Washington

The White House has fuelled growing fears among scientific leaders that the recent era of expansion in US science funding is coming to a close. On 25 August, it announced plans to set new “investment criteria” next spring for all research programmes, including those in basic science.

Reports that the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Science at the Department of Energy (DOE) are planning to cut their budgets for 2003 have added to scientists' worries.

Eight months into the Bush administration, scientific leaders are also increasingly concerned about their lack of access to the White House. John Marburger, director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state, who was named as Bush's science adviser in June, has not come to Washington as a consultant, as the science community would have liked, in advance of his expected confirmation by the Senate next month.

No other senior research position in the administration has yet been filled, and the three most senior officials left from the Clinton administration — NSF director Rita Colwell, NASA administrator Dan Goldin, and Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute — are each tipped to leave their positions soon. So is energy secretary Spencer Abraham — sworn in this January — who may run for governor of Michigan.

Bush's plan, released by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), says the criteria-based approach is being tested now on the DOE's applied research programmes in energy supply and conservation.

Mitch Daniels (right) and George Bush plan new performance measures for basic research. Credit: AP

The OMB will next confer with the five main science agencies — the National Institutes of Health, the NSF, the DOE, NASA and the Department of Defense — before extending the approach to all basic research programmes. The chosen criteria will be published in the spring and will be used to develop budgets for the 2004 fiscal year.

Science lobbyists fear that the proposal will hurt basic science by demanding quick pay-offs. One senior lobbyist says of the officials driving the new policy, who include Mitch Daniels, the OMB's director: “They don't know what basic research is. They think that it should all be done by industry.”

But White House officials argue that the OMB will listen to scientists' views before establishing the criteria for basic research.

→ http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002