Washington

Ten months into a presidency that faces a raft of entirely unanticipated challenges at home and abroad, President George W. Bush finally has a science adviser.

Tough target: John Marburger needs to establish influence in the White House. Credit: BNL/AP

John Marburger, the former director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state was confirmed in the post two weeks ago and has hit the ground running. He's already setting priorities for dealing with the deluge of terror-related research proposals submitted to the White House from various agencies. In addition, he is coordinating technical assessments of methods for improving anthrax detection and mail security, and is imposing a new organizational structure on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which he runs.

“Overall, we're getting up to speed after a long hiatus,” says Marburger, who has been in Washington working as a consultant to Bush since late September.

But the mild-mannered physicist enters a White House playing-field where the only game in progress is the war on terrorism — and it's a contest that is already well under way. Marburger faces a stiff challenge, observers say, in asserting the influence of an office whose ranks have been depleted by neglect.

For example, the influence of a White House science adviser is normally measured by the degree of direct access the adviser has to the president. But on the most pressing scientific issue of the moment — bioterrorism — Marburger's advice will not go directly to Bush, but will instead be channelled through the newly created Office of Homeland Security and its chief, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge.

Furthermore, Marburger is only one of several science advisers Ridge consults. And it has been suggested that Ridge — who will have broad powers in dealing with the anti-terror response — may appoint a chief science adviser of his own.

Marburger's influence on budgetary matters could also be limited, at least in the short term, as the 2003 budget proposal is already in its final phases of preparation.

He says he has been heavily involved in budget meetings on research spending, and has talked with the the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about its plan to apply results-oriented investment criteria to science programmes. He pledges that the administration is “not seeking some crude sort of immediate pay-off” and that the OMB is “engaged in a serious effort at finding a better way of explaining to Congress and the public why basic, discovery-oriented science” is worth funding.

Marburger is in the midst of reorganizing the OSTP's staff structure. The associate directorships for environment and national security are to go, leaving just two divisions: science and technology.

As for matters that occupied the White House before 11 September, Marburger says he is looking at climate-change policy but has not spent much time thinking about human embryonic stem-cell research.