Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990                   TAG: 9005110665
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO MORE TIN CUPS FOR SCIENCE FUNDING

Keyworth had more to worry about than getting enough federal funds for science projects. His cut-back staff was filled with people borrowed from other agencies instead of with prominent names from science and technology. He also had to defend the feasibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which once threatened to drain not only funds but also scientific brainpower from areas of demonstrated technical need.

D. Allan Bromley is science adviser to George Bush, and beggars' rags have gone out of style along with Star Wars. The fiscal 1991 budget includes $71.2 billion for research and development - a 6.7 percent increase over the prior year, and the largest boost for any federal agency. Defense-related projects still would get six of every 10 federal R&D dollars, but most of that 6.7 percent increase would go to non-defense programs. For research, that's a welcome development.

Big-ticket items still get big bucks. Among them are the Energy Department's supercollider and two National Aeronautics and Space Agency programs: a space station and a long-range plan to put humans on the moon and Mars. Sizable increases also are slated for the human genome-mapping project at the National Institutes of Health and for research into global climate change. Work on AIDS treatment will get 31 percent more money, and similar increases are planned for robotics and agricultural research.

A couple of other needy areas get a lick and a promise: "small science" and facilities improvement.

As to the first, Bromley says the administration wants to do more to aid basic research done by individuals and small groups. He admits disappointment in falling short, but says the expansion of scientific knowledge makes it more and more costly to develop new techniques. The garage tinkerer is priced out of the business - certainly, out of much chance for grants from the National Science Foundation and NIH.

Facilities improvement - updating university research buildings and equipment - could absorb as much as $50 billion. It gets only $20 million in 1991. Bromley says the problem must be confronted eventually. Like many other issues in Washington, it's being put off.

The $20 million was inserted in anticipation of the tinkering Congress always does with the science budget. Members use it as a form of pork barrel, diverting money and projects to their districts. The White House, to its credit, will try to head that off by stipulating the $20 million for facilities improvement be allocated through a peer-review process.

Uncle Sam's seed money is important, and it's good to see the R&D budget on the rise. But the private sector, too, should do more. There has been too much emphasis lately on mergers, corporate takeovers and the chase for the immediate payoff in quarterly profits and stock prices. As companies get bigger, they move more slowly and become more averse to the risks involved in research and development. R&D soaks up lots of cash, and the return on investment may be long delayed.

Debt, both public and private, has also been a drag on research. The nation can't build a knowledge base for the future if it lives only for the present, and declines to pay even for that. That lesson from the "dismal science," economics, can help the other sciences thrive.