Most conservatives, asserted William A. Galston in his 28 August Wall Street Journal column, 'believe that economically significant new ideas originate in the private sector'—and that government should stay out of the way. But the real story, he argued, 'is more complex and surprising.'
At the WSJ, Galston, a former Clinton administration official, writes for a generally conservative opinion page. In recent columns at the more liberal Washington Post, conservatives Michael Gerson and George F. Will seem to agree with him about crucial federal support for science.
Gerson, the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush and author of a book called Heroic Conservatism , recently published a column praising, and explaining in much technical detail, an effort at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a malaria vaccine. Will recently predicted that a half-century from now, what 'might seem most consequential' from the Obama administration will be the president's NIH initiative to study the brain. Will praised and explained it as a research enterprise likely to yield practical applications across biomedicine.
Another recent Will column advised that to 'see the federal government at its best, and sequester-driven spending cuts at their worst, visit the 322 acres where 25,000 people work' for NIH. Like Galston, Will disputes the belief that government doesn't advance innovation and should stay out of the private sector's way. Will wrote:
In the private sector, where investors expect a quick turnaround, it is difficult to find dollars for a 10-year program. The public sector, however, with its different time horizon, can fund for the long term, thereby drawing young scientists into career trajectories and collaborations impossible elsewhere.
Galston, citing a study that tracked trends over decades, similarly argued, 'Without the research conducted in federal labs and universities (much of it federally funded), commercial innovation would have been far less robust.' But on the question of federal involvement not just in innovation, but directly in the innovation marketplace, Will differs fundamentally from Galston, whose column carried the headline 'Government is a good venture capitalist.'
The conservative Will believes that government is a poor venture capitalist. Without actually mentioning the name Solyndra, he wrote:
Unfortunately, recent government behavior has damaged the cause of basic science. It has blurred the distinction between fundamental research and technical refinements (often of 19th-century technologies—faster trains, better batteries, longer-lasting light bulbs). It has sown confusion about the difference between supporting scientific research and practicing industrial policy with subsidies—often incompetently and sometimes corruptly dispensed—for private corporations oriented to existing markets rather than unimagined applications.
Galston doesn't buy that. He stipulated that conservatives 'who aren't reflexively antigovernment can accept that government-sponsored basic research contributes to innovation-driven growth.' But he lamented that 'they (and many liberals) are unwilling to go further.' He quoted economist Lawrence Summers's belief that government is a 'crappy venture capitalist.' Then Galston invoked the work of an economist, Mariana Mazzucato, that 'suggests a more expansive understanding.'
Mazzucato is R. M. Phillips Professor in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex, UK. She is known for, among other things, speaking at a recent TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, where she attributed 'the technology behind the iPhone, or Google' to the US government, which 'has been very interventionist in funding innovation.' Galston declared that Mazzucato shows that federal efforts 'have provided 20% to 25% of total funding for early-stage technology companies, far more than the amount invested by private venture capital' and that federal programs 'have spearheaded the creation of entirely new economic sectors.'
He quoted her: 'Not only has government funded the riskiest research, whether applied or basic, but it has indeed often been the source of the most radical, pathbreaking types of innovation. To this extent it has actively created markets, not just fixed them.' And he reports that she 'has a theory to explain why this is so':
In the 1920s, University of Chicago economist Frank Knight made a seminal distinction between risk (where the probability of possible outcomes is known) and uncertainty, where these probabilities are not and cannot be known. When an action or situation is 'in a high degree unique,' Knight said, decision makers face uncertainty rather than risk. That is the difference between investing in innovation and betting on roulette. According to Ms. Mazzucato, private capital tends to be averse to making commitments when the odds of success cannot be assessed, opening an innovation gap that only entrepreneurial government can fill.
Galston closes by acknowledging that counterarguments will need fair assessment, and, in effect, by agreeing with Will about science and sequestration:
Every U.S. government program that has contributed to innovation during the past half-century is subject to the budget sequester. We're not even eating our seed corn; we're throwing it away. Whatever rational economic policy may be, this isn't it.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
