VU reacts: Haglund responds to Neal Lane letter

Editor's note: The following letter was written in response to a reprint of a letter written by National Science Foundation Director Neal Lane appearing in the Aug. 11-24 issue of the Vanderbilt Register.

Having heard Dr. Lane when he was here, I applaud what he and many others in the scientific and science-policy communities are doing to help raise public awareness of the practical, economic importance of science as well as its intrinsic value as a cultural object.

There is a potentially critical constituency for the support of science that we are not addressing at present, at least not in a targeted way: the American Association of Retired Persons. It is well known that the AARP has been a large, relatively cohesive voting block. Although the association is becoming more heterogeneous, it still has a common set of concerns relating to the long-term economic and medical health of its membership. I wonder whether we could not find a way to make the case to them that the economic growth which will sustain adequate medical and pension benefits into the next century cannot develop without investments in research and development.

According to many economists, the continuing growth in the service sector is unlikely to provide high economic growth. Even if the grandchildren of AARP members are gainfully employed as bank tellers, food-service workers or health-care providers, it will not be possible given the unremitting pressure on those wage levels to provide for growth in retirement income or health-care benefits. Moreover, because advances in medical science and technology frequently come from other parts of science or engineering, limiting our research investment to obvious recipients such as the NIH will not provide that sustained growth in technological capability which would meet their most urgent medical needs. Only investments that have long-term potential for major economic impact will sustain the growth that retired Americans will need.

There is increasing evidence that investing in basic research is like investing in IBM in the 1930s. The cost is modest, and the returns are immense, provided that one invests for the long haul and invests broadly to spread out the risk of failure. Compared to the costs of development and commercialization, basic research is cheap, but the risk is high. As every investor knows, however, where risk is high, so is potential payoff. Current studies by the National Research Council and others suggest that the average annual rate of return on basic research is somewhere between 20 and 30 percent.

I tried this argument out on a fellow traveler to Milan this summer, a woman who has a substantial record of service at the national level in the AARP. She seemed surprised, but receptive. She - and I am certain many others like her - tend to think of research and development as expenditures at the margin, or worse, expensive boondoggles which need to be trimmed from the federal budget. The essentially messy character of university-based fundamental research is often not clear to people like her, despite their long affiliations with their own colleges or universities. Now that economic studies are beginning to provide a foundation for asserting that scientific research produces immense long-range benefits, the AARP may be an audience that we need to reach and convince to support increased investment in R&D by both the private and government sectors.

After all, seniors (a group to which we will all belong sooner or later) do want their grandchildren to grow up with interesting and important opportunities to contribute to the general advancement of society. Basic research investments are what make that kind of long-range opportunity possible.

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