Science Process Redesign

 

Kevin has conceived a proposal that is worthy of our joint best thinking and reflection.  My hope is that by the time the FS folks come back to work, we might have a series of guest posts engaging with his ideas.  So please consider writing a guest post yourself or submitting a comment below. In the text below, Kevin mentions the EPIC report (2024) on Innovation in the Forest Service which I think we missed when it came out; so I’ll post that separately and we can discuss later this week.

Summary:

This summer was the 9 th American Forest Congress where diverse interests gathered to shape the future of forest policy. Among the many topics discussed was the intersection of
information, technology, and innovation. This led to resolutions that address, in part, the need for greater collaboration among public and private entities from within the information and
technology ecosystem. I believe there is a path to use collaborative inquiry to help rebuild trust and foster innovation while recognizing the competing incentive structures at play among
different information producers and consumers. Drawing on my experiences and the groundwork laid during the Forest Congress, I’d like to introduce an idea for an open forest science foundation to the readers of TSW. I want to hear whether the problems I and others have identified with the current information environment are jointly felt by the readership, if the
proposed idea and governance model of the foundation has merit, and what experiences readers can draw from that can help shape the foundation’s creation and increase its likelihood for success.

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For a variety of reasons, I found myself in an introspective mood over this past New Year, thinking about my generation’s legacy. It was around this time we saw the Forest Service end its effort to develop national policy concerning the management of older forests (i.e., the “NOGA”), followed by USDA announcing its intent to rescind the Roadless Rule, and the President signing an Executive Order focused on increasing timber production. Different administrations coming to drastically different conclusions about what’s needed to sustain the national forest system is par for the course and unsurprising in today’s political climate. But in the wake of the policy whiplash, I couldn’t help but reflect that our community may be more broken than I thought. From old growth conservation to a blanket rescission of the Roadless Rule, these are policy proposals focused on the margins of resource management and don’t address the most relevant issues of today. I believe we can, and must, recommit ourselves to working together so future generations can have similar or even stronger relationships to the national forests as we’ve had. I’ve asked Sharon to contribute this guest post because the spirit of this blog is in seeking truth, and the depth of experience shared by readers of TSW is a tremendous resource for feedback. I’d like to propose a way to use collaborative inquiry to help solve a series of interconnected issues I think we face. I hope readers will share their perspectives and constructive feedback.

The power of community and truth-seeking have been used to overcome crux moments throughout the history of the Forest Service. The Yale Forest Forum describes American Forest Congresses as “a unique and powerful way to bring together forestry leaders and other stakeholders to resolve big issues and create direction for the future of U.S. forest policy”. Indeed, the 2nd Forest Congress led to the creation of the Forest Service. The 7th American Forest Congress was held in 1996 during a moment of division, mistrust, and fear not unlike what we’re experiencing today. A dear friend and colleague of mine who sat on the board of the Congress likes to remind me that back then I was still “running around in diapers” (inaccurate, but it makes me smile). Listing of the northern spotted owl and subsequent implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan was scarring and timber communities were left reeling. But it was during that Congress that the “Communities Committee” was formed and a vision for collaborative, community-based involvement in national forest policy became expressed. For the uninitiated, the Communities Committee was a self-organized, diverse group that focused on the intersection of natural resources and community revitalization. The legacy of the Communities Committee is reflected in major policy advances like the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, and the 2012 Planning Rule, in so much as collaboration was a central tenet. My generation has been fortunate to have listened and learned from those who advanced the community forestry movement. For me, its legacy is felt most when people speak so proudly about their involvement with the Communities Committee and the empowerment they felt to make meaningful contributions to national forest policy. Sounds dreamy.

Fast forward to today, with the Communities Committee well past sunset, and a deep sense of mistrust is pervasive in our community, certainly when it comes to policymaking at the
national level. Agency folk would sometimes look at me sideways when I’d discuss opportunities for active management to restore old growth conditions during NOGA conversations. It could have been for lots of different reasons, but it felt like the baggage of working for an ENGO was hard to shake. While the national scene may be messy, there are examples of progress still being made locally. Place-based collaboratives exist in many, but not all, regions of the country. And while some may be thriving, others have struggled to meet expectations. Nonetheless, we should celebrate their mere existence. True collaboration, not just compromise, is a generative process. I’m no expert in formal forest collaboration a la CFLRP like many who engage with TSW, but I have been collaborating with fellow scientists for much of the past 15 years. It is powerful, and incredibly rewarding, to transcend boundaries with those who view the world differently as you move through a co-production process. I think we all can relate to that in some way. Those who have studied and practiced collaboration point to the benefits of collaborative inquiry to foster trust-building.  Collaborative truth-seeking may help us rebuild trust with one another by working towards solutions to problems that affect all of us who care about the national forests. But without an institution like the Communities Committee, many of us who feel like we have something to offer, myself included, feel a little helpless.

The Forest Service has a long history of partnering with outside entities to advance the state of science and deliver data products that support planning (e.g., LANDFIRE). But the agency
appears to be at a crossroads. The institutional arrangements between R&D, academia, NGO, and the philanthropic community that we’ve relied upon to meet our information needs
are struggling to satisfy demand. There are more pressures on the resource and heightened expectations from the public surrounding land management outcomes that strain the agency
(e.g., greater provision of wood fiber, reducing fire risk, adapting to a changing climate). Meanwhile, information holes and outdated/unused decision support tools are abundant. I believe it is largely because of misaligned incentive structures between the major institutional information providers that has given rise to the current situation. Academics are rewarded through peer-reviewed publications and receiving external funds while juggling tremendous responsibility for educating our future workforce. Forest Service R&D scientists don’t have the budget to develop their research programs without competing for external resources like academics, so many spend a bulk of their time writing proposals and publishing papers to be competitive with their academic colleagues. Those at NGOs try to fill information voids and use inquiry to advance conversations not being had, but they understandably stick to issues relevant to their organization’s campaigns and those supported by their donors. And the philanthropic community generously attempts to make progress through their resource allocation, often through NGOs, but their decisions are also mission-driven and funding isn’t necessarily intended to be long-term. It’s come time to question whether or not these institutional arrangements are sufficient for today’s needs.

The agency hasn’t always made it easy on external groups to support them. At the national level, the institutional arrangements I previously described are largely bilateral between the
agency and individual entities, like a hub-and-spoke pattern where the agency is the hub. Without any alternatives, we’ve created a system where the agency can largely dictate the
direction, scope, and speed of innovation absent broader community involvement. The classic “we got this” attitude. This may be because, historically, the agency was the leader in
technological innovation, making major investments into tech infrastructure like the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the Forest Products Lab. My colleagues at the Environmental Policy
Innovation Center (EPIC) wrote an excellent report on the challenges and opportunities for technological innovation at the Forest Service that I encourage you all to read here. The big
take home for me, and based on my lived experience, is that it is difficult to bring innovation and creativity into a system where the dominant agency culture is one of ultimate discretion
and a reluctance for change. The report goes on to highlight inadequate staffing of technical talent and high levels of turnover and rotation within the agency as significant limiting factors
to innovation.

As noted in the report from EPIC, the agency is wrestling with whether to continue being an information producer, transition to an information consumer, or the degree to which it can be
both. Meanwhile, the private sector has caught wind of the technology vacuum and there’s a nascent “gold rush” happening. Companies are selling information, decision support tools,
and the promise of AI back to the agency, and have organized themselves to influence policies favorable to their technology (as an example, see Sec. 303 in the Fix Our Forest Act around prioritized technology). People both inside and outside the agency are healthy skeptics of the Forest Service using proprietary data and models, especially as the general scientific community has increasingly embraced open source science. This all raises questions about how best to manage agency discretion with a burgeoning private technology sector, and the consequences for public trust.

Here on TSW, there’s been recent postings about a Peoples’ Database as recent as June of this year and dating back to 2012-2013. This idea of organizing ourselves to identify and
resolve information gaps relevant to management of the national forests resonates with me. But I think this idea goes far beyond a database. I think there's a better way that we, as
curious information providers, can support agency planning and decision making at multiple scales, from folks in the field to decisions made in D.C.

I’d like to propose the creation of a non-profit, open forest science foundation inspired by governance structures found in trade associations (e.g., Linux Foundation) and the mission of boundary-spanning organizations that facilitate collaborative adaptive management (e.g., Southwestern Ecological Restoration Institutes). The goal is to create an institution that can
support applied forest science research, model development, and technology delivery via a collaborative process to stimulate innovation and trust-building with national significance. The
foundation would largely be supported with dues contributed by members representing different stakeholder groups with interest in solving the myriad challenges facing forest resource management (e.g., forest industry, environmental non-governmental organizations, for-profit technology companies, industrial private landowners, universities.). This would spread the financial responsibility among the broader community of information producers and consumers, hedging against overreliance on a single funding stream while creating a shared fiduciary accountability among the diverse members. The foundation’s non-profit status well-positions it to receive philanthropic contributions and serve as a partner in traditional, competitive research grants administered by the federal government, thereby complementing member dues to expand its capacity. Like other national non-profit organizations that directly serve federal land management agencies (e.g., National Forest Foundation), key personnel in government can receive ex officio status to help ensure coordination and communication between the foundation and decision-makers.
The primary functions of the foundation would include:

● Codifying a set of community standards and specifications so all research supported by the foundation is transparent, reproducible, and accessible;
● Collectively identify gaps in scientific information, models, and technology affecting members to set a comprehensive forest science research agenda;
● Allocating resources to internal staff and external entities tasked with delivering on elements of the agenda; and
● Maintaining and moderating information repositories to ensure accountability to the standards.

Individual members, either directly or through a board representative, would receive voting power that ensures their perspectives on technology and information needs are reflected in
the foundation’s research agenda. The hope is whether its spatial vegetation data products, a new forest dynamics model, or technology to support digital prescriptions, what is produced
by the foundation is of the same quality as proprietary products but has far greater social license because of the collaborative, transparent nature by which it was developed. If then
used to evaluate policy proposals or planning decisions, for example, we might find ourselves having more focused discourse about the merits rather than being distracted by various
scientific or technological deficiencies of the supporting analysis. Ultimately, the scope of work carried out by the foundation would be driven by the collective needs of its members. And
through that process of resolving shared information and technology needs, we might start to see ourselves in one another again.

Administration of the foundation would be performed by honest brokers who believe in the inherent value of open science and the need for pragmatic solutions facing the forest sector,
and governed by a board of directors that represent the various membership classes. It would be staffed by technical and subject matter experts who are responsible for managing projects
to ensure scientific quality and posterity beyond the provisions of our peer-review publication system. A crucial aspect of this model, consistent with the open source computing model, is
that value added products and/or services may be derived from work supported by the foundation. An example is how Google is a member of the Linux Foundation which maintains
Linux, a free, open source computer operating system that Google uses to run its products (i.e., Android smart phone) and services (i.e.,. Google Cloud). This governance structure
provides incentive to the for-profit community to participate and contribute to the mission of the foundation, which, in turn, will accelerate scientific progress and discovery. Creating a
membership-based open source forest science foundation offers an alternative to the existing institutional arrangements, draws from our community’s familiarity with place-based
collaboration, ensures investments in science and technology can endure political uncertainty, and gives agency to the broader forest community to steer the direction of technological
innovation.

This past summer was the 9th American Forest Congress, and I showed up in good faith with this idea of a national scale, open forest science foundation in tow. I was pleased to find
others who shared this vision, and learned about existing research cooperatives at Oregon State University and in the Northeast. I was even more heartened that the core concept was
made into aspects of two of the passed resolutions. Some worthy of highlighting include:

•  Develop and fund open-source, open-access, and other collaborative data and modeling environments to meet diverse and large-scale demands while respecting privacy, proprietary data, and Tribal treaty reserved rights and data sovereignty;
•  Support multi-sector needs such as planning, monitoring, adaptive management, technical assistance, forest health and risk assessment, supply chain sustainability, and forest management and conservation;
• Make these tools readily accessible to local communities to support community-driven and locally-led solutions;
• Develop a collaborative, inclusive community that is reflective of the providers and users of forest information, and that incentivizes the creation and use of an open and resilient forest information system; and
• Build a more focused and effective public-private forestry research partnership to foster innovation in forest stewardship, conservation, and new forest product development. This partnership should address the environmental, economic, and social problems we face as a nation.

With the hope that something as meaningful as the work carried out by the Communities Committee can come from the 9 th Forest Congress, I’d like to introduce this idea of an open
forest science foundation to the readers of TSW. I want to have a discussion as to whether the problems I’ve identified are jointly felt by the readership, if the proposed idea and
governance model of the foundation has merit, and what experiences readers can draw from that can help shape the foundation’s creation and increase the likelihood that it can succeed. I
think my generation – including the logger, conservation scientist, wildland firefighter, and software engineer – has more interest in solving problems together and healing the divide
than one might think.

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Kevin attended The University of Montana and received a BA in economics and MS in forest management. He then worked as a research assistant at both UM and Montana State University, researching the economics of fuel treatments and wildland fire use, wilderness fire management, the effects of climate change on future whitebark and limber pine distributions, and the global relationships between human pressure and forest structure. He worked for The Wilderness Society as a landscape ecologist where he supported the organization’s work on conservation planning and national forest policy. He most recently worked at the technology and consulting firm, Silvx Labs. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, he now calls Duluth, Minnesota, home.

 

 

 

1)  If you haven’t seen, please go back to my post yesterday on Managed Fire.  Perhaps because of the Supreme Court case, it doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention.  And we haven’t heard from other parts of the country whether the Arizona approach is similar to how other areas go about doing MF.

But on to science..
It seems to me that this is an opportunity to get folks together to get a handle on better managing the USG R&D portfolio. I’m talking about serious change and so it would have to be some kind of bipartisan institution maybe begun in this admin, but dedicated to making better use of the R&D budget, making decisions and prioritization more transparent, and ensuring that research intended to be applied.. can actually be applied. Maybe that’s too big an ask, but I would at least like to see us start on that path. In this effort, little science (us) would have a voice along with Big Science (say, the usual OSTP suspects).

2) People are very concerned about One Wildfire Agency in terms of losing local capacity.  But I’m the only one concerned about centralizing fire research in the Intelligence Center (or will it be centralized?)  I’m concerned on the basis of losing FS research- the kind of useful work you find in the screenshot above –  as more aggressive and larger research agencies may be empowered to set research agendas.  More satellites and high tech (nothing wrong with high tech), less emphasis on communities and human firefighters.  The idea that you can understand something without understanding any of the moving parts or mechanisms. Maybe it’s my time in DC, trying to hoover up any scraps from the Big Science funding table, and I think that very careful structuring of how R&D is designed, prioritized and funded is important.

3) The previous Admin had an open-access effort, I think that’s a really important to keep up or expand.  Fortunately, the linked article on paywalls is not paywalled.

In Washington, D.C., these shifts prompted both Republicans and Democrats to urge the federal government to revise its access policies. In 2013, then-President Barack Obama attempted to strike a compromise—via the 1-year embargo rule—between publishers and open-access advocates.

But many—including Biden, then Obama’s vice president—were not happy with that deal. In a 2016 speech, for example, Biden noted, “The taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research, but once it’s published, nearly all of that sits behind [pay]walls. Tell me how this is moving the [scientific] process along more rapidly.”

4)  In addition to some kind of cross-checking that different agencies (or within agencies) aren’t doing duplicative research, I’d like to see a clearer check on research panels for “research that is supposed to be helpful to policy makers or managers or resource professionals.” That would involve a check on whether something is already known, and whether more knowledge is actually helpful to anyone.  Perhaps reviewers are too polite to say “I think we already know this” or “no one cares about that plant and its future under modeled climate change.”  Often I found in the FS  that folks in NFS would relationally not want to question what R&D folks were doing- “why annoy them?” and “it’s their funding.” This can also be true for university researchers (as I was advised “don’t question them, they’ll write even worse things about us”). So my view is that to get an unbiased look you would need to select people out of the relational line of fire.

5)  I think perhaps only in JFSP is there a direct link from managers and resource professionals questions and what gets prioritized, designed and funded.  For example, I think we could know how different parts of the country do managed fire, how they do it, what communities think and so on.  We have excellent literature on PF, MT and community views.  Perhaps a group could have an annual review of what is being studied (broader than, but inclusive of, USG funding) and what gaps there are, and move from their to actually funding work determined to be useful.

6) I don’t mean to pick on these people, certainly they are the right people, FS, USGS and Forest folks. From the abstract, and the FS has an open version on their website here.

However, lack of natural ponderosa pine regeneration in undisturbed forests (i.e., no occurrence of stand-replacing events) may require management treatments to promote regeneration.

In addition to effects on near-surface temperature and soil moisture, management conducive to natural regeneration was associated with the density of competing tree species, understory litter and debris cover, and adult tree cone production.

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Our results show that existing forest management treatments have the potential to promote natural ponderosa pine regeneration in the SWUS, but will require assessment and modification through time to remain effective.

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I think there are questions around “is climate change impacting the things we already know about forests?” and maybe this was it.  Another way to prioritize would be.. “hey these things we’ve noticed are different and they seem problematic, what can we do about them?” Of course, the scientists were supported by the Climate Adaptation Science Center; but isn’t every management or non-management practice now considered “climate adaptation”? When I was working, it seemed like there was a burgeoning business in creating new centers with new administrative structures that seemed duplicative, at least to us users. When we asked questions about that, I remember USGS folks saying “it’s too late Congress already funded them, you get to help us decide where to put them.”  USGS has Adaptation Science Centers, USDA has Climate Hubs. Is anyone checking for duplication or gaps?

Here’s a study on Forest Ops in the Northern Forest Climate Hub.

7) I thought that this was an interesting idea- Let Unfunded Grant Applications See the Light of Day

Something very similar happened with the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2023, the Academies called out NSF for not meeting its legal obligation to share data: “Granting access to data on all applicants for program assessment purposes, as is called for in the legislation mandating this review, and establishing processes that would allow for structured evaluation of policies and procedures would help NSF understand the effectiveness of its initiatives and how its programs could be improved.”

Despite expectations from policymakers and statutes that data from science agencies be available for analysis, both of us—longtime open science advocates who have worked in various government and industry positions and who are writing only in our personal capacities and not on behalf of anyone else—have heard top researchers complain that they can’t get access to information on unfunded proposals, or, on the rare occasions when they do, access is conditional on allowing the agency to veto any publications using the data.

Without knowing what proposals go unfunded, there is no way to know whether agencies are supporting a wide range of ideas or favoring a narrow theory. Are “high-risk, high reward” proposals getting a chance? Have hard-won changes in grant policies actually helped early-career researchers? Do the questions researchers ask change in response to demands from Congress or calls from citizen groups? These questions seem both valuable and straightforward. Yet metaresearchers (those who research how research is done) are unable to address such topics with any certainty. The public cannot know, for example, how many NIH grant applications come from historically Black colleges or universities, or how many researchers propose to study gain-of-function in viral genomes, without knowing what is included in all R&D grant applications, funded and not.

..

Researchers could make more efficient progress by using past grant proposals to refine their approach and so avoid wasting months or even years on unrealistic proposals, particularly if reviewers’ comments and scores are also shared. They could learn whether they are pursuing projects already deemed unpromising by funding agencies, which could prompt them to try other areas, or to have a pre-application conversation with a program officer to gain a better understanding of an agency’s interest. Researchers with similar interests would be able to discover each other’s work and potentially join forces, leading to stronger proposals, more impactful research, and collaborations formed much earlier than those enabled by publications and conference presentations.

Though agencies can look across their own applications for insights, access to a complete picture of the research landscape across the federal government would allow funding agencies to make more informed decisions about funding priorities. As articulated in the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act signed into law by President Trump in 2019, when agencies can share and access information across the government, they are able to more efficiently identify research trends, understand the derivative impacts of their own work, and craft decisions and policies informed by evidence. They can also build more effective, cross-agency initiatives, such as NSF’s Smart Health funding opportunity, designed to support cross-agency efforts to incorporate information science in health care

8) Indirect costs caps. There has been much concern about NIH reducing its caps. A reasonable person could wonder “why shouldn’t all USG research have the same caps?” I’ve never really heard this kind of thing discussed. Certainly it would seem to be easier for grant administrators and PIs to deal with. I ran across this guide to indirect costs from my old agency, NIFA (that is one agency in one department- USDA!).

There’s a fascinating article in Science that delves into a scientific controversy around fish behavior and ocean acidification.  Martin Enserink is a journalist with Science who  wrote the article and sent me a link, so hopefully you can access it. It raises some questions about the science biz, how it works, and how it might work better.

The fight, between two groups united by their passion for fish, isn’t just about data and the future of the oceans. It highlights issues in the sociology, psychology, and politics of science, including pressure on researchers to publish in top-tier journals, the journals’ thirst for eye-catching and alarming findings, and the risks involved in whistleblowing.

Should extraordinary claims get closer scrutiny?

The paper has proved so polarizing in the field, “It’s like Republicans and Democrats,” says co-author Dominique Roche of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Some scientists hailed it as a stellar example of research replication that cast doubt on extraordinary claims that should have received closer scrutiny from the start.

and

Not long after that paper was published, Science received a “technical comment” from JCU reef ecologist Andrew Baird, who noted several problems, including the fact that the water flow quoted for Dixson’s flume was much faster than any coral larvae have been reported to swim, meaning larvae would be washed out of the back of the flume. Science’s review process deemed the comment “as low priority for publication,” says Deputy Editor for Research Sacha Vignieri. (Science’s news and editorial departments operate independently of each other.) Baird published it as a preprint instead, but it drew little attention.

Maybe there should be a screen for “extraordinary claims” and/or “high degree political and policy implications,” that would invoke an open peer review process? Would this story have been different if that had been the case? I think much of the interpersonal drama might have been avoided, and of course, better research accomplished.

When Scholarly Discussion is Not Enough: Give Up or Blow Whistle or ???

The group learned some painful lessons. After a preliminary inquiry, a UU panel dismissed the request for an investigation in a terse report and berated the team for failing to discuss its concerns with Lönnstedt and Eklöv in a “normal scholarly discussion.” Lönnstedt said the group was simply jealous. The accusers spent many months gathering additional documentation, at the expense of their own research. In April 2017, Sweden’s Central Ethical Review Board concluded there had indeed been “scientific dishonesty” in the research, and Science retracted the paper; 8 months later, a full UU investigation concluded the data had been fabricated. (Eklöv blamed Lönnstedt; Lönnstedt maintained her innocence.)

The brazenness of the apparent deception shocked Jutfelt. “It really triggered my skepticism about science massively,” he says. “Before that paper, I could not understand how anyone could fabricate data. It was inconceivable to me.” Now, he began to wonder how many other papers might be a total fantasy. The experience also taught the group that, if they were ever to blow the whistle again, they would have to bring a stronger case right from the start, Clark says.

On the other side of the globe, the group’s accusations had Munday’s attention. “It seems that Clark and Jutfelt are trying to make a career out of criticizing other people’s work. I can only assume they don’t have enough good ideas of their own to fill in their time,” he wrote to Lönnstedt in a June 2016 email that she used in her defense to the ethics board. “Recently, I found out they have been ‘secretly’ doing work on the behavioural effects of high CO2 on coral reef fishes, presumably because they want to be critical of some aspects of our work.”

Others defended Munday and Dixson more diplomatically. Four “grandfathers in the field,” as Bruno calls them, criticized the replication in a paper in Biogeosciences. One author, Hans-Otto Pörtner of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, says his own work had been on the receiving end of criticism from the “youngish group” in the past. “Building a career on judging what other people did is not right,” says Pörtner, who co-chairs one of IPCC’s three working groups. “If such a controversy gets outside of the community, it’s harmful because the whole community loses credibility.”

So.. according to Pörtner, criticism should stay within the community because otherwise the community would lose credibility. So people shouldn’t criticize each others’ work in public? Only via blind peer review, or publishing papers that disagree (given that the journal would publish them, because “not finding something” isn’t all that exciting). Leaving the rest of us to ponder “why did they come to different conclusions?”. I would actually trust the community more if their disagreements were in the open. I wonder whether that might be a role for the relevant scientific society.

Everyone has heard of basic and applied sciences. Generally, basic is thought to be better by scientists, and applied, more useful by others. But why is this, and how does it affect how we affect the practice of science today? First, let’s return to Peter Medawar.

The hard and fast distinction between pure and applied science is a quaint relic of the days when it was widely and authoritatively believed that axioms and generative ideas of some privileged sciences (the ‘Pure’ Sciences strictly so called) were known with certainty by intuition or revelation, while the Applied Sciences grew out of merely empirical observations concerning ‘matters of fact or existence’. The distinction between pure and applied science persisted in Victorian and Edwardian times as the basis of a class distinction between activities that did or did not become a gentleman (‘Pure Science’ being a genteel occupation and ‘Applied Science’ having disreputable associations with manual work or with trade). This class distinction is now widely believed to have been rather damaging to this country.

Medawar also argued strongly in the 70’s that basic and applied funding decisions needed to be made by scientists, and not users of science. Here’s a link to a history paper on this. It did not go without notice by others that the position of scientist must make all funding decisions about science is a bit self-serving for something funded by tax dollars. But what does this have to do with us today?

A few months ago, I attended a Forest Service Partners shindig and ran into a person in Forest Service R&D. I asked him how things were going, and he said Congress was on his back about not funding useful research. Of course, this has nothing to do with FS R&D as currently constituted, but has been an ongoing tension for as long as there has been serious levels of public funding for scientific research, and not just in the US. (This is my version of history and others are invited to add their own perspectives and experiences).

The Fund for Rural America was an attempt by Congress to convince researchers to do useful things for rural Americans. You can check out the provisions of the 1996 Farm Bill here (note that the same conversation was close to 25 years ago):

(C) USE OF GRANT.—
(i) IN GENERAL.—A grant made under this paragraph may be used by a grantee for 1 or more of
the following uses:
(I) Outcome-oriented research at the discovery end of the spectrum to provide breakthrough results.
(II) Exploratory and advanced development and technology with well-identified outcomes.
(III) A national, regional, or multi-State program oriented primarily toward extension programs and education programs demonstrating and supporting the competitiveness of United States
agriculture.

Notice the “outcome-oriented.”

Yet, let’s look at the other forces pushing toward basic research. Here’s a 2014 report from the National Academy of Sciences.

USDA has played a key role in supporting extramural research for agriculture since the passage of the Hatch Act in 1887, but its use of competitive funding as a mechanism to support extramural research began more recently (see Figure 3-1). A peer-review competitive grants program was proposed as a means of moving a publicly funded agricultural research portfolio toward the more basic end of the R&D spectrum.2 A 1989 National Research Council report stated that “there is ample justification for increased allocations for the [competitive] grants program to a level that would approximate 20 percent of the USDA’s research budget, at least one half of which would be for basic research related to agriculture” (NRC, 1989, pp. 49–50).

The National Research Council study (part of the National Academies, what I call the Temple of Science) pushed toward more basic research. Why 50% of the total? I’m sure they have a rationale, but not sure that the Congress would agree. So again, we see the Science Establishment going for more basic (and potentially less utility and accountability) and Congress later pushing back asking public funds to have more accountability (outcome-oriented).

I also had a ring-side seat for part of a transition. At one time USDA had (more) formula funds that were given to land grant schools to figure out useful things. Often for forest science, the Dean would get together users and others to help prioritize research via discussions at the state level, at the best. Or perhaps give it to his buddies or use it as trade for something, at the worst. But then USDA-CSREES now NIFA hired a bunch of folks from the National Science Foundation, who came with the idea that only scientists can judge whether research is worth doing, and the best way is to bring them together for panels in DC. The FRA staff, including me, even got in trouble with the Powers that Were for allowing a user on a panel.

Meanwhile, back at the Forest Service, Forest Service scientists were less funded, and told to look for funding elsewhere than the Forest Service, which necessarily led them to focus on what other scientists who run grant programs think is cool.

If we go back to the history paper above, we can see that politicians can see the self-interest of scientists in this, but it has nevertheless been difficult for politicians (even appropriators!) and the public to get a grip on it. Of course, agriculture, health, nutrition, engineering, and different technologies have different communities, funding sources and approaches, so the applied sciences, like science in general, are not one thing.

If something is useful, then framing the question (as we’ve seen, extremely important in figuring out which disciplines and approaches are helpful) should definitely be done including users (in our case, practitioners, land managers and so on). I’m not saying that researchers don’t do this through their own personal commitment- I’m saying that the systems in place do not necessarily support it and could be changed to support it.

Another tendency is for departments to centralize scientists (e.g. USGS), which can also drive them farther away from research that helps their agency colleagues. IMHO the Forest Service was wise, politically astute, and/or lucky to retain their own research scientists, even if it leads sometimes to intramural drama. A small price to pay for a modicum of independence from the Science Establishment.