President Biden came into office promising to restore the role of science in government after the Trump administration’s rocky relationship with scientific advice. (You might remember an incident involving a hurricane forecast and a Sharpie.) A key tool for the White House to implement its ambitious science-related agenda is the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP—a relatively small outfit that oversees policies about science, including budget requests for agencies that conduct science and the coordination of major scientific endeavors across the federal government. Since Biden took office, OSTP has taken on a variety of sorely needed priorities, including reinvigorating government processes for scientific integrity, future pandemic preparedness, and exploring what artificial intelligence means for human rights. But these good causes have been overshadowed by controversies over OSTP’s leadership.
Politico recently broke a story about billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s close ties to the Biden administration’s OSTP. A whistleblower pointed to potential ethics conflicts in the interactions of Schmidt’s philanthropy, Schmidt Futures, with OSTP—specifically the organization’s funding for travel, fellows, and the close work of an unpaid White House consultant who worked for Schmidt Futures. Schmidt Futures denied any wrongdoing, pointing out that OSTP has long relied on recruiting external experts to guide science policy making, an arrangement that allows the federal government to bring in technical expertise quickly. This follows the resignation of Biden’s science adviser and director of OSTP, Eric Lander, who also had close ties to Schmidt, after the same whistleblower accused Lander of creating a toxic work environment. That’s a lot of controversy befalling an office that normally stays out of the news cycle.
Now Biden must consider who should serve in the director role, a position that has always been filled by a scientist—usually a physicist. The idea seems simple: A scientist who has conducted big-ticket research knows how best to oversee science policy and advise the president on science issues. But as Lander’s situation showed, this resulted in OSTP taking on some of the problems that plague academia, like toxic work environments driven by hyper competition for funding and unyielding demands to publish, at the expense of high-level policy making and public service. The controversy surrounding Schmidt’s influence shows the difficulties a more tech-centered leader might encounter—namely that big tech is inseparable in the minds of the public and critics from big time lobbying. Maybe it’s time the White House put someone from a very different background in charge.
Since its creation in 1976, the job responsibilities for the head of OSTP have varied with each administration, as science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. noted in a recent analysis. The director of the office has traditionally filled two roles: one focused on “science for policy” and one on “policy for science.” The first is about informing the president on issues where science and technology are important to decision making. Science and tech are wound up in nearly every major policy concern today, and scientific expertise and advice are diffused throughout many agencies and advisory bodies. For example, George Keyworth II, science adviser to President Reagan, focused much of his time providing advice about a variety of defense technologies, such as nascent stealth technologies and missile defense systems.
The second role is about documenting and generating policy that informs the various agencies that conduct research, for example, by laying out budgetary priorities for research agencies. While not nearly as influential as the Office of Management and Budget, OSTP nonetheless plays an important (and unique) role as an advocate for science and technology programs in the federal budget process. In Biden’s first year in office, a memo from OSTP laid out pandemic preparedness, advancing manufacturing, cyber security, and climate technologies as key administration priorities that federal agencies should use to craft their budget requests. Back in 2008, one commentator noted the importance of the mundane bureaucratic roles of OSTP as much more materially important than the title of “Assistant to the President.”
Of course a renowned scientist or tech guru could run OSTP but they may overlook important qualities of today’s science and tech challenges, namely that many of these challenges are about more than just science and tech. Climate change, artificial intelligence, scientific integrity, and pandemic preparedness permeate our social world and thus are inseparable from the eccentricities, wonders, and wickedness that come with human institutions. Yet the tech sector and academia have a tendency to view science and technology as solutions. Beating China in the AI race—an oft cited rationale for further federal investment in AI R&D—sounds great but avoids questions about AI’s potential implications. Likewise, science advocates almost always see growth in the federal science budget as a positive development, despite the clear institutional challenges presented by rapid growth in research budgets, such as a dependence on graduate student labor resulting in ever more scientists competing for limited university professor positions. OSTP could benefit from leadership with a critical perspective of the role science and tech play in our social world and who might better navigate where science can help and where other policy mechanisms are better suited.
To his credit, Biden seems to recognize the need to think about science and tech more broadly. At the outset of his administration, he appointed Alondra Nelson, an accomplished scholar of the ways social phenomena like race and inequality interact with science, as deputy director for science and society at OSTP. Throughout her career, Nelson has pointed to the ways that science and tech leave some behind or directly causes cruelty and harm. Since Landers resigned, Nelson has been “performing the duties of director” of OSTP. In a new arrangement for the White House, Biden chose to separate the “science adviser” role from the director of OSTP role, with Nelson leading OSTP and Francis Collins, former director of NIH, serving as science advisor. Some science commentators have argued that Nelson should be appointed the director. I personally find arguments for appointing Nelson compelling, but if for some reason the administration doesn’t, there’s another trait they should look for in an appointee: some political experience.
As mentioned above, a key role of OSTP is guiding science-related budget requests. The federal budget process requires political jockeying to get priorities into presidential budget requests and congressional appropriations. In shepherding the creation of new research entities, OSTP must navigate competing interests from within and outside of the federal government about where such entities should live or who they report to, as has happened around the new Advanced Research Projects Agency Health. Controversies, and the avoidance of them, involve political intuition about what fights are (and aren’t) worth fighting to advance the administration’s priorities. A good deal of political knowhow would go a long way dealing with these challenges.
Finally, the director of OSTP should an appreciation for what people actually like about science and government. As a colleague recently remarked to me, trading the influence of the fossil fuel industry in the Trump administration for the influence of the tech industry flies in the face of efforts to bring promote scientific or government integrity.
Today’s science and tech issues are at least as much about good governance, responsibility, and the public good as they are about beating China in a race to develop the best AI. We should look beyond the science and technology for leadership on 21st century science policy challenges.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
