Keeping Politics Out of Science

Each year the federal government spends some $6 billion on university research. Scientists traditionally compete for this money by making proposals, which get reviewed by other scientists and experts, who recommend to the appropriate agency what projects to support. This “peer-review” system is at the heart of academic practice. It is designed to insure that federal funds are dispersed on the basis of merit, not political influence.

In the last few years, however, some academic institutions have been hiring lobbyists and going directly to Congress to press their appeal for funds, and they have been very successful at it. In 1982, Congress appropriated $3 million directly to universities, but in 1985 the figure had risen to $137.6 million, and it continues to grow.

Turning federal support for research into just one more piece of bacon in the congressional pork barrel has alarmed many people in the academic community. In March, a committee impaneled by the Assn. of American Universities, the American Council on Education, the American Assn. of State Colleges and Universities, the National Assn. of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States said the practice threatened “serious and lasting damage to the nation’s research enterprise.”

In response to that report, the heads of more than 40 of the nation’s top research universities voted recently not to accept federal funding that had not been subject to the traditional peer-review process. Among those who agreed to the proposal of the Assn. of American Universities were the president of the University of California, David P. Gardner; the chancellors of the three UC campuses that are members of the association--Charles Young (UCLA), Ira Michael Heyman (Berkeley) and Richard C. Atkinson (San Diego)--and the president of USC, James H. Zumberge.

Their stand is clearly correct. Scientists are in a better position to judge the quality and prospects of proposed research than are the members of Congress, who are prepared to trade public works projects for university research facilities. A recent report on peer review by Congress’ General Accounting Office concluded that it was an “inexact, subjective process” but that it “has been continually and overwhelmingly endorsed as the best method of assuring that the best research is funded.”

At the same time, it is not surprising that the peer-review system is backed by the heads of leading academic institutions, which do very well under peer review. The second tier of universities, who feel they have been shut out by peer review, favor direct appeals to Congress to undo what they see as the inbreeding of the top universities. These schools argue that the people’s representatives are in the best position to decide how the people’s money should be spent.

Each approach no doubt has its inequities, but the money would be better spent if scientists, not congressmen, have the major say in what is done with it. The university presidents have the right idea in rejecting pork-barrel money. But some of them at times seem to forget this when it suits their purposes. When the National Science Foundation awarded its earthquake engineering center to the State University of New York at Buffalo, a consortium of California universities went to Congress in an effort to overturn the decision. And the current competition over where to situate the proposed superconducting super collider does not seem to have much peer review in it.

All of these decisions should be made on the basis of merit, not politics. Keeping the decision making in the hands of scientists is the way to protect the process.