In a speech last February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, John Marburger, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, defended the significant tilt toward the life sciences in federal science funding. Science was within reach of a “frontier of complexity” that “creates far more opportunities in the life sciences,” he said. “Given the new atomic-level capabilities [of biological research], the life sciences may still be underfunded relative to the physical sciences,” he concluded.
Yet there was concern both in the physical sciences community and on Capitol Hill over the disparity in the distribution of federal research dollars. A House Science Committee summary of President Bush’s proposed fiscal year 2003 R&D budget noted that, although NIH would receive a 17% increase, “all other civilian R&D is collectively frozen.” (See Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 55 4 2002...
