the contrary, free trade will trump energy independence in the existing policy landscape.

Conclusion

Are there ways ARPA-E can make a difference? Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter argued that with its huge demand, the military could serve as an early market for new energy technologies, fulfilling the same procurement role for ARPA-E that it does for DARPA. The armed forces have a long history of experimenting with advanced power and energy systems, including batteries, photovoltaic arrays, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors. The Navy is currently sponsoring an experiment with Solazyme, a company that has sold the government pilot-scale batches of algae-based biofuel, including 1.7 million liters (450,000 gallons) to be blended into aviation fuel for the RIMPAC naval exercise this summer.

The catch is that this fuel costs $6.86 per liter ($26 per gallon). Military markets may provide a lucrative niche for some companies, but the armed forces have traditionally put performance over efficiency in their energy supply and conversion systems. So it is unlikely that this sector can serve as a pivot for a civilian spinoff in the short term.

It was left to former President Clinton to articulate the limitations and contradictions in American energy policy and energy R&D policy. In the discursive style of the former president (which here could be defined as “convenient inconvenient truths”), he distanced himself from AOTA without quite saying as much, claiming he supported it if it enabled growth with declining greenhouse gas emissions—which, of course, it does not. Much of Clinton’s pitch seemed eminently reasonable. He urged summiteers to “pick low-hanging fruit” to give time for advanced technology projects to come to market. He proposed a public/private infrastructure bank that would finance projects he claimed could be profitable, create jobs, and cut emissions, especially in energy efficiency. He lauded the governments of Germany, Sweden, and Denmark for pursuing equitable and sustainable energy development.

Probably any post-presidential address by Clinton is fated to sound like a stump speech, and he was not above invoking the Senate’s unanimous rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 as a Cassandra “aha” moment for his administration. That his address was the only one to generate a standing ovation at the ARPA-E Energy Summit 2012 indicated an appetite for greater government involvement in sustainable energy than the current administration is offering. And yet as president, Clinton pioneered the very quick-fix model of collaborative, cost-shared R&D adopted by the Obama White House—one that he now distanced himself from. It does not bode well for serious reconsideration of energy policy that so many were willing to forgive or forget the inconclusive legacy of a slew of Clinton projects, including the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, the Climate Change Technology Initiative, and even the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Also seemingly easily forgotten was that the 1997 Senate action was in part a response to the Clinton administration’s inability or unwillingness to design a coherent industrial strategy capable of executing the Kyoto Agreement.

In its energy and economic policies, the Obama administration has mirrored the Clinton administration in almost every way. Both inherited financial, industrial, and foreign policy crises and had strong but evanescent political mandates that could have allowed them to entrench the basis of an alternative energy regime through national energy programs. Both instead chose the tactical political considerations of “compromise.”

Of course, AOTA is a misnomer. Connoting a sort of affirmative action, it does not privilege all energy sectors equally, but, rather is a near-zero-sum equation favoring the fossil-fuel status quo. The Obama administration’s inability to coordinate alternative energy policy with alternative economic and environmental policies means its twin imperatives of job creation and cheap, clean energy are mutually exclusive. Belated policy tweaks have done little to resolve this contradiction. Recognizing that foreign-made photovoltaic panels hurt domestic manufacturers but help domestic energy users, the Department of Commerce recently levied a small tariff on Chinese imports, one that probably won’t have much practical effect beyond the symbolism of standing up to “dumping” or “illegal subsidies,” charges surely of the-pot-calling-the-kettle-black variety. Cheap alternative energy is being realized, but value is being added in the “wrong” country.

In appearing to try to please everyone, President Obama has pleased no one, furnishing ammunition that even the dimmest lights in the opposition firmament can readily exploit. Newt “Moon Unit” Gingrich had fine sport deriding algae-based fuels, cherry-picking from AOTA to be sure. But the fact is that renewable energy production has grown very slowly under the president’s stewardship. Given that cheap, clean gasoline substitutes are unavailable on a wide scale, President Obama surely did not impress any but his most ardent supporters with his charge that Republican critics of alternative energy were “founding members of the flat earth society.” More than any single event, the gasoline situation lends validity to criticism that the White House’s alternative energy program is a sham. And the snail’s pace of the administration’s high-speed rail program hasn’t benefitted commuters in the interim.

Conservatives take President Obama’s rhetoric at face value. Progressives see the president as disingenuous. No doubt White House planners regard delaying the trans-border section of the Keystone XL pipeline and approving the Gulf of Mexico portion as a stroke of savvy realpolitik, but one has to wonder whether Democratic-leaning voters really are as gullible as this scheme implies. And as for the president’s claims that gasoline prices are determined by forces beyond the government’s control (speculation and unrest in the Middle East), it is probably not beyond the capacity of even the mildly educated to understand that the administration has shown little appetite to reregulate Wall Street and has done its part to inflate the fear premium through confrontational policies in the Persian Gulf. Committed both to alternative energy (but not in a rational, comprehensive way) and cheap fossil fuels (but not in ways benefiting American motorists in an election year), President Obama has accrued no political capital from his energy policy from either the left or the right by the end of his first term.

The president long ago lost the legislative capacity for bold action in practically every field, including energy, but because the GOP’s slate of presidential candidates is so extraordinarily weak in 2012, he may not need it to get re-elected. At least, that is the conventional wisdom in Democratic circles. Should President Obama win a second term, Congress is likely to be even more hostile than in his first term, as in the Clinton years. And as in the Clinton years, that will probably mean four more years of inaction and increased resort to cant.

Wise policies benefitting the alternative energy industry-in-waiting and society at large, consequently, are less likely to devolve from the normal (stalemated) two-party policymaking mechanism than from abnormal (or, rather, periodic) events of the kind (economic collapse) that brought ARPA-E into being in the first place. History shows that national emergency is really the only political bonding agent in American society. As we lurch from crisis to crisis, we can only hope that when the next reckoning comes—with Mother Nature, the economic system, or both—we will be left with the agency and faculties to achieve some balance in human affairs on this planet.

Matthew N. Eisler is a Research Fellow at the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Further reading

“ARPA-E Team,” available at http://arpa-e.energy.gov/About/Team.aspx (last accessed March 26, 2012).

William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta, “ARPA-E and DARPA: Applying the DARPA Model to Energy Innovation,” Journal of Technology Transfer 36 (2011): 469–513.

Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks, Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean-Energy Economy (Washington: Island Press, 2008).

Bracken Hendricks, Sean Pool, and Lisbeth Kaufman, “Low-Carbon Innovation: A Uniquely American Strategy for Industrial Renewal” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2011), available at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/low_carbon_innovation.html.

David A. Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000).

Gijs Mom, The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations In the Automobile Age (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

Scott L. Montgomery, The Powers That Be: Global Energy for the Twenty-First Century and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Bruce Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).

Joseph J. Romm, Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do (New York: William Morrow, 2007).

Joseph J. Romm, The Hype about Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate (Washington: Island Press, 2004).

Michael Shnayerson, The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM’s Revolutionary Electric Vehicle (New York: Random House, 96).

U.S. Energy Information Administration. February 2012 Monthly Energy Review. (U.S. Department of Energy, 2012).

Vaclav Smil, Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate (Washington: AEI Press, 2010).

Vaclav Smil, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2010).

The findings of a recent survey confirm the argument of my book, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, that America has entered a new and unprecedented era of politicized science. University of North Carolina health services researcher Gordon Gauchat has found that trust in science among American conservatives has plummeted since 1974. The issues that divide us are familiar. Among them are planetary and human origins, climate change and the remarkable advances of the new biology.

Importantly, Gauchat found that the lost confidence is found not only among self-identified conservatives with less education, but among “high information” conservatives as well. This result undermines the notion that the more people know about science, the more they trust its conclusions. In fact, as the psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown, people tend to select data that support their prior belief preferences. In his survey Gauchat found that more sophisticated conservatives appreciated the threats to their values posed by science (e.g., intensified government regulation) more than those who were less educated.

As Gauchat observes, if this trend persists the implications for science institutions could be dire. Both public funding of basic research and the use of evidence in policymaking are threatened by politicized science. Citing Chris Mooney‘s theory that the change in public attitudes began in the Reagan era and intensified under George W. Bush, Gauchat observes that until then most people identified science with the space race and moon landing, triumphs that gave science great cultural authority across the ideological spectrum. Indeed, as I’ve argued, historically American science policy has been closely aligned with the civic narrative of progress and the pushing back of frontiers: where Americans saw new worlds to conquer they’ve been enthusiastic about pioneering technologies: the telegraph, transcontinental railroad, telephone, vaccines, organ transplants, information technologies and spacecraft.

The obituary of the American frontier has been prematurely written before, starting at least with Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” of 1893. But with the close of the continent, the rise of China, and the uncertain future of space exploration it is hard to see where the next American frontier will lie. Well-intended but unsexy abstractions drawing on the “Sputnik” analogy, like energy independence, have not gotten modern Americans’ blood flowing.

And as science has become specialized it is harder to find an Edison or a Salk who inspires with a personal story. Post-Vietnam America allows for little heroic mythologizing, even of revered technology leaders like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

To make matters worse, in recent decades “experts” have come to be seen (and in fact often are) in charge of public policy. This is partly a result of the fact that modern society is so complicated and so dependent on science-based technologies that expertise is required to run them as never before. But conservatives who worry about threats to traditional values and encroaching government harbor doubts about the motivations and moral compass of scientists. Gauchat’s results square with those of the sociologist John Evans, who finds that it is not science in general or even the scientific method that is the ultimate object of mistrust, but rather scientists themselves.

The grounds for mistrust of science are found in the DNA of the Enlightenment itself. Francis Bacon is often credited as the first to articulate the modern idea of science, distinguishing between basic and applied research. In Bacon’s 17th century utopian tale The New Atlantis, the governors of Bensalem are scientists. But, as one of them explains to the shipwrecked visitors, not all of their knowledge is generally shared: “And this we do also: we have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret; though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.”

What is to be done? One answer is to change the conversation. The focus needs to be placed on what Bacon referred to as the fruits of science that can help achieve Enlightenment goals of human flourishing, the same goals that the American founders saw as keys to the prosperity of the new nation.

Another answer is to emphasize the activities of scientists that are publicly observable, concrete and transparent, activities that are often under the heading of engineering. This answer argues that, instead of looking to the space program as an analogy, we should focus on the modern version of the program itself. A manned Mars landing is controversial among many progressives and is far more difficult to achieve in every sense than many of us used to believe, but the implications of such a national commitment may redeem scientists themselves in all sorts of secondary ways.

As is well known, funding for NASA’s manned Mars mission has taken a hit in the 2012 budget. In truth, I have not been an advocate of a human mission. The risks to a human crew are (pun intended) astronomical and the benefits to scientific knowledge modest compared to a robotic mission. But there are some experiments that machines alone probably can’t do. And for a unified sense of national purpose, especially rescuing the public profile of scientists, there may be no other solution.

Of course, the financial obstacles are also extreme, especially in the current fiscal environment, when there are so many pressing human needs back on Earth. But for the future of America’s commitment to science, one that will eventually lift all boats, the manned Mars mission might appeal to another traditional American principle: pragmatism.

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. This article is cross-posted in the Huffington Post.

After long anticipation and many delays, EPA is expected to issue its first limits on carbon pollution from power plants this week.

With Republicans increasingly desperate in the face of economic recovery, they are sure to treat this as a lifeline, a focus for renewed attacks. They will try to make the rule a stand-in for government overreach, job-killing regulations, and Obama’s secret plan to raise gas prices. Also probably Sharia.

These conservative attacks will be meritless, flying in the face of the considered judgment of credible, independent analysts. But the political media is unlikely to play “truth vigilante” by fact-checking them. Instead, expect endless horserace coverage of political tactics based on tired conventional wisdom — dissociated, for example, from the fact that EPA air rules are wildly popular with the public, across partisan lines.

With that coming fact void in mind, here are the top five things you need to know about the rule and the attacks that will follow it.

1. This rule applies to new power plants, not existing or currently permitted plants, meaning it won’t have any real effect until well after the election.

The new rule, issued under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) program, requires that new power plants emit no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt. Currently, natural gas plants come in below that, in the 800s, while coal plants emit an average of almost 1,800. (Technically, a plant can operate for the first decade without carbon controls, but it must show after 30 years that it has emitted no more than 1,000/mW on average over that time.)

The rule will not apply to plants already permitted and headed toward construction, of which there are about a dozen. Nor will it apply to existing plants; they are, per standard New Source Review practice, “grandfathered in” under the rule.

Power plants have very long lead times. Even if a new plant were conceived today, it wouldn’t reach the permitting or construction phase until well into next year. So in terms of the economy leading up to the election, the effect of the rule will be negligible.

2. The rule marks (but did not cause) the end of new coal plants in the U.S.

No new conventional coal plant can meet EPA’s new pollution standard. The only way to cut a coal plant’s emissions in half is to build it with carbon capture and sequestration, which adds as much as 30 percent to its cost. (There’s also the possibility of co-firing coal with biomass, but I haven’t looked into that much.)

Anything that raises the cost of new coal plants is bad news for coal fans, because new coal plantsalready aren’t getting built, for economic reasons. Cheap natural gas is undercutting coal. So is the steep drop in wind and solar prices, the growing popularity of demand-side alternatives, the increase in materials costs, a rise in the cost of capital, and investors’ concerns over carbon risks. All this has conspired to grind coal plant proposals to a halt:

EIA reports [PDF] no new conventional coal plants coming online after 2012, and only two gigawatts of coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration coming online around 2017; then nothing more through 2035, the end of the EIA forecast period.

A spokesperson for American Electric Power, whose 38,000 MW fleet is currently two-thirds coal,told Ron Brownstein, “We don’t have any plans to build new coal plants. So the rules won’t have much of an impact.”

Don’t let conservatives fool you: new coal is outmoded and uneconomic in the U.S. EPA has little to do with it.

3. This rule is the easier one. The tougher one, which will apply to existing plants, will come later, probably after the election.

EPA actually has two rules for carbon on the way. The first is the New Source rule released this week, which applies to new plants. The second, under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, will regulate existing coal plants. That one hasn’t been released yet and I would be very surprised if we see it before the election. It’s a political hot potato.

EPA has a ton of discretion under 111(d) — legally speaking, it could even implement a cap-and-trade system — but it has already signaled that the rule will be relatively tame, mostly requiring modest efficiency upgrades. In terms of pushing existing coal plants toward retirement, other EPA rules are likely to have larger impact.

4. The ongoing wave of coal-plant retirements has little to do with EPA rules.

There has been a wave of coal-plant retirements in the last year and a half, which conservatives have rushed to blame on EPA rules. But EPA has very little to do with it. There are long-term forces at work which were driving this wave before Obama even came into office.

If you’re of a nerdy bent, I recommend this new report from long-time power industry expert Sue Tierney: “Why Coal Plants Retire: Power Market Fundamentals as of 2012” (PDF). The gist is that three forces are conspiring to render existing coal plants uneconomic: “the sharp decline in natural gas prices, the rising cost of coal, and reduced demand for electricity.” EPA has little control over any of those.

Again, don’t let conservatives fool you: coal’s time has passed. It’s not coming back.

5. EPA rules are not job killers or economic burdens.

There have been some truly hysterical claims made by conservatives about EPA rules. Republicans seem to be in a contest to one-up each other with ridiculous numbers, some borrowed from industry-funded analysis, some just pulled out of their asses.

In this regard, I highly recommend a report from the Economic Policy Institute’s Isaac Shapiro called “The combined effect of the Obama EPA rules.” It is the only attempt I’m aware of to comprehensively tally the costs and benefits of EPA rules issued under Obama. Not surprisingly, it finds that conservative attacks have no basis in fact:

Two broad conclusions emerge from this analysis. First, the dollar value of the benefits of the major rules finalized or proposed by the EPA so far during the Obama administration exceeds the rules’ costs by an exceptionally wide margin.

…

Second, the costs of all the finalized and proposed rules total to a tiny sliver of the overall economy, suggesting that fears that these rules together will deter economic progress are unjustified. (my emphasis)

In 2016, when all the Obama EPA’s new and proposed rules are fully in effect, the combined costs, not including offsetting benefits, will amount to “about 0.13% of

the economy.” The idea that something that marginal could substantially affect the U.S. employment rate or rate of GDP growth is just a lurid fantasy.

——

Bonus!

6. Some day the natural gas bubble will pop and prices will return to earth.

When that happens, it will be extremely helpful to have this rule in place, since industry won’t be able to go backwards to coal. It will have to move forward into renewable energy.

It is the dynamic interplay of natural gas, renewables, and demand reduction that will shape the U.S. power system in the long run. This rule is just a nudge to get coal off the stage a little quicker so that evolution can begin.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. This piece was originally published at Grist.

National security organizations in the United States, including the armed services and the intelligence community, have developed a close relationship with the scientific establishment. The latest technology often fuels warfighting and counter-intelligence capacities, providing the tactical advantages thought necessary to maintain geopolitical dominance and national security. Neuroscience has emerged as a prominent focus within this milieu, annually receiving hundreds of millions of Department of Defense dollars. Its role in national security operations raises ethical issues that need to be addressed to ensure the pragmatic synthesis of ethical accountability and national security.

Introduction

During the past decade, the US national security establishment has come to see neuroscience as a promising and integral component of its 21st century needs. Much neuroscience is “dual use” research, asking questions and developing technologies that are of both military and civilian interest. Historically, dual use has often involved a trickle down of military technology into civilian hands. The Internet, for example, originated as a non-local, distributed means to secure military information. In the case of neuroscience, however, civilian research has outpaced that of the military. Both National Research Council (NRC) reports and Department of Defense (DoD) funding reveal ongoing national security interests in neuroscience and indicate that the military is quite eager to glean what it can from the emerging science [1],[2]. To pursue cognitive neuroscience research, the Pentagon’s science agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), received about US$240 million for the fiscal year of 2011, while the Army trails at US$55 million, the Navy at US$34 million, and the Air Force at US$24 million [3].

The military establishment’s interest in understanding, developing, and exploiting neuroscience generates a tension in its relationship with science: the goals of national security and the goals of science may conflict. The latter employs rigorous standards of validation in the expansion of knowledge, while the former depends on the most promising deployable solutions for the defense of the nation. As a result, the exciting potential of high-tech developments on the horizon may be overhyped, misunderstood, or worse: they could be deployed before sufficiently validated.

Current state-of-the-art neuroscience, including new forms of brain scanning, brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), and neuromodulation, is being tapped for warfighter enhancement, deception detection, and other cutting-edge military applications to serve national security interests.

Brain-computer interface

BCIs exemplify the dual use nature of neuroscience applications. BCIs convert neural activity into input for technological mechanisms, from communication devices to prosthetics. The military’s interests in BCIs are manifold, including treatment modalities, augmented systems for controlling vehicles, and assistance for detecting danger on the battlefield.

In the late 1990s, scientists demonstrated neurological control of the movement of a simple device in rats, and soon thereafter, of a robotic arm in monkeys [4]. More recently, a pilot study of BrainGate technology, an intracortical microelectrode array implanted in human subjects, confirmed 1,000 days of continuous, successful neurological control of a mouse cursor [5]. Non-invasive technologies for harnessing brain activity also show promise for human use. Progress has recently been reported on a “dry” EEG cap that does not require a gel to obtain sufficient data from the brain. The “brain cap” is reported to reconstruct movements of humans’ ankle, knee, and hip joints during treadmill walking in order to aid rehabilitation [6].

DARPA’s Augmented Cognition (AugCog) program sought to find ways to use neurological information gathered from warfighters to modify their equipment accordingly. For example, the “cognitive cockpit” concept involved recording a pilot’s brain activity to customize the cockpit to that individual’s needs in real time, from selecting the least burdened sensory organ for communicating information to prioritizing informational needs and eliminating distractions [7]. Although the Augmented Cognition moniker (and funding mechanism) seem to have been dropped, its spirit lives on in other DARPA projects. For example, the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System is developing portable binoculars that convert subconscious, neurological responses to danger into consciously available information [8]. Such a system could reduce the information-processing burden on warfighters, helping them to identify and respond to areas of interest in the visual field more quickly.

Via intracortical microstimulation (ICMS), a neurologically controlled prosthetic could send tactile information back to the brain in nearly real time, essentially creating a “brain-machine-brain interface” [9]. The technology underlying this concept is already evolving, and some researchers hope that optogenetics, which both enables “precise, millisecond control of specific neurons” and “eliminates most of the key problems with ICMS,” will ultimately supplant the ICMS for sensory feedback [9]. In addition to devising prosthetics that can supply sensory information to the brain, brain-machine-brain interfaces may directly modify neurological activity. Portable technologies like near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), for example, could detect deficiencies in a warfighter’s neurological processes and feed that information into a device utilizing in-helmet or in-vehicle transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to suppress or enhance individual brain functions [2].

Much of the technological evolution of warfare has introduced a distance between the parties involved. From the advent of firearms to airplanes, aerial bombs to remotely operated drones, the visceral reality of combat afforded by the physical proximity to one’s enemy has steadily eroded. In 2007, researchers taught a monkey to neurologically control a walking robot on the other side of the world by means of electrochemical measurements of motor cortical activity [9]. Considering this in light of the work on robotic tactile feedback, it is easy to imagine a new phase of warfare in which ground troops become obsolete.

Warfighter enhancement

The therapeutic paradigm of medical practice aims to heal and reduce suffering, to return the ill to a state of normal health. Yet, many interventions can be used by the healthy to enhance specific traits or capacities beyond the physiological or statistical norm [10]. For example, BCIs can operate prosthetics for therapeutic purposes, but they could also connect to orthotic exoskeletons that enhance strength and endurance. Similarly, therapeutic drugs like methylphenidate can help patients recover focus and attention, but they are also used, for example, by healthy college students looking to maximize academic performance [11]. Whether they do in fact improve performance is open to disagreement [11],[12]. Military pharmaceutical neuroenhancement came to the public’s attention in 2003 when “two American pilots accidentally killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight others in Afghanistan” [13]. It turned out that the pilots had been taking Dexedrine, the amphetamine-based “go pills” often used to reduce the fatigue induced by long missions.

In 2008, a report for the US Army compared the effects of amphetamines with those of modafinil, a drug typically used and approved to treat narcolepsy, in combination with sleep-aiding drugs. Despite the controversy over “go pills”, the study found that for long-duration missions, both amphetamines and modafinil have statistically similar effects of reducing the cognitive decline associated with fatigue [14]. Other reports state that modafinil significantly outperforms methylphenidate for cognitive enhancement in healthy individuals, “especially on people undergoing sleep deprivation” [15]. Related research has investigated other ways to combat fatigue as well. Published in 2007, a DARPA-sponsored study showed that nasally administered orexin-A, a neuropeptide, restored the short-term memory of sleep-deprived monkeys [16].

In its 2009 report for the US Army, the NRC recommends that TMS should also be a part of further research on central nervous system fatigue [2]. Studies suggest that TMS can enhance a variety of neurological functions in healthy individuals, from mood and social cognition to working memory and learning [17]. Another noninvasive neuromodulation technology, transcranial pulsed ultrasound, was demonstrated to have a number of promising effects, from being “useful for sonoporation in gene therapy” to “promoting nerve regeneration” [18]. With the aid of both DARPA and US Army funding, researchers envision and work toward developing portable, in-helmet ultrasound transducers capable of stimulating neural circuits with a better precision and depth than TMS [19]. Direct current polarization, or transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), is another noninvasive, DARPA-supported technology for neuromodulation. “As might be expected, TDCS can enhance cognitive processes occurring in targeted brain areas” [20], including learning and memory [17].

While cognitive augmentation will enhance performance on some tasks, other situations call for the reduction of neurological capacity. For example, if a memory of a traumatic event could be dampened, one may be less likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result. In 2002, scientists produced preliminary evidence that propranolol, when administered shortly after a traumatic event, could mitigate the long-term potential for internal cues to invoke post-traumatic stress [21]. More recently, scientists demonstrated that propranolol can similarly reduce PTSD symptoms when administered “after retrieval of the memory of a past traumatic event”, not just immediately after the event itself [22].

Human enhancement may benefit individuals and society in myriad ways, but it also poses many risks. In the civilian world, if more and more people begin enhancing their minds and bodies, individuals may eventually feel subtly coerced into enhancing themselves in order to remain competitive in school or the workplace [10]. In the military context, the risk of coercion is much more pronounced [13]:

According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, soldiers are required to accept medical interventions that make them fit for duty. Experimental treatments are a harder case, but the US government has shown a tendency to defer to commanders in a combat situation if they think some treatment is likely to do more harm than good, even if unproven.

If a warfighter is allowed no autonomous freedom to accept or decline an enhancement intervention, and the intervention in question is as invasive as remote brain control, then the ethical implications are immense. As Peter W. Singer has observed, “the Pentagon’s real-world record with things like the aboveground testing of atomic bombs, Agent Orange, and Gulf War syndrome certainly doesn’t inspire the greatest confidence among the first generation of soldiers involved [in human enhancement]” [23].

Neuroscientific deception, detection, and interrogation

National security agencies are also mining neuroscience for ways to advance interrogation methods and the detection of deception. The increasing sophistication of brain-reading neurotechnologies has led many to investigate their potential applications for lie detection. Deception has long been associated with empirically measurable correlates, arguably originating nearly a century ago with research into blood pressure [24]. Yet blood pressure, among other modern bases for polygraphy like heart and breathing rates, indicates the presence of a proxy for deception: stress. Although the polygraph performs better than chance, it does not reliably and accurately indicate the presence of deception, and it is susceptible to counter measures. Because of these problems with the polygraph, researchers are eagerly following up on preliminary successes in using new neurotechnological modalities for detecting deception.

“Brain fingerprinting” utilizes EEG to detect the P300 wave, an event-related potential (ERP) associated with the perception of a recognized, meaningful stimulus, and it is thought to hold potential for confirming the presence of “concealed information” [25]. The technology is marketed for a number of uses: “national security, medical diagnostics, advertising, insurance fraud and in the criminal justice system” [26]. Similarly, fMRI-based lie detection services are currently offered by several companies, including No Lie MRI [27] and Cephos [28]. DARPA funded the pioneering research that showed how deception involves a more complex array of neurological processes than truth-telling, and that fMRI arguably can detect the difference between the two [29]. No Lie MRI also has ties to national security: they market their services to the DoD, Department of Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, among other potential customers [30].

The Defense Intelligency Agency (DIA)-commissioned 2008 NRC report, Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, in which one of the present authors (JDM) participated, reiterates the conclusion of a 2003 NRC report [31] that “traditional measures of deception detection technology have proven to be insufficiently accurate” [1]. While the NRC ultimately recommends pursuing “research on multimodal methodological approaches for detecting and measuring neurophysiological indicators of psychological states and intentions”, it cautions that like traditional polygraphy, neurological measurements do not directly reveal psychological states [1]. In fact, many scholars and scientists dispute the validity of brain scan-based lie detection [24],[32].

In addition to questions of scientific validity, these technologies raise legal and ethical issues. Legally required brain scans arguably violate “the guarantee against self-incrimination” because they differ from acceptable forms of bodily evidence, such as fingerprints or blood samples, in an important way: they are not simply physical, hard evidence, but evidence that is intimately linked to the defendant’s mind [32]. Under US law, brain-scanning technologies might also raise implications for the Fourth Amendment, calling into question whether they constitute an unreasonable search and seizure [33].

Another neuroscientific field stimulating national security interest pertains to the hormone oxytocin, which has been shown to augment the expression of various virtues, from “trust and trustworthiness” to “generosity and sacrifice” [34]. Without elaborating, the NRC’s 2008 report specifies oxytocin as a “neuropeptide of interest” [1]. If the interest in question relates to pharmacologically incapacitating the psychological defenses of interrogation suspects, this may conflict with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). According to the CWC, a chemical that can cause “temporary incapacitation” is defined as a “toxic chemical” and is therefore banned from such use [35]. Beyond this ethical concern, oxytocin is far from being confirmed as a truth serum, and without further verification it should not be treated as such. The history of research on finding the ultimate truth serum is long and storied. Suffice it to say, “[T]he urban myth of the drugged detainee imparting pristine nuggets of intelligence is firmly rooted and hard to dispel” [36].

Recommendations

This paper has detailed the national security establishment’s interest in and ability to fund a panoply of diverse neuroscientific studies. It has also reviewed the ethical, legal, and social issues that emerge from this relationship. Yet, discussions in themselves will not ensure that the translation of basic science into deployed product will proceed ethically or contribute to the greater good. These considerations must be embedded and explored at various levels in society: upstream in the minds and goals of scientists, downstream in the creation of advisory bodies, and broadly in the public at large.

Although they may receive funding from national security agencies, neuroscientists may not consider how their work contributes to warfare. As we have seen, however, neuroscience does, and will continue to, play a role in military operations. This fact spawns a plenitude of ethical concerns, from which one may surmise that the sciences should divorce themselves from the military completely. However, the fact that the material explored in this paper is public information speaks to the possibility that a discussion about the role and limits of neuroscience in national security may be open and transparent. Bifurcating public science from national security may only drive the same research underground, undermining its current public accountability [13]. Thus, it would be impractical to try to circumvent the ethical problems simply by cutting ties between science and national defense.

Many would agree with George Mason University anthropologist Hugh Gusterson that “[m]ost rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we’ll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it’s too delicious to ignore” [37]. In any case, as we have suggested, the dual use possibilities for neuroscience render such a world unlikely. Therefore, scientists themselves could become more aware of the dual use phenomenon, whether their work is specifically funded by national security bodies or not, in order to create a more self-conscious scientific enterprise. They could also involve themselves in constructing the parameters to guide and govern their relationships with national security agencies. Just as many nuclear scientists opposed the development of atomic weapons, contributing to the test-ban treaties of the 1960s and the drawdown of armed missiles in the 1980s [13], neuroscientists could consider and promulgate their perspectives on the military implications and ethical issues associated with their work.

This article was originally published in PloSBiology, and should be cited as “Tennison MN , Moreno JD (2012) Neuroscience, Ethics, and National Security: The State of the Art. PLoS Biol 10(3): e1001289. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001289″

Endnotes

1. Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Research in the Next Two Decades, National Research Council of the National Academies (2008) Emerging cognitive neuroscience and related technologies. Washington (D.C.): National Academies Press. 214 p.
2. Committee on Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications, National Research Council of the National Academies (2009) Opportunities in neuroscience for future army applications. Washington (D.C.): National Academies Press. 136 p.
3. Kosal M. E, Huang J. Y (2011) Security implications of cognitive neuroscience research: Results from an ethnographic survey of researchers. Brain Waves Module 3: Neuroscience, conflict and security. London: The Royal Society.
4.Lebedev M. A, Nicolelis M. A. L (2006) Brain-machine interfaces: past, present and future. Trends Neurosci 29(9): 536–546. Find this article online
5. Simeral J. D, Kim S. P, Black M. J, Donoghue J. P, Hochberg L. R (2011) Neural control of cursor trajectory and click by a human with tetraplegia 1000 days after implant of an intracortical microelectrode array. J Neural Eng 8: 1–24. Find this article online
6. Presacco A, Goodman R, Forrester L. W, Contreras-Vidal J. L (2011) Neural decoding of treadmill walking from non-invasive, electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. J Neurophysiol 106: 1875–1887. Find this article online
7. Keiper A (2006) The age of neuroelectronics. New Atlantis 11: 4–41. Find this article online
8. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Sciences OfficeCognitive technology threat warning system. Available: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Cognitive_Technology_Threat_Warning_System_(CT2WS).aspx. Accessed 15 July 2011.
9. Lebedev M. A, Tate A. J, Hanson T. L, Li Z, O’Doherty J. E, et al. (2011) Future developments in brain-machine interface research. Clinics 66(S1): 25–32. Find this article online
10. President’s Council on Bioethics (2003) Beyond therapy: biotechnology and the pursuit of happiness. New York: Regan Books. 328 p.
11. Smith M. E, Farah M. J (2011) Are prescription stimulants “smart pills”? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals. Psychol Bull 137(5): 717–741. Find this article online
12. Outram S. M (2010) The use of methylphenidate among students: the future of enhancement? J Med Ethics 36: 198–202. Find this article online
13,.Moreno J. D (2006) Mind wars: brain research and national defense. New York/Washington (D.C.): Dana Press. 210 p.
14. Storm W. F (2008) A fatigue management system for sustained military operations. 104 p.
15. Repantis D, Schlattmann P, Laisney O, Heuser I (2010) Modafinil and methylphenidate for neuroenhancement in healthy individuals: a systematic review. Pharmacol Res 62: 187–206. Find this article online
16. Deadwyler S. A, Porrino L, Siegel J. M, Hampson R. E (2007) Systemic and nasal delivery of orexin-A (Hypocretin-1) reduces the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance in nonhuman primates. J Neurosci 27(52): 14239–14247. Find this article online
17. Hamilton R, Messing S, Chatterjee A (2011) Rethinking the thinking cap: ethics of neural enhancement using noninvasive brain stimulation. Neurology 76(2): 187–193. Find this article online
18.. Tyler W. J (2011) Noninvasive neuromodulation with ultrasound? A continuum mechanics hypothesis. Neuroscientist 17(1): 25–36. Find this article online
19. Tyler W. J (2010) Remote control of brain activity using ultrasound. Armed with Science. Available: http://science.dodlive.mil/2010/09/01/remote-control-of-brain-activity-using-ultrasound/. Accessed 21 July 2011.
20. Ukueberuwa D, Wassermann E. M (2010) Direct current brain polarization: A simple, noninvasive technique for human neuromodulation. Neuromodulation 13(3): 168–173. Find this article online
21. Pitman R. K, Sanders K. M, Zusman R. M, Healy A. R, Cheema F, et al. (2002) Pilot study of secondary prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder with propranolol. Biol Psychiatry 51(2): 189–192. Find this article online
22. Brunet A, Orr S. P, Tremblay J, Robertson K, Nader K, et al. (2008) Effect of post-retrieval propranolol on psychophysiologic responding during subsequent script-driven traumatic imagery in post-traumatic stress disorder. J Psychiat Res 42(6): 503–506. Find this article online
23. Singer P. W (2009) Wired for war: The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21^st century. New York: Penguin Group. 512 p.
24. Greely H. T, Illes J (2007) Neuroscience-based lie detection: The urgent need for regulation. Am J Law Med 33: 377–431. Find this article online
25. Ganis G, Rosenfeld J. P (2011) Neural correlates of deception. In: Illes J, Sahakian B. J, editors. The Oxford handbook of neuroethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 101–117.
26. Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories (n.d.) Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories executive summary. Available: http://www.brainwavescience.com/ExecutiveSummary.php. Accessed 13 January 2012.
27. No Lie MRI, Inc. (n.d.) No Lie MRI home page. Available: http://noliemri.com/. Accessed 13 January 2012.
28. Cephos (n.d.) Cephos home page. Available: http://www.cephoscorp.com/. Accessed 13 January 2012.
29. Langleben D. D, Loughead J. W, Bilker W. B, Ruparel K, Childress A. R, et al. (2005) Telling truth from lie in individual subjects with fast event-related fMRI. Hum Brain Mapp 26: 262–272. Find this article online
30. No Lie MRI, Inc. (n.d.) Customers – government. Available: http://noliemri.com/customers/Government.htm. Accessed 19 July 2011.
31. Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph, Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences and Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council of the National Academies (2003) The polygraph and lie detection. Washington (D.C.): National Academies Press. 416 p.
32. Farrell B (2010) Can’t get you out of my head: the human rights implications of using brain scans as criminal evidence. Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law 4(1): 89–95. Find this article online
33. Greely H. T (2006) The social effects of advances in neuroscience: legal problems, legal perspectives. In: Illes J, editor. Neuroethics: defining the issues in theory, practice, and policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 245–263.
34. Zak P. J (2011) The physiology of moral sentiments. J Econ Behav Organ 77(1): 53–65. Find this article online
35.Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (1997) Chemical Weapons Convention, article II: definitions and criteria. Available: http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/articles/article-ii-definitions-and-criteria/. Accessed 7 August 2011.
36. Marks J. H (2007) Interrogational neuroimaging in counterterrorism: a no-brainer or a human rights hazard? Am J Law Med 33: 483–500. Find this article online
37. Cressey D (2008) Pentagon goes psycho. Nature News Blog. Available: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2008/08/pentagon_goes_psycho.html. Accessed 8 August 2011.

FUNDING SCIENCE
Study Shows NIH Generated $62.1 Billion in Economic Activity
A new report shows NIH had an economic impact last year of $62.1 billion dollars while sustaining some 432,000 public and private sector jobs. The proposed flat funding for NIH lead a group of  medical researchers to circulate a petition voicing their concerns of  “cures delayed, labs closed, and of the US falling behind in research.” Add lost jobs and economic shrinkage to the list whilst starting the in-fighting over shifting limited funding to important a new program designed to fast-track critical drug development and release.

CYBERSECURITY
Cybercriminals VS. Hacktivists
More a case of Spy VS. Spy-  so-called hacktivists have managed to out-pillage the world this year more than their “organized” cybercriminal counterparts. Instead of the iconic social and politically motivated web-defacements and “denial of service” attacks, hacktivists have turned to large scale data breaches which has lead to Verizon compiling a database and investigating total losses with several corporate participants.

CLEAN ENERGY
DOD Interest In Sustainable High-Grade Fuels Powers New Market
The second generation or Gen2 biofuels are benefiting from the military’s need for specialty chemicals. Joint R&D programs and fuel purchases are driving the industry to commercial viability while securing independent, sustainable fuels for our National defense.

BIOTECHNOLOGY
Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against Blood Test Patent
The Court ruled that a biotech company’s blood test that detects a rise in certain red blood cells from a reaction by the autoimmune treatment drug, thiopurine, was un-patentable because it was a “well-understood, routine, conventional activity previously engaged in by researchers in the field.” The court cited that though the link between the new drug and reaction in the body was new, the patent never the less “simply describes that relation sets forth a natural law.” This decision may have larger implications going forward for other biotech and gene patentability.

STEM EDUCATION
Tennessee’s “Monkey Bill” Moves Along
With a vote of 24-8 the Tennessee Senate passed a bill aimed at encouraging teachers to undermine science by debating “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” The law that created the famous Scopes Monkey Trial from Tennessee in 1925 was passed by 24-6, leading a ban on teaching evolution in the state until 1967- a total of 42 years. Never having been fully satisfied, opponents have “creatively” sought to undermined evolution in the 45 years since evolution has been a legal science topic in the state.

ENVIRONMENTAL
EPA Regulatory Costs Overblown
A new study challenges the oft touted talking points against environmental regulation. Contrary to the “job killing” regulations, this study reports “there is extensive literature showing that the costs of environmental regulations are more than offset by a broad range of economic, public health, and jobs-related benefits.”

EDUCATION
Empirical Study of Online Learning Programs Gleans Insights
The cost benefit study weighed the many differences that an online learning environment brings to education. By making use of home or community spaces, there are costs saving over using dedicated buildings as well as “through the reuse and large-scale distribution of materials.” The report makes suggestions for more effective learning by creating curriculums that encourage active learning which can also add to increased startup costs over traditional courses.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
2 Trillion in Ocean Damages- Add that to the Debt
Science Progress recently reported on the unexpected rate of acidification in our oceans and now the Stockholm Environment Institute put a tangible monetary figure on that damage: $428 billion per year by 2050. Tallying to 2 trillion by 2100, the report says it is not intended to be a “scaremongering forecast,” but instead to give concrete differences in the results of our actions. The report notes that these predictions are at our current CO2 emission rates that would push global temperatures up by 4o C and that the impacts can be reduced to $105 billion per year by staying below 2.2o C by 2050.

This week’s news compiled and summarized by Jason Thomas.

 Science is giving us expectations
We want game-changin’ permutations
Science is giving us expectations
We want radical transformations
Good, good, good transformations …

You’re now in the frame of mind of many within the science policy community—the state of mind that sees the transformative potential of science and technology as having little or no downside.

Increasingly within our scientific institutions, mere incremental advance is no longer sufficient. Scientists are being asked to be more radical, more willing to take risks, and more disposed to push the frontiers of knowledge—to become, in a word, transformative.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, or NSF, is one of several agencies developing initiatives to promote so-called “transformative” research. For instance, in September 2007 NSF issued Important Notice No. 130, which announced a change to NSF’s Intellectual Merit review criterion effective January 5, 2008. Reviewers would now be asked, “To what extent does the proposed activity suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?” (bold indicates addition of “potentially transformative” to the criterion).

This announcement followed the release of a document (often called “The Butterfly Report” from the image on its cover) in May 2007 that contained the following definition of the term:

Transformative research involves ideas, discoveries, or tools that radically change our understanding of an important existing scientific or engineering concept or educational practice or leads to the creation of a new paradigm or field of science, engineering, or education. Such research challenges current understanding or provides pathways to new frontiers.

Good, good, good transformations

This definition was not meant to define strict boundaries between “transformative research,” or TR, and all the rest.[i] In a January 4, 2007, talk, “Transformative Research: The Artistry and Alchemy of the 21st Century,” then-Director of NSF Ardent Bement, Jr. suggested it would often be easy to identify transformative research in hindsight, but that we would continue to discuss the meaning of the term “transformative”:

But we also can – and no doubt will – continue to quibble among ourselves about the meaning of “transformative research,” which as yet has no universally accepted definition. That is just as it should be. When concepts as complex as “transformative research” are still emerging, we need to practice a kind of “constructive ambiguity.” Doing so will give us the flexibility to incorporate new knowledge and fresh perspectives as they arise; in other words, leave room for discovery. In that way, we can make course corrections along the way, adapt to changing circumstances, and remain open to diverse suggestions about the issues.

In March 2012 the three of us led a two-day workshop at NSF Headquarters to once again raise the question of the meaning of “transformative research.” TR has come to encapsulate an increasingly central question across both U.S. and foreign science agencies: In a hypercompetitive global economy, with pressing challenges in many areas (energy, food, water, disease, etc.), how can we do a better job of picking research projects that are true game changers?

The workshop

Workshop participants included 25 career scientists, engineers, historians, philosophers, and science policy researchers. Former and current NSF officials also attended parts of the workshop. One of the first questions discussed was, “What is meant by the term?” Bement’s insight concerning the advantages of there being no universally accepted meaning only holds if NSF’s definition is not accepted as comprehensive. Accordingly, the workshop spent little time on establishing the “right” definition of the term. Instead, we focused on fleshing out alternative interpretations that would provide both NSF and NSF researchers with tools to harness the “constructive ambiguity” of TR and turn it to their advantage.

The workshop did, however, focus on whether transformative research truly existed except retrospectively. Is TR merely a useful moniker for Congress and the public to indicate extra effort, or is there a real phenomenon here that might be identified on the front end?

Another central concern was, “Why transform?” The argument in favor of TR is that it will help us deal with our many urgent problems, while assisting the U.S. economy in the global race for economic advantage. On the other hand, many people today are uncomfortable with change, feeling with some justification that the changes in economics and culture over the last 30 years have left them with the short end of the stick.

Central to all these discussions was the work of Thomas Kuhn. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argued that revolutions in science are spontaneous, radical breaks with the status quo that ultimately transform a field of study. But Kuhn assumed that most science consisted of incremental puzzle solving, which he called “normal” science. What happens if science is constantly revolutionary? Again, some suggested that transformative research was the result of incremental advances within the current structure of normal science. If so, then NSF’s emphasis on TR is redundant: Transformations naturally occur within scientific fields in the course of normal, or incremental, research.

NSF has committed to emphasizing the importance of funding basic research that contributes to societal benefits, such as quality of life, economic growth, and environmental health, through the Broader Impacts merit review criterion. Thus the workshop also asked, “What is the relationship between TR and broader impacts?” Peer review is arguably the proper tool to advance a policy of promoting transformative research, but participants also noted that review panels could present a significant barrier to funding transformative science.

If what NSF wants is to fund transformative research, then why use reviewers who are committed to the current state of the art to try to find it? Recalling some of the issues NSF has had with incorporating broader impacts considerations into its merit-review process, when it comes to reviewing potentially transformative research, it is natural to ask, “Who really counts as a peer?” Political considerations aside, given that so many of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries flew in the face of conventional wisdom, how can peer-review panelists tell when proposed research will be potentially transformative? Can we identify transformative characteristics up front? And if a researcher specifies that the proposed research might be transformative, can reviewers trust the label?

The conversations launched at the workshop are only beginning. A white paper is being authored now, and we have plans to create a volume of essays on the topic. This volume will not be targeted only at academic specialists, but also at a broader audience of those concerned with public funding of research. Overall, transformative research presents us all with another opportunity to make publically funded science more accountable.

J. Britt Holbrook is research assistant professor of philosophy and assistant director at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity, or CSID, at the University of North Texas, or UNT. Robert Frodeman is professor of philosophy at UNT and director of CSID. Kelli Barr is a graduate student in the UNT department of philosophy and graduate research assistant at CSID.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research provided by the NSF under grant No. 1129067, while emphasizing that any opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF or any of its employees.

Science Progressing is your weekly guide to the science and technology policy news you should not have missed. Did we leave anything out? Tweet or facebook us and let us know.

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
Americans doubtful of American science dominance; China investing big
A poll found that 60 percent of people believed that the U.S. would not lead the world in science and technology innovation in 2020. A scary feeling considering the importance science and technology to our economy. With China increasing their basic research budget by a significant 12.4 percent this year and skeptical politicians and flat funding for basic research here at home, the palpable apathy of the public is even more distressing.

FUNDING SCIENCE
Flat NIH funding: What’s in it for me?
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health are coming out against the flat funding proposed by the Obama administration. Mincing no words, one researcher says “”It’s an epidemic of cures delayed, labs closed, and of the US falling behind in research.” With the NIH being a incubator for some of the most useful  biomedical research, it is perplexing that funding will not keep at least with inflation much less increase to support Obama’s own bio-economy initiative.

GENETIC ENGINEERING
Synthetic biology garners resistance
“An extreme form of genetic engineering” is how a group of 111 organizations characterize synthetic biology. They reason that a moratorium is necessary until increased regulation and oversight measures are put in place. A 2010 presidential commission report into synthetic biology came to different conclusions.

ENERGY
The full costs of the Keystone pipeline
A Cornell University study reported that the eventual costs of the Keystone pipeline over time will economically and environmentally outweigh the exaggerated benefits that have been claimed by pipeline backers. By studying the history of other pipelines, they have concluded it is not if but when the pipeline spills that will undoubtedly push costs far over any benefits. Tar sands oil is course and heavy and acts like “liquid sandpaper” flowing through the steel pipes, leading researchers to estimate 91 significant spills at a cost of 700 million each over a 50 year usage.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Smart meters could replace nuclear plant
South Korea is on track to have smart meters installed in 50 percent of homes by 2016. The energy savings are estimated to be enough to shut down an entire nuclear power plant.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Consumers to GM: Stop funding climate denial
An online petition has collected more than 30,000 signatures after it was revealed that the notorious climate denial “think tank,” Heartland Institute, has been receiving large injections of cash from General Motors. The alleged internal documents leaked last month revealed Heartland’s strategies to weaken science standards in schools and how to continue to please donors hostile to climate science.

CYBER SECURITY
How to prevent cyberwar
The World Cyber Security Technology Research Summit at Queen’s University Belfast is scheduled for its second annual meeting on March 16. The communications between nations and private business on cybersecurity is key, according to Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of the largest antivirus company in Europe, to maintaining the internet “as a platform for economic growth and societal development.” Kaspersky Labs, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the UK’s Home Office, the European Commission, McAfee, the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, Cisco, SRI International, Georgia Tech, IBM and CyLabs will all be represented at the summit.

GENETICS
Woolly mammoth clone within three years
Russian and South Korean scientists make deal to collaborate on cloning a woolly mammoth. The Russians whom discovered a pristinely preserved mammoth in the Siberian permafrost last August are already in negotiations with Japanese researchers to clone the animal. With the two competing, there is a high likely hood of having mammoth soon rather than later.

GENETICS
Shape versus content: An epigenetic view of DNA
A new imaging technique is giving geneticists further insight in to the physical changes that occur when genes are switched on or off. The actual way that the DNA is folded may play a large role in actual gene expression. This epigenetic response means that it’s not just the content of the gene but how it is physically located in relation to other genes that determine the full extent of expression.

PRETTY COOL
Laser lighting rod
French researchers have demonstrated in a lab that a laser can be used to guide lightning strikes. Even more impressive, they were able to redirect the lightning mid-strike. One wonders whether this technology could be used to collect energy from storms.

Some universities, too, are rethinking their policies. Penn State, for example, announced in December that the university is no longer required to own intellectual property created by industry-sponsored research. “In short we consider the net present value of the interactions and relationships that our faculty and students have with industrial professionals to be real and therefore greater than the apparent future value of the proceeds from such IP,” wrote Hank Foley, Penn State’s vice president for research, in announcing this news. “Our goal … is to flatten any and all barriers or impediments to innovation and that includes our own past stance on intellectual property.”[iii]

Plans for a new technology research center near Manhattan. Image courtesy of Cornell University.

The rationale for these policy changes is clear: Technology transfer can provide a broad range of benefits, but these benefits have not been distributed across all communities. For example, academic inventors can solve practical problems while funding additional research during dwindling budgets; students and graduates can get career paths and professional skills; universities can contribute to a virtuous cycle of regional economic development and diversification while facilitating student and faculty recruitment; and regions can get new businesses and more jobs.[iv] These rewards can be substantial: The University of Wisconsin’s technology transfer efforts have resulted in more than $1 billion back to support the university.[v] Failing to successfully commercialize the research and technology coming out of universities and research institutions thus leaves considerable unrealized value on the sidelines.

To date, though, many of the benefits of U.S. university-based technology transfer have been concentrated in a few communities such as Silicon Valley. Eleven of the approximately 200 members of the Association of University Technology Managers contribute more than half of its technology transfer revenue. This suggests that some university communities may not be bringing to market the full potential of their research.[vi]

Government and university efforts to increase the impact of university technology transfer are essential. But there is another group that also has an important role to play in accelerating university technology transfer: private-sector ventures. Businesses large and small have a unique opportunity to jumpstart real, transformational change in a community’s technology transfer efforts.

To make this opportunity clear, it helps to specify the five major challenges that currently limit technology transfer.

 Five factors that inhibit technology transfer

As a quick recap, it is helpful to think about the overall technology transfer process as a funnel—a “wide mouth” of research investment feeding a “narrow end” of successful commercialization. (see Figure 1) Research can lead to inventions, some of which are disclosed to a school’s technology transfer office, or TTO. The TTO pursues patent applications for some disclosures; some are approved. These disclosures can be commercialized, usually by licensing, renting the intellectual property to an existing company or startup, and forming a company. Only some commercialization attempts generate revenue or sustain a startup. At this point, startups enter the traditional business funding and growth cycles, such as self-funding or seeking seed funding.

Figure 1.

Of course there are far more ideas generated than will ever be commercialized; that is the beauty and the challenge of technology transfer. But five factors inside and outside of the university contribute to incomplete technology transfer—that is, the casting off of ideas with validity and potential impact before commercialization is achieved.

Inside universities, we need to consider incentives, structures, and cultural factors. First, incentives—or more appropriately, the lack thereof—can contribute to inefficiency. Universities rightfully need to focus on their core missions of research and instruction. Maintaining research funding, which can be hundreds of millions of dollars or more, must be a core function. A high-risk, noncore activity like technology transfer is not likely to be an area of focus.

Second, structure: Institutions are rightfully skeptical of substantial direct investments in noncore functions with certain short-term costs and uncertain long-term benefits—which is exactly the case with universities and technology transfer. This is especially true when technology transfer offices have to operate at a loss for many years, as many do.[vii] As a result there may be underinvestment in essential technology transfer activities such as getting to know professors and researchers and earning their trust. One practitioner estimated that a tenfold increase supporting campus entrepreneurial activity would not exhaust the supply of commercializable ideas.

Third, culture: Technology transfer offices must focus on protecting the university’s assets and reputation. Sometimes, though, this may come at the expense of encouraging new ideas. As one former university official noted, “Academic tech transfer offices too often think in terms of processing paper.”[viii] They may, for example, set up barriers via contracting processes that limit value creation or place undue emphasis on procedural outputs that hamstring a university’s chance to succeed.

To be sure, these factors inside a university can be important. But focusing only on universities’ contributions to incomplete technology transfer would miss the full story. The “innovation ecosystem”—the supporting institutions, activities, and culture relating to technological innovation—is also a major determinant of technology transfer performance.[ix]

In the 1990s, for example, Stanford University did not encourage startup businesses based on new technologies, yet the school still led the nation in startup creation. As a research team who studied this observed:

“Stanford’s success in generating new businesses … depends not only on university policies and strategies but also on the institutions, entrepreneurial climate, and fertility of the economic soil (including access to venture capital) in the recipient community.”[x]

The ecosystem’s contribution can be summarized into two factors: innovation-entrepreneur matching and pre-seed support. Innovation-entrepreneur matching describes the connection between the academic innovator providing ideas and energy with a commercialization team who can guide that idea into the marketplace. Given the complexity of this matching, which involves connecting subject matter expertise, personalities, and communication styles, it is not enough to post disclosure summaries of available technologies online and hope that an entrepreneur finds it—proactive matchmaking is essential.

Pre-seed support describes the degree of financial and non-financial encouragement of a fledgling company. Funding is part of this support, but it is only one part. Consider this comparison of Baltimore and Silicon Valley from almost 20 years ago:

A person with an idea to begin a new business in the Santa Clara Valley would be encouraged to take the plunge by friends, family, and co-workers. These people would offer assistance, advice, and most likely start-up funds. If someone with a reasonable idea would not seek to start a company, everyone would think they were crazy. In contrast, the same person with that same idea in Baltimore would be discouraged by everyone they knew from starting a firm. Indeed, they would be thought crazy if they gave up their job security and benefits.[xi]

New startups and entrepreneurs need the financial, intellectual and, yes, emotional support to make it through the challenging early years.

When all or some of these five factors are not in place, we would expect to see incomplete technology transfer.

How the private sector can help address these challenges

In underdeveloped innovation ecosystems facing some or all of these challenges, private-sector ventures are well suited to chip in. [xii] They can play an intermediary role, reducing transaction costs and distributing risk effectively across multiple steps of the value chain.

Specifically, business could help close the gap from disclosures to pre-seed ventures by developing business models to address the five limits on technology transfer. They would operate under different incentives and structure. While a university may not focus on a very low probability risk of launching a new commercial enterprise, a private venture, with a 100 percent guarantee of failure unless value is captured, most certainly would. A business can also provide expertise in innovator-entrepreneur matching and provide services to help build an internal culture and structure that supports innovators and new startups.

One analogy for this approach comes from the history of the automotive industry. Early manufacturers like Henry Ford had to build almost everything themselves.[xiii] They began to enter into agreements with Firestone and Goodyear for tires. Over time, other specialized firms grew dramatically. By 2008 there were 9,100 equipment manufacturers, making everything from trim to transmissions.[xiv] But at the early stages of this “automotive ecosystem,” a single business had to solve many needs. So it may be with universities and technology innovation.

Several private-sector entities have been formed to help close this gap between technology transfer practice and potential. Intellectual Ventures, which works with thousands of inventors around the globe to commercialize and expand their inventions, is one. Another is Technology Ventures Corp, or TVC, which recently announced plans to expand nationally to assist Department of Energy labs in technology transfer.[xv]

My venture, Canterbury Road Partners, is a third example. We aim to support technology transfer for one or more universities in a community by launching locally-based pre-seed startups based on that university’s “unrealized” innovations—those that a Technology Transfer Office was not able to commercialize.

Looking ahead

University communities looking to harness private-sector institutions to accelerate their technology transfer ecosystem will have to identify the right partners. They’ll also have to demonstrate the organizational will to do things differently, such agreeing to standardized, forward-looking intellectual property contracts that lower the transaction costs for startups and facilitate private investment necessary for product development and business expansion. University partners must be excited about their partnerships if they are to work; begrudging support won’t cut it.

Private ventures can help by creating a value proposition for universities and their communities that is worth being excited about. They must acknowledge simultaneous economic and community development goals and be empathetic about the challenges universities face in optimizing the technology transfer process. Beyond the traditional measures of technology transfer effectiveness, such as licenses generated or revenue from startup companies, businesses should commit to a broader set of goals and metrics that matter as much or more  to universities, such as jobs for graduates and local residents, the number of ideas that are turned into marketplace realities, and local economic development.

To be sure, substantial risks are involved. But there is also potential for substantial gains. Effective technology transfer can revitalize office space in once-shuttered buildings around university campuses; encourage the next generation of professors to choose their school based on the chance to turn their ideas into impact; give hometown students who have attended colleges in other cities the opportunity to return to their hometowns to start their careers; and create thousands of new jobs. Simply put, as Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing said: When it comes to technology transfer, “Everyone Wins.”[xvi]

Matt Van Itallie is the founder of Canterbury Road Partners, a technology transfer accelerator. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

Endnotes

Tina Swanson, in a NRDC Switchboard repost.

Imagine you’re sick and you go to the hospital seeking diagnosis and treatment from a doctor.  After taking your history, giving you a thorough examination and doing a huge number of expensive tests, your doctor determines that you are being sickened by pollution from an industrial complex, A**e Industries, located near to your home. But then, just as she is coming to tell you her results, your doctor is arrested, charged with attempting to report her diagnosis to you before she provides it, along with all her notes and test results, to A**e Industries.  A**e Industries also threatens to sue the hospital if they allow your doctor to reveal her results to you.  Sound outrageous or farfetched?  Then wait till you hear this…..

Earlier this year, lawyers representing the Mining Awareness Resource Group, which works on behalf of the mining industry, sent letters to a number of scientific journals, including Occupational and Environmental Medicine and The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, suggesting they “reconsider” publication of articles submitted by the National Cancer Institute or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health on the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study in light of a court order issued by a U.S. federal district court.

This legal threat directed at peer-reviewed scientific journals, an unprecedented new low in the war on science, was just the most recent effort by the mining industry to derail and delay this $11.5 million publically-funded study of the relationship between exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust that occur in and around mines and lung cancer.  It began in mid-1990s, when the mining industry sued the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding industry representatives be included on scientific oversight committees for the study.

Congress got into the act in 1999, demanding to “review and approve” study results prior to publication, an overreach that a federal judge rejected, instead allowing the industry and the Congressional committee a 90-day pre-publication review.  Legal and procedural skirmishes still continue over the committee’s and the mining industry’s demands for ever more documents.  For a more complete description of this disturbing story, see these articles here, here, here and here.

The diesel study, launched 20 years ago, builds on numerous other studies that have suggested a link between diesel exhaust (which contains sooty particulate matter as well as hundreds of toxic chemicals) and lung cancer, including research that led California to list diesel exhaust as a known carcinogen more than a decade ago and this one on railroad workers published in 2004.  The diesel study was also expected to provide valuable new information to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and arm of the World Health Organization, when it officially reassesses the science linking diesel exhaust to cancer this coming June.

According to Dr. Kyle Steenland, professor at Emory University’s School of Public Health, the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study is a “state of the art evaluation of diesel” that should provide “very important … information about whether diesel is a lung carcinogen.”  Dr. Steenland expressed the frustration of many scientists and public health officials when he said “It’s high time that the public and the scientific community get to see the results of this study.”

Last month, when I began researching and writing this post, that was where this story of science interference and suppression ended.  But last Friday the good news came: results of the study had been published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.  The journal article and accompanying editorial are publically available online.  Bottom line: the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study showed that regular exposure to high concentrations of diesel exhaust significantly increases the likelihood of dying of lung cancer, with cancer rates as much as three- to sevenfold higher for the most heavily exposed miners compared to miners exposed to lower levels.  My colleague, Diane Bailey, provides a more complete description of the study’s results in her latest blog.

This case of stalling and suppressing scientific results is not an isolated incident—books have been written about this kind of stuff and the news is full of similar stories.[1] But many of us think that it’s getting worse and that it represents a growing threat to our health, our democracy and our planet.

Last month, Dr. Nina Federoff, outgoing president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science expressed her profound concern that the anti-science movement was spreading and that we were “sliding back into a dark era.”  What makes the diesel study story such a compelling and illuminating example of the war on science isn’t just that the assailants are so clearly identified (the mining industry) and their objective is so cynical and self-serving (preventing disclosure of facts about the effects of working conditions on the health of their own employees).  It is that it has escalated the war on science from distortion and denial to the use of legal threats to prevent publication of peer reviewed scientific results (which, in this case, the industry almost certainly already knew) and manipulation of Congress to support this kind of interference.

Science, like a medical diagnosis, is the use of observation, measurement and experimentation to answer questions and establish objective facts.  By design and application, it is transparent, characterized by the free flow and exchange of ideas, information and, because we scientists can’t help ourselves, more questions.  Neither scientists nor doctors always agree with each other—but it is the open and creative yet informed discussion that makes science such a powerful tool for learning, problem-solving and progress.

So the next time you hear a story like this, evaluate the background, evidence and the players.  And then ask yourself whether it makes sense to attack science—the messenger and the message—rather than the problem that science seeks to understand.

Tina Swanson is Director of the Science Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard and republished at Climate Progress.

[1] To cite just two recently published examples, read Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, or Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, by Shawn Lawrence Otto, for an excellent analysis and description of this problem.

CYBER SECURITY
Federal agencies to run cyber attack fire drill in NYC
The White House along with the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security and Justice Department  plan to simulate an attack on the NYC power grid to show how extensive the damage could be. The idea is to give members of the Senate a firm understanding what is at stake in securing the Nation’s cyber-infrastructure.

GENETICS   
NIH debuts genetic testing online guide
The National Institutes of Health have released the Genetic Testing Registry, or GTR. Director of NIH and renowned biomedical researcher Dr. Francis Collins called the GTR a “powerful new tool,” to help people “make sense of the complex world of genetic testing.”

CLEAN ENERGY
Concentrating solar energy companies create advocacy group
Concentrated solar power, in use since the ’80′s, works by directing sunlight with an array of mirrors to heat water, creating steam to drive a turbine. The Concentrating Solar Power Alliance, or CSPA, is a consortium of companies that have extensive experience with the technology that is “dedicated to educating U.S. regulators, utilities and grid operators about the unique benefits of concentrating solar power (CSP).”

STEM EDUCATION
DOE’s “Biggest Energy Loser Challenge” is big hit
An online education program created through a partnership among the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Southern University, has tasked kids with investigating their energy footprint. At the end of the education program, kids will compete to create the most energy efficient model home representative of their region.

TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
Nanoparticles affect nutrient absorption
A study has found that nanoparticles can affect nutrient absorption in the intestine at some dosages. The study found that small prolonged exposure, like what might occur with a some vitamin supplements, can have an impact to nutrients absorption ranging from 50 percent decreases to 200 percent increases.

GREEN ENERGY
What are “nanotrees?”
They are not alive but University of California, San Diego researchers have created branch-like nanowire from materials such as zinc and silicon to capture solar energy. Real trees vertical structure and branches are key to their efficiency at collecting sunlight and have been mimicked by the “3D branched nanowire array.” Coming to a rooftop near you!

TECHNOLOGY
HD electron microscope
A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield have greatly improved upon the electron microscope. The old scope depended on lenses, which have many physical limitations. The new microscope “instead forms the image by reconstructing the scattered electron-waves after they have passed through the sample using computers.” This allows for the imaging of much smaller objects at a much greater resolutions.

INVESTING IN SCIENCE
How much would you pay to launch our economy?
The question posed by Neil deGrasse Tyson both spoke to the economic argument for NASA as well as the less apparent and more important non-economic inspirations. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation heard famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson give testimony on why NASA is an important driver in the economy. Leaving lawmakers astonished and bumbling for words, Tyson delivers a vision of America that left the Senators asking what they can do to help move forward. Watch the video.

GENETICS
Genome of gorillas mapped for first time
The full genome of a gorilla was fully mapped out and revealed some unexpected secrets. The comparison of the genomes between all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans will shed light on many question of our evolutionary history together.

This wee’ks science policy news gathered and summarized by Jason Thomas, an intern with Science Progress.

Until Rush Limbaugh came out calling a female Georgetown law student a “slut” for demanding coverage of birth control under her self-financed academic health care plan, very few media outlets were covering her story. As a third-year law student and vice president of the Women’s Legal Alliance, Sandra Fluke was supposed to testify on the importance of contraception in front of the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, but was blocked from making an appearance because committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said she was not “qualified.” Apparently, the all-male panel of religious leaders was considered more appropriate.

All too often, policy decisions concerning women are shaped without consulting those affected most, and advocates for women’s rights seem to only have a voice in the mainstream media when high-profile men bring their issues to light. According to a new survey conducted by the Association for Women in Science, or AWIS, problems that have traditionally been seen as “women’s issues,” such as work-life integration and family responsive policies in the workplace, are turning out to be issues that affect both men and women across the globe.[i]

The Association for Women in Science is taking advantage of the limelight of International Women’s Day in order to illuminate the challenges faced by men and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM fields. AWIS is releasing the results of its study at a convening of Global Experts on Work-Life Family issues in New York City, focusing on male and female researcher’s perceptions and sentiments about the STEM workforce.[ii] This survey is the first large-scale international snapshot of perceptions and attitudes on work-life satisfaction among women and men in the STEM workforce. Although we have known for decades the challenges women face in traditionally male-dominated work and educational environments such as STEM disciplines, the results of this study suggest work life integration difficulties may be contributing to the high rates of attrition for both male and female STEM workers, but for women most of all.

In rigorous, competition-driven work such as scientific research, where scientists are expected to publish papers, apply for and maintain grants with multiple research projects, manage postdocs and graduate students, teach undergraduate courses, and participate in their respective disciplinary societies, truly attaining “work-life balance” can be elusive. The model of workplace practices in STEM careers is based on the premise that researchers have a spouse at home to cook dinner and take care of the family, which is no longer realistic given that half the workforce in the United States is now comprised of women. As a result, male and female researchers are suffering.

The results of the Association of Women in Science’s survey indicate that lack of flexibility in the workplace, dissatisfaction with career development opportunities, and declining success rates for federal grants are driving both men and women to re-consider their STEM professions. “These findings confirm that work-life conflict is not gender-specific in the scientific community,” said Janet Bandows Koster, AWIS executive director and CEO. “The real issue is that the academic workplace is still modeled on an ideal that no longer exists nor compliments the realities of today’s global workforce.”

Despite their shared difficulties with men, women still bear the biggest burden in STEM fields. According to the survey, women were more likely than men to report that work-life integration difficulties have negatively impacted their careers and 40 percent have delayed childbearing so as not to conflict with their careers; while only 27 percent of men indicated the same situation. Because women have the additional biological burden of childbearing, as well as societal expectations that they take responsibility for family caregiving, female researcher’s ability to compete with their male counterparts is often hindered. To compound their barriers to success, women receive smaller salaries and lab spaces on average, scanter resources, and stunted advancement through the STEM career pipeline. While these are important issues to address, it is often difficult to bring attention to this issue as a policy priority because there are few men who will publicly recognize and speak out on the inherent inequities of the system.

But whether men or women, a diminishing STEM workforce is a challenge the United States must address in order to maintain global competitiveness in technology and innovation. Thus, it is time for men to speak out against the lack of family-responsive policies at institutions and the unreasonable expectations that academic researchers dedicate their entire lives to work. “If researchers who want a fulfilling home and work life are being driven out of the industry through archaic working practices, it’s time to address the system itself.  Let’s stop pointing the finger at women by putting a “baby” Band-Aid on the problem and solve the real issues,” said Bandows Koster.

Some federal agencies are taking the problem to heart, and launching efforts to raise awareness about the importance of work-life integration in the sciences and engineering. Two examples are the National Science Foundation’s Career-Life Balance Initiative and ADVANCE Program, which promote practices that would allow researchers more flexible work hours and provide interim grant support for individuals taking a leave of absence for caregiving. It also promotes a stop-the-tenure-clock option for childbearing, which would allow women to stay on track for tenure despite the unfortunate concurrence of early-career advancement and optimal fertility.

While these and other initiatives by institutions and the government to level the playing field for women researchers are paramount to the success of a movement toward a stronger and more gender-equal STEM workforce, it will take a much larger cultural shift in order for women to attain equal status and opportunities for advancement. Curbing the attrition of talented women from the academic pipeline cannot be achieved through advocacy, campaigning, or policymaking alone. It will require investment in institutional changes, such as those promoted by the NSF’s Career-Life balance initiative and ADVANCE Program, and the development of knowledge and skills to help people achieve greater work-life satisfaction.

Soon after Rush Limbaugh came out with his attacks on women seeking coverage for contraception, President Barack Obama called Sandra Fluke on the phone to offer his support. Today and in the future, let’s hope men take this as an example and stand together with women in ensuring our nation’s global competitiveness by keeping more women in STEM.

Alice B. Popejoy is the inaugural Phoebe S. Leboy Public Policy Fellow at the National Office for the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) in Washington, D.C. In addition to working for federal legislation that benefits the 7.4 million women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, Ms. Popejoy is involved in a host of other projects at AWIS, including the Advancing Ways of Awarding Recognition in Disciplinary Societies grant funded by the National Science Foundation. She writes and publishes the monthly advocacy and public policy newsletter, AWIS in Action! and is a regular contributor to science policy blogs as well as academic journals on the issue of under-recognition of women in scientific disciplinary societies. In the fall, Ms. Popejoy will begin a Ph.D. program in public health genetics at the University of Washington, Seattle.

References

[i] Survey results were collected in December 2011 and January 2012 with 4,225 scientists and authors responding. Of the respondents, 80 percent were married or partnered, 70 percent were male, 64 percent worked at a university and 83 percent worked 40 or more hours per week. Survey respondents were working scientists and researchers who publish academically across all disciplines. This AWIS project is underwritten with a grant from the Elsevier Foundation New Scholars Program. Elsevier assisted with the technical administration of the survey that has a margin of error of <1.3 percent at the 90 percent confidence level.

[ii] National Science Foundation data include six broad occupational groups in the STEM workforce: physical and life sciences, computer and mathematical sciences, social and related sciences, engineering, STEM managers, and STEM technicians (in addition to other workers considered a part of STEM in health and medical-related occupations, STEM pre-college teachers, and STEM postsecondary teachers).

The carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the atmosphere now is causing a similar acidification effect — only 10 times faster.

In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers compared the current rates of ocean change to other major acidification events going back 300 million years, and what they found is shocking: never in that long period did the ocean pH fall as rapidly as it is falling right now (lower pH means higher acidity). Ocean pH has already dropped 0.1 units to 8.1 — it is a logarithmic scale, meaning the drop represents about a 30 percent change in acidity. Within another hundred years, it could drop to 7.8.

Never in 300 million years has the ocean pH fallen as rapidly as it is falling right now.

At this level, coral, mollusks, and many other creatures will be unlikely to survive. Increased CO2 entering the oceans depletes the carbonate ions that these animals need to make their shells and reefs.

The new study, led by Bärbel Hönisch of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, found that only the event 56 million years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum period, even approached the current rates of acidification. Other mass extinction events also involved rises in atmospheric as well as oceanic CO2, but rates were slower (or the fossil record is not strong enough to firmly establish those rates).

For example, about 252 million years ago, a surge in volcanic activity killed off more than 95 percent of marine life. Fifty million years later, another increase in volcanic activity doubled atmospheric CO2, and coral reefs and other marine life largely disappeared. For the record, humans have pushed CO2 levels from 280 parts-per-million to about 392 ppm since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with concentrations due to keep rising at more than two percent each year until we decide to do something drastic to cut emissions.

When it comes to the oceans, though, “something drastic” might not even be enough. The rise in acidity is likely to continue apace for some time even if we were to stop emitting all CO2 right now. The fact that we’re outpacing even the great extinction events of the last 300 million years suggests that we are indeed in the midst of the sixth such event in the planet’s history. As disturbing as it is, there is a decent chance that for huge chunks of the world’s marine life, it is already too late.

“I do not think there is much hope to reduce the rate of acidification,” Hönisch said in an email. “Even if we stopped producing CO2 now, the concentration in the atmosphere would remain high for a long time, unless we find an efficient and cost-effective way to reduce atmospheric CO2.” This is not, though, a reason to give up trying, she added. “While we may not be able to slow the current rate of calcification, reducing emissions would help to maintain this rate and prevent it from growing even higher.”

Christopher Langdon, a biological oceanographer at the University of Miami who was not involved in the new Science study, agreed that we have entered unprecedented territory. “It’s not a problem that can be quickly reversed,” he said in a press release from Columbia. “We’re playing a very dangerous game.”

This article is reposted from our partners at OnEarth Magazine. Image: Bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef, via Acropora/Wikimedia

ENERGY INNOVATION
Gates Calls for More Energy R&D
“Crazy,” is the word Bill Gates used described federal investment efforts towards energy at the DOE’s Energy Innovation Summit. Gates went on to connect the “underfunding” to the slow progress of new and cleaner technologies. Calling for tempered expectations of technology progress and failure, Gates said we need “literally thousands of companies trying these things so we will get the 10 or 20 approaches we need to make progress.” Structured competition for progress is a not just a lofty idea but a movement with traction.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
State Department’s Twitter “Tag Challenge”
Five jewel thieves have lifted the world’s 3rd most valuable diamond from a showroom in Washington, D.C., and split to the five different cities… at least, that’s the premise of the State Department’s twitter Tag Challenge. $5,000 will go to the person or team who submits the photos of the five simulated villains. The goal is to find out how well social media can be used to accomplish a real, time-sensitive law enforcement goal.

CYBERSECURITY
NASA Networks Fully Hijacked
Jet Propulsion Laboratories confirmed that its computer networks were compromised to the point where attackers emanating out of China were able to edit and delete sensitive files. The full-breech lead to compromises throughout the NASA network the extent of which is still under investigation.

MILITARY TECHNOLOGY
Bullet Proof Undies
To help protect against the devastating injuries that can be sustained by IED explosions, the U.S. military has testing and preliminary issuing of Kevlar underwear. The two tier protection consists of an underwear type garment and a more rigid over pant protective gear.

GENETICS
Molecular Tweezing Plucks Parkinson’s
UCLA researchers developed a new compound that targets the protein responsible for Parkinson’s disease. While the experiments thus far have only been carried out in living fish models, there were no toxic side effects, giving great hope to a human solution.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Slow Progress Urges Climate Rethink
The Schelling consensus, a group of 26 leading environmental economists, are urging governments to rethink carbon reduction methods. The lofty carbon reduction goals have fallen way short and now this group is looking to large scale geo-engineering projects to make greater impacts to reduction efforts.

ENERGY
Smart Grid 2.0
NIST has released “Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards 2.0” that further details a road map for improving the nation’s energy infrastructure. This update has brought 22 more standards to the existing 75, and now addresses cybersecurity.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY
Battery Advancement Sees Triple Range at Half the Cost
Envia Systems, a DOE-funded research company, has created a lithium-ion battery that has triple the efficiency and can be produced at half the cost of current vehicle fuel cell batteries. Its a hopeful sign that President Obama’s investment in clean technology is paying dividends.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Yale Professor Speaks for Himself
William D. Nordhaus, an economist at Yale, has come to his work’s defense against a group of climate skeptics that improperly used his study. The skeptics were cited in a Wall Street Journal piece that has remained under fire from the scientific community since its release in late January.

GENETICS LAW
DNA Seizure
The 9th circuit court of appeals upheld a California law that allows for suspected felons to have a DNA swab test taken from them and entered into a crime database. Three of the four plaintiffs in the case challenging the law were never charged with any crime.

This week’s news compiled by Science Progress intern Jason Thomas.

This resistance stems in part from the definition of the sort of research NSF is supposed to fund—basic research. In 1945 Vannevar Bush, who was coming off a successful run as chairman of the Manhattan Project, spent his political capital arguing that the federal government ought to support basic research. Bush’s report, “Science – the Endless Frontier,” defined basic research as research done without regard for its practical consequences. The term was essentially a more practical way of saying pure science—a term that had been in circulation at least since the late 19th century. The point was to conduct research that was driven by the researcher’s own curiosity rather than by any sort of external need. This is why the term of art is often “blue skies” research, named after the question “Why is the sky blue?”[1]

This struggle between scientists looking to rebel against government efforts to restrict their freedom reminds us a little of the movie classic “Cool Hand Luke” in which prison warden Strother Martin engages in a running conflict with Paul Newman’s character, the inmate Luke. Luke has little interest in following prison rules, and Martin, in frustration, eventually lays down the law. Luke is told that he needs to “get his mind right” about how things are going to operate. Luke sees things differently.

Those of us who watch old movies will remember that Luke comes to a melancholy end. Of course, the relationship between Congress on the one hand and the NSF and individual scientists on the other is not the same as that of the warden and inmates. But one point does seem apt. Following a congressional mandate the updated merit review criteria issued by the National Science Board, or NSB, in December 2011 make it clear that the Broader Impacts criterion is not going away. Congress has, quite literally, laid down the law. Rather than continue to fight, the scientific and engineering community should look for ways to own the Broader Impacts criterion and make it work to their overall advantage.

The struggle to communicate how science benefits society

Since its implementation in 1997, NSF’s Broader Impacts criterion has often been viewed by scientists and engineers as an onerous burden. The view was that the real work of science was captured by outlining a project’s intellectual merit—that is, outlining its impact on science for an audience of other scientists. Many research project proposers and reviewers considered NSF’s requirement that scientists discuss the broader impacts of a project on society to be irrelevant.

Congress, however, viewed things differently. In fact, a requirement for NSF to attend to broader impacts was written into the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. Moreover, in response to the repeated criticism that the Broader Impacts criterion was unclear, Congress provided a list of “national needs” that the criterion could be used to meet. Rather than going away, as some scientists had hoped it would, a new, more prescriptive Broader Impacts criterion emerged.

NSF then decided to reassess the entirety of its merit, or peer, review criteria. Proposed new criteria were released in June 2011, with a period for feedback.[2] NSB did receive some pushback—according to an entry on the Nature News Blog from December 13, 2011, the task force eventually settled on a “non-prescriptive, big-tent definition” of broader impacts:

Since 1997, the NSF has required all grant proposers to justify their requests not just on intellectual merit, but also on this notion of broader impacts. Yet researchers have found the requirements distressingly vague. Legislation passed by Congress in 2010 confirmed the importance of broader impacts, and also tried to be more specific, listing some of the activities that would count as having societal benefit. But when the task force’s May 2011 draft report dutifully repeated some of these examples, some critics worried that the NSF’s criteria would end up being too specific. [Task Force co-chair] Bruer’s team has since removed the list. “It raised problems about why some things were on the list and others not,” says Bruer.[3]

In NSB’s initial June 2011 revision, potential benefits to society appeared to have been limited to the list of national goals provided by Congress. But some feared that in taking away the vagueness of the “benefit to society” clause, the proposed criterion would limit the freedom of proposers and reviewers to suggest and judge novel and creative ideas not included on the list.[4] Although critics of the Broader Impacts criterion had consistently claimed that it was unclear or “distressingly vague,” NSB came to realize that a degree of vagueness is actually a good thing—it allows for maximum autonomy on the part of proposers and peer reviewers to provide their own answers to the demand for accountability.

A deeper emphasis on “broader impacts”

On January 9, 2012, NSB released its final report, “National Science Foundation’s Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions.” In the final revisions NSF’s Broader Impacts criterion does not merely survive—its status in the review process has grown. NSB’s revisions more explicitly integrate broader impacts with intellectual merit. They also require a separate broader impacts section in grant proposals and mandate a separate account and assessment of a project’s broader impacts in the grantee’s final report. In other words, the Broader Impacts criterion is approaching parity with the Intellectual Merit criterion.

Welcome to Broader Impacts 2.0, per the NSF:

Broader Impacts: The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.[5]

Note that not only is the new Broader Impacts criterion usefully vague, but it also explicitly requires that proposers (that is, not Congress) articulate a project’s potential benefits to society.[6]

The final revisions also ask proposers and reviewers to address the same set of questions for intellectual merit and broader impacts—in areas such as the soundness of the plan for the proposed activity, the qualifications of the proposer(s) to carry out the proposed activities, and the access to necessary resources. Indeed, even the question of the potential transformativity of the proposed activities now applies to both intellectual merit and broader impact.

NSB’s integration of intellectual merit and broader impact means seeing the connections between things formerly thought to be separable. NSB’s new criteria recognize that in the 21st century, our disciplinary peers are no longer our only audience. Moreover, science funding is increasingly tied to the notion that basic research is a driver of innovation, which in turn drives economic growth. This will require an adjustment in the way we think about broader impacts: Scientists and engineers will need to begin to see that even basic research must take place in the context of the needs of the users of that knowledge.

It is obviously too early to say whether scientists and engineers will actually make the adjustment. By removing the list of national needs in the June 2011 proposed revisions and enhancing the usefully vague “benefits to society” language of the final version of the Broader Impacts criterion, however, NSF is allowing members of the scientific and engineering community the freedom and creativity to give an account of their own broader impacts.

Whether scientists and engineers will embrace this freedom or continue to resist such calls for accountability remains to be seen. If we are to learn anything from the past, however, unless scientists get their minds right about broader impacts, Congress will be happy to step in to resolve this failure to communicate.

Robert Frodeman is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID) at the University of North Texas. J. Britt Holbrook is research assistant professor of philosophy and assistant director at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas. One of the central research projects at CSID is understanding the meaning of “broader impacts.”  The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant No.0830387, while emphasizing that any opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF, or any of their employees.

Chemotherapy for pediatric ALL is life saving, it has stood the test of time, and the evidence of its efficacy is unequivocal. Initial management of ALL uses “tried and true” drugs and can achieve an early complete remission in more than 98 percent of cases. After remission, the drugs are important in achieving a longstanding cure. Methotrexate, for example, is periodically injected into the spinal fluid to manage risk of central nervous system disease. Many of the drugs used to treat ALL are now generic and low cost and thus represent model drugs in our current health care environment—effective, life saving, and cheap.

But there is a problem. Like several hundred other drugs, some of those needed to treat children with ALL are in short supply and may run out within a few weeks. In the case of methotrexate, particularly the preservative-free injectable version, the supply has been tenuous for some time but now it is an acute matter of life and death for children with ALL. Recent quality control problems at a U.S.-based methotrexate manufacturer have tipped the balance. In December 2011 Ben Venue Laboratories, Inc., of Bedford, Massachusetts, extended their voluntarily suspended methotrexate production of the drug in compliance with the inspection findings of Federal Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and other global regulatory authorities. While the basis for drug shortages is multifactorial, the root cause of the methotrexate crisis (and the shortages of other low cost drugs) is economic.

Despite the desire for low-cost therapeutics, when drugs become commodities, the profit margin is small and sustainability is based on minimizing the cost of production and some assurance of adequate demand. It is not surprising (and in fact expected) that “commodity drugs” run into problems over time, given that investment in them is logically a lower priority, compared to other newer products where the demand and profit margins are more favorable. The ecosystem that supports availability of low-cost generic drugs is thus fragile and highly susceptible to manufacturing and quality problems.

The number of companies making any given “commodity drug” is typically small  and thus temporary interruptions at one company put substantial stress on the overall market for that drug. While manufacturing processes for older drugs may be well established, they also become routine, leaving little incentive for manufacturers to invest in them or innovate. Quality control processes and manufacturing facilities are expensive to maintain. When there is little return on that investment, cost containment necessitates operating in a streamlined manner that is less tolerant to the variances (like equipment malfunctions, operator errors, inadvertent contamination, etc.) that are inevitable, even under optimal circumstances. If a problem occurs, such as at the methotrexate plant, it has ripples throughout the supply and distribution process.

In the case of methotrexate, oncologists have pointed out that the acute situation is “a perfect storm.” As it turns out, these storms are not that uncommon. The flu shot has been around for decades and it is highly effective in preventing incidences of serious flu, cost effective, safe, and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Until recently, however, the U.S. manufacturing capacity for influenza vaccine production had shrunken to minimal levels.

The flu shot was also a “commodity.” Manufacturing costs were low, but so were margins, with prices driven by government contracting as well as other factors. Not only was U.S. manufacturing capacity limited, but the manufacturing processes for the influenza vaccine were also antiquated, with little or no investment or innovation. Because of a short production timeline (given the seasonal changes that occur in the virus) and outdated facilities/processes, the influenza vaccine was periodically in short supply and triage was required, leaving many unprotected against the illness.  In 2004 contamination problems in a single U.K. manufacturing facility resulted in a severe shortage of vaccine supply for the United States, forcing authorities to prioritize the vaccine to only those with the highest risk and leaving many others unprotected.

Despite the public health need for a reliable supply of the seasonal influenza vaccine, we were only moved to real action when the urgency was heightened by fear of bird and swine flu and the realization that influenza could be a threat to national security. We were woefully unprepared as a nation. Public health and homeland security response resulted in the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to incentivize process improvements and the development of U.S. manufacturing capacity to address the situation. Collaborative efforts among the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the FDA, CDC, and NIAID were directed at funding development of new more efficient methods for production of flu vaccine and stimulating facilities and process improvements. By 2009 the number of U.S. manufacturers of flu vaccine doubled. We are all better off as a result, not just by being better prepared for a bioterrorist threat, but also by advancing our ability to provide routine flu vaccination to those who need it.

The headlines in the past several weeks have been replete with awareness of the problem of drug shortages in oncology. The real and present risk to the lives of children with ALL must have us act with urgency to assure that we do everything possible in the short term to address impending shortages. Time is running out before this threat becomes a life-threatening reality for ALL patients, and it is our duty to act in their interest. The FDA is addressing the acute crisis and now has approved additional manufacturers to increase supply. It is yet not clear if we will escape the methotrexate crisis without significant human costs, but even if we do, a longer-term solution for sustainable availability of critical drugs is needed. There are more “perfect storms” on the horizon.

Legislative initiatives, such as the Preserving Access to Life-Saving Medications Act, are making their way through congressional committees that increase FDA authority to require notification of events that will affect supply of critical drugs. In October 2011 President Obama issued an executive order directing the FDA to take action to prevent prescription drug shortages and protect consumers. These are needed steps but are not sufficient, given the fundamental economic root cause of the problem. The president, Congress, FDA, manufacturers, and media have their eye on the issue of drug shortages. In many cases the issue is not the medical science; these drugs have been proven to be safe, effective and, in cases like methotrexate, life saving. But they are not as scientifically “sexy” as new innovative drugs and so get less attention. Because they form the bedrock of our medical armamentarium, we need to find the right balance of cost and predictability.  

Edward Connor, M.D., is Director of Innovation Development and Investigational Therapeutics at the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National Medical Center, and a Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Photo credit: AP Photo/Stew Milne.

References

Chustecka, Z. 2012. “‘Children Will Die:’ Panic in US Over Methotrexate Supplies.” Medscape Medical News Oncology (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/758624).

Ben Venue Laboratories. “News and Events”(http://www.benvenue.com/pages/release.html).

American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. 2012. “Methotrexate Injection. Production Effected-Description.”

PBS NewsHour. 2012. “What’s Causing a Shortage of Pediatric Cancer Drugs?” February 15 (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june12/drugs_02-15.html).

Gatesman, ML, and TJ Smith. 2011. “The Shortage of Essential Chemotherapy Drugs in the United States.” New England Journal of Medicine 365: 1653–1655.

Emmanuel, Z. 2011. “Shortchanging Cancer Patients.” The New York Times. August 6 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/ezekiel-emanuel-cancer-patients.html?).

Chabner, BA. 2011. “Drug Shortages — A Critical Challenge for the Generic-Drug Market.” New England Journal of Medicine 365: 2147–2149.

Pearson, H. 2004. “Flu vaccine shortage looms. Contamination problems halve US stock of shots.” Nature. October 6.

Goodman, J. “The Administration’s Flu Vaccine Program: Health, Safety, and Distribution (http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Testimony/ucm184309.htm)

Preserving Access to Life-Saving Medications Act, S. 296 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-296).

DeParle, NA. 2012. “We Can’t Wait Update: Preventing Prescription Drug Shortages.” The White House Blog. February 21 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/21/we-can-t-wait-update-preventing-prescription-drug-shortages).

CYBER SECURITY

TECHNOLOGY
What does 3-D printing mean to you?
Slate’s Future Tense delves into 3-D printing technology and brings you up to speed with what to really expect from this much-hyped technology.

CYBER SECURITY
Internet activists creating an unstoppable “mesh-net”
Originally, the Internet’s design was built upon a decentralized and redundant network of connections. That has changed with internet service providers now centralizing and feeding the majority of internet users today. Activists intend to “get back to the basics.”

GENETICS INNOVATION
DNA Sequencing- in your pocket
A startup biotechnology company in Britain is set to release a genome sequencing USB device. With a price tag of $900, it beats the $10,000 and up cost of many laboratory genomic tests by a long shot.

ENERGY INNOVATION
DOE issues offer for new competitive research grants
The DOE will award $30M for research on onboard natural gas storage and at-home refueling. There is also an award for $10M for algal biofuels. Much needed investment to spur technology innovation that advances economic, environmental, and energy security goals.

SCIENCE DIPLOMACY
Views of Science from the Arab perspective
Princess Sumaya of Jordan, president of Jordan’s Royal Scientific Society, worries over the experiments that consume so much of the world’s research budget. Calling for a “global alliance to start plotting research priorities,” Princess Sumaya presses for more focus on climate and water issues that better serve the entire world.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Republican scientists confront their representatives
Five registered Republican scientists share their stories of being repeatedly denied access to their representatives. When access was granted they left feeling less than welcome.

CYBER SECURITY
NSA warns of ‘Anonymous’ group’s growing capabilities
Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency has warned that the hacker group Anonymous could have the capabilities to cause widespread disturbance to the Nation’s power grid.

BIOETHICS
Majority of students found willing to contribute to DNA “biobank”
Olivia Adolphson, an undergraduate student at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, conducted research that showed that 64% of the 500 students were willing to contribute to DNA biobanks. The aggregation of whole genome information is necessary to fully understand the correlation between disease, lifestyle, and environment.

This week’s news was compiled and summarized by Jason Thomas, an intern with Science Progress at the Center for American Progress.

This is the latest step by the Obama administration toward breaking down bureaucratic silos, increasing interagency collaboration, and making the federal government leaner, more efficient, and more customer-friendly. But much still must to be done to build the modernized government that American workers, businesses, and industries need to stay cutting-edge and to compete for the jobs of the 21st century.

To better understand the significance of Business USA and where it can be improved swiftly—a key goal of the administration as the new portal goes through its “beta” testing phase of development—it’s important to break down three distinct but related problems currently keeping federal innovation-oriented business programs from performing at their peak potential. Specifically, what impedes better private-public business solutions to help our economy grow are:

• The problem of discovery—knowing what the federal government provides
• The barrier to customer service—too much red tape
• The lack of strategic coordination among programs with complementary goals and similar constituencies

Let’s look at each of these problems in turn before highlighting a slate of reforms the Center for American Progress presented earlier this year to the administration and Congress.

The problem of discovery

The federal government operates hundreds of programs and services designed to help businesses create jobs and grow the economy. These programs are currently managed, maintained, and operated by dozens of federal agencies and many of them overlap. But many businesses simply are not aware or are not easily able to navigate the plethora of programs that exist to help them obtain financing, export assistance, manufacturing assistance, research and development funding, technology licensing, technical assistance, or other forms of counseling. This is mostly because these programs are managed without clear coordination by many different federal agencies, each of which market them differently—or in some cases not at all.

Improving customer service

Once a business has identified one or more federal programs in which it is interested and eligible, actually completing the application process can be difficult, time consuming, expensive, and confusing. Furthermore, separate requirements and applications for programs managed by separate agencies make it difficult for businesses eligible for many similar programs to access the ones best suited to their needs.

Just one case in point: The National Institute of Standards and Technology manages the Technology Innovation Program, a competitive grant program to help small- to medium-sized firms innovate in strategic technological areas. At the same time the Small Business Administration and 11 different agencies maintain the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Programs. These programs are designed to help small- to medium-sized firms obtain funding to pursue risky technological innovations but require separate applications.

What’s more, program requirements—which range from size to ethnic, gender, or socioeconomic status of organizational leaders to geographic location to industry sector—are mismatched with assistance delivery mechanisms, which range from project grants to microloans to financing assistance to technical assistance and others. Better aligning eligibility requirements with assistance tools can make federal programs more flexible and better able to ensure that every eligible businesses in need gets the right kind of assistance it needs to innovate and grow.

The lack of strategic coordination

This keeps federal business programs from working together with complementary innovation programs aimed at university technology transfer, community development, workforce training, and trade assistance at the regional economic level. CAP’s Science Progress project in 2009 detailed the importance of these “regional innovation clusters,” and more recently my colleague Jennifer Erickson and I discussed why businesses do not exist, thrive, or innovate in a vacuum—their success is interconnected with the success of the communities, regions, and industries within which they operate.

Whether for high-tech, high-growth startups or small-town mom-and-pop businesses with more modest ambitions, the best businesses plans are responsive to local economic conditions. Innovative businesses must take into account the availability of local assets and liabilities such as infrastructure planning, district or regional economic development initiatives, local workforce talent, formal or informal university partnerships, and proximity of both supply chain partners and customers. In short, the vitality of the many regional economies upon which our nation is built and the success of businesses in these economies are fundamentally intertwined, yet the current fragmented system of federal businesses assistance programs is not well-coordinated with other existing federal efforts to invest in these important determinants of success. That means that federal programs supporting a small business as well as a university technology transfer effort, a community college workforce-training program, and a regional economic development plan in the same region, might not coordinate whatsoever.

Enter the Business USA portal

The Business USA beta portal tackles the first of these three challenges—the problem of discovery—head-on. It creates one place where businesses can go to discover the plethora of existing federal assistance programs available to them. As my colleague Kristina Costa wrote in January:

You might think that the Small Business Administration would be the go-to place for all things small business—but that assumption leaves out loan programs administered by the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, among others. “It’s hard to know which [loan] is best for you if they aren’t all in one place,” says Christine Koronides, who oversees small-business policy for the White House National Economic Council.

The recent “State of the Federal Web” report conducted, among other things, an inventory of federal websites. Fifty-six federal agencies publish 1,489 top-level .gov domains—and a dizzying 11,013 lower-level websites. This isn’t a knot that Google can untangle on its own—important information can be buried in poorly formatted .pdf or .doc files that search engines may not be able to parse.

The increased awareness from consolidating many of these resources in one website stands to increase utilization rates of many of these programs and maximize the economic bang for the taxpayers’ buck. But while the Business USA beta portal addresses the discovery problem, it leaves unanswered the questions of customer support and strategic coordination.

Another step toward tackling the customer service challenge can be taken by implementing the Business USA hotline that President Barack Obama highlighted when unveiling the new portal and by doing a comprehensive review of existing program application requirements with the goal of streamlining and integrating as many of them as possible using existing executive authority.

Next steps

To truly bring federal businesses and innovation programs into the 21st century, Congress needs to empower federal agencies to share information, increase the flexibility with which assistance tools can be applied to eligible firms, and coordinate strategically toward shared goals such as job creation, export expansion, regional economic invigoration, and technological innovation. Our proposal for a common application for federal innovation and competitiveness programs would move us further in the right direction by encouraging entrepreneurs, investors, universities, workforce interests, exporters, and other players to collaborate to access federal assistance jointly around shared goals.

Demand for these kinds of coordinated interagency programs focused on innovation clusters has grown among regional public, private, and nonprofit economic players and planners. Just look at the high number of applicants relative to available funding for the Energy Regional Innovation Clusters program, i6 challenge, and Jobs and Innovation Accelerator programs. Each of these programs coordinated the resources across six or more federal agencies to deliver funding to self-assembled regional innovation consortia with proposals that leveraged businesses, workforce, technology, and trade for innovation, job creation, and growth.

But this kind of interagency coordination and on-the-ground collaboration around shared goals needs to become the norm rather than the exception across the thousands of existing federal assistance programs. Rather than managing the rich array of existing resources independently as separate programs, a new structure such as the common application we propose could manage them as complementary tools to be deployed strategically to encourage bottom-up collaboration around shared goals of innovation and national competitiveness.

As my co-author Jonathan Sallet and I discussed in more detail in our recent paper, “Rewiring the Federal Government for Competitiveness,” shifting existing programs to empower businesses, entrepreneurs, inventors, researchers, and workforce development organizations to work together could go a long way toward spurring innovation that creates new economic value, business activity, and jobs in regions across the country.

President Obama announced his intention to take these next steps when he called for “one department with one website, one phone number, and one mission—helping American businesses succeed.” The ball is now in Congress’s court to allow the president to build on what he started with Business USA and to bring antiquated government bureaucracy up to speed with the dynamic needs of the 21st century global innovation economy.

Sean Pool is Managing Editor of Science Progress, a Center for American Progress project.

This question was unraveled recently at a CSPO seminar with Dr. Gregg Zachary—a longtime business reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century—and Dr. Sybil Francis, executive director of the Center for the Future of Arizona and a former aide in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. CSPO—a collaborative intellectual network emanating out of Arizona State University—“creates knowledge and methods, cultivates public discourse, and fosters policies to help decision makers and institutions grapple with the immense power and importance of science and technology as society charts a course for the future.” With this goal and in that spirit, Dr. Francis and Dr. Zachary launched the discussion using the Manhattan Project and the Human Genome Project as points of departure.

Within the context of the history of competition between different governmental agencies involved with these two monumental projects, the discussion centered on not just if competition can create results but also how to harness the power of competition. Examples were invoked, including the historical competition between Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for governmental nuclear contracts in the 1950s; between the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and the Department of Energy in phase I of the Human Genome Project; and between NIH and Celera for phase II of the Human Genome Project. The goal was to tease out the organizational structures that facilitated efficiency and success. As Dr. Zachary stated, “The stakes are high with $150 billion of total [federal] R&D invested per year. Improving productivity of these funds could have a huge impact.” Making the most of scarce resources is critical in a time of emphasis on belt-tightening in Washington and as we pursue technological solutions to so many of society’s problems. How do we go about allocating these critical investments and maximizing the outcomes?

To answer this question, Dr. Zachary and Dr. Francis laid out several tools and characteristics that encourage productive outcomes from competitive research.

First, research must have a clearly specified problem to solve. Consider the difference between research directed to “understand the science of weight gain” versus research aimed at “reducing the prevalence of obesity in society.” A clear mission is important.

Next, the outcome identified needs to be important to the customer—in this case the government or the public. When a research objective is perceived as high-profile or sexy, research teams naturally compete to be involved. This was highlighted by the Human Genome Project, where the excitement surrounding the race to be chosen drove progress in both public- and private-sector research and led to vast and positive societal outcomes, which have been extensively documented.

Another important characteristic for competitive research is a sense of urgency as exemplified by the 1960s race to the moon, the 1940s race for the atomic bomb, or the later stages of the Human Genome Project as private research companies began to enter the fray. Not only must the outcome be perceived as important, but it must also be time-constrained. In the case of energy innovation, the threat of runaway climate change provides an important motivator for many in the clean tech research community.

Consequences for failing to meet identified needs and deadlines, and prizes for the winners are important as well. There must be clear winners and losers. However, Dr. Francis stipulated that the loss doesn’t necessarily have to be economic in nature—losing stature or prestige can be equally powerful. In the case of Lawrence Livermore Lab’s competition with Los Alamos Lab for nuclear weapons contracts in the 1950s, Dr. Francis noted that the potential loss of prestige proved a powerful motivator of competition and innovation in the development of new weapons delivery systems for the atomic bomb.

But at the same time that there are winners and losers, research programs must be careful to ensure that lessons learned by the losers do not go to waste but rather stay within the research ecosystem. Indeed, both panelists at the CSPO event agreed that the knowledge gained by losers in a competitive research environment can still have tremendous economic, scientific, or institutional value. “The loser cannot cease, they still provide value in loss,” Dr. Zachary argued.

The panelists concluded by suggesting an iterative approach to funding research competitions. Under this approach, rather than competing for a single all-or-nothing contract or prize, competing research teams have multiround competitions where the level of funding or the size of the prize rises in proportion to the risk. In this way the “losers” bow out early on, while investment is low. The remaining competitors are then exposed to more risk in relation to the escalating investments. Failure is a loss of contract and a knock to future prestige or credibility. By allowing competitors to scale their efforts gradually as chances of success are assessed, this approach also allows the losers to remain viable after their loss while encouraging all parties to compete and take measured risks.

Is the pursuit of scientific and technological breakthroughs analogous to Olympic competition? It seems that competition can sometimes lead to productivity and efficiency, especially when the competitive regime is designed to take advantage of the lessons learned by losers as well as winners. As policymakers continue to reconcile tight federal budgets with the need to invest in the innovation that fuels long-term economic growth, let’s hope they move forward with an awareness of how best to use competition as a tool for making the most of every federal research dollar.

INVESTING IN SCIENCE
The 2013 science budget
Check out Science Insider’s great resource for FY 2013 science budget analysis.

CYBER SECURITY
Debate on Capitol Hill over Cyber Security Act of 2012
Sen. John McCain dashed hopes for easy passage of a bipartisan cyber security bill on the grounds that it put power to oversee safety in the hands of the civilian Department of Homeland Security, rather than the Department of Defense.

STEM EDUCATION
Viewing the world through a ‘mathematical lens’ can help young children learn math
NSF research finds new approaches to helping children learn mathematics through incorporation of math into free play and other daily activities.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Controversy unfolds over leaked documents from fringe denial group
The Heartland Institute, a 501(c)3 climate denial charity has had several alleged confidential fundraising documents released on the internet. These documents reveal methodical plans to discredit climate science and seek out funding from the Koch foundation. Ironically, the Heartland Institute lauded the release of stolen emails from climate scientists in 2010, but isn’t so happy about the release of its own documents.

PRIVACY
Has Google been tracking iPhones without anyone’s permission?
A report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Google has been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of Safari users, by tracking the browsing habits of people, even if they thought they had blocked such monitoring.

TECHNOLOGY
“The Right to Peaceably Assemble” -with your cellphone
Chicago Alderman Ricardo Munoz introduced an ordinance to the Chicago City Council meeting Wednesday to prevent the city from blocking cellular communications during the G-8 and NATO summit in May. This brings back into the spotlight how technology has changed the landscape of first amendment rights.

BIOTECH
Genetic Rosetta Stone Unveiled in Nature
Geneticists have created an automated database sequencing process to correlate genetic data at nucleotide level to controlled environmental conditions. This type of whole genome data and demographic information collection is crucial to “determining the basis for traits and disease, it is critical to develop methods for detecting all forms of genetic variation.”

ENVIRONMENT
Moderate pollution increases stroke risk 34 percent
A joint study by Brown and Harvard Universities, data from the Boston area, found a 34 percent increase in stroke risk on days that were considered “moderate” pollution days compared to “good” quality days by EPA standards.

INNOVATION
Google a safety mechanism for chemists
A chemist at Washington State University has adapted Google’s PageRank algorithms to create moleculaRnetworks, which scientists can use to determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions without the expense, logistics and occasional danger of lab experiments. The unexpected application of computer science technology to chemistry is a great example of how unpredictable innovation can be.

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
White House sets deadline for release of agency policies (subscription required)
Federal agencies must soon publicly release their scientific integrity policies, after the White House set a long-awaited deadline on plans that have been more than three years in the making.

This week’s news compiled by Science Progress intern Jason Thomas.