NSTC Federal Policy Review

**PRIORITIES FOR FEDERAL INNOVATION REFORM**

**Issues Paper Submission**

**INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION AND SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY:**

# The Impact of Restrictions on Scientific Exchange

**Submitting Organization: International Affairs, The American Physical
Society (Irving A. Lerch, Director)**

**Contributing Organizations: American Association for the Advancement
of Science Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility (Irving A.
Lerch, Chair); Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program (Mark
S. Frankel, Director); and Science and Human Rights Program** **(Audrey
Chapman, Director)**

**Contact Information: Irving A. Lerch**

**The American Physical Society**

**One Physics Ellipse**

**College Park, MD 20740-3844**

**Telephone: (301) 209-3236**

**Fax: (301) 209-0865**

**Email:**

**[This draft has non been approved by either AAAS or
APS.]{.underline}**

***[Issue Statement]{.underline}***

In his recent editorial in ***Science***, Philip H. Abelson questioned
the future of U.S. technology leadership.[^1] He cited the March 1999
report of the Council on Competiveness which led him to conclude:
"Prospects for a future adequate U.S. R&D labor force seem poor.
Graduate school populations in engineering and the physical sciences are
static or declining. A large number of graduate students are foreign
nationals and an increasing proportion of them are returning to their
home countries after completing their studies. Meanwhile, less than half
of the U.S. alumni are employed in technological fields. The Innovation
Index provides evidence that the United States may be living off assets
that have not been adequately renewed (indeed, U.S. investment in the
fundamentals of innovative capacity reached a peak in 1985)."[^2]

That the U.S. domestic science and technology enterprise has become
increasingly dependent upon international recruitment and cooperation is
self-evident. Fully 25% of doctorates granted in the natural sciences,
32% in mathematics and computer sciences, and 33% in engineering were
granted to foreign nationals in 1995.[^3] At the same time, the
percentage of foreign educated and foreign born scientists making
exceptional contributions in the life and physical sciences in the U.S.
is growing. Sharon Levin and Paula Stephan report: "We find that,
although there is some variation by discipline, individuals making
exceptional contributions to S&E \[Science and Engineering\] in the
United States are disproportionately drawn from the foreign born. \...
Our research shows that the United States has benefitted from the inflow
of foreign-born talent and that this talent was more likely to have been
educated abroad than one would have predicted given the incidence of
foreign-educated scientists and engineers in the population. \... the
United States has benefitted from the educational investments made by
other countries \..."[^4]

In addition to the recruitment of foreign students and specialists,
international scientific collaborations are increasing. Cooperative
research programs in high-energy physics, astronomy and astrophysics,
global climate change, biodiversity, infectious diseases, human genome
and other projects requiring the sharing of major research facilities or
the gathering of information on a global scale, has become a significant
factor in our domestic research budget.

The 1997 Rand Corporation Study by C.S. Wagner reports that in fy '95,
U.S. Government support for international cooperation and development
exceeded \$3.3 billion.[^5] This constituted almost 4.5 percent of the
total annual federal research and development budget. Four reasons were
given to justify these expenditures:

*** scale of equipment or investment is large***

*** project is global***

*** unique expertise is located elsewhere***

*** mission of funding agency is to support international
cooperation***

To this list we must add another factor which we will address in the
next section:

***There is substantial, enhanced productivity derived from
self-organized collaborations.***

Setting aside NASA (and the international space station), most of the
funds are contributed by DoD, US AID, NSF and DoE (this would be
rearranged today if we account for the DoE and NSF contributions to the
CERN Large Hadron Collider project). The disciplines being supported
(excluding the international space station) are dominated by the
geological sciences, physics, biomedicine, materials research and
engineering--all vital areas to our national interest. But while the
study develops a framework for assessing the impact on national
priorities in science and technology, it does not answer the question of
whether the return on investment is warranted. The largest
investments--excluding the space program--are in support of programs
directly related to our national security.

***In sum, the domestic science enterprise is dependent upon an
international intellectual commerce. The health of the domestic
enterprise is mirrored in the health of international science. U.S.
Science is increasingly being integrated into the global network and the
ability of U.S. scientists to participate and contribute in this global
regime is dependent upon the nation's ability to develop, maintain and
support international cooperation and recruitment. [Therefore, policies
and procedures which impede scientific exchange, can (and do) damage
U.S. interests.]{.underline}***

***[Scientific Productivity as a Function of
Collaboration]{.underline}***

It is very difficult to quantitatively assess the gains to a scientific
project from collaboration. Not all individuals or groups are capable of
making unique contributions. What is required is an objective measure of
the costs and benefits to a complex program associated with the addition
of partners. How we measure scientific productivity is not altogether
clear. In some cases, it may be the achievement of a single engineering
feat such as the design, development and fabrication of a research
instrument. Another measure may be the frequency and quality of new
information added to a field. Such measures exist otherwise it would be
impossible for the "Republic of Science" to advance science on the basis
of community standards and critical review by scientists.

In a recent study of organizational complexity, Barbara Drossel of the
University of Manchester invoked a model for productivity dependent upon
the numbers of partners in a group and impediments to communication.[^6]
Drossel assumes that group productivity per number of cooperating
individuals increases as a function of group size but is depreciated by
the costs of maintaining connectivity within the group. This yields a
very simple model where the productivity gain of a group per member is
proportional to the numbers of members and is reduced by the square of
the numbers of members. So long as the cost of maintaining the group is
very much smaller than the costs of communication, group productivity
will climb as members are added, eventually reaching a peak and plunging
negative as more and more of the group's resources go into maintenance
activities.

As the cost of maintaining the group decreases from 5% to 9% of the
productivity gain parameter, the maximum group productivity declines by
a factor of 3 and the optimum group size declines from 14 to about half
this number. We can generalize this model to examine the combination of
groups to form larger collaborations of "supergroups." Using this model
to examine the behavior of interacting groups we find that
collaborations provide enormous increases in productivity. Simulating a
collaboration between a larger, well-funded research group with a
smaller, less-efficient and less-well-funded group, over a broad range
of the smaller group's productivity and connectivity parameters, the
putative gains in productivity of the full collaboration can still be
impressively large. In fact, calculations for larger numbers of
collaborating groups imply that rather large gains can be achieved for
modest investments to bring these groups together.[^7]

This model may be further generalized to higher-order collaborations of
groups of supergroups. Thus, research groups, institutional
collaborations and regional intergovernmental organizations may be
examined.

One important example of a jeopardized international partnership among
many is the high-energy physics D0 collaboration formed in 1983 to
conduct experimental research using the Fermi National Laboratory
Tevatron antiproton-proton collider. The collaboration consists of 450
scientists from over 60 institutions involving 15 countries, including
many on the "sensitive countries list." In May, 1998, when the Indian
government conducted nuclear tests, the subsequent invocation of the
provisions of the Glenn Amendment resulted in the virtual elimination of
the Indian team from the collaboration. Despite the modest investments
by the Indian government to the project (\$500,000 in equipment plus
some travel and maintenance costs for their scientists) the loss of
their Indian partners greatly distressed the management of the
collaboration since many aspects of the \$100 million U.S. investment
will suffer. And it is not clear that the implementation of the law
targets the correct institutions or is strictly merited.

***The assumption that small, inefficient research groups add little to
a large international cooperative project is probably wrong. The advent
of telecommunications technology has profoundly changed international
collaborations by facilitating the exchange of data, information and
expertise. There is every reason to expect that the overall efficiency
of distributed collaborations will become the norm and that scientific
productivity will be enhanced. In fact, future collaborations of a size
characteristic of large high-energy physics projects will probably
appear with increasing frequency.*** ***[It is therefore imperative that
government policies and laws which can depreciate or impede large
international collaborations be subject to review to diminish the
possibility that automatic implementation of policies will not
inadvertently do more damage than good.]{.underline}***

***[The U.S. Scientific Community and the National
Interest]{.underline}***

At present, a pyramiding array of government regulations, laws and
advisories designed to regulate the flow of material and information in
the national interest, also serves to impair the conduct of
international scientific exchange. For the most part, the scientific
community has no say in the formulation and implementation of these
proscriptions inhibiting scientific commerce. This is not true for
industry which may appeal export restrictions to the Department of
Commerce, for example.

Thus, the granting of visitors visas may be denied for economic or
technology transfer reasons without recourse--neither by the applicant
nor the U.S. scientists hosting the meeting or proffering the
invitation. Time and again, learned and professional societies,
universities, technology industries and even government laboratories
have been frustrated in their efforts to secure the expertise and
creativity of foreign colleagues.

Nonetheless, the nation remains dependent upon a system of open exchange
to sustain a progressive, advanced research program.

The growing list of sensitive countries, technologies and export
controls has bogged down a review system with neither the expertise nor
resources to handle visa applications with dispatch or fairness.

***We therefore encourage the administration and Congress to develop an
executive review mechanism to monitor impediments to international
scientific collaborations and exchange.***

***[We recommend the establishment of a review panel to assess the
impact of travel restrictions within the context of the national
interest. There should be a strong association between the U.S.
scientific community and its international associates but moderated by
the understanding that no U.S. scientist will take lightly his or her
responsibilities to national security. Agency decisions should be
subject to the oversight of this panel and decisions referred back to
the agency with additional information where appropriate. In extreme
cases, the panel should have the authority to appeal directly to the
appropriate cabinet secretary or agency head.]{.underline}***

[^1]: Philip H. Abelson, "Future of U.S. Technology Leadership?"
    Editorial, ***Science,* Vol 285,** 27 August 1999, p 1353.

[^2]: Michael E. Porter and Scott Stern, "The New Challenge to America's
    Prosperity: Findings from the Innovation Index," Report of the
    Council on Competitiveness, March, 1999, see http://www.compete.org.

[^3]: See figure 3-13: National Science Foundation, "Science &
    Engineering Indicators--1998\"

[^4]: Sharon G. Levin and Paula E. Stephan, "Are the Foreign Born a
    Source of Strength for U.S. Science?" Policy Forum, ***Science,* Vol
    285**, 20 August 1999, pp 1213-14.

[^5]: C.S. Wagner, "International Cooperation in Research and
    Development: and Inventory of U.S. Government Spending and a
    Framework for Measuring Benefits."
    http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR900/MR900web/MR900.pref.html.

[^6]: Barbara Drossel, "Simple Model for the Formation of a Complex
    Organism," ***Physical Review Letters, vol. 82***, 21 June, 1999, pp
    5144-47.

[^7]: Irving A. Lerch, "Organizing International Scientific
    Collaborations: A Simple Analysis of Telecommunities," being
    prepared for presentation at the workshop on, "Building the Virtual
    'House of Salomon': Digital Collaboration Technologies, the
    Organization of Scientific Work and Economics of Knowledge Access,"
    IIASA, Laxenburg (Austria), 3-5 December, 1999.