Washington

The integrity of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) could be called into question because of its backlog of competing major projects, observers claim.

The warning came at a hearing on 2 August of a National Academy of Sciences panel set up to study how the NSF selects such projects. Congressional staff warned the panel that the number of approved but so far unfunded projects was encouraging Congress to choose those that the NSF should fund. This could cost the agency its cherished reputation for scientific objectivity, they said, and perhaps lead it into territory where political factors, rather than scientific merit, would determine project funding.

But NSF director Rita Colwell denies that the problem exists, and says that the agency's selection process is in good shape.

In the past few years, the National Science Board, which governs the NSF, has approved several multimillion-dollar projects that the agency has not felt able to fund for construction. At least six projects are currently in this backlog — and researchers involved in them are increasingly bypassing the NSF and going straight to Congress to seek funding, staff told the meeting.

The IceCube project has jumped its place in the funding queue, thanks to congressional intervention. Credit: R. MORSE

One such project is IceCube, a neutrino detector to be built in the Antarctic. This was approved by the science board in 2001, but the NSF has yet to request funds for it. Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who directs the project, met with the staff of the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that funds the NSF — “at their request”, he says — to discuss IceCube. As a result, he secured $15 million to begin work on the project this year.

Another project, the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER), which will study the troposphere using an aircraft, was approved by the science board in 1998, but is yet to appear in an NSF budget request. Congress, however, added $35 million for the project to this year's NSF budget.

Congressional staff also reported strong pressure to squeeze funding for a proposed $280-million underground physics laboratory at the Homestake mine near Lead, South Dakota, into the NSF's budget. The project has yet to undergo scientific review, but it is strongly backed by both main political parties, who are facing off in a fiercely competitive Senate election in South Dakota this November. One congressional staff member, claimed that pressure to begin the project is threatening to bypass the entire approval process of the National Science Board.

“The volume of people coming to Capitol Hill from the science community is increasing,” Joel Widder, a staff member on the Senate subcommittee responsible for NSF's budget, told the panel. Cheh Kim, another staff member, asked the panel — which was convened at the request of a group of senators who say they champion the NSF's independence — to help to establish criteria for prioritizing NSF projects. Meantime, Senate appropriators have slashed next year's funding for major NSF projects (see Nature 418, 472; 2002).

But Colwell contends that the problem of congressional interference with NSF project decisions is under control. “I think the process is working very well and has been for 50 years,” she says. She doubts whether the academy's review will lead to any drastic changes in the process.