Science Policy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Science policy refer s to that aspect of public policy that addresses funding, regulation, and organization of science and technology. Nations support scientific endeavors for a number of reasons, such as economic growth and military or security interests. While facets of scientific inquiry have been supported by governments throughout history, it was not uScience policy refer s to that aspect of public policy that addresses funding, regulation, and organization of science and technology. Nations support scientific endeavors for a number of reasons, such as economic growth and military or security interests. While facets of scientific inquiry have been supported by governments throughout history, it was not until the interwar period that science policy materialized as a distinct policy area.
The Soviet Union led activist government science believing that science and technology were key to industrialization and modernization. The Soviets supported science with public funds, promoted the profession as a branch of civil service, required that research be targeted toward the social and economic goals of the state, and made science education available broadly. By the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union was spending about 0.8 percent of its national income on scientific research, compared to 0.1 percent by the United Kingdom.
Scientific institutions and societies in the United Kingdom historically eschewed involvement in government and politics as the ideal of pure, disinterested science reigned. Rethinking of the role that science may have in mitigating the deep social crises of the interwar period and the impending Second World War (1939–1945) led to changes in the relationship between government and science with increased funding and coordination of research into military-relevant technologies.
The United States lagged behind the United Kingdom in developing a wartime alliance between science and the military, but by 1939 advances in understanding the potential destructive power of atomic power triggered the establishment of the governmental Advisory Committee on Uranium, which ultimately led to the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. The project ushered in the era of “Big Science” and involved the mobilization of an unprecedented number of scientists; coordinated activities around multidisciplinary projects for military purposes; and brought together industry, academia, and the government.
Governments in most, if not all, industrialized countries became actively involved in funding and coordinating scientific research following World War II, establishing or substantially increasing funding for science councils, national laboratories, and research institutes. Most of the investment at the time was in mission-specific areas that included military research, agricultural productivity, and atomic energy, with the goals and criteria set by the relevant government funding agencies. On the other hand, the scientific community set goals of basic research and assured quality through the peer review process.
Ascendance And Institutionalization Of U.S. Science Policy
The 1957 launch of the Soviet spy satellite, Sputnik, accelerated investment in science and engineering, particularly in the United States, with increases in research and development spending averaging 15 percent, achieving technological supremacy by the mid-1960s. The ascendance of science led to new bureaucracies, expanded legislative committee jurisdictions, and the growth of existing science-oriented organizations. The National Science Foundation was established in 1950 as the federal agency to support fundamental research in all scientific and engineering disciplines. President Kennedy established the Office of Science and Technology in 1961 in response to the space race. In 1976 it was renamed Office of Science and Technology Policy, and its mandate was broadened beyond space to advise the president on the effects of science and technology in domestic and international arenas.
In the legislature, the Senate Standing Committee of Aeronautical and Space Sciences was formed in 1958, then folded into the Commerce Committee in 1977. Similarly, the House of Representatives established the Committee on Science and Aeronautics in 1958, which has undergone a number of name changes and is presently the Committee on Science and Technology. Broadly speaking, these committees have full or partial oversight of agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and other science-dependent bureaucracies.
Interacting within these political arenas are powerful science organizations such as the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a number of university and industry lobbyists. The effects these groups have on science policy range from congressional earmarking of projects (funding or prioritizing science outside of the peer-review process) to advocating for more robust peer-review processing in government funding decisions.
International Drivers And Trends In Science Policy
International organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization played important roles in reporting on and shaping science policy in both developed and developing countries. Today there are science-based bureaucracies in all developed and most developing countries. In the early 1960s, both organizations set explicit guidelines and goals for member governments to establish scientific advisory bodies, as well as recommendations to support scientific and technological research. In its 1963 report, Science, Economic Growth, and Government Policy, the OECD made an explicit link between science and the economy, arguing that higher education and research were long-term investments to stimulate economic growth.
Sociopolitical changes in the late 1960s had profound effects on science policy. Environmental, feminist, antiwar, and student movements questioned decision making and called for more public participation. The result was a broadening of the scope of science policy to reflect emerging societal concerns including environmental issues, reproductive technology and birth control, and the conversion of military research and development to civilian applications. A second OECD report, Science, Growth, and Society: A New Perspective (1971), shed uncritical optimism of scientific development, emphasized social and environmental contexts of technological change, and argued for more active citizen engagement in science policy development and consequences.
The 1980s saw a shift toward investing in more commercially oriented innovation policies as a response to the economic ascendance of Japan and the East Asian newly industrializing countries—Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. In these countries, science policy was integrated into industrial policy. A 1981 OECD report emphasized stronger relationships between universities and industry and focused on industrial innovation. In the following decade, OECD countries increased funding for materials sciences, information technology, and biotechnology and shifted their science policy orientation to commercial innovation.
In the 1990s the OECD continued to focus on innovation policies, but its framework of analysis included “innovation as interaction” and highlighted that states needed to develop capacity not only to develop their own innovations, but also to develop the capacity to adopt technology developed in other countries.
International Cooperation In Big Science
While science and technology policies for economic growth and military applications maintain a nationalist perspective the 1990s and 2000s saw an unprecedented degree of international cooperation in Big Science projects that pertain to mapping the human genome and climate science. The estimated US$3 billion Human Genome Project actively engaged industry, research scientists, and the medical community around the globe. Major contributors to the project included the China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States. Completed in 2003, the project catalyzed the biotechnology industry with transfers of technology to the private sector. It also spurred a host of ethical, legal, and social concerns such as who owns and controls genetic information, are genetically modified foods safe for humans and the environment, and how and should fetal genetic testing be used? These complex social and ethical issues have led to politically charged debate that has integrated into science policy in many countries.
Climate change science is arguably the largest and most international project in the history of science. While countries fund climate science through specialized agencies, universities, and institutes, as well as private sector investment in understanding causes, risks, and developing mitigation and adaptation strategies, the Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change (IPCC) has emerged as the most authoritative source of information and policy decisions for climate science. The IPCC Panel is composed of government appointed representatives and neither conducts its own research nor monitors climate itself. Rather, the lead authors of IPCC reports assess available information from peer reviewed, published scientific literature. In 2007 the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
Bibliography:
1. Brooks, Harvey. Science, Growth, and Society: A New Perspective. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1971.
2. Elzinga, Aant H., and Andrew Jamison. “Changing Policy Agendas in Science and Technology.” In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Shiela Jasanoff, 572–597.Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995.
3. Ezrahi, Yaron. The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
4. Freeman, Christopher, Raymond Poignant, and Ingvar Svennilson. Science, Economic Growth, and Government Policy. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1963.
5. Jasanoff, Sheila. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.
6. Kojevnikov, Alexei. “The Phenomenon of Soviet Science.” Osiris 23, no. 1 (2008): 115–135.
7. McClellan, James E. and Harold Dorn. Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.ntil the interwar period that science policy materialized as a distinct policy area.

The Soviet Union led activist government science believing that science and technology were key to industrialization and modernization. The Soviets supported science with public funds, promoted the profession as a branch of civil service, required that research be targeted toward the social and economic goals of the state, and made science education available broadly. By the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union was spending about 0.8 percent of its national income on scientific research, compared to 0.1 percent by the United Kingdom.

Scientific institutions and societies in the United Kingdom historically eschewed involvement in government and politics as the ideal of pure, disinterested science reigned. Rethinking of the role that science may have in mitigating the deep social crises of the interwar period and the impending Second World War (1939–1945) led to changes in the relationship between government and science with increased funding and coordination of research into military-relevant technologies.

The United States lagged behind the United Kingdom in developing a wartime alliance between science and the military, but by 1939 advances in understanding the potential destructive power of atomic power triggered the establishment of the governmental Advisory Committee on Uranium, which ultimately led to the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. The project ushered in the era of “Big Science” and involved the mobilization of an unprecedented number of scientists; coordinated activities around multidisciplinary projects for military purposes; and brought together industry, academia, and the government.

Governments in most, if not all, industrialized countries became actively involved in funding and coordinating scientific research following World War II, establishing or substantially increasing funding for science councils, national laboratories, and research institutes. Most of the investment at the time was in mission-specific areas that included military research, agricultural productivity, and atomic energy, with the goals and criteria set by the relevant government funding agencies. On the other hand, the scientific community set goals of basic research and assured quality through the peer review process.

Ascendance And Institutionalization Of U.S. Science Policy

The 1957 launch of the Soviet spy satellite, Sputnik, accelerated investment in science and engineering, particularly in the United States, with increases in research and development spending averaging 15 percent, achieving technological supremacy by the mid-1960s. The ascendance of science led to new bureaucracies, expanded legislative committee jurisdictions, and the growth of existing science-oriented organizations. The National Science Foundation was established in 1950 as the federal agency to support fundamental research in all scientific and engineering disciplines. President Kennedy established the Office of Science and Technology in 1961 in response to the space race. In 1976 it was renamed Office of Science and Technology Policy, and its mandate was broadened beyond space to advise the president on the effects of science and technology in domestic and international arenas.

In the legislature, the Senate Standing Committee of Aeronautical and Space Sciences was formed in 1958, then folded into the Commerce Committee in 1977. Similarly, the House of Representatives established the Committee on Science and Aeronautics in 1958, which has undergone a number of name changes and is presently the Committee on Science and Technology. Broadly speaking, these committees have full or partial oversight of agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and other science-dependent bureaucracies.

Interacting within these political arenas are powerful science organizations such as the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a number of university and industry lobbyists. The effects these groups have on science policy range from congressional earmarking of projects (funding or prioritizing science outside of the peer-review process) to advocating for more robust peer-review processing in government funding decisions.

International Drivers And Trends In Science Policy

International organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization played important roles in reporting on and shaping science policy in both developed and developing countries. Today there are science-based bureaucracies in all developed and most developing countries. In the early 1960s, both organizations set explicit guidelines and goals for member governments to establish scientific advisory bodies, as well as recommendations to support scientific and technological research. In its 1963 report, Science, Economic Growth, and Government Policy, the OECD made an explicit link between science and the economy, arguing that higher education and research were long-term investments to stimulate economic growth.

Sociopolitical changes in the late 1960s had profound effects on science policy. Environmental, feminist, antiwar, and student movements questioned decision making and called for more public participation. The result was a broadening of the scope of science policy to reflect emerging societal concerns including environmental issues, reproductive technology and birth control, and the conversion of military research and development to civilian applications. A second OECD report, Science, Growth, and Society: A New Perspective (1971), shed uncritical optimism of scientific development, emphasized social and environmental contexts of technological change, and argued for more active citizen engagement in science policy development and consequences.

The 1980s saw a shift toward investing in more commercially oriented innovation policies as a response to the economic ascendance of Japan and the East Asian newly industrializing countries—Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. In these countries, science policy was integrated into industrial policy. A 1981 OECD report emphasized stronger relationships between universities and industry and focused on industrial innovation. In the following decade, OECD countries increased funding for materials sciences, information technology, and biotechnology and shifted their science policy orientation to commercial innovation.

In the 1990s the OECD continued to focus on innovation policies, but its framework of analysis included “innovation as interaction” and highlighted that states needed to develop capacity not only to develop their own innovations, but also to develop the capacity to adopt technology developed in other countries.

International Cooperation In Big Science

While science and technology policies for economic growth and military applications maintain a nationalist perspective the 1990s and 2000s saw an unprecedented degree of international cooperation in Big Science projects that pertain to mapping the human genome and climate science. The estimated US$3 billion Human Genome Project actively engaged industry, research scientists, and the medical community around the globe. Major contributors to the project included the China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States. Completed in 2003, the project catalyzed the biotechnology industry with transfers of technology to the private sector. It also spurred a host of ethical, legal, and social concerns such as who owns and controls genetic information, are genetically modified foods safe for humans and the environment, and how and should fetal genetic testing be used? These complex social and ethical issues have led to politically charged debate that has integrated into science policy in many countries.

Climate change science is arguably the largest and most international project in the history of science. While countries fund climate science through specialized agencies, universities, and institutes, as well as private sector investment in understanding causes, risks, and developing mitigation and adaptation strategies, the Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change (IPCC) has emerged as the most authoritative source of information and policy decisions for climate science. The IPCC Panel is composed of government appointed representatives and neither conducts its own research nor monitors climate itself. Rather, the lead authors of IPCC reports assess available information from peer reviewed, published scientific literature. In 2007 the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Bibliography:

Brooks, Harvey. Science, Growth, and Society: A New Perspective. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1971.
Elzinga, Aant H., and Andrew Jamison. “Changing Policy Agendas in Science and Technology.” In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Shiela Jasanoff, 572–597.Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995.
Ezrahi, Yaron. The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Freeman, Christopher, Raymond Poignant, and Ingvar Svennilson. Science, Economic Growth, and Government Policy. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1963.
Jasanoff, Sheila. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Kojevnikov, Alexei. “The Phenomenon of Soviet Science.” Osiris 23, no. 1 (2008): 115–135.
McClellan, James E. and Harold Dorn. Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

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