A social contract model
The 16-day government shutdown in the
United States, in October 2013, had a pronounced effect on federal
funding for scientific and medical research. Writing in
Nature,
Daniel Sarewitz found the event a good
opportunity to reflect on the
role of taxpayer-funded scientific research in this country. I will
similarly indulge in such reflection here. Sarewitz emphasizes the
need for a tangible payoff from such research. I agree with that
point, since in my view a social contract exists between the people
who fund research, particularly the taxpayers, and those who carry it
out.
In this month's issue of
Eos, William
Hooke
discusses this social contract more eloquently that I could.
Hooke realizes that much of the taxpayers' financial support “comes
from people far more strained financially than we are,” as most
mid-career and senior scientists belong comfortably in the middle
class. Hooke wants us to think about the following questions: “Why
should they pay us? Isn't it because they hope that our labors will
improve their lot in life? Don't we owe them something? What would
a fair return on society's investment look like?”
In the U.S., the social contract
originated in World War II, and the terms of the contract were
tantamount to “give us lots of money and don't ask too many
questions, and one day you'll be glad you did.” As Hooke points
out, for most of the post-war period, this setup was wildly
successful. However, Hooke points to numerous stresses on the
contract that have emerged in the last decade, and he is not
impressed with the scientific community's response: a turn to
political advocacy. “Worse, we've too often dumbed down our
lobbying until it's little more than simplistic, orchestrated,
self-serving pleas for increased research funding, accompanied at
times by the merest smidgen of supporting argument.” In the
geosciences, Hooke claims that “we've allowed ourselves to turn
into scolds. Worse, we've chosen sides politically, largely
abandoning any pretense at nonpartisanship.” Hooke says that the
outcome is “alienating at least half the country's political
leadership—and half the country's population.” He counsels as
follows: “As individuals and as a community, let's listen more to
the people and the political leaders who support us and spend less
time up front telling them what we know. Relaying our knowledge can
come later; we first need to build a bridge of trust that can carry
the weight of truth.”
I am largely in agreement with the
comments by Sarewitz and Hooke cited above; I found Hooke's piece
particularly compelling. Let me take the opportunity here then to
outline my own views on the social contract between publicly funded
scientists, taxpayers and voters, and the political representatives
in between. My thoughts are motivated by two seemingly contradictory
premises.
Premise 1: Basic research deserves a
mostly hands-off approach
Basic research is driven by curiosity
and serendipity, and therefore cannot be managed in the same way as
goal-driven, applied research. The payoff for society is almost
never obvious, immediate, or predictable, yet basic research has a
strong track record of producing such payoffs in the long run, albeit
with a high error rate. (Not every piece of research will result in
a payoff.) Hooke's account is right: “give us lots of money and
don't ask too many questions, and one day you'll be glad you did.”
However, I think that outside pressure
is indeed needed on the scientific community on at least one issue:
non-reproducible research. Such “research” represents a waste of
society's resources as well as an insult to the goals of scientific
endeavor. The scientific community has not been quick to face up to
the problem, which is intimately bound up with flaws inherent in the
community's infrastructure: its reward system for funding, tenure,
and promotion. This is one arena where outside pressure from
taxpayers and political leaders, would be welcome by me,
despite the predictable pushback from within the scientific
community.
Premise 2: Scientists are never
“entitled” to funding
Taxpayer funding for research makes use
of the coercive power of government to seize a share of individuals'
income for redistribution. This means that the government knows how
to spend that share of money better than you would, and it doesn't
trust you to make the right decision. Taxpayers do have limited
control over the government's wisdom, when they function as voters,
but this limited control is very weak.
I am influenced here by the work of the
public choice school of economics. Scholars of that stripe point out
that in democracies, voters choose candidates or parties that
represent a portfolio of policy stances across the entire spectrum of
political decisions that a nation needs to make. A candidate or
party's stance on the deployment of taxpayer-funded scientific
research is usually a very small piece in that portfolio. That piece
is often drowned out in political campaigns that focus on more
visible issues to the voting public. This severely limits citizens'
direct voice to government on the level and distribution of their
money to scientific research. Secondly, on any particular issue
(like science funding), citizens' interests are usually more diffuse
than those of special interest groups, who have a large and specific
vested interest in the government's decisions, and thus are able to
mobilize large amounts of money to influencing both policy makers
(elected or otherwise) and the voting public. The amount of such
money is still dwarfed by the money the government has to spend, as
well as the economic consequences of that spending for the special
interests. This makes such lobbying a worthwhile investment on their
part. Thus, at least in the U.S., our democratic form of government
severely reduces the role of the citizen/voter/taxpayer in
influencing how much public money goes to scientific research, and
how that money is allocated.
Scientists should not maintain an
attitude of entitlement. Their funding is not a direct outcome of
voter support, and the survival of that funding is subject to
competing pressures from other special interests. Scientists should
reflect on whether they (as members of the middle class) deserve
other people's money to carry out research of their own choosing,
while others in society, such as children in families below or
straddling the poverty level, are deprived of even the opportunity to
advance out of the conditions in which they were born. Gratitude for
the persistence of Premise 1, the hands-off approach to funding basic
research, should prevail instead of an elitist sense of entitlement.
Private funding for science?
I'd now like to discuss a
blog post by
accomplished physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, from January, 2013. In
this post, she provides a very thoughtful and considered discussion
of the role of private funding for science, either from wealthy
philanthropists, or through crowdfunding, and in contrast with
public funding. I will have to disagree with much of what she has
written. However, note that some of the disagreement may be due to
larger differences in culture and government between Europe (where
she resides) and the U.S. (where I do). The discussion below will be
from an exclusively American perspective, and I will not claim that
my conclusions would apply to countries with different cultural norms
and political systems.
First, let me list the points where I
agree with Hossenfelder, though I will express them differently and
perhaps with my own spin on them. (Thus don't take the following as
a literal reporting of her views, but rather my own perspective on
certain of her views with which I find favor.) Quotation marks are
used to indicate words or phrases from her post.
Much of scientific research is in
“unglamorous” areas that lack public visibility, and the nature
of such research (let alone any potential tangible benefit for
society) may be very difficult to communicate. Moreover, the
“dramatically high failure rate” may make the cost-benefit
trade-off seem difficult to justify. For this reason, much
scientific research will fail to attract private funding. (Private
donors like the Gates Foundation are often interested in measuring
the impact of their giving; this will be hard to do for blue sky
research.)
I believe that even the patron saint of
capitalism, Adam Smith, would have recognized that funding basic
research is a legitimate function of government, because of an
inherent market failure. Basic research benefits everyone equally,
not any particular investor who wants a competitive advantage, and
the payoff is usually too long-term and too unpredictable for a
private investor's taste.
“Wealthy donors often drive their own
agenda.” They can have a disproportionate influence on the kinds
of research that get done, with respect to the priorities of others.
“We have a lot to lose in this game if we allow the vanity of
wealthy individual[s] to influence what research is conducted
tomorrow.”
Now, to the points of disagreement. My
biggest impression is that Hossenfelder's piece conveys a sense of
entitlement. She works in an area of physics (quantum gravity) that
she says is “constantly underfunded,” and she finds essentially
no sources of private funding in her country that target her specific
field. However, she strongly believes in “the relevance of my own
research” and expects the same of any scientist. This is only
natural. The only problem I have is that nobody is entitled to spend
other people's money. They certainly are not entitled to use the
middleman of government to coerce non-scientists, who may have no
interest in my research, to fund a research program that I defined
simply because I am interested in it. To support Hossenfelder's
position, I would have to assume that I am smarter than the
taxpayers, and that the government should seize a portion of their
income to support my research, which is more worthy than what the
citizens would have spent that money on otherwise. We need to make the case that financing basic physics research is good for all of society, in some abstract sense, not just good for physicists.
Secondly, Hossenfelder values the
stability of government funding as opposed to the potentially
transient nature of private funding. “One of the main functions of
governmental funding of basic research is its sustained, continuous
availability and reliability.” In the United States, this just
isn't true. First we saw the sequestration, which created a massive
strain on the research enterprise across the country. Then there was
the government shutdown itself. The adverse consequences of both the
sequestration and the shutdown have been discussed at length by
others. The bottom line is that in the United States, public funding
of science has become highly unstable and unpredictable, no less so
than funding from private sources.
Third, Hossenfelder states that the
“Interests of wealthy individuals can affect research directions
leading to an inefficient use of resources, leaving essential areas
out of consideration. Keep in mind that the relevant question is not
whose money it is, but how it is best used to direct investment of
resources into an endeavor, science, with the aim of serving our
societies.“ This implies that some kind of optimal distribution of
research funds exists or can be found. I do not agree with that
implication. Funding for science is based on choices made by
individuals. Individuals may choose how to spend their own money
(e.g., wealthy donors) or they can choose how to spend the taxpayers'
money (politicians and funding agency bureaucrats). There is no
objective “right answer” to how such choices should be made; each
chooser makes his or her own cost benefit tradeoff calculation,
ostensibly on behalf of society. The funding agency bureaucrats may
have better qualifications than the wealthy donors and politicians to
disburse research money, since the bureaucrats usually have science
backgrounds themselves, and rely on peer review by other scientists.
However, the bureaucrats usually do not have the power to determine
the overall budget for a given funding agency – this is the domain
of politicians, and in the U.S., the politicians have chosen to
shrink the available funds for science (along with all other areas of
discretionary funding) in order to keep taxes low, maintain the
government's ability to borrow money at reasonable interest rates,
and protect entitlement programs, such as Social Security and
Medicare. In other words, the democratic process in the U.S. has
resulted in a reduction in the overall level of public funding for
science. For all Hossenfelder's praise of putting science funding
under the control of a democratic process, could she really find
fault with the resulting de-funding of science?
Fourth, Hossenfelder does not think
scientists should “waste time on marketing” their projects to
donors. This line of argument crops up in her discussion of
crowdfunding. However, under the public model, in the U.S.
scientists have simply outsourced such marketing to their
professional societies, who use volunteers and professional lobbyists
to make the case for public science funding to Congress. Make no
mistake – this is still marketing, just at a macro level instead of
a micro level. Yes, individual scientists are spared the indignity
of begging for money, but in my view this may be a bad thing, because
it perpetuates the sense of entitlement. When you have to beg for
money, you have no illusions about who is putting the bread on your
table.
Funding for science will always be
limited because there are other demands on society's resources.
Without constraint, funding for science could become a bottomless
pit, because there is no end to the number of questions and research
programs that could be formulated, nor to the numbers of people
recruited to pursue them. Finite resources force us to be selective
and make priorities, and the resulting fiscal and scientific
discipline can often be healthy.
I believe there needs to be plenty of
room in science funding for both kinds of funding, private and
public. Wealthy donors should have the opportunity and the
discretion to contribute to the funding of scientific research, as
long as the products of that research (journal papers) are subjected
to the same peer review process expected of publicly funded science,
and funding sources and other potential conflicts of interest are
disclosed. Meanwhile, public funding of science must also continue,
in order to alleviate the market failure discussed above. However,
its level and distribution will continue to be unstable and subject
to contraction at the whim of Congress and the voters who elect its
members. For science to continue as a viable enterprise, its funding
must depend on a balanced funding ecosystem with both public and
private sources.
One solution to Hossenfelder's concerns
is to encourage wealthy donors to make use of peer review within
their philanthropic foundations. For instance, the donors can play a
macro role in determining how much to give for a certain broad sector
of research (which after all is what Congress does when it hands the
National Science Foundation a budget) and let individual scientists
submit proposals to the foundation's expert panel for peer review.
This alleviates some of the issues she has with crowdfunding. I also
agree with Hossenfelder that the door should be opened for private
citizens (regardless of wealth or income) to donate directly to
government funding agencies, with a moderate level of direction. For
instance, the donor might direct a gift to a division of the National
Cancer Institute, but the funds would be disbursed via the usual peer
review process by that division.
An alternate model is for a scientist
to fund his or her own research, thus guaranteeing their intellectual
independence.
Stephen Wolfram famously did so by financing his
unconventional computational research with earnings from a successful
software company.
Julian Barbour also does unconventional research,
funded by his “actual” career as a scientific translator, plus a
lucky break in obtaining some farmland that he rented to his brother.
See the preface to Barbour (2001). I am also inspired by the story
of American musical composer Charles Ives, who wrote highly
unconventional music. He didn't want his family to “starve on his
dissonances,” so he pursued a highly accomplished career in the
insurance industry, making music his hobby. During his lifetime he
was known as an actuary and influential insurance executive, but
history primarily remembers him for his music. Only true
independence gives you the time and space to think for yourself.
However, a caveat should be made.
Hamming (1997, p. 353) has been critical of the independence given to
members of the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS, Princeton, NJ)
because most of them “continued to work on the same problems which
got them there but which were generally no longer of great importance
to society.” Hamming notes that only a “few, like von Neumann,
escaped the closed atmosphere of the place with all its physical
comforts and prestige, and continued to contribute to the advancement
of Science.” One major difference is that Wolfram and Barbour had
to work hard at their day jobs, while the IAS guys were paid to be
pure theorists.
A personal note
Incidentally, I myself departed from
basic research partly because I felt uncomfortable with the social contract
between academic research and the public that funds it. It seemed to
me that the social contract was non-existent. The public has to take
a leap of faith that in the long run, funding science would result in
societal benefits. There is evidence that this is true in the
aggregate, but I could never justify why any particular line of basic
research that I might pursue would result in a tangible benefit to
society, one that justifies the coercive power of government to
secure my funding. On the other hand, I am comfortable as a taxpayer
and voter with the fact that I help fund blue sky research by others.
References
Julian Barbour, 2001: The End of Time:
The Next Revolution in Physics. (Corrected edition.) Oxford
University Press.
Richard W. Hamming, 1997: The Art of
Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn. Gordon and
Breach.
William Hooke, 2015: Reaffirming the
social contract between science and society. Eos, 96 (6): 12-13.
Donald Sarewitz, 2013: Science's
rightful place is in service of society. Nature, 502: 595.
