Panel Calls Apportioning of Federal Funds Haphazard : Coordination of Science Research Urged

The federal government’s system for apportioning $60 billion a year for science and technology is far too haphazard and needs strengthening in the White House and Congress, the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine said Tuesday.

The three academies, the government’s premier sources of independent scientific advice, said the White House and Congress lack a systematic way of coordinating how billions of dollars are now spent on urgent research topics such as global climatic change and the AIDS epidemic that cut across the territorial lines of many federal agencies.

In a report prepared at the request of Congress, the academies also questioned the Reagan Administration’s method of counting what it spends on research and development. It said the current figure of $60 billion may be inflated by more than half.

Used for Weapons Systems

More than $30 billion of this amount, the report said, is spent on advanced technology and the development of weapons systems like the stealth bomber that do not fit conventional definitions of research and development used elsewhere in the government.

“Lumping together as R&D; the defense and civilian agency activities now classified as such may lead to overstating the national science and technology effort overall and in certain research fields,” said the report, written by a 13-member panel that included the heads of all three academies.

They urged the incoming Bush Administration to convene a group of experts to determine how much of the $39 billion now counted in the Defense Department budget as research and development is “appropriately classified” as science.

The central message of the three academies, however, was a plea to Congress and President-elect George Bush to raise their sights beyond the budgets and missions of individual federal agencies in mapping out research spending.

Research on the global effects of chemical damage to the earth’s ozone layer or climatic warming, for example, cuts across seven different federal agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Agriculture Department.

Lack of Assessment

“We found that a major flaw in the current budgeting process was the lack of a systematic assessment of budgetary needs across different agency programs,” National Academy of Sciences President Frank Press said.

“The U.S. faces a dilemma,” Press said in a news conference. “On the one hand, investments in science and technology activities offer greater promise than ever before for producing significant material benefits. . . . On the other hand, the nation faces unprecedented budget deficits and statutory requirements to reduce them.”

Bush’s pledge to appoint a science adviser as a full presidential assistant--the highest level that job will have been accorded in many years--”is a hopeful sign,” Press said, that the White House will be able to provide an overarching rationale for spending on science and technology.

A full presidential assistant, he noted, should have the authority necessary to coordinate budget plans among separate agencies and with the White House Office of Management and Budget, which--like the Congress--now breaks up the task mainly along agency lines.

“It happens to a certain extent now,” Press said. “But the opportunities (of major new research initiatives) are so large, and the resources so limited that this has become essential.”

Among the leading initiatives advocated by competing segments of the scientific community are a $24-billion manned space station, a $5-billion atom smasher called the superconducting super collider, and a $1-billion proposal to map the human genetic material, a step that promises new insights to the genetic origins of cancer and other diseases.