THE CUTTING EDGE: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Talk of Killing U.S. Quake Agency Rattles Geologists

In science, intellectual brilliance often seems commonplace. And since the best science is done by the top 5% to 10% of the people in each field, more often than not in my years as a science writer I have found myself interviewing the super-achievers, those whose intellectual curiosity and personal drive made them stand out even among their peers.

That kind of intellectual overkill can leave one a bit numb.

So I guess it’s not surprising that the first time I interviewed Tom Heaton I almost fell asleep. Speaking in a dull monotone with a heavy Southern accent, Heaton droned on and on about seismology and what we don’t know about earthquakes.

But every now and then, during that first meeting years ago, Heaton said something that allowed me to see with clarity an idea or concept I had never understood before. So I found myself driving out to Pasadena often to sit in his office at the U.S. Geological Survey and pick his brain about everything from earthquake dynamics to whether animals can predict earthquakes.

Heaton knew about these things because he had dabbled in all of them, driven by an insatiable curiosity and an exceptional intellect.

But you won’t find Heaton in his old office anymore, where he helped develop such things as an earthquake monitoring system for Southern California that is, quite simply, the best in the world. He has moved across the street and is now professor of engineering seismology at the Caltech.

That simple move--from the two-story bungalow that houses the Geological Survey’s small field office in Pasadena to the ivy covered halls of one of the nation’s leading research universities--says volumes about what is happening to our lead agency on such matters as earthquakes, volcanoes and the tectonic forces that continue to reshape this planet.

Heaton and Caltech are both richer for the move. But the Geological Survey has lost one of its leading lights. And Heaton isn’t the only one. I know of several other key scientists who will be gone within a year, and that is very troubling.

“A lot of the better scientists are keeping their eyes open” for other jobs, Heaton says, and only the tight job market for earth scientists will keep some of them where they are. But as more and more of them relocate--pushed on by the recent layoffs of 525 of their colleagues--the agency will grow weaker and weaker.

There will be few new hires, so there will be less of the energy that creative young minds bring into an organization.

As Heaton so often does, he put it best himself: “It’s hard to keep the organization vital.”

Like any huge bureaucracy, the U.S. Geological Survey needed a little trimming and refocusing. Too many senior scientists were sitting at their desks, absorbing scarce financial resources instead of venturing into the field to do science. The agency had become so overburdened with salaries and personnel costs that not much more than about 5% of its budget went into field work. By cutting the payroll and allocating more of the remaining funds to operations, the agency should be able to lift that figure to around 20%.

That is for the better. But when the new congressional leadership in Washington talked about killing the Geological Survey, it sent a shock wave through the agency that is almost impossible to reverse. The best people will leave, if they can find jobs anywhere else. Budding earth scientists will look elsewhere for careers, and thus less thought will be applied in the coming years to such critical matters as earthquake engineering and volcano monitoring.

What will emerge from all of this is a weaker U.S. Geological Survey. When I mentioned that recently to a fiscally conservative friend, he clapped his hands with glee.

“After the best people are gone,” he said, “it will be easier for Congress to finish killing it off.”

Some of the work, of course, will go on. Heaton is not going to stop doing seismology just because he has left the agency. Universities and engineering firms will continue to do research, just as they have in the past. But what could be lost is the vitality of a federal agency designed to focus our attention and resources on subjects most of us would rather not even think about. Like earthquakes. And volcanoes. And mudslides.

There is much work to be done. As Heaton said recently: “It’s frustrating to see it cost billions of dollars to retrofit buildings and bridges [for earthquake safety] and then see people come in later and say ‘We just didn’t know.’ I have to tell them, ‘Of course you didn’t know, you dummy. You didn’t do the research. Now you’re going to pay big time.’ ”

There’s a funny thing about people, he added. “We don’t get the answers before we make the mistakes. It’s odd.”

Heaton was a career employee with the Geological Survey. In all probability, he would never have left, but Caltech came in with a very attractive offer, and he no longer saw a future with the agency.

“I was happy doing what I was doing,” he said.

Lee Dye can be reached via e-mail at 72040.3515@CompuServe.com.