Washington

Democrat John Kerry, the US presidential candidate, has unveiled a strategy for investing billions of extra dollars in science and technology, with an emphasis on research in areas other than biomedicine.

Hand outs: the source of funding for John Kerry's science plan has been ridiculed by his critics. Credit: J. CHIU/AP

The plan, released on 24 June, would raise US$30 billion over an unspecified period of time through the auction of radio spectrum that is currently used for television broadcasts. Roughly two-thirds of the money from the sale would go towards research and development, and the rest would support incentives for industrial innovation.

But critics quickly panned the proposed source of funding as a financial gimmick. “Spectrum auctions are the last refuge of budget scoundrels,” says Robert Walker, a lobbyist and former Republican chairman of the House of Representatives' Committee on Science.

Kerry announced the plan in a speech at San José State University in California. “America must lead, not follow, other countries in the great discoveries that bring greater prosperity,” he said.

The proposal came at the end of a week of science-oriented campaigning for the Democratic candidate. At its start, Kerry said that, if elected, he would lift President Bush's ban on government-funded embryonic stem-cell research. He was then backed by 48 Nobel science laureates: “John Kerry will restore science to its appropriate place in government,” they wrote in an open letter of endorsement.

The Kerry plan will auction radio spectrum freed for use by the conversion from analogue to digital television, says Thomas Kalil, a Kerry adviser and former assistant in President Bill Clinton's economic-policy office. The sale would produce more than $30 billion; roughly $22 billion would be assigned to research in areas such as nanotechnology and clean energy, and to science spending at the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Pentagon.

President Bush was advised to increase physical-sciences funding by his own scientific panel, but “has not followed through”, says Michael Lubell, head of the American Physical Society's public affairs division in Washington.

Kerry's opponents say that his plan would be tough to implement and unlikely to produce dollars quickly enough. Direction of the funding would require an act of Congress, they note. And Walker points out that digital broadcasting of television is not due to be complete until the end of 2006, so no money would be available until then. Attempts to speed up the process would lead to a “huge argument with the broadcasters”, Walker says.