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Reevaluating the Structure of Institutions and the Scientific Enterprise

Major structural changes are underway in the scientific enterprise, observed Richard Meserve, president emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Senior of Counsel of Covington & Burling LLP, who moderated the first session of “Endless Frontier: The Next 75 Years in Science,” a symposium held at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on September 22, 2022. Specific aspects of these changes were discussed in the subsequent three sessions of the symposium, which examined the translational gaps between discovery and innovation (Chapter 2), the technical and professional workforce (Chapter 3), and the optimization of the science and technology enterprise to benefit society (Chapter 4). But the first session looked more broadly at four prominent developments in science and technology that are forcing institutions to adapt: the need for diversity and flexibility to cope with increasing international competition, the benefits to be gained by taking a systems perspective on the science and technology enterprise, the growing role of philanthropy in science, and changes in the nature of science that are affecting scientific research.

In his introductory remarks, Meserve cited as examples of developments that are affecting science and technology three similar and partly overlapping trends. First, remarkable bipartisan enthusiasm surrounds increased federal support of research focused specifically on pressing societal problems. Passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 (where CHIPS stands for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors; P.L. 117-167) authorized substantial expansions in use-inspired and translational research and technology development at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy, and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Among many other initiatives, the act directs NSF to identify and annually review and update as appropriate a list of national and geostrategic challenges and key technology focus areas to guide more than $80 billion of new federal funding in these areas. “If funds on this scale are appropriated, it clearly will significantly expand the NSF focus well beyond the pursuit of fundamental science for its own sake,” said Meserve. “The bill’s passage reflects a newfound commitment to focus more federal support of science on meeting economic and national security needs.”

Second, the scientific enterprise has become much more aware of the need for greater diversity not only in the populations engaged in science but in the geographic distribution of research funding—an aim also reflected in provisions of the CHIPS and Science Act. Achieving this diversity will require increased support of institutions that have been largely overlooked in the past and that serve diverse and geographically distributed populations of students, Meserve said.

Third, as discussed later in this chapter, philanthropic support for science is undergoing a dramatic resurgence, including substantial philanthropic gifts for the pursuit of science directed toward particular fields or problems.

In some ways, said Meserve, this represents a “return to an earlier age” in which philanthropic gifts were a major driver of scientific progress.

THE FORCES SPURRING INSTITUTIONAL ADAPTATION

“I’m a beneficiary of [Vannevar Bush’s] vision, a child of the Sputnik era, when even a girl could dream of being a scientist, at least if she was white and from a middle-class, educated family,” said Frances Arnold, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. The federal government’s postwar support for science made it possible for U.S. scientists and engineers to explore the edge of knowledge, experience the joy of discovery, solve long-standing puzzles, and win a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes. (Arnold herself won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for her work on the directed evolution of enzymes.)

Science continues to be an endless frontier, Arnold observed, but U.S. researchers are not the only pioneers on that frontier. Other countries see the value of investing in science and technology and are developing and competing for the talent that pushes the frontier forward. Semiconductor technology and manufacturing is one area where the United States has faced and will face substantial competition, but many other potential industries of the future require long-term investments, including clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and synthetic biology. Choices need to be made about which technologies to support—battery storage or biologically produced chemicals and fuels, for example—but “choosing winners is hard, especially when we don’t know how and whether particular technologies will be used properly, or how they’ll fit into the bigger picture connected to economics, ethics, societal impact, and global concerns.”

The intensification of international competition combined with the continued need for international cooperation is one of the developments forcing U.S. science and technology to adapt. Another is the need for greater diversity in not only the people but also the institutions engaged in science and technology. The lack of people prepared for jobs in advanced technologies is clearly a bottleneck for U.S. growth, Arnold observed. In addition, planting the seeds for the technologies of the future will require a diverse scientific enterprise made up of institutions that serve different constituencies and different purposes, Arnold said. “The power and vitality of U.S. science comes from this diversity—public and private, large and small institutions that are not carbon copies of one another and should not attempt to be.” Because future technologies will come from science that is difficult to anticipate, the science and technology enterprise must be careful not to squelch innovation with sclerotic structures and short-term requirements. “We must not inundate principal investigators with administrative burdens or make them do everything, putting science last.” Researchers must not be punished for taking risks, for sharing their work freely, for collaborating with colleagues from across the globe, and for welcoming the smartest young people from around the world. In particular, the United States is a small country in terms of population. “Most of the world’s best brains are not born here, and among them are the brains that will create the future. And I feel there are enormous costs to closing doors,” Arnold said. “Turning inward will doom us to being a second-rate power in science.”

Finally, Arnold called attention to the need for a longer-term vision to maintain the nation’s strength for another 75 years. Despite a greatly increased ability to understand and control the natural world, the timescale of human planning has become progressively shorter. “In fact, it starts to look a lot like the short-term planning of companies chained to quarterly shareholder reports, with all the well-known downsides of that tunnel vision. In our rush to deal with short-term exigencies, there’s a growing institutional failure to plan for the long term.” This need for a longer-term vision extends as well to creating a strong K–12 system “that can nurture young people and introduce them to the joys of science.”

As someone who studies evolution, Arnold pointed out that diversity is the key to survival and adaptation in a competitive and constantly changing world. The famed ecologist Sandra Díaz has compared diverse biological ecosystems to a tapestry woven with a warp and a weft. The weft of the science tapestry is composed of diverse institutions with their individual functions, interests, and adaptation to local goals. But the most important part of a tapestry is its warp—the set of threads that keep the fabric in place.

A SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE ON THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE

Scientific research revolves around a few basic questions asked in different permutations and with different emphases, observed Ottoline Leyser, chief executive officer of United Kingdom Research and Innovation.

• What is this?
• How does it work?
• How can we make it better?

These questions in turn create equally fundamental questions for nations and societies.

• How can the research and innovation system be organized to address those questions most effectively?
• How can the benefits from the answers be optimally realized?

The nature of the answers to these questions have shifted over time, said Leyser. In the 21st century, the answers involve multiscale, cross-sector, and cross-disciplinary systems. “We’re no longer looking at individual things—we’re looking at systems.” Regarding the content of science, these systems may involve ecosystems, energy systems, cellular systems, and so on. Regarding the organization of science, systems encompass skills, careers, infrastructures, institutions, funding, and other features of the science and technology enterprise. “The core of the challenge now is to view things in terms of those systems.”

United Kingdom Research and Innovation is a relatively new organization that was formed by bringing together seven preexisting research councils. It covers all the major disciplines and sectors where research and innovation are conducted. “That gives us that systemswide opportunity,” said Leyser. “We have asked ourselves: What needs to change in that system? What do we need to do to engineer the research and innovation system to be in a better place?”

The global research and innovation system is highly competitive and narrowly focused on a set of short-term criteria for excellence, and often those criteria are imposed at the individual level rather than across a portfolio of activity. That creates incredible pressure on individuals and a stovepiping that segregates different parts of the system—research from innovation, and both from the wider society.

The research and innovation system needs more capacity to create new opportunities and then pivot to capture the benefits of those opportunities, said Leyser. This requires both a portfolio approach to risk and concerted effort to bridge the disconnection between research, innovation, and the wider society. In particular, the structure of institutions and the scientific enterprise needs to be reevaluated in the light of four fundamental principles:

1. Diversity – The system needs to support the diverse people, places, and ideas needed for a creative and dynamic system.
2. Connectivity – The system needs to build connectivity and collaborate across parts of the system to break down silos nationally and globally.
3. Resilience – The system needs to be agile and responsive.
4. Engagement – The system needs to help embed research and innovation in society and the economy.

On this last point, for example, the research and innovation system tends to be seen as a specialized and isolated activity done by “clever people in a special place,” said Leyser. That has created many problems in attracting the full range of people to work in and think of themselves as part of the system. “In my ideal world, everybody considers that they’re part of the research and innovation system, with the opportunity both to contribute and to benefit.”

Change is needed at all scales, from individual careers to research groups to departments to faculties to institutions to research foundation to national academies, Leyser said. At all these scales, change must promote diversity with an emphasis on connectivity, resilience, and engagement. This will require major shifts in thinking away from the parts to the relationships between the parts and what these relationships mean for the whole. Narratives around complex systems that allow people to grasp what needs to be done and what the opportunities are can be hard to build, but this is a priority in getting everyone to contribute and benefit. “Those are what I see as the key changes that we need to drive and our responsibilities as custodians and stewards of the system.”

THE GROWING ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN SCIENCE FUNDING

Harvey Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, elaborated on the third trend Meserve cited in his opening remarks: the growing role of philanthropy in supporting science. Since the mid-1960s, the federal government’s share of funding for basic research expenditures at universities and research institutions has fallen from more than 75 percent of the total to less than 50 percent. At the same time, the combination of funding from higher education and nonprofit institutions has risen from about 15 percent of the total to more than 40 percent. Many of these funds are from philanthropies, and many of the institutional funds are from earlier philanthropic support that has taken the form of endowments. In absolute measures, private grants for scientific research in the United States have risen from slightly more than $10 billion in 2010 to annual totals of more than $30 billion today.

A major force behind this growth is the rising global wealth of individuals in the United States and elsewhere, Fineberg noted. The total wealth of individuals with a net worth exceeding a million dollars has approximately doubled since 2007—to more than $140 trillion—and individuals with a net wealth exceeding $30 million represent about a third of this wealth. This growth in wealth has been going on around the world, but the United States, which represents about 30 percent of wealth, still accounts for more than 50 percent of global giving. “The U.S. reputation as a place with a propensity for philanthropy is well earned,” Fineberg said.

In 2013, six U.S. philanthropic organizations and philanthropists devoted to the funding of science came together to form the Science Philanthropy Alliance, which has since then grown to approximately 40 members. With a mission of increasing philanthropic support for science and making this support more influential, widespread, and effective, the alliance seeks to leverage the comparative advantages of philanthropies in supporting science by doing the following:

• Accelerating high-risk, unproven research
• Operating with flexibility and nimbleness
• Embracing curiosity-driven and problem-solving research
• Leveraging additional funding
• Seeding new research and filling in gaps
• Working collaboratively in areas of shared interest
• Scaling impact through partnerships and open science
• Investing in underrepresented groups and at critical stages of careers

Many top scientists have received substantial support from philanthropy while conducting pathbreaking research, Fineberg pointed out. In the future even more scientists will be able to conduct pathbreaking research through philanthropic funding for their work.

CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS

The scientific enterprise in the United States has worked very well, said Elias Zerhouni, professor emeritus of radiology and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, “and you don’t want to change things if they’re working.” Nevertheless, changes in the nature and structure of scientific research now call for corresponding changes in the scientific enterprise.

In 2000 the world spent about $700 billion on research and development. Currently, that amount is over $2 trillion dollars, with much of this growth occurring overseas as other governments have recognized the value of science and technology. This growth in funding within and across countries requires that changes be made in the structure of the scientific enterprise, said Zerhouni, because “new resources tend to change behaviors and structures.”

An ongoing shift in the nature of science also demands institutional restructuring. Typically, all sciences undergo a reductionist phase in which the basic components of the system, whether particles, DNA, or proteins, are investigated and understood. Then the sciences enter a second phase where knowledge needs to be integrated into complex systems. This creates a tension between the structure of institutions that have been shaped by the reductionist phase and the need to restructure those institutions for the integration of data into systems. Furthermore, such integration today requires “tremendous convergence” among the physical sciences, biological sciences, data sciences, and engineering, Zerhouni said, which requires breaking down the walls between departments and disciplines in universities.

Zerhouni, who also formerly served as the director of the National Institutes of Health, said that the scientific enterprise can be improved by disruption but not by destruction. In other countries, the scientific enterprise has fewer preexisting stakeholders who need to be satisfied. In contrast, the existing system in the United States requires “deft and flexible management of how those changes are going to be made in the new competitive landscape that we’re dealing with.” Effective management requires a clear-eyed and strategic view from funders, including philanthropies and the federal government. It requires coordination at the national level to boost the impetus for institutions to consider change. And no institution can be successful without reflecting the composition, diversity, and aspirations of the people it represents, Zerhouni said.

Like the other speakers in the symposium’s first panel, Zerhouni expressed concern about the system that has evolved to educate and train scientists. Because of what he called the “embedded rigidity” in the U.S. system for funding science, a young scientist today goes through 14 to 16 years of preparation before independence. As a colleague of his once observed, “we design our system not to ignite the young mind but to cremate it.” Structural change in this system is absolutely necessary to reduce the huge amount of leakage it creates in human resources, said Zerhouni.

THE MISSION OF PHILANTHROPIES

In response to a question during the discussion period about whether philanthropy should be held accountable for funding researchers who are pursuing a wide range of questions, Fineberg noted that the missions of philanthropies vary widely, from focusing on a single issue to a more broadly based approach to funding science. The independence of philanthropies also means that there is no unifying coherence in the assignment or allocation of philanthropic resources. A challenge that the national and global science communities face is making allocation decisions across broad areas, such as between fundamental curiosity-driven science and solutions directed at contemporary problems. “It is not the case that philanthropy has solved it, and it’s not the case that we have solved it either nationally or globally.”

Philanthropies do not have external boards of directors or other constituents to whom they must respond. They therefore have a flexibility that entails a corresponding responsibility for reporting and communicating on their work so that it can be examined, critiqued, and improved.

Zerhouni pointed out that philanthropy has been critical in creating models that go against the grain of academic institutions. For example, the Bio-X program at Stanford University was created with philanthropic funds to experiment with the idea of combining disciplines, as was the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. In general, initial infusions of philanthropic funding can be vital in experimenting with new structures. “To herd cats, you need to bring fish, and directing resources toward that purpose will be very effective, because you can’t change behaviors without resources.”

CHANGING INCENTIVES

In response to a question about how to change the valuation of research and publications within disciplines, Leyser said, “we change the rewards, and that’s completely in our power to do.” People within the scientific enterprise tend to think that they have no power to change the reward system. “This is typical of a systems problem,” she said. “The answer is that everybody has power to change it. And everybody has to act in concert to do that. It’s hard because of all of those requirements, but it’s possible.”

Funders have a disproportionate influence on incentives, Leyser continued. For example, in assessing the CVs of researchers applying for funding, United Kingdom Research and Innovation has shifted to a more narrative approach in which applicants write what they have contributed to knowledge—“evidence that goes beyond just publications to what you’ve done and why it’s important.” The organization also looks at an applicant’s training and mentoring of others as wider contributions to the research system and to connecting the research and innovation system to society.