Science / Medicine : Scientists Find a New Home at the White House : Politics: After years of being all but ignored, science experts are finally having their say. And President Bush is getting the message through adviser D. Allan Bromley.

When President Bush disclosed during the Malta summit that hehad reversed himself and now favors adoption of a global warming treaty, it confirmed what D. Allan Bromley has been telling science audiences all year: When he talks, the President listens.

That the White House science adviser has the ear of the President is in itself a notable turnaround. Most of Bromley’s predecessors during the last quarter-century have wielded little clout, especially during the Reagan years.

But Bromley, the new director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), is enjoying a heady status unprecedented for a science adviser. His high profile reflects Bush’s propensity to seek advice as well as Bromley’s stature in the world of Big Science, which during the 1988 presidential campaign had passionately advocated just such a role for the next presidential science adviser.

“The charge Dr. Bromley has been given is the broadest ever,” said Frank Press, the National Academy of Sciences president who was President Jimmy Carter’s science adviser.

And in successfully urging Bush to propose a U.S.-sponsored, international conference aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, Bromley has demonstrated that he is pragmatic as well as persuasive.

Previously, Bromley had favored a go-slow approach toward the emerging crisis, as did Bush. But the adviser changed his mind after global warming experts convinced him that, among other things, some Western nations might go their own way in seeking solutions without waiting for Washington, sources said.

Two weeks later, at the Malta summit, Bush announced his shift.

With perhaps one exception, Bromley’s record since his August Senate confirmation has more than lived up to the hopes of a science community that had grown accustomed in recent years to seeing science advisers languish in near-obscurity, all but ignored by the White House.

Bromley now consults with Richard G. Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, on funding issues involving science and technology. He confers with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney about the prospects of shifting money from military research to civilian programs. And he meets regularly with Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan on matters such as the appointment of a director for the National Institutes of Health.

Still, the skeptics were heard from in November after Bromley confessed that he had been bypassed when the Administration decided to extend the controversial ban on federal funding for research using tissues from aborted fetuses.

No big deal, the former Yale physics professor replied gamely.

Abortion is not a science or technology issue, he insisted. “It’s an issue on which scientists have no special insights,” he said. “I know precious little about the medical field.”

In 1988, candidate Bush delivered a major science policy address that elated scientists. He pledged a deep commitment to government investment in basic research as well as in science and math education. Bush also vowed to significantly upgrade the science adviser’s status.

Bromley reportedly helped draft the speech, although he recently declined to discuss his role in that address.

But after the inauguration, as months passed and no science adviser was appointed, the science community grew restless.

Those trepidations evaporated when Bromley was named in April.

There was further cause for elation because Bush gave Bromley the additional title of assistant to the President, thus granting him direct Oval Office access.

“There are very great expectations,” said Donald Hornig, who served as science adviser in the last days of the Kennedy Administration and then under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“Allan Bromley is known to be a first-rate physicist and a person of some force and views. And that’s a very big difference from the recent past,” Hornig said.

Bromley, 63, was a member of the White House Science Council in the early days of the Reagan Administration when he and Bush met.

A man partial to bow ties and precise enunciations, Bromley is outspoken to the point of abrasiveness, some say. But he is considered urbane and witty by others--including, insiders say, the President.

The Canadian-born nuclear physicist is widely praised both as a scientist who knows how to design an experiment and as a bureaucratic infighter who knows how to get things done in Washington.

That latter reputation was immediately put to the test.

During the Reagan years, the White House science office’s staff and budget shrank by more than 50%.

“OSTP was all but ignored,” recalled Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate science, technology and space subcommittee. “And science and technology policy was based more on the whims of speech writers than on sound scientific analysis.”

By the time Ronald Reagan returned to California, many scientists were deeply disturbed by what they regarded as a severe neglect of science and technology--especially at a time when America’s competitiveness appeared increasingly at stake and when so many “mega-projects,” like the super collider, the human genome mapping project and the space station, were vying for funds.

While Bromley’s early reviews have been positive, many observers note that science advisers make few, if any, policy decisions themselves. Rather, their influence rests largely on their ability to persuade the President and key Administration officials.

“Nothing comes along which the science adviser has to say yes or no to. He’s just not in a position of deciding yes or no about anything ,” said Hornig, now chairman of the department of environmental science and physiology at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

“But he can take initiatives and carry great weight,” he added.

Bromley said he does not intend to sit back and wait to be asked for his advice. As a presidential assistant, he said, “I can inject science and technology whenever it’s important.”

He also has persuaded Bush to create a President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology--to be chaired, of course, by Bromley.

The adviser said Bush has promised to act as host of the council’s first meeting, probably in January, and to sit in “as frequently as time permits.”

Bromley said his most important role will be to ensure that the President “has access to sound advice” on science and technology issues, such as in setting priorities on the many mega-projects on the drawing boards.

“It’s quite clear that not all of them can continue on a parallel path,” Bromley said. “We’ll have to do some phasing. It’s a very difficult process, but we’re getting under way.”

Among Bromley’s current preoccupations is the rebuilding of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Already, he has persuaded the Office of Management and Budget to double his staff to 33 next year.

“And I have a gentlemen’s agreement with Dick Darman,” Bromley said, for 45 slots in 1991.

He said he and the budget director also have worked out an arrangement in which corresponding levels of employees in both offices meet to thrash out budgetary issues involving science and technology.

As Bromley noted in a Science magazine interview on the eve of his confirmation hearing: “It became evident a long time ago that if you control the budget, you control public policy.”

A past president of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, Bromley has served on many national and international science policy boards and committees. He was vice chairman of a panel that recommended a doubling of the National Science Foundation budget in 1986.

But above all, he is known for his candor.

In criticizing the quality of America’s science education, Bromley heatedly told a Washington Science Writers Assn. meeting last month, “We are perpetuating a fraud on our children.” Thumping the dais, he said many so-called science classes are “troughs of mediocrity.”

Improving the quality of such education, Bromley said, is “without any question the most important issue.”