It is pretty grim. Vice President Gore was quoted by the journal Science in the 23 February 1996 issue, page 1045, as having said:
"Yeah, those scientists are a major political bloc. In places like Iowa and New Hampshire, you can just see them out there turning the tide."
This was a very sarcastic statement, by an otherwise enthusiastic proponent of basic science research in this country, about the significance of science as a political issue. Knowing how apathetic scientists can be, perhaps he is right.
Vice President Gore has attacked the Republican Party as "flirting with a turn toward no-nothingism, particularly with regard to administration initiatives to promote environmental research" according to an article in the Washington Post, February 28, 1996 page A17.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has concluded that the Republican budget plan would cut government funding for U.S. civilian science research by almost 1/3 by the year 2002 in contrast to Japan who plan to double civilian science research by the year 2000.
The members of Congress consist of well over 150 lawyers, but only 6 scientists, two engineers and one science teacher among the 535 members of Congress. In a speech to the AAS, Vice President Gore noted that "scientific concepts sometimes are missing from our public discourse". As the Vice President also noted, several recent comments by ranking Congressman " should send shivers down our spine". Even though a recent UN-sponsored symposium agreed that human activity has begun to affect Earth's climate, House Representative Dana Rohrabacher ( R-California) has dismissed this as just "liberal claptrap". Representative Tom Delay ( R-Texas), the House majority Whip, promoted legislation that would identify DDT as "not harmful". Vice President Gore noted that these comments suggest " a deeper disregard for science itself, and a taste for junk science and belief that science is just another rhetorical tool to be manipulated and twisted to fit a preconceived ideological view".
So far as space science is concerned, most journals such as Science ( march 22, 1996) and 'Space news', March 4, 1996, have concluded that there is a major crunch ahead for space science research, mainly due to NASA expecting Congress to force them to accept a declining budget over the next 7 years to balance the budget. The 1997 budget submitted by the President requests $175 million less than the 1996 budget. Wes Huntress who heads the $2 billion space science program at NASA expects deeper cuts in 1998 and beyond. In inflation adjusted dollars, this will be about a 30 percent real decline in space science research. Rep. James Sensenbrenner ( R-Wisconsin) who heads the House Science Committee is appalled at this precipitous decline. The Space Station's $2.1 billion annual budget is off the table and protected. Money for analyzing data and operating spacecraft is already being drastically reduced, according to University of Maryland Space Physicist Glenn Mason.
There are now many forecasts that show that NASA will, even in the best of worlds, be forced to close down one or two of its 12 research facilities. Last year, a House Committee was threatening to close down the Goddard Space Flight Center with its 12,000 scientists and engineers, and move it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which just happened to be in the congressional district of Representative Walker who proposed this idea. Everyone notes that this means loosing some unique research talents and resources, but they all claim that science has to bare its share of paying the national debt. Even more recently, Dan Goldin was threatening to lay off almost 1/2 of the staff at NASA Headquarters by 1998, before Congress stepped-in and steered him towards a different course of action.
I guess we will just have to wait and see just how much all of this is just political posturing or not. Other constituencies are also being held hostage by this process. The only problem is that other constituencies do not have the same multiplier effect on making new money in this economy. The technological spinoffs from basic research are enormous. Many studies have shown that for every dollar invested in basic research, 6 to 10 are generated. The Japanese know this as do the Europeans. The Internet started off as a research tool to send mail, now it's a multi-billion dollar industry.
Neal Lane, the Director off the National Science Foundation, said in a February 9 meeting of the AAAS in Baltimore Maryland that we are in the process of conducting a national experiment to see just how little money we can spend on basic research and still be a world-class leader in science in the 21st Century. At the same time, graduate student enrollment in physics is down by 10 percent in 1996, and down by 21 percent since 1992. A decline by this amount has not been seen since the early 1970's. Enrollment in astronomy programs, however, is up, and last year 130 Phds were granted compared to about 95 in the early 1980's. But a look at the jobs in astronomy shows that the vast majority are temporary post-docs that last only 2 years or so. Any openings for tenure- track positions are immediately swamped with hundreds of applicants with up to 10 years of post-doc experience.
So, this country has drawn the line, and said that it expects our children to be encouraged to learn about mathematics and science, but is busy making sure that the climate for the best and the brightest young scientists is as hostile as possible. And 1 out of 5 students majoring in physics as undergraduates are responding by not going to graduate school in physical science. We will no doubt coast for a decade, riding upon the momentum of those already working on new Phds, but when they are gone, in the early years of the 21st century, some analysts expect we will see a marked decline in new talent. Some even feel that the Era of the US Nobel Prize domination in physics will coast to an end in the next 10 years with other countries with better resources filling the void that we are unilaterally retreating from. When that happens, there may be a few Congressional studies, but no one will want to point the finger at their own political party as having underwritten the retreat. Since by that time the general public will be too worried about other things than some crazy scientists, it will be a silent abdication.
On the other hand, perhaps we will figure out how to eliminate the national debt and still maintain a strong CIVILIAN basic research effort which is not fettered by what business or the Defense establishment wants science to do for them.