By BARBARA SPECTOR

At an April | meeting in #Rgg
Washington, D.C., the Carne- s
gie Commission on Science,
Technology, and Government
formally began the process of I
going out of business. The cor
mission’s five-year charter ends
June 30.

The panel was convened in 1988
under the auspices of the Carnegie
Corporation of New York to assess
the ways in which policymakers take
science and technology issues into
account when making decisions.
The blue-ribbon panel is cochaired
by Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg,
former president of Rockefeller Uni-

  
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
    
    

COCHAIRMEN:
Joshua Leder-
Si berg, left, and
William T. Golden
Ry have served at

@ the helm of the
may Carnegie Com-
mission from the
panel's inception
in 1988.

versity, and Wil-
liam T. Golden,
chairman of the
‘board of — the
-American Mu-
.seum of Natural
s.History in New
ormerly. served as a spe-
consultant on. scientific activi-
ties to President Harry Truman.
Included among the members of
the commission and its advisory
council are some of the United
States’ most prominent scientists, as
well as two former U.S. presidents
(Democrat Jimmy Carter and Re-
publican Gerald Ford); three former
US. senators: (Republicans Charles

  

NEWS

Daniel Evans of Washington, as well
as Democrat Lawton Chiles of Flor-
ida); three former U.S. representa-
tives (Democrats John Brademas of
Indiana and Paul Rogers of Florida,
as well as Mathias, who served in the
House before being elected senator),
and three current or former gover-
nors (Democrat: Richard Celeste of
Ohio, as well as Chiles, now
Florida’s chief executive, and Evans,
who was Washington’s governor
from 1964 to 1977).

Winding Down

Commission staff, as well as the
commissioners themselves, say the
five-year limit on the panel’s
lifespan is a positive thing. “The
types of studies the commission did
could continue to be done by others,
or the commission could go on,”
says Mark Schaefer, senior staff as-
sociate and director of the
commission’s Washington, D.C., of-
fice. “But it’s a good idea to have a
defined lifetime and then go on and
do other things. I think it keeps peo-
ple fresh.”

April 5,1993 THE SCIENTIST 3

§ CREATOR:
The commis-

4 sion is the

y brainchild of

1 Carnegie Cor-
poration presi-
F dent David A.
Hamburg.

   

In the five

years that com-
mission mem-
bers have been working together,
Lederberg says, “we all got to know
each other, and personal axes to
grind were all worn down. In that
way, it’s a shame to disband, but I
think we all agree it’s time. I don’t
think the world needs a permanent
watchdog.”

Vital Statistics

The panel’s 15 committees and
task forces, involving the efforts of
more than 150 high-power volun-
teers, have made about 400 recom-
mendations. While commissioners
acknowledge that some of these sug-
gestions are more likely than others
to be put into practice, they note that

Blue-Ribbon Panel Begins Process Of Closing Up Shop

several have already been imple-
mented (for example, the recom-
mendation that the president move
quickly to appoint a science ad-
i President Clinton did
when he named John Gibbons to the
post in December). Yet, as Golden
notes, “One can never be sure of
paternity; we weren't the only ones
urging such action.”

In addition to its eminent volun-
teers, the commission has eight pro-
fessional full-time-equivalent  staf-
fers scattered among its three of-
fices—two in New York and one in
Washington. When the com-
mission’s charter ends, some $12
million to $15 million will have been
spent on continued production and
dissemination of its 18 reports. In
addition, the commission has con-
tributed to a half-dozen other publi-
cations, as well as several dozen
background or working papers.

The commission is known jok-
ingly among its members as the
“Commission on Everything” be-
cause of the wide range of topics it

(Continued on Page 8)

        
Carnegie Commission Activity Winds Down _,

(Continued from Page 3}

has addressed, according to one
source who requests anonymity. It
has issued reports on science and
technology as they relate to societal
goals; international affairs; and the
executive, legislative, and judicial
branches of government, among
other subjects.

Bidding Adieu

The April 1 event was the final
formal activity of the full commis-
sion. After a closed session in which
the panel was scheduled to approve
one of its last task force reports—
“Science, Technology, and Con-
gress: Organizational and Pro-
cedural Reforms”—it hosted a meet-
ing and reception for about 300
members of the U.S. scientific com-
munity as well as members of gov-
ernment and the media. Gibbons was
among the invited speakers slated to
address the group. At press time, the
meeting had not yet taken place.

The open meeting marked the re-
lease of a report noting the highlights
of the commission’s tenure, “Sci-
ence, Technology and Government
for a Changing World.” Also
planned is a book-length summary
document on the work of the com-
mission, now being written by
Lederberg and Jesse Ausubel, the
commission’s director of studies.
The volume is scheduled for publi-
cation in the winter of 1993-94.

The purpose of the meeting, says

Golden, was “to review what we
have done and plot for the future—to
devise ways to stimulate continued
attention to the issues to which we
have paid attention.”

David Z. Robinson, — the
commission’s ‘executive director,
adds that another goal of the meeting
was to thank the invited guests—
many of whom had been sought out
by the commission for advice—for
their help and to get their reaction to
the panel's five-year-long work. “IH
they agree with the conclusions [of
the reports],” Robinson says, “we
want them to have ‘ownership’ of
them, and use the pe
fact that the com-
mission has rec-
ommended them
to push them.”

The Next Stage
“There will be
an enormous let-
down after [the
commission  dis-
bands],” acknowl-
edges Maxine L.} ¢@
Rockoff, — senior
administrator of the commission.
“But there will also be a lot that gets
launched.” The chairpersons of the
commission’s various task forces,
she says, “are committed to. the
ideas” set forth in the reports. “There
will be continued growth and flow-
ering of seeds that the commission
planted, even though there won’t be

  

 

 

a central staff,” she predicts.

Golden says he hopes that some
of the responsibility for seeing that
the recommendations get carried out
will be shouldered by “other organi-
zations that will continue more or
less in perpetuity,” such as the na-
tional academies of science and en-
gineering, scientific societies, and
academic entities like Harvard
University’s John F Kennedy
School of Government. “We hope
they will use our reports and create
their own.”

As others take over, he adds,
“there’ Il be mutations to our recom-
mendations-—and there ought to be
as the years g0 on. Our recommen-
dations won't last in perpetuity, but
will mutate ina Darwinian way.”

The Carnegie Corporation will
support the distribution of the

    

EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR:
David Z. Robin-
son will return to
the Carnegie
Corporation once
the commission
closes down.

commission’s — re-
ports to anyone
who requests them
for the next year or
two, corporation
staffers say. Rob-
inson, a research
physicist who was
executive vice president and trea-
surer of the Carnegie Corporation
before joining the commission staff,
will return to the corporation and
will work there on implementation
of the commission’s findings.

In addition, says the com-
mission’s creator, Carnegie Corpo-
ration president David A. Hamburg,
“there are some grants that [the cor-
poration] may make over the next
three years to
follow up in
spirit.” For ex-
ample, he
says, funds
might be dis-
bursed to uni-
versity-based jy
groups or sci-
entific organi-
zations that
want to pursue
the commission’s
ideas.

An __ important
component of the
follow-up process
will be the efforts
of the commission members them-
selves, commission officials say.
“All of us who have been connected
will be promoting these gospels as
best we can as a sideline to our other
activities by seizing every opportu-

 

  
 

ADVISORY COUNCIL
MEMBER: Rodney W.
Nichols, CEO of the
New York Academy of
Sciences, says he will
be tracking the commis-
sion’s recommendations.

nity to bring these issues up,” says
Golden, Another way for commis-
sion members to keep the recom-
mendations in the public
consciousness, says Robinson, is by
writing opinion pieces in journals
and newspapers.

The level of interest in continuing
the panel’s activities will vary ac-
cording to the commitment of the
individual commission members,
Golden acknowledges: “Some will
be more interested than others; that’s
the way of the world. All of these
things have a half-life, it’s true. The
next few years will be very impor-
tant—attention will taper off unless
we keep the attention level up.”

Rodney W. Nichols, chief execu-
tive officer of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences and a member of the
commission’s advisory council, says
he believes that “people who work
very hard on something on a pro-
bono basis” will keep to their com-;
mitment after the commission has
shut down. “Those of us involved
will keep tracking [the recommenda-
tions] through networking and meet-
ings,” he says. “Would I be doing the
same things if the commission had

" Tz] never ex-
“| isted? The an-
swer is proba-
bly yes.”

Robinson
notes, how-
ever, that “the
value of re-
ports —- goes
down over
time.” As the
years go by,
he says, it is possible that
“the recommendations
[will be] all in place or all
rejected”—or that chang-
ing times have rendered
some of the items moot.

“These things [recommenda-
tions] ought to be airborne,” says
Golden. “They'll go on their way,
and in the next couple of years
there’]I be a need for another Carne-
gie Commission.” Q