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C-PET National Press Club forum follow-up
See the conference report attached below
Dear Colleagues,
 
C-PET Election Forum on the Future of Science and Technology Policy
 
We now have the audio from the Forum available at c-pet.org, and various related documents are also being posted to the website. Here is the meeting summary.  
 
Separately, for those who are interested and either have an account on LinkedIn or wish to open one (the basic LinkedIn level is free of charge), we are developing a C-PET group list. You can subscribe through the link on the website homepage.
 
 
Best,
 
 
Nigel Cameron
 
President
Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies
The Future of Science and Technology Policy

The C-PET Forum on Science, Technology and the Presidential Election at the National Press Club
September 26, 2008

Chair: Nigel Cameron, President, Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies; Illinois Institute of Technology

Co-chairs: Jennie Hunter-Cevera, President, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
Jonathan Moreno, University of Pennsylvania

Co-sponsored by the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
and the Society for Industrial Microbiology
 
Meeting summary
 
US global leadership in science and technology is accompanied by a disturbing anomaly: a curious lack of interest in S and T issues on the part of the general policy community - in Washington and around the nation. While controversy has focused on specific issues (notably, embryonic stem cell research, and climate change), its context has been less S and T and more that of wider policy issues. Even - perhaps especially - the space program receives little scrutiny from the policy community or the press. While science and some industry groups press for higher levels of federal S and T funding, the specifics are little reported. One consequence is that there has been frustration that the presidential candidates have failed to address S and T issues in detail in their campaign speeches. An effort to get a debate focused on S and T has pulled much support, and led to responses from the campaigns to a list of submitted questions.
 
That is the context in which national leaders on science and technology policy met Friday September 26 in Washington, DC to discuss what many see as the leading issue facing America in the long term. Science and technology drive the economy and are the keys to our security. Every facet of the future will be shaped by the options they offer. The Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, lead sponsor of the forum, has been established with wide bipartisan support and participation from corporate, policy and civil society sectors - to raise the profile of S and T policy and especially the long-term transformational significance of "emerging technologies" such as biotechnology and nanotechnology, and IT applications such as artificial intelligence and robotics.
 
The forum opened with a keynote from Senator Obama's lead technology surrogate, Michael Nelson, former White House staffer, IBM executive, and now Visiting Professor at Georgetown, who laid out Obama's vision for the future of science and technology policy. Senator McCain's surrogate, longtime Senate staffer and adviser Floyd DesChamps, withdrew from the forum as the McCain campaign had been briefly suspended in response to the financial crisis.
 
Nelson shared his enthusiasm for the Obama campaign's commitment to giving S and T policy with a new seriousness in federal policy. He was impressed by the involvement of "top-rate people to make it happen," at this "very high point" of the campaign. He said he was delighted to discover that C-PET had been brought into existence, as its agenda was crucial to the future of the nation. Obama's special focus was on emerging technologies, IT and telecoms issues, and he had a team of 400 advisers working at many levels on the S and T agenda. A paper had just been put out addressing 12 key S and T issues, together with a letter of endorsement from 61 Nobel laureates that touched on such issues as energy, disease, climate, and competitiveness. Other materials were available on the web, including separate policy papers on science and technology, and cross-hatched S and T issues in the policy positions on energy, education, and other key areas.
 
Key concerns/highlights included:
  • A free, open internet
  • Use of the internet to make government more transparent. He commended the Bush administration for its follow-through on Phase II the e-government initiative that he had helped then VP Gore initiate (enabling transactions in addition to the dissemination of information); Phase III, including collaboration and engagement with government and across the nation, lay ahead, heralding a new approach to government, best understood by comparison with the way in which the Obama campaign had used the medium.
  • Obama would rapidly bring in a talented science adviser.
  • He would "restore integrity to the advisory process."
  • Double basic funding for S and T over 10 years.
  • Make the R and D tax credit permanent.
  • Streamline the patent system - and stop it being used to inhibit innovation (patent trolls et al.).
  • Appoint a Chief Technology Officer with responsibilities across government to promote best practices and encourage innovation.
 
Jonathan Moreno, co-chair, ask about the proposal to institute a 5-day window for public internet comment before non-urgent legislation was signed. Nelson responded that an Obama administration would draw on the wisdom of crowds - for example, added that public hearings would be webcast.
 
Audience comments and responses included:
  • David Goldston: how useful are crowds? Do we want to be hyper-democratized? Is that not part of the problem already?
  • Jaydee Hanson: is it not interesting that the election would seem to be between one party that wanted to regulate the environment, and another one that wanted to regulate the human body (on issues such as stem cells, gene patents)?
  • Nick Alexander: would e-government as described not lead to a cyber-populism that was already being evidenced in the emergence of a blogger elite?
  • Jennie Hunter-Cevera: S and T are driven by public needs and scientific discoveries.
  • Andrew Maynard: Who decides what the public "needs"?
  • David Goldstone: "The notion that there IS a 'public' is . . . phoney."
 
 
The opening panel addressed the Federal Role in S and T Policy. Led by David Goldston (former staff director of the House Science Committee and monthly columnist in Nature) it included Phillip Bond (President of the Information Technology Association of American, former Undersecretary at the Department of Commerce), Reece Rushing (Center for American Progress), and Neil Munro (National Journal).
 
Goldston noted that the key question was what kind of research agenda should be set. It had hitherto been set almost entirely by the research community itself. There had been "not enough discussion" of priorities and consequences of the kind that "ought to happen in an administration." 'We've gotten better in that we are now asking the questions. We have not gotten better at answering them." On social and ethical implications, "we set aside a pot of money on the genome or nano and then you try and work out if it was spent on the right things." The key issue is what to make of experts v. the people, which is "much trickier than any writing I've seen on it." Our approach is schizophrenic. We all say we want the people involved, but on specifics we want the scientists to decide! These issues will be "much more heightened" as technology progresses. "We are nowhere in thinking ahead about how to deal with this, and if these longer trends in the political culture continue - polarization, no subtlety, media every 3 seconds - we will never have the capability of handling these questions. Because the system is going in the exact opposite direction . . .."
 
Bond offered his comments from an industry perspective. Competition was more serious than ever; innovation globalized; information faster (including misinformation) - so that "branding for failure" was easier than ever (who wants to buy Chinese toothpaste?). As a result, "policy is a bigger competitive factor than ever before." Every technological advance is a double-edged sword: Societal and ethical considerations must be factored in earlier, especially where public money is involved - policy-making is increasingly monitored. So science is not just for scientists. Other points included:
  • We need more public/private R and D engagement.
  • More nonstop information efforts to challenge misinformation.
  • Awareness of the profound implications of such issues as ubiquitous sensors / image capturing with their radical privacy implications (cf. Google Earth).
  • Is there a public right to know what a private lab is doing?
  • The Homo sapiens v. "Robo sapiens" agenda is going to be of vast importance.
  • The Obama idea of public comment on bills is a good one, but surely should be addressed in the context of the legislative branch, not when bills are passed to the president for signature.
 
Rushing addressed the role of date-driven policymaking, instancing issues from the need to track global ocean currents to the value of using sensors to monitor bridges and developing "quality of life" indexes to compare communities and assess needs.
 
Munro offered a journalist's perspective, and commented that like journalists scientists form a professional community that will tend to act in its collective self-interest. Yet journalists found this difficult: they saw business people like Bond as acting in business interests; yet scientists as a parallel professional group were seen with a respect that undercut realism. "Many of the debates that come up in Washington on S and T policy are proxies for status and power and money;" not simply fights over S and T. "We journalists rarely treat fellow-professionals like we treat these scumball business guys or the military-industrial complex. So we downplay the interests issue."
 
Audience responses included: 
 
  • Andrew Maynard of the Woodrow Wilson Centre Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies: should we not separate the science itself from its policy implications?
  • Do we need to re-evaluate who sets the S and T agenda - government? Business? The research community?
 
Concluding comment from Jennie Hunter-Cevera: S and T are on the train that has left the platform while the policy issues are still trying to board.
 
The second panel addressed Space Policy. Moderated by Paul Root Wolpe of Emory University, it included NASA's Planetary Protection Officer Cassie Conley and former Chief Health and Medical Officer (now at George Mason University) Arnauld Nicogossian.
 
Nicogossian reviewed the central role of health questions and their associated ethics components in the development of human space flight, especially in relation to project long-duration space flight. 
 
Conley explained the role of planetary protection - to protect other planets from us, and us from them. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty set out obligations that were becoming more complex to fulfill in light of the advent of private space travel, with initiatives from the X-Prize, the Planetary Society, and so on. Mars was the planet most at risk of contamination, and of contaminating the earth.
 
Wolpe noted that NASA was a "uniquely vulnerable" agency since it was expendable in a way that other agencies and major federal programs were not.  He noted the key ethics issues involved in long-duration space flight which had been given a boost by the Bush administration.
  • In low earth orbit, if an astronaut was sick the key was to bring him or her home quickly. What are the underlying values if it happens on the way to Mars?
  • There are more minor injuries than most people realize in the current situation.
  • What about the exposure of women to radiation? Should NASA freeze their eggs?
  • A risk calculus was needed to plot the likelihood, severity, and cost of measures needed in each case - on a craft with little elbow-room for space and weight.
  • What happens if someone becomes disabled? Who does the work? What if someone dies?
  • What is the highest priority? Astronaut safety or mission success?
  • Should families be given full information? Conversely, should astronauts be told if a family member is sick or dies?
 
NASA must find a way to determine the shared values of our society and apply them to these highly unusual situations.
 
The final panel focused on Emerging Technologies. Moderated by Una Ryan, former CEO of AVANTI Immunotherapeutics, it included Jennifer Camacho (IP lawyer and partner at Proskauer Rose in Boston), Dawn A. Bonnell (Director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at the University of Pennsylvania), forum co-chair Jennie Hunter-Cevera (President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute), and Caroline Wagner of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University.
 
Ryan introduced the panel with her own remarks, from the point of view of industry. The in biotech spectrum from discovery to development/manufacturing had its weak link in the middle: Phase III trials and the building of manufacturing plant. At that point government can often prove more of a roadblock than a help. We have good "push" mechanisms at the research end, but poor "pull" mechanisms. Many promising products never make it out of Phase II.
 
She made a plea not to weaken Intellectual Property protection. When drugs cost $1bn to take to market, the patent estate is often all there is. Streamlining, as Nelson had called for, was fine; but no meddling in a way that would undercut IP. She added that she had doubts about the wisdom of crowds and the prospect of populism. It was crowds that had burned witches.
 
What advice, she asked the panel, would they have for the next president?
 
Hunter-Cevera picked up the patent theme, and favored an extension from the current 17 years to 30. She focused her remarks on biologics and the growing role of personalized medicine.
 
Dawn Bonnell stated that emerging technologies are developed to provide solutions to problems ranging from the environment to energy to defense, and offered the key to vast areas of economic development. Two particular challenges were noted. First, long-term R and D was increasingly dependent on government as private investors focused on the short to medium term. Second, an increasingly skilled trained workforce would be needed; yet we have fewer science and engineering graduates, and international graduate students are increasingly returning to their home countries.
 
Caroline Wagner, speaking as a science policy analyst, sought to answer the question posed by the panel moderator: what message for the next president? First, "when a question reaches the Congress or the President, it is always about values - how we as a society value certain activities." Second, we need appropriate barriers to rapid implementation of new developments, as too-rapid implementation could lead to instability; yet such barriers inevitably frustrate scientists. "The nanosciences will revolutionize all areas of S and T, and perhaps all industries as we know them." Third, we are moving from knowledge scarcity to knowledge abundance. We need to develop a collaborative approach in which knowledge is seen as a public good to be shared (and there are now security reasons to underline this message).

Finally, Jennifer Camacho shared her experience in addressing IP issues in the context of a start-up company, and aiding in ensuring that a group of companies working in a new field (synthetic biology) offered advice to government on the kind of regulatory framework they considered necessary.