 My name is Nick Wiginton, I'm an assistant vice president for research here at University of Michigan and I'm very excited today to introduce this panel on science and technology policy in the Trump era. Before I do, I just want to get a quick plug in for an upcoming speaker hosted by STPP later this year. Dr. Wagia Bowman from the University of Arkansas will be here on March 19th to discuss digital development, governance of the state and information technology in East Africa. Professor Kintaro Toyama from the School of Information will be the discussant, so please do join us for that. Now for today's panel, which is sponsored by STPP, the Rackham Graduate School and the UFM Office of Research, which we were happy to support today, seeing how based on the headlines that keep cycling through my phone today, federal policy around research and science is very important for helping UFM maintain our status as the number one public research university in the country. So we have a wonderful group of alumni here with us who can help us understand science and technology policy in today's rapidly evolving political environment. First we have Dr. Christopher Avery, who is Senior Global Client Assessments Manager at ICF International. Currently, he serves as the Deputy Director of the National Climate Assessment at the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In this role, he has managed the development, writing and publication process of the NCA and other ongoing science assessments. Before this position, he held a number of senior positions both at the National Council for Science in the Environment and the Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office. Previously, he was a AAAS Congressional Fellow, Merzion Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies, and before that he earned his Master's in PhD in Analytical Chemistry here at UFM with an STP Graduate Certificate. Our next panelist is Dr. Isha Matthew. Isha is currently a AAAS Fellow in the Department of Defense and previously served on the California Council on Science and Technology Policy in the Office of Assemblymember Jose Medina, who then retained her as a Legislative Aid and Communications Director. In that capacity, she briefed the Assemblymember on a range of policy issues, including health, transportation, and education. In addition to staffing bills, she also handled communications, including press releases, op-eds, interviews, and outreach. Isha obtained a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology here at UFM with an STP graduate certificate. Our final panelist today is Michelle Heineman. Michelle is a researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a federally funded research and development center in D.C. that provides rigorous and objective analysis for the formulation of national science and technology policy, supporting the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other federal science agencies. Prior to joining STPI, she served as a summer associate at OSTP, addressing policy issues in the environment and energy domain under the Obama administration. Michelle holds a Master's of Public Policy from the University of Michigan with an STPP certificate and a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alabama. So the way this will work is each of the panelists will give some brief remarks, which will be followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Shobita Parthasarathi. And she is an associate professor of Public Policy and Women's Studies and also director of STPP. Following the panel discussion, we'll take questions from the audience. So beginning around 440 staff, which includes Nikita, which is back there, and Katie, right there. They'll start collecting cards. And then two students, Pete and Lindsay, in the front row here, along with Professor Joy Rody, will facilitate the Q&A session. So make sure to find Katie or Nikita during the talk to get your questions in. And if you're following along online, please post your questions to Twitter using the hashtag policy talks. OK, so without further ado, I'd like to invite our first panelist, Dr. Chris Avery, to the podium. Oh, are you going to the podium or are you hanging out? I mean, I was just going to talk. Just make sure you're talking close to your microphone. Oh, here at this microphone. Sorry. So, hi, everyone. It's very cool to be back in a room that I spent many hours as a student. I think it's a chance to talk to you a little bit. Before I begin, a couple of things I want to say. One, I want to say thank you to the Ford School, STPP, the Office of Research, and RACM for bringing us back here. There are a lot of really cool alumni from Michigan doing really cool things, and I don't often think of myself as one of them, but I'm grateful to be back and get a chance to do that. I also want to stay right up front, just very clearly set the stage. I am not here representing or on behalf of the U.S. Federal Government. I'm not representing my company, ICF. I'm here as an alumni. So, I'm here to say what I think, personally, me as a human, and I'm not representing any government or company, so I want to make that clear, and I'm sure my colleagues will echo something similar. So, we talked a little bit before this panel, just to kind of get a sense of what each of us were thinking on this particular topic and kind of, we each have our own little kind of thought process, I think, but the thing that I figured I would spend my limited time on is just an interesting change that I've seen in D.C. and kind of the science policy community in the last two years, actually. I think this started before the current president was elected. I think I've seen a bit of a change in how science policy is treated and thought of, broadly speaking, in the D.C. world, in the policy world. And I guess what I'm really getting toward is many of you who've gone through the STPP coursework have heard the phrase, honest broker. Scientist as an honest broker, and the teachers here, the professors here do a really great job of showing how problematic that particular description is, and all of that is still true. But what I've actually started to see more recently, and some of this is colored by my own work in the climate science space, is a rise in an actual real version of an honest broker as a scientist in a policy space. I don't think anyone here would claim that we are in a politically neutral and happy time. We are in a politically contentious time, and that's been going on for long enough that a lot of citizens and a lot of politicians are looking for places to whatever version they think it is accomplish something, to compromise in some way, shape or form, to do whatever it is that motivated them to be where they are and do what they're doing. And one of the things that has come out of that from what I've seen that I find unexpected is that science, broadly speaking, and not universally applied, seems to have found a space in this political conflict to be a safe space for both sides. And I've seen a lot of opportunities where scientists in small ways have been able to come in as an honest mediator of fact in between. And I think one of the secrets of success of that particular perspective has actually been around the rise of scientists as a political actor, which is a bizarre flip of where you probably thought it was going with this. But what I think finally happened is a recognition that scientists are human and therefore we have human natures and full of personal political beliefs and acknowledging that and being upfront and honest about that and trying to articulate, yes, I believe this, however, separate from that, the facts as the scientific community, broadly speaking, understand the world to be is this. And it may or may not align with what I believe and that's okay either way. But I, as a scientist, am giving you these facts. Now, I, as a human and a citizen and a person with values, want you to do this. And what I found is that it hasn't necessarily changed outcomes, but what it has done is provide some type of a mental framework for policymakers to understand how scientists can simultaneously be a trusted neutral source and a partisan political actor. And I don't mean partisan in a pejorative sense. I just mean partisan in we all have sides and whatever issue we're talking about that we all come down on. So I think what I've seen so far and it hasn't been universal and it hasn't been one direction and people have screwed it up. But I've seen a broader understanding of we need to stop pretending that we aren't human and that by acknowledging our own humanity and some of our own biases we've actually been able to find some areas where we can remove ourselves from the politics. Which I think has surprised a lot of scientific actors in the DC area. There are probably a ton of examples where someone could show that I'm wrong. But I would say the climate space especially I've seen a really significant value of scientists engaging in the policy space with honesty. I think most climate scientists in the world are pretty strong viewed on what they think should happen as a result of the science knowledge. And what I've seen scientists who are successfully engaging in this space with people who disagree on the facts of reality of climate change what I've seen them effectively engage in that space by doing is saying the science I've done tells me this the values that I hold as a citizen of this country tell me that I want you to do this. And that seems like a really narrow separation but what it really ends up doing is making it very clear that the scientific space around facts and understanding of the world while imperfect and not complete is a separate space from the actions that our values dictate those facts make us do. So they inform each other they're connecting each other but being very explicit about this bifurcation between scientists versus us as scientific political actors I think has actually I've seen signs that that's actually really helpful and that could actually in some ways be a path forward out of some of this political anger that we seem to see in the country right now. So that was sort of unformed but I hope I got to where I was trying to go at the end so I'll shut up at that point and hand it off. Hi everyone I'm Isha just as Chris just said I am here as myself I do not represent the federal government or anything like that and I also want to say thank you to everyone involved in bringing us here. So I'm going to talk about something a lot drier but very important to this enterprise which is research funding so most of the R&D that this country invested in flows through the agencies and there's two things that Congress needs to do for an agency to function. The first is the appropriations process where they allocate money to go to different agencies and programs and the second is the authorization which gives an agency the legal authority to use those funds. Now the president himself doesn't exactly set the appropriations he can however influence its size and composition but really what he does is he sends a request to Congress who can accept some of it so I'm just going to quickly go through that process just to make sure everyone is on the same page with how that works. So the president submits his request to Congress Congress has these resolutions that sets the key point of those resolutions is to set the total discretionary spending amount then each house goes through the appropriations process where they mark up these bills and then they come together and hash it all out and when they hash it all out that goes to the president and he signs it and there you go. Now as you are all probably aware when that doesn't happen there's two things that can follow. One is a government shutdown and then the other thing that's you know not it's also not ideal is the continuing resolution where funding is capped at a fixed formula usually this is at the previous levels funding amounts this year's funding amounts it's not the greatest I mean it's not great but because it introduces uncertainty to the research enterprise people don't know when the budget is going to come through and they don't know how much that will be and so it's tough to plan for new programs and things like that when you look at the original the administration's budget request it is lean around R&D funding except for there's a couple cases where that's not true one is the Smithsonian Institute which got a bump the Department of Veterans Affairs and then a program under HHS which is like a patient centered outcomes research fund trust but however Congress has a different view on funding levels for places like the NSF, the NIH and so as this is being worked out in February the agencies will submit their you know their plans for the Office of Management and Budget for the next fiscal year's plan so it's kind of two things happening currently but how that's all going to fall remains to be seen Great, hi I'm Michelle, same disclaimers so I do not represent my organization, the Institute for Defense Analysis or the Federal Government my sponsors at OSTP but also thank you all for inviting me the other great panelists to speak with you today I was thinking I would focus my kind of introductory remarks on how science policy is coordinated at the federal level and how changing priorities at that level can impact how science policy is coordinated and gets done so my perspective is mainly focusing on the Office of Science and Technology Policy an office within the Executive Office of the President that serves to inform the President on science and technology policy issues that are relevant to the President's agenda and policy areas of interest and one way that OSTP works to to advance science policy and coordinate science policy among the federal agencies is through the National Science and Technology Council this is a body that helps to coordinate the science technology policy process they help to ensure that there is consistency with the President's goals on science and technology policy decisions at the agencies and at different departments and they also try to help integrate the President's agenda across different agencies they also help to ensure that science and technology is considered in the development and implementation of federal priorities so it's kind of a two-way street and then finally they also have kind of an international coordination piece and so through the NSTC OSTP is able to form essentially interagency bodies Chris actually kind of works with one in which he will likely speak about later that example the U.S. group on USGCRP is the Global Change Research Program and that example is that it's there's 13 different federal agencies that 13 correct that NSCC is able to coordinate to form policies around global change climate change being one of the major types of change that we see and so you see these different interagency groups formed around many different science areas that are of interest to either the President or things of relevance in the current environment so or by Congress as well so for example there's always some lasting ones for example about water availability quality you also might have some fast track action committees that are set up to maybe deal Zika or Ebola or things like that and so through that mechanism OSTP is able to essentially integrate all of the advice that are thousands of federal agencies are providing all of that expertise and really provide the President with sound counsel and objective advice in that area I will address the elephant in the room OSTP currently does not have a director that's definitely something we can talk about and later but I would say the main changes that you've seen or I've witnessed and how OSTP and the NSCC process has been coordinated and function during this new administration is that right now there seems to be kind of a lack of uncertainty and this comes from the budget process but also from a lack of leadership and due to that uncertainty we're seeing a lot of a lot of priorities not able to fully function in the way that OSTP the NSCC process might optimally function and so it's creating even more areas of uncertainty in those ways as well great thanks to all of you for getting the conversation going before we open it up to questions from the audience I had a few and I wanted to start with you've all talked a little bit about what are the sort of small changes that you've seen and of course many of us have a lot of connections to DC and some of us don't but I presume many of us at least read the papers occasionally so I think it would be helpful for us to get a sense of how to understand what we read in the papers in the context of science and technology policy and one of the things that I think a lot of us have read especially when it comes to science and technology policy but generally in policy perhaps the place where we've heard about it the most is in the context of the State Department is this notion that the administrative state is being dismantled or in Steve Bannon's terms that the deconstruction I think is a very important question. I think the deconstruction I think is the term he used that what he was going for was deconstructing the administrative state and so we've read about that as I said most famously in the context of the State Department that the State Department is getting rid of in various ways thousands of employees certainly hundreds at this stage with designs for more we know a little bit that there's talk about similar things about that at the EPA and I guess I have a few questions related to that the first is is that a real phenomenon right again we hear about it in the paper but to what extent is your sense that that's a real phenomenon and the second question related to that is if it's a real phenomenon what does that actually mean what are the impacts on policy on regulation and the role of government in our lives and related to that how does that affect the lives of scientists does that affect the lives of citizens in a real way that those because I think this administrative state that is now more discussed more than ever are often technical workers of some kind they're scientists and engineers often but they're scientists and engineers of some kind we're working in the bowels of government that are that are now being sort of cast into this new light into this new administration and I'm curious what your sense of of those politics are is that a phenomenon that's occurring and if it is what are the implications of that and it may be different in different places which I think is also something that again we read in the papers but we don't you guys are there on the ground and I think it would be useful for us to get a sense of the specificity and sensitivity of that I would definitely say that I also read the papers right so I'm also reading the same information that you are and so of course that is also tainting not I believe it's happening but I will say from my personal experience yes I have seen impacts from that I'll give an example you know we like I mentioned in STC I work often with these NSCC interagency groups and the State Department the example you raised often works or serves on these interagency bodies and when you don't have the right expert in the room that can be problematic you're trying to form a policy or come up with a research plan around a very specific issue and you need the international perspective in the case of the State Department and there's maybe nobody to call and so that can be hard I would say the other major impact that I've definitely seen personally is the impact to federal agents morale to to my friends my coworkers right and it's just heartening to see people feel like they are not valued that their careers in science policy serving under an agency you know trying to be a good civil servant and work on issues that they are really passionate about that to not be recognized or to be cut in a way or talked about in a way in the news is it affects them personally too so yeah it's definitely impacting more than just the physical person being in the office I think and I personally worry about how that's going to impact the next generation of people who go into civil service I really hope that a lot of you in this room are considering going into civil service and that you aren't too discouraged by what you're currently might be seeing if you're talking to people who work in science agencies right now I mean I I agree I don't want to draw attention away from the very human impacts that we see I mean of course it's real it's clearly happening that's quite obvious I do think I do just a argument that's more interesting so just one thing to challenge slightly on is that the things a staff or broadly speaking a staff of employees works on is reflective of an administration's policies and it is completely appropriate that an administration use staffing as a way to indicate what they do and do not think that it is appropriate for their staff to work on I'm not saying like generally speaking in a very kind of meta way it's appropriate for a president to come in and say this stuff isn't a priority and therefore I in my capacity as president am not going to spend the taxpayer money on it you know every president does that that's part of their explicit job so that's that's not immoral or anything that they're doing wrong we may have complaints about how they're doing it or choices about choices that they're making but the action in and of itself I don't think is wrong what it means I think is broadly speaking a far more complicated question and I think Michelle hit the nail on the head there are all of these kinds of questions about what it means for the future and what it means for the future of the scientific enterprise and science policy enterprise whether the pipeline of people who want to come in are going to be willing to even work in this kind of a space that the fundamental contract of working in that place has changed so those are very real questions that I don't think anybody really has an answer to and I do think that it's also really important to reiterate what you just said of like this is going to be different different places you know I think that the impact we see on the State Department is likely to be a lot more significant and long lasting than something like the Department of Energy where it's really just about research funding so it'll probably slow down the pace of research but it won't necessarily change the direction of the content of the research so it's hard it's complicated and I'm certainly not complimenting the process by which it's happening but I do think that at least on some fundamental level the actions are well within is right yeah I mean echoing everything you said my sense and I don't you know I don't have a chart with me to draw this conclusion from but my sense of it is that it's not a broad general loss of staff it's particular you know offices and functions where these changes are happening and as Chris said whatever your thoughts on it may be it is indicative of where priorities may or may not be but the other question is those people who are doing that work they don't just disappear they may go somewhere else to try to do the same functions and just to draw on to that as well it's not just the people that want to do other things the work doesn't disappear either we may choose either not to do it or delegate that work to somebody else but it shifts to another agency or another place it may shift out of government into another space but it's not like the State Department decided to not work on gummy bears so gummy bears no longer exist it's a ridiculous example but that's the point so it's like just because an agency changes their priority does not mean this work disappears into the ether it means that other pathways have to be found and for people who are passionate about that particular issue or that particular work the way you do that work will change and sometimes that's scary but that also is an opportunity it means that it's a chance to try a new path and do a new thing and go a new way and there are benefits to flipping the script and changing the system and trying something new there are also risks and you can cause a lot of damage but it's not a universal evil I mean just as a small anecdote I know an end of more than four people who have faced a situation like that who are now gearing up to run for office so you just never know how that balance is going to be struck so you all are starting to get at some of the complexity that I think is really important and hopefully that we can get at today we are in an academic setting after all not trying to sell newspapers but so I'm curious again what we hear in the papers and what we know about is all of these scary things that are happening in policy and more specifically science policy and I'm wondering whether there are places that this administration when you think about the administration's priorities are there places that are places within science and technology policy or within research funding but broadly science and technology policy that the administration is interested in or is investing in and I think broadly for example that obviously this is an administration that has been trying very hard to increase military funding presumably DoD funding is expanding what opportunities does that create in terms of science and technology policy in terms of research funding do we see other places like that within the administration's priorities where we can say okay that kind of embodies this complexity that you guys are getting at that are actually potentially beneficial for certain parts of the world of science and technology and science and technology policy yeah I mean I can if you don't mind starting with that okay so kind of you know so there's funding and then there's programming and this example falls more along the ladder so I mentioned at the beginning in my opening remarks that there's appropriations and then there's authorization right the legal authority to do things but sometimes that authorization bill can also signal how Congress would like to see an agency kind of lay itself out programmatically one example of that is the 2007 administration act and okay I'm going to try to explain this and I'm going to try to read the room to see how good a job I'm doing with this so you have the secretary of defense and you have the deputy secretary of defense and underneath them are a variety of different offices do I need to speak louder I'm so sorry okay how much did you hear any of that oh it's on okay much better so you have the secretary of defense and you have the under secretary of defense underneath them are a variety of under secretaries of defense and there are under secretaries for policy there's under secretaries for the comptroller's office you know the financial office and right now there is an under secretary for acquisition technology and logistics and research and engineering falls under that under secretary office now according to this new authorization act that research and engineering is going to move up to its own under secretary level which means that everything underneath it from basic research applied all of that it's going to have greater access to leadership and be a little bit more in the spotlight so that could mean it's a big endeavor it's going to take a little bit of time but it could mean some interesting things as far as research and engineering go to piggyback off that that was kind of where I would go with this question to you this administration has all the administrations have but this one has really looked at efficiency and kind of that is in a way it's a good thing so the reorg of the department of defense is a great example of how you know an agency might use these priorities to streamline and make their processes more efficient within that we were talking earlier for example there's all the services each service branch has its own kind of business functional lines and part of the reorg is to also kind of separate those out so that also helps streamline processes and can really help to alleviate some of the issues that large departments that are maybe more bureaucratic might be having that also applies to the other science agencies not just the department of defense and these can have good impacts there's also been some emphasis on a lot of emphasis on collaboration under this administration be that international or be that with academia or the private sector and I personally think that's a good thing for there to be more collaboration with academia especially in research and so those types of priorities really can create more efficiencies and I think that's a good thing as well. Yeah to kind of jump off that I think an interesting place to go is to look at confirmation hearings for various heads of agencies or a lot of them release statements on where their priority issues are interviews to give interviews and you can kind of get a sense of what they're looking at that could be interesting for S&T policy one example is the new head of I'm forgetting his name this is so bad but the new head of NIST who said some interesting things on looking at tech transfer so that's a national institute for standards and technology that's right I always forget the teeth so he said some interesting things on tech transfer and the new the person who's been tapped for NCI has said some interesting things about national cancer institute sorry I know I know this is so good it was the thing that frustrated me when I started government when I was doing it has said some interesting things about the role of basic research in science and technology so I would look there too to see where priorities lie I agree with everything they just said the only other thing that I would add is I think there's an I don't think this I don't know that this is entirely intentional but I do see one ramification of the removal again of the federal action from certain science technology spaces is again that work is just going somewhere else so I'm personally seeing a rise of a lot of science and technology policy work at the state level because the federal government is no longer doing it this may be a dangerous example but the Department of Education I think is an interesting example of that I'm certainly no fan of our home state secretary but functionally what's happening is that the Department of Education is just like refusing to do stuff which is they're right that's a policy choice too but those decisions are just being made elsewhere they're being made at the state level they're being made in the hands of other people so what that's doing is increasing the number of venues in which scientists can be useful partners so it's it's not yeah it's complicated I guess I don't know where else we're going with that hopefully we specified that a little bit but I think it would be useful actually to get from you a sense of I think we've been sort of talking a little bit or I've been trying to have you guys talk about what's changing and what's not changing and what has changed right but I realized in our conversation what was explicitly talked about is you know the relative roles of political staff and civil servants sort of career staff and political staff and I think there may be people in the room who don't have an understanding of when a new administration comes in I guess there are two dynamics one is how much of a staff in an agency like the Department of Energy or the State Department or the Department of Defense or the EPA how much of it changes how much of it stays the same in terms of personnel that's one question and then how much of it change there's the personnel question and then there's the priority question how much of what people do on a day to day basis changes as a result of those priorities and how much is just actually the same between administrations so I'll start she jump in when I go wrong obviously this would be a common refrain it changes by agency but the bulk of the leadership layer either at the agency itself or most of the sub offices are political appointees and they have a shelf life of the administration so it's very normal that some fairly significant percentage of agencies change when an administration changes civil servants are permanent employees but they're not in the leadership by and large they may be program directors or program managers and things like that but most civil servants don't actually have funding authorities or budget authorities they may be managing projects but they're not the ones who sign the contracts those are largely people who occupy a higher space of either high level civil servants or political appointees and that's the way it's designed that's appropriate for it to work that way and I think that the second half of your question of like what does that actually impact the work of the agency is that of course it has a real impact but the time scale of that impact I think is also quite important many of these agencies are working on time scales that are the length of a whole administration or longer depending on some of the investments from DoD and that changes that limits the amount of impact that change overall can have things happen in a direction that turning that boat entirely can be quite challenging but I guess the biggest takeaway that I would say that it changes is actually the process by which things change and I'm a little bit biased on this because I saw this happen several times at DOE so I'm actually really interested to know if you guys agree with me if this is how it works in other agencies sorry the Department of Energy okay it wasn't just me every time a new secretary came in the methods by which things were approved and vetted and considered and chosen and selected at the Department of Energy dramatically changed and it was reflective of how secretaries prioritize or interpret the priorities that their boss the president is giving to them they're coming along with their own expertise and their own interests and things like that but they're there to execute the president's will and that changes so we talk a lot about politics we talk a lot about policy and I don't want to lose that third thread of the process the process by which things happen is equally as important as the other two and those are things that are actually completely within the control of the administration that are really really really impactful yeah so I totally agree with you on process that is at least from my perspective from the the executive office of the president that also happens there too of course there and how those processes change can really impact how a lot of policy is made but I would also say that it's not just the administration that's changing Congress is also always changing and these political appointees have to be confirmed by Congress many of them, not all of them yes, many of them, not all of them and as well direct federal agencies to do things and so federal agencies are not just given things to work on from the administration but Congress can also dictate those things as well so just to add that in the mix that's actually a really important point the agencies and all of the administration have a whole lot of strings attached to their budgets I mean I know you guys have actually looked at the budget bill passed by Congress that's more than I actually expected it's huge, it's a massive document and it's because it's not like Congress just says okay department of energy you get 55 bucks and the State Department you get 100 bucks and a pile of string like there's there's a massive amount of detail underneath there's like an overall appropriation to the agency and they explicitly say this thrust in the agency gets this amount of money and these sub-offices each get this amount of money and then they say this amount of this money will be spent on this project or this program so it's written into law explicitly what all of these funds are for and there's obviously space in there for policy choices and process choices and all that kind of stuff but where you spend your money is policy and a large significant amount of strings attached to the money that comes in are coming from Congress to ask a question I'll try to refrain from using acronyms in my question you live in Ann Arbor that lowers the likelihood but I'm in academia where everything's an acronym so I wanted to ask a question on the politics side of things maybe in hopes of extracting some juicy insider information from you all so a year ago when the new administration was coming into office one of the predictions maybe that I heard was that things were going to go more from sort of a two-party negotiation process between Republicans and Democrats to something that's more Congress maybe working together in a Congress versus executive office or administrative sort of negotiation style part of that I guess is maybe was predicting that we have a unpredictable and maybe administration whose views sometimes change quite rapidly so I didn't know if that's actually coming true or if that's been affecting what you've seen on the ground in terms of how the Congress works with the administration I mean do you get a sense of that I mean one thing I saw when I was in California is that when I used to take that's my my designated I feel like you don't even need it that's a good skill I mean I was just going to say when any party controls a space there begin to be subgroups within that party I mean you saw it in California with the Democratic party achieving a supermajority there are groups within that the other Dems and they still need I mean they still don't agree on everything and kind of that back and forth needs to happen and I think that there's an element of that going on in Congress as well that you know so it's not just Congress versus the executive branch it's Congress, Congress, Congress and then the executive branch I mean I think we have to remember that Congress is not this plant that grew in a forest that we all work around now we sent those people there there was an election you may remember it and these people were chosen and there are whether we like it or not they are by and large reflecting the views of the people they're representing so I pushed back a little bit on the idea that Congress is not doing their job their job is explicitly to represent the people who sent them there and fundamentally there are a lot of policy and political spaces in which there isn't a consensus in our society yet there are some very hard questions that we as a society are grappling with science policy aside like broadly in the more social setting there are some really complicated questions that we as a society have not resolved and I think that's also true in the science policy space and one thing that part of the reason I opened my comments with Thomas Broker is that with Thomas Broker discussion was that in spite of that lack of consensus on what the right path forward is or if we even need a path forward I think that I'm seeing signs of an interest in talking and an interest in basing that conversation on knowledge and facts and that doesn't premeditate a particular outcome but I think that there's at least an interest in talking again and some of that some of that is going to be frustrating because it doesn't mean that everyone is going to agree at the end of talking so I don't know if that's a juicy tidbit for you but who's interested in talking we'll give you a great example there's a new caucus that has popped up in congress the chemistry caucus it's a bipartisan caucus and it's actually talking about increasing some regulations at the EPA about disclosure of chemicals and chemical safety for citizens and there are doesn't mean they're going to do anything I really don't think they will but the fact that they're having a conversation in a safe space is meaningful so that's one example and I'm seeing other places where I'm seeing green non-profits partnering with an oil company to have a conversation about how that oil company can use less fossil fuels to make as much money and oil companies were not open to these conversations 20 years ago and it's not that they're changing their business it's not that we're changing any actions but a predicate to any kind of change or advancement is discussion and we haven't I personally think I personally think that part of the reason that there's so much angst and anger right now is that we have shut ourselves off from having the real conversations to actually get to the next step of solving a problem we aren't even in agreement on what the problem is yet so until we can get to some kind of a space where we can at least agree what the problem is or at least agree on pieces of the problem we're never going to get to any kind of actual change and I don't think anyone regardless of their political stripes is happy with the way the world is as it is now so at least having some amount of discussion of ways they want to do something different or change the world in whatever way you think is best that starts with some safe space for conversation and I've at least seen an interest in having the safe space so that caucus is just kind of one example that I'm coming off the top of my head but I'm seeing others too yeah that and that right there what Chris just said is sometimes the hardest part of getting to any solution getting people in a room to have a discussion is such a I think undervalued part absolutely of the process I think most politicians are very afraid of the idea of going in and having a conversation and saying I don't know because I'm going to be held to these statements and I can't learn I can't just have a conversation and figure out what it is that I don't know and I actually the thing that actually gives me a lot of hope in that space was the 2016 2017 election in the state level in Virginia there's a lot of the people and I saw this on the Republican side too some of the Republican delegates who won were saying I don't actually know what I think on every single issue tell me what you citizen tell me what you person I'm asking to represent think help educate me so that I represent you well that is I challenge you to go try and find that being said in an election ten years ago so there is change but it's happening at a conversational level that doesn't rise to kind of the political coverage that we tend to see the first question is how does public opinion influence the science policy process and how do policy makers balance expert opinions with public priorities which may be skewed by so-called fake news can you repeat the question one more time yeah I kind of need to write down this how does public opinion influence the science policy process and how do policy makers balance expert opinions with public priorities that might be skewed by fake news well that's not a one word answer anybody want to try first so as you might imagine I'm not short on opinions I really hate the term fake news I really do and probably not for the reason that you think I think fake news has become an excuse to dismiss things with which you disagree and I think that that's something that we in scientific space need to really fight against you know I see this a lot in the climate change space where people who are labeled as climate change deniers are dismissed as not welcome to be a part of the conversation and I think that's really sad I think that's really a shame so just starting out in that space in that term so I'm going to ignore it but to actually get to your question I think that question was phrased in a way that I just kind of want to disagree with that I think it's not I think we need to stop yelling at politicians for listening to public opinion that is quite explicitly their job their job is there to represent us as the citizens of this country and there are limited ways in which in California in which 700,000 people can talk to one person there are limited ways in doing that and surveys while imperfect and criticisable all across the board are one way in which an elected official is trying to understand what the person the people that they represent think so I think it's really really unfair of us to criticize politicians for listening to their constituents that said I think it is a fundamental challenge that people in political offices have to grapple with of when they want to consider technical knowledge when it stands in opposition to what their constituents think and this is that grappling is a large part of why I probably don't really want to run for office because that's a really hard question it's a really hard question it changes from minute to minute it changes the way that you weigh those things changes based on your own personal values and your own lived experience and I don't really I don't have a great answer for how they do it because I don't know how I would do it if I was in their job I honestly think that piece is the hardest part about running for office you have an example that you might be able to share that sort of brings that grappling into an academic space for us often it's hard for us to imagine if you have technical knowledge that provides you with insights we often are in a position where we say that should be the overriding basis for a decision sure so when I was working in congress for senator coons there was a debate I watched on the house floor and I thought it was really really interesting and it stuck with me because senator white house was making a speech in favor of doing something on climate change as he does quite regularly which is great I'm happy for it and another senator stood up and said you know I'm not dismissing the science behind what you're saying but you're asking me to take money out of our current budget and invest it in the future a hundred years from now that we don't know what it's going to look like and there are children who are homeless in my state who are starving and quite frankly I don't think I've done that now you can I have a lot of responses to that particular comment but I thought it was actually pretty insightful because what it shows was a different prioritization of now versus later and there are all sorts of criticisms that you can make of that but I think it's a coherent policy position to say the federal government should focus on feeding and clothing its citizens so to me that's one example can I try to so maybe we can in case the question was supposed to be asked there's another way we could address this question it's just not congressional it's true I went to a different place in case that was what the person was thinking maybe we could also talk about that so public or citizens can also I guess have a say in science policy not through their elected representative however that is a great way to influence science policy but there's also things like requests for information, RFIs on policy documents that are currently being developed for example the organization that I work for works on a lot of these policy documents and we put out RFIs all the time and we ask for public input or expert input on what we're working on that science policy process and there's also of course public comment periods and tons of other examples of public comments but it doesn't so my answer is it doesn't just have to be through an elected representative you as a citizen with an opinion or with some really relevant bit of scientific information that you feel like needs to be included in some sort of process you can submit that information there are forms and processes to collect that and every comment is read it is the job for example we did an RFI a couple months ago and I was the one who received all those comments and wrote a summary of them on a very specific, very small document so it was too many, it was only like 60 but there's other ways it doesn't just have to be through an elected representative I don't know if you guys want to comment on that as well from the agencies you work for agencies whenever they're doing regulations have a public comment period national climate assessment is out for public comment right now everybody go tell us what you think we want to hear it and I just wanted to make one small quick comment about public opinion influencing science and science policy this is not gone unnoticed obviously by the agencies too I forget the name of the report but in the national science foundations I think it was their indicators report not only they collect all these different metrics but now I believe they have a new line on what makes a metric a good metric and I think that's because they understand that just forget fake news there's just so much information out there and how do you add value to what you're putting out that people grab onto it this is a very big question I would also just add if you're reading the news fairly regularly that's great you're a fairly informed person how many of you have ever checked the federal register how many of you have ever heard of the federal register okay the federal register is a publication that the government puts out every single day that summarizes every action that is in the public space every single day almost every single week I would imagine there's something released where the government is explicitly asking for your input with directions on how to give it and it is like pulling teeth to get people in the public to actually comment and participate we are desperately wanting it do it when we ask for it so like federalregister.gov you should have that on your list of things you read on a periodic basis alright next question so you guys have kind of spoken on this a little bit but I think we want to dive a little bit deeper so considering the present political climate where partisan divide on issues keeps growing and there seems to be even more animosity than ever in between the right and the left how do we and people in DC escape the danger of being in an echo chamber where we're only talking to one side and we only choose to have the conversations with the people who share our beliefs how can we kind of break that down and how have you seen that happen within your own experience I don't want to keep talking first just to give you local politics yeah that's what I was going to go my sense was pay a lot of attention to local politics it's smaller people there tend to draw from a broader base of what they have in common I think there's like yeah I'm just gonna stop there I guess I would add on to that and say that honestly the only person who's ever changed my mind is someone that I knew and it's not entirely true I'm being a little facetious but there's a lot of power in this hey you person that I trust think differently than I do let's talk so I would say that I don't see any way out of a deeply separated political divide other than people at the local level talking to people with whom they disagree and having conversations that may or may not change people's minds you know I think that there are a lot of examples in the political zeitgeist where we've seen significant movement in public opinion that only came up from the citizen level I think it's delusional not delusional it's an unfair word that's a little aggressive I think it's unreasonable to expect Congress to fix a deeply felt partisan political divide in the citizenry of the United States we have to save ourselves so if you're only reading if you're a liberal and you're only reading Huffington Post shame on you if you're a conservative and you're only reading Fox News shame on you I don't think anyone would be surprised for me to say out loud I am a liberal I'm a subscriber to three libertarian magazines I don't always agree with what's in them but I find their thinking fascinating and I learn from them so you have to seek out thinkers and human beings with whom you disagree and talk to them we can't expect everyone to come to us we have to choose to fix it ourselves I'll echo with that just a little bit I really think these conversations that Isha and Chris mentioned they're hard to have and starting with family is always a good place but also reading is a really really great way and educating yourself on the other sides opinions or the way that they might approach something what are their values and really trying to do that research and confront with that and think about that even if you don't put yourself out there and have those conversations I think at a minimum being aware whether that's listening to a podcast maybe a little libertarian leaning for ten minutes a day just to get that perspective just keeping just not always siloing yourself is just so important and also not doubling down on your opinions and something I've definitely learned in DC really being open to hearing other people's opinions and when they might have an opinion that goes against a fact that you believe in just recognizing that and leaving it there so I'm going to take the moderator's privilege to chime in on this question having had all three of these illustrious alumni in my class and in a class that really attempts to force people to do this and so I think it's I think that their responses are correct and wonderful but I think the thing that I would add to it is that you have to really understand the logics in the positions that you violently disagree with if those are positions that have legs then there's a logic to them and there are facts that are associated with that position and there's a style of reasoning and there's a set of values and in the class where I have these all three of them I force students to role play stakeholders and I encourage them to role play stakeholders that they vigorously disagree with because that's another place where you can understand that logic I begin to understand that logic as a means of trying to start to bridge these divides I think we are now at a moment where we caricature other people from different political perspectives so much that we reject the idea that they're people at all and we certainly reject the idea that their positions might be evidence based so we will say well you know their facts are wrong they are monsters I think in real political debate that's rarely actually the case and I think you are a better political actor and you're more likely to get what you want if you really embody and try to understand the logics you know one small thing a little kind of a flip to that so where I work I meet a lot of people who think a little bit differently than me and one thing I found very interesting finding an issue that we both actually agree on and understanding what led them to reach the same decision that I did is often not the same and kind of having insight into that is also really helpful for these discussions as well on issues where you differ we have a question both from Twitter and the audience they are both kind of together as people with scientific expertise how do you handle or have you handled in the past situations where your superiors might make statements or have positions that diverge from a scientific consensus regarding for instance climate change or vaccinations or things like that and would an honest broker of science simply say that these are divergent views on these topics or would they advocate for a particular position now please okay so I think virtually every I told you guys I did a congressional fellowship from the American Chemical Society in 2011 and 2012 and there's a group of about 40 scientists who get compete and get placed in congress to do this every year and in every single one of those interview processes this exact question is part of the interview panel because it's a fact of life you know it's unless you're the president of the states there's somebody that is above you and even then the citizens are above them so it's like no one no one doesn't have a boss and no one doesn't have somebody else who has other some other value system or perspective or structure that they're that they're using and the reality is that science alone is not the only answer to every question you know science is as a scientist scientist is the mechanism that we as a society use to mediate factual disputes it tells you what is good joy is smiling because she's the one who actually gave me this line it's we know that the sky is blue or that eating carrots is good for your eyesight or that climate change is occurring but politics is how we mediate values disputes politics is how we decide that we're going to incentivize eating carrots in elementary schools because they're good for you or whether when we decide whether or not we want to do something about climate change that's a political and values choice it's not a scientific question so one of the hardest things I think personally about being a scientist working in the science policy space is knowing my place and knowing my limit and there are decisions that get made that are informed by the science but are not only informed by the science and sometimes values outweigh it a lot of times values can outweigh facts that's the nature of us as human beings it doesn't make it evil it doesn't make it wrong it just is so knowing your place I think is one of the hardest parts of being humble and being part of this community is that you can't fix everything you can't change everything and just because somebody did something that is in opposition to a fact or scientific knowledge doesn't mean they're wrong that's hard to swallow that's the thing about being an advisor though it doesn't obligate the person listening to you to take your advice it's just there to inform all the other streams of evidence that go into their decision making our job as advisors is to make sure that the person making the decision is as well armed as well informed as possible the decision is theirs if you want to be the person making that decision you need to run for their office where I work the way that we always like to talk about it is you know we do objective policy analysis for you know the White House Office of Science Technology Policy or other federal agencies and not just in the Trump area but forever if we do a research study and we hand it to our sponsor and they say well it's not the answer I was looking for it's not what I want to do here we say well that's what our that's what our analysis gave us and you're welcome to throw that in the trash but this is the answer that we have and they don't have to do anything with it they can put it in a way and file in cabinet and never look at it again and we'll be sad because we worked really hard on it and we really believe in it and we feel like it's objective and it's our best attempt at providing them with a rigorous analysis but they don't have to do anything with it at the end of the day if they don't want to I think a good thing that's how the process is set up to run so that they can take in all of these different pieces of advice that they're receiving and make the decision that is best for their agency or their constituents or whoever they might be for those of you who attended a lecture I think it was last semester Shabita when she released her most recent book one of the themes and takeaways that I hope all of you who attended that took away from it was that there's more types of experts than just scientific experts there's a vast array of expertise that's beyond just technical science and we expect the people who we have chosen to lead our society to take all kinds of expertise into account not just our own that's a really hard to do it's a really hard thing to do okay so in the wake of the uncertainties on the federal level with the way things are structured right now do you guys expect to see greater participation from state government, local government, nonprofits like citizen science movements have you already seen that and do you expect it to continue? yeah I mean from a research funding level there's been some there's been big increases at the state level I think most of it driven by five states but still but the only issue only regarding funding this my comment is limited to funding only is that even with different sectors stepping up especially with high risk long term projects that needs not just a budget but a consistent budget and I think the last time the last numbers I looked at were that the state contribution combined was like 1% of the federal investment in that sector so it's a tough thing to do but I still think it's interesting to see where compensation happens and I would say you'll see it happen in different sectors first I mean there are some state level agencies that function much better as a state type of agency for example the Department of Transportation is probably more effective at state and local level than it is at the federal level there's many examples like that I think there's a lot of opportunity for state and local jurisdictions to really fill the space that is perceived to be being left right now that goes back to what we said at the beginning of like decisions are made somewhere so yeah I do think that there's a rise of opportunity I think I think this is pretty gross but I think for a number of decades even there was a perception that there's a lower quality of worker at the state level and I think that that's totally false it's completely false I think there's a lot of really really gratifying work at the state or local level and quite frankly the federal government is really largely about funding and rules around funding there's other things to the bulk of policy at the federal level is kind of pretty intimately connected to those two things and the state and local level is about putting steel in the ground one of the coolest projects that I ever got the chance to work on at the Department of Energy was actually wasn't at the Department of Energy it was at the city of Detroit I got to come home to my home city and work with Mayor Duggan in Detroit to retrofit all of the street lights to LEDs I don't know if you guys have followed that news at all I think that's going to be a part of that and it wasn't because the federal government like solved the problem it was that the federal government came in as a productive partner and said you state locality, state or location city government what do you want we have expertise that we can help you figure out what you want if you don't know and we can help you lead it I think to me that's kind of the future of effective state and national and local give localities the space and breathing room to decide what's best for them and then using federal resources whatever they may be to solve the problems as they've framed them and I think that that does give me a lot of hope that I've seen some productive movement into that space of stopping this we at the national government must know what's right and instead of saying you this person who lives in this town tell me what you need that's definitely something that that is just always I'm constantly being reminded of no matter what the science policy topic of the day I'm looking at is that the federal government can only do so much in a certain science space a lot of times it really comes down to municipalities or local governing bodies or authorities and those types of things that are really actually doing the work creating incentives, building the plants or whatever and the federal government can really just kind of set up that framework and you know and that's really useful it enables a lot of states and localities to do things and maybe they wouldn't have been able to do but still that a lot of stuff it blows my mind whenever we're working on things like oh this is technically out of scope because the federal government just doesn't have space here right and so I'm constantly being reminded of that as well I mean that's how it should be too right like if you're trying to reduce let's just say that the US government put out some goal on I don't know greenhouse gases and then the state of California interprets that a certain way and one of the programs in that is mass transit the way that's going to look in Fresno is going to be very different than the way to look in San Diego very different than the way to look in Humboldt County so it's really important to have that level of local interpretation and implementation that's the risk of you all acting like assuming that decentralization of science and technology policy is the way to go which maybe it is but I think I guess I would be interested in you're reflecting on if science and technology policy retreats from the federal level and goes either to the state and local level to private actors what do we lose what are the kinds of things that either what are the kinds of priorities that get lost or the kinds of projects that get lost if this is the kind of trend which is everything should be local what are the drawbacks of that so but a complaint just for one second about where do you use that it's retreating from the federal level I don't believe that that's accurate I think that the science policy operations at the federal level are well staffed and are going to survive regardless of who is in office or when or what party or whatever you think the way and actually I'm really interested to know if you guys agree with me but to me it comes off much more as a democratization of science technology policy of that not only have we built infrastructure and interest and expectation of science policy at the federal level we now have an opportunity to show its value to the state and local level so I don't think the normal Indiana citizen would assume that everyone at the federal level understands why science is important but I think if you ask them why science policy or science itself is important to their small town they would be hard pressed to answer that question and I think the movable of science and technical knowledge and science policy at large into the state and local space is an opportunity to more deeply connect the scientific enterprise to the actual lived lives of the citizens. My example is just an example I hope I wasn't making an argument for retreat and decentralization but linking to what Chris said just a way to engage as many communities as possible into an overall goal setting process for this work. Another question from Twitter that's sort of a follow up to a variety of the comments that have been made so far so far this panel has sort of taken the position it seems that doing science policy really hasn't fundamentally changed under the Trump administration is that a correct understanding? I mean we all we all talked about that under any administration things change under any different congress things change but and of course there are different different priorities I mean you can compare the CP priorities memo that came out in 2017 to the last one that came out from the Obama administration and you'll see they're actually really similar and certain sentences might actually be the same and so while there might be large areas of shifting focus it's not as dramatic I think as the news would like to would like to make it seem like it is I mean I remember we got calls there's all these stories about the office of science within OSTP is empty and that means OSTP is no longer in existence like that's not true that you know it's there are still people there you know so it is definitely changed but it should have changed and it you know and it did yeah I'll leave it for that and then maybe we'll pick back up well I'll just say you know that I seem to be challenging the premise of questions a lot today fundamental to that question is an assumption that the science and technology the science and technology policy enterprise is static and that's just not true I hope that that's at least something we didn't have an AI project I hope that's at least something that we've communicated here it's just like LEDs getting diodes the problem is you're going to go back to DC and start spelling out all that why are you talking so much I don't know so situation normal of science policy is evolution it is change I don't care who won the White House this time around science policy should have changed from one administration to the next science policy changed from the first Obama term to the second Obama term that's how it's supposed to work change the society and especially in our understanding of how science and technology impacts our daily lives that's changing at a much more rapid rate I think than it was for my parents and certainly more than it was for their parents change is our new normal and we have to stop being afraid of that yep I'm just literally going to echo what you said right I mean science changes, tech changes, society's change and priorities of leadership change and I mean all these comments from today are focused on science and technology policy under the current yeah okay well we're at 5.30 so we'll go ahead and wrap up so please join me in thanking our speakers