At the 2004 Conference: Yellowstone Park Fire Policy

PROGRAM OUTLINE

From science and technology inputs to policy outcomes: What are the determining factors?

Science and technology policy represents a truly transdisciplinary topic that crosses academe, government and industry and requires both theoretical and practical perspectives. While one can currently identify individual science and technology policy interests and agendas, there are few explanatory models or even best practice guidelines that relate science and technology inputs with policy outcomes or, on the other hand, policy inputs with science and technology outcomes. Indeed, scientists often complain that policymakers do not listen to them or “the science;” policy makers often complain that scientists not only fail to understand what it means to make policy, but also fail to provide information in formats that can be used successfully to make policy. Too often, policy discussions focus on funding rather than impact. Through comparative research and comparison of research, the goal of STP-GRC will be to discern critical variables in the relationships between inputs and outcomes. This will be accomplished by bringing together members of the highly diverse science and technology policy community to present and discuss current empirical studies. Building networks within this community will advance the critical work of developing a robust field of research in science and technology policy.

The conference will be organized in four components: the opening session will introduce key concepts in science and technology policy; the next three days will be focused on empirical studies in which science and technology issues are analyzed in lecture/discussion sessions and posters; subsequently, as an analytic and empirical tool within the program itself, the next session will be dedicated to meta-analysis of the foregoing empirical presentations; finally the closing session will address how uncertainty influences the possibility of establishing credible policy.

Sunday evening:

Wil Lepkowski (Independent science writer; formerly covered national and international science and technology policy for Chemical and Engineering News)
Introduction to the Gordon Conference on science and technology policy.

What is science and technology policy?

The goal of the opening session will be to develop a common understanding and consensus about what science and technology policy means, which will serve as a conceptual framework for subsequent discussions.

Radford Byerly Jr. (Physicist; Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado; Former Chief of Staff, House Committee on Science and Technology)
What are the issues involved with science for policy versus policy for science?

Robert D. Atkinson (President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; author of The Past and Future of America's Economy: Waves of Innovation that Power Cycles of Growth (2005))
How does science and technology policy influence global competitiveness?

Elisa Eiseman (Senior Natural Scientist at the RAND Corporation; author of The National Bioethics Advisory Commission: Contributing to Public Policy (2003))
What counts for success in science policy?

Monday morning to Wednesday evening: Variations on a theme of comparison

The goal for each of the following sessions will be to focus on an example or related group of examples in which the path from science and technology input to policy outcome has been analyzed in terms of critical influences determining the relationship. General themes for each session are as follows:

Monday Morning:

Science Policy Directions and Advice: Biotech vs. Nanotech

Chaired by Michael Rodemeyer (Senior Consultant, Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology; served for 15 years on the U.S. House Committee on Science)

This session will focus on two major technological developments – biotechnology and nanotechnology – as case studies to examine the various forces at work in public policy. The biotechnology case study will be largely retrospective while the nanotechnology case study will look at current policy issues.

In both instances substantial commitments of federal research funding were intended to stimulate the development of a robust commercial enterprise with presumed public benefits. Federal policies in the form of funding, regulation, technology transfer, and intellectual property protection, all worked to promote the rapid development of the science and spin-off to commercial entities.

While biotechnology has clearly become a big business, food applications of biotechnology are faltering in the face of public opposition in Europe and other parts of the world. Nanotechnology developers are concerned that they not become the next “genetically modified food” controversy.

Greg Simon (President, FasterCures; former Chief Domestic Policy Advisor to Vice President Gore from 1993 to 1997 and staff director of the Investigations Committee on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology)

L. Val Giddings (President, Prometheus AB; formerly Vice President for Food and Agriculture, BIO and director of biotechnology policy studies with the Office of Technology Assessment)

Merzbacher, Celia (Assistant Director for Technology R&D, U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy; Executive Director, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology)

Evan Michaelson (Research Associate, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars)

Monday Evening:

Scientific Workforce: Domestic and International Factors

Chaired by Patty McAllister (Director of Government Relations and Public Affairs at the Council of Graduate Schools and former Executive Director of Public Affairs at Educational Testing Service)

This session will examine the major changes taking place along the global landscape of graduate education in science and engineering fields. It will review current domestic policy decisions relating to the nation’s commitment to the US scientific workforce in the future.

This includes examining such issues as the need for domestic recruitment into key fields of science, making individual advancement in the scientific workforce gender neutral, and the role of US graduate schools in the international context as domestic policy decisions combined with significant investments in graduate education infrastructure by countries abroad begin to challenge the historic dominance of US graduate institutions. Recent reports released by both the private and public sectors focus on science and technology education and workforce development as high priorities to insure continued superior global competitiveness of the US.

Kenneth Redd (Director of Research and Public Policy at the Council of Graduate Schools and formerly with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators)

Andrea Stith (Program Officer, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and former Science Policy Analyst at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology)

Paula Stephan (Professor of Economics at Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University; currently a member of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Advisory Committee to NSF)

Tuesday Morning:

Schumpeter’s Next Wave: Convergence of Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Science and Cognitive Science

Chaired by Braden Allenby (Arizona State University, Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, former Vice President for Environment, Health and Safety at AT&T, and Chair of the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy)

This session will analyze perceptual and pragmatic challenges to establishing coherent policy for the so-called “NBIC convergence,” the convergence of four powerful systems - nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and communication technology, and cognitive sciences. The transformative power of foundational technology systems (e.g., electricity, railroads) on subsequent economic and cultural developments is well documented. It must be anticipated, therefore, that NBIC also will cause significant transformations within society.

Developing NBIC policy requires an ability to assess the state of the art across the different technological domains involved as well as to foresee reasonably what might be the results of their continued integration and evolution. A key concern is how to develop rational and ethical management of future events characterized by change so fundamental and rapid that there might appear to be radical discontinuity between the future and the present.

Braden Allenby (Arizona State University)

Thomas H. Karas (Principal Member, Sandia National Laboratories Technical Staff and Advanced Concepts Group and former member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment)

Barbara Karn (Project on Emerging Technologies, Woodrow Wilson International Center; Former Director, EPA Research and Development Program for Nanotechnologies; Editor, Nanotechnology and the Environment: Applications and Implications (2005))

Clint Andrews (Rutgers University, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and President of the Society on Social Implications of Technology of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

Tuesday Evening:

Assessing Biomedical Promise for Novel Diagnostics and Treatments

Chaired by Susan M. Fitzpatrick, (Vice President of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, co-chair of the 2004 GRC on Science and Technology Policy, and current AAAS board member)

This session will raise policy questions in the context of three case studies that have received significant public attention in the media and been the focus of state and federal policy decisions. In each case, concerns have been put forth regarding the adequacy of the current status of scientific and/or medical knowledge in relationship to the policy discussions.

What are the costs (financial and psychological) of widespread medical screening? Are these costs contributing significantly to overall costs of medical care? Do the public and providers understand the relationship between screening and disease detection, prevention, and or treatment? How does one deal with the problem of false positives?

To what extent does the public marketing of stem cells therapeutics reflect, underplay, or exceed scientific data regarding stem cell potential? Are investments in stem research disproportionate to their potential impact? How should the community link research investments with anticipated outcomes, e.g., balance funding of as yet unproven methodology with additional research on proven but often unfunded more conventional approaches to health care, e.g., hospice care or rehabilitation medicine.

Are medical service-providers increasingly medicalizing biology and behaviors previously considered within normal human variability? Can one distinguish soft vs. hard diagnostic tools, e.g., at what point do cholesterol levels become pathological or behavioral quirks become defined learning deficits? How do employers, school, and governments evaluate such claims on their resources, and is there a current trend to divert resources from the truly ill to the worried well?

Donna Gerardi Riordan, (California Council on Science and Technology, former assistant to the Chancellor for higher education and science policy at UC-Santa Cruz and National Academy of Sciences staff)

Joseph Dumit, (Director of Science and Technology Studies at UC Davis, associate editor of the journal Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry and author of Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity (2004))

H. Gilbert Welch, (Professor of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, Co-Director of the VA Outcomes Group and author of Should I Be Tested for Cancer? (2004))

Wednesday Morning:

Energy Policy: Change Agent or Implementation of the Status Quo

Chaired by Jeff Warren (Coastal Hazards Policy Analyst for the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management; former geologist with Phillips Petroleum and the US Geological Survey)

The United States now consumes ~26% of the world’s energy production. China’s economy has become the fastest growing in history and Chinese energy consumption is projected to increase 150% by 2020. Conditions are similar in India where oil consumption is expected to jump by 80% by 2010.

Ideally, science and technology should be instrumental in formulating policy to address future demands for global energy. While energy policy can potentially drive the direction of global energy generation and utilization, it also can simply implement market and national energy decisions.

Energy policy reflects a complex relationship between available resources (fuel), economics, culture, security and the environment. Understanding those relationships is critical to deciding on science and technology’s role in future energy policy. This session will examine the challenge to energy policy to become a mechanism by which the global energy situation could be changed rather than be just a passive reactor to the current situation.

Paul Komor (University of Colorado at Boulder, former Project Director at the Office of Technology Assessment, and author of Renewable Energy Policy)

Bryan Hannegan (Lecturer in Geography at George Washington University, Former Associate Director for Energy and Transportation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality)

Daniel Metlay (Senior Professional Staff Member of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and former Task Force Director on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board)

Cindy Yeilding (Global Geoscience Technology Manager for British Petroleum; former Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists)

Wednesday Evening:

Impact of International Intellectual Property Law and Policy on Global Biotechnology and Health Care

Chaired by Shobita Parthasarathy (U. Michigan, assistant professor in the area of science, technology, and public policy; authoring a monograph on genetic testing for breast cancer in the US and Britain to be published by MIT Press)

A strong intellectual property climate has long been considered pivotal to the encouragement of innovation, particularly in the United States and Europe. Robust intellectual property laws in the US, for example, have been widely seen as the catalyst for the growth of its biotechnology industry. With the emergence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the increasing importance of the European Union as a governing body, there have been ever more frequent attempts to harmonize patent law across the world.

These efforts have garnered controversy worldwide regarding the implications of existing patent laws for international science and technology development as well as the continued ability to develop science and technology so as to promote the public good. This session will explore these issues by examining case controversies concerning the harmonization of biotechnology patent law in the European Union, implications of worldwide patents on AIDS drugs for Africa, American challenges to the patentability of genes, and the fate of India's generic drug industry after the country's acceptance of WTO rules.

John Barton (Emeritus Professor, Stanford University Law School, and former Chair of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights and Developing Countries for the UK; co-author of forthcoming "The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Politics, Law and Economics of the GATT and WTO")

Jon Merz (Associate Professor of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Consumer Project on Technology; former policy analyst at RAND Corporation; co-author of forthcoming book "Science Compromised: Case Studies in Policy Making and the Biological Sciences" (2006))

Shobita Parthasarathy (U. Michigan)

Poster Presentations (Instructions for Submission)

Because of time limitations, not all important, contemporary science and policy issues could be included as session themes. For instance, information technology, homeland security and terrorism, and global warming were omitted. Moreover, each session theme is itself limited in scope. Poster presentations on Monday-Wednesday afternoons will provide opportunities to cover material and topics not addressed in the lecture/discussion sessions. We hope to attract approximately 40 poster presentations from graduate students and postdoctoral fellows as well as more established researchers.

Chaired by Rachel Ankeny (University of Sydney, Director and Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science)

Committee: Daryl Chubin, Clement Counts, John Elter, David Guston, Margot Iverson, Ellen Landers, Mark Largent, Deb Niemeier, Beth Raps, Janice Tsai, Lee Zwanziger

Thursday morning:

Meta-analysis of the previous six sessions and extended group discussion

Commentators will reflect from their different perspectives on the previous sessions as an introduction to an extended open discussion. The goal is to get beyond the survey level treatment and look at the complicating textures as well as broad areas that need further inquiry as researchable issues.

Donna J. Dean (Senior Science Advisor with Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC; President (2006-2007) of the Association of Women in Science; former senior executive with the National Institutes of Health)

Colin Macilwain (senior editor at Nature responsible for its editorial and business sections; has covered science policy for Nature since 1993)

Daniel Sarewitz (Arizona State University, Professor of Science and Society; Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes; former science consultant to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology)

Thursday evening:

Decision making in a world of uncertainty

Chaired by Roger A. Pielke Jr. (University of Colorado, Professor of Environmental Studies; Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences)

Uncertainty means that more than one outcome is consistent with one's understandings. Often decision makers seek to reduce uncertainty in hopes of clarifying understandings of the relationship between alternative possible courses of action and their outcomes. Science too focuses on reducing uncertainty. This convergence on uncertainty makes for a convenient marriage of science and decision making. But there are times when the marriage is strained, such as when policy makers substitute science for action in cases where uncertainty is irreducible or when scientists coalesce around a gridlocked political debate, when effective policy making might require new policy options be introduced into debate. This closing session will focus on cases studies in which decision making under uncertainty is examined from the perspectives of science, policy and politics.

Roger Pielke Jr. (University of Colorado)

David H. Guston (Arizona State University, professor of political science and associate director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes; Author of Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research (2004))

Robert Lempert (Senior Physical Scientist, RAND Corporation; exploring application of computer technology and complex adaptive systems to science, technology, and environmental policy issues)

Preliminary List of Poster Presentations:

Clinton Andrews
EJ Bloustein School of Planning, New Brunswick, NJ
Reducing Energy Vulnerability

Marilyn Averill
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado at Boulder
Climate Litigation: The Intersection of Law, Science, Policy, Ethics, Economics, and Civic Engagement

Frazier Benya
History of Science Program, University of Minnesota
California Stem Cell Guidelines: Our Broadest Ethical Restrictions Yet

David Bruggeman
Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Tech
Inputs, Outputs and Outcomes of the GRC on Science and Technology Policy

Nora Egan Demers
College of Arts & Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University (academic)
Moving Beyond the Classroom: From Issues in Science and Technology to Science, Technology and Society

Lisa Dilling
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder
The Implications of Mismatched Supply and Demand for Climate Science: The Case of U.S. Carbon Cycle Science

Erik Fisher
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado at Boulder
From Upstream Engagement to Midstream Modulation: Shaping Technology from Within

Frances Fisher
Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases Program, Microbiology Department, Georgetown University
A Political Strategy for Improving Food Safety

Sean A. Hays and David Guston
Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Arizona State University
Public Value of Social Policy Research

Michelle Horbaly
Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Disease program, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University
Combating Bioterrorism with National Integrated Biosurveillance of the American Food Supply

Lekelia D. Jenkins
Duke University
Power to the People: Empowering Users for Successful Invention and Adoption of Marine Conservation Technology

Ann Johnson
Department of History, University of South Carolina
Research Practices and Road Maps in Nanostructured Materials Research

Nathaniel Logar
CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder
Reconciling Uncertain Outcomes for U.S. Department of Agriculture Global Change Research: Missed Opportunities versus Useable Science

Genevieve Maricle
Environmental Studies/Science and Technology Policy Research, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder
Shaping Science: Turning Science Studies into Science Action

Genevieve Maricle and Elizabeth McNie
Environmental Studies/Science and Technology Policy Research, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder
The Science and Technology Policy Handbook: Mapping the Field

LaRuth C. McAfee and David L. Ferguson
Department of Technology and Society, Stony Brook, NY
Status and Experiences of Minority Doctoral Students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Disciplines

Aleecia M. McDonald
School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh
How Technology Drives Vehicular Privacy

Elizabeth McNie
Environmental Studies/Science and Technology Policy Research, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder
Producing Useful Scientific Information for Policy: Lessons Learned from the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Program

Ryan Meyer¹, Genevieve Maricle², and Elizabeth McNie^2
1Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University and ²School of Life Sciences and Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder
Priorities, Goals, Metrics and Reality: will the US Climate Change Science Program Contribute to Policy and Decision Making?

Evan Michelson
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Measuring the Merger: Examining the Onset of Converging Technologies

Mark Neff¹ and Elizabeth A. Corley^2
1Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University and ²School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University
How Climate Changed Ecology: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Changing Focus of Ecological Research

Catherine A. O’Riordan and Peter F. Folger
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Disaster mitigation: communicating scientific consensus to inform policy

Beth Raps¹ and Maria Gaffney^2
1Independent Scholar and ²Sterling College
Rocking Schumpeter’s Waves: Using Adventure Travel to Influence Public Uptake of Science Policy

Ruben Rodrigues
Sci & Tech Policy, Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston
Effectively Applying Nanotechnology and Nanomanufacturing to the Needs of Developing Nations

Michael W. Wara
Stanford Law School and Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, Critique and Lessons for a Post-2012 Developing World Climate and Energy Policy.

Jameson M. Wetmore
Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University
Religious Forays into Nanotechnology Policy

Charles Weiss
Georgetown University
Privacy and the Future of Data Mining

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Last update: July 26, 2006