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	<title> - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PART II: FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR SCIENCE</title>
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	[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
	[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


	NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PART II:
	FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND
	CHALLENGES FOR SCIENCE

	=======================================================================

	HEARING

	BEFORE THE

	SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

	COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

	ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

	FIRST SESSION

	__________

	MARCH 21, 2017

	__________

	Serial No. 115-08

	__________

	Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology


	[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



	Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov



	__________


	U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
	24-672 PDF WASHINGTON : 2017

	----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
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	COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

	HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
	FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
	DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
	MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
	RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
	BILL POSEY, Florida ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
	THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky AMI BERA, California
	JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
	RANDY K. WEBER, Texas MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
	STEPHEN KNIGHT, California DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
	BRIAN BABIN, Texas JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
	BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia JERRY MCNERNEY, California
	GARY PALMER, Alabama ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
	BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia PAUL TONKO, New York
	RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana BILL FOSTER, Illinois
	DRAIN LaHOOD, Illinois MARK TAKANO, California
	DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
	JIM BANKS, Indiana CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
	ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
	ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
	NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
	CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
	------

	Subcommittee on Research and Technology

	HON. BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia, Chair
	FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
	RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
	STEPHEN KNIGHT, California JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
	DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
	RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana AMI BERA, California
	DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
	JIM BANKS, Indiana EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
	ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
	LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
	C O N T E N T S

	March 21, 2017

	Page
	Witness List..................................................... 2

	Hearing Charter.................................................. 3

	Opening Statements

	Statement by Representative Barbara Comstock, Chairwoman,
	Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
	Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 4
	Written Statement............................................ 6

	Statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Member,
	Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
	Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 8
	Written Statement............................................ 11

	Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
	Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
	of Representatives............................................. 15
	Written Statement............................................ 17

	Witnesses

	Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy, Acting Chief Operating Officer, National
	Science Foundation (NSF)
	Oral Statement............................................... 19
	Written Statement............................................ 22

	Dr. Maria Zuber, Chair, National Science Board
	Oral Statement............................................... 32
	Written Statement............................................ 34

	Dr. Jeffrey Spies, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer,
	Center for Open Science and Assistant Professor, University of
	Virginia
	Oral Statement............................................... 42
	Written Statement............................................ 44

	Dr. Keith Yamamoto, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and
	Strategy, University of California, San Francisco
	Oral Statement............................................... 52
	Written Statement............................................ 54

	Discussion....................................................... 63


	Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record

	Statement submitted by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman,
	Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
	Representatives................................................ 82

	Document submitted by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking
	Member, Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on
	Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 85


	NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PART II:
	FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR SCIENCE

	----------


	TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017

	House of Representatives,
	Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
	Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
	Washington, D.C.

	The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
	Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barbara
	Comstock [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. The Committee on Science, Space, and
	Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is
	authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
	Good morning and welcome to today's hearing entitled National
	Science Foundation Part II: Future Opportunities and Challenges
	for Science. I now recognize myself for five minutes for an
	opening statement.
	For nearly 70 years, the National Science Foundation has
	served a mission that made the United States a world leader in
	science and innovation. The key question before us today: How
	can NSF keep us and continue to keep us at the forefront of
	science and innovation for the next 70 Years?
	Today we will hear perspectives on how NSF can meet the
	challenges and opportunities of the future and ideas for ways
	that NSF can improve.
	We will examine particular challenges such as setting
	priorities during a time of budgetary constraints, and ensuring
	that all taxpayer-funded research is high quality,
	reproducible, and conducted with integrity.
	We will also look at the vast opportunities created by
	technology, which allows science to be more accessible and has
	created more data than ever before. I look forward to hearing
	how we can make science more open and harness that data to
	solve real-world problems.
	There are also great opportunities for innovation where
	science disciplines intersect. How can we encourage more
	transdisciplinary approaches to solving some of our toughest
	challenges, from cybersecurity to traumatic brain injuries or
	Alzheimer's, diabetes, and so many more issues that we know
	you're addressing and that we've addressed here in the
	Committee and elsewhere throughout Congress. But the best
	breakthroughs come when we break down those silos.
	Finally, we have a great opportunity and challenge to
	develop a new generation of STEM workers. A study by Georgetown
	projects 2.4 million job openings in STEM through 2018, where
	Virginia will lead the nation with 8.2 percent of its jobs
	being STEM related.
	By 2018, there are projections that Virginia will need to
	fill 404,000 STEM jobs. These are good paying jobs, and we need
	to prepare students to fill them. And I'm happy to say that we
	have a Dominion student here from Virginia today at our hearing
	who is shadowing us here today to hear from our great
	witnesses.
	So this is the second of two hearings the Research and
	Technology Subcommittee is holding on the National Science
	Foundation, NSF, this month, to provide input into a
	reauthorization of NSF later this year. The first hearing held
	on March 9 with Director France Cordova covered issues
	addressed in the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act,
	including accountability and transparency, large facility
	construction management reform, research misconduct, and STEM
	education coordination. I should actually emphasize it with
	preventing the research misconduct there where we're addressing
	that.
	The AICA, signed into law in January, demonstrates that
	there is a strong bipartisan commitment on both sides of the
	aisle to the mission of NSF and to supporting basic and
	fundamental research.
	I hope this Committee can continue to work together on
	making sure we maintain our nation's leadership in science.
	Innovation is about seeking new methods, new ideas, and new
	breakthroughs. We want to make sure that the way we fund,
	support, and conduct science is as innovative as the research
	it produces.
	And with that, I look forward to hearing the testimony of
	our guests.
	[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Comstock follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. And I now recognize the Ranking
	Member, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, for his
	opening statement.
	Mr. Lipinski. Good morning. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock,
	for holding this hearing on the future opportunities and
	challenges for science. I also want to thank our panel for
	being here this morning to inform our discussion on the
	important issues facing the U.S. scientific community.
	As a scientist, I chose to be on the Science Committee, and
	this Subcommittee in particular, because of the key role I
	would be able to play with my colleagues in promoting and
	overseeing the National Science Foundation, the world's
	foremost facilitator of top-quality scientific research. As
	Chair and now Ranking Member of this Subcommittee for more than
	eight years, I am proud to--proud of what I have been able to
	help the Foundation--how I've been able to help the Foundation
	fulfill its critical mission.
	All of us in this room want to maximize the benefits that
	we can reap from federal investments in science, but we
	sometimes differ on the best way to do this. Some believe that
	federal investments in particular fields of research are a
	frivolous use of taxpayer dollars and that funding for these
	projects would be better utilized in other areas of research. I
	believe that there is unambiguous evidence to the contrary and
	that NSF investments across all fields of science and
	engineering have yielded tremendous societal benefits over the
	past 70 years.
	I want to say a few words about a primary target for some
	criticism: research funded through the NSF's Social,
	Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, or SBE Directorate. I have
	heard the argument that, in the wake of proposed cuts to the
	SBE directorate, if social and behavioral science research adds
	value to an interdisciplinary initiative--cybersecurity, for
	example--the other NSF directorates participating in the
	initiative could fund the SBE element of the project. There are
	a number of problems with this approach.
	First, program officers face strong competition for
	research funding within their own directorates and are thus
	very reluctant to divert funding from their own field to
	researchers in another field.
	Second, NSF currently only supports the highest quality SBE
	research, guided by the expertise of the scientists in the SBE
	directorate, many of them supported directly by the SBE budget.
	If SBE research were to be supported only as an add-on to other
	projects, the quality of the research would inevitably suffer.
	And an engineering program officer, no matter how good they are
	in their field, cannot be expected to have the expertise to
	assess the social science component of a proposal.
	I also want to point out that SBE funding accounts for only
	4.5 percent of the total NSF research budget, or $272 million
	out of over $6 billion.
	When I was a political scientist, I was one of the
	strongest proponents of interdisciplinary research. I believed
	that fields of study were oftentimes too siloed. But I also
	understood that groundbreaking interdisciplinary research
	required that those involved in that research needed to bring
	the best expertise in their own fields to the table. If SBE
	funding is gutted, progress in the social sciences will slow
	and its community of experts will shrink along with its
	capacity to add value to other research initiatives. As a
	result, in the long term, America's capabilities in
	cybersecurity, medicine, military planning, disaster
	preparedness and aid, and countless other fields will suffer.
	For interdisciplinary research to be transformative, the core
	research it draws from must be strong.
	The evidence bears out that unfettered research driven by
	key questions and approaches within a discipline that is
	carried out across all fields of science and engineering serves
	as the best foundation for discoveries and technological
	innovations. This is the philosophy the NSF has followed, and
	it has produced outstanding benefits for our economic and
	national security.
	Perhaps more important, it is that unfettered ability to
	pursue the best and most compelling ideas that attracts and
	nurtures our nation's and the world's greatest scientific
	talent and keeps them here on our own shores, contributing to
	our nation and developing the next generation of American STEM
	talent. If we start to suffer the brain drain that other
	countries such as the UK and Germany suffered in decades past,
	we may never fully recover.
	We can all agree that we want to maximize the return on
	federal investment in science, and there are ways of doing this
	that we can agree on. It is important to ensure that research
	is reproducible and conducted with integrity. We can make
	certain that data obtained from federally funded research is
	made available to other scientists and to the public. And we
	can encourage interdisciplinary collaboration while maintaining
	support for core research. WhileCongress should set priorities
	for our investments in science, it does not have to be at the
	expense of scientific inquiry or the viability of entire
	research disciplines.
	Madam Chairwoman, before I yield back, I want to ask
	unanimous consent to put in the record a document that majority
	and minority staff received yesterday from the NSF Inspector
	General, Allison Lerner, in regard to the number of incidents
	of research misconduct over the past 12 years.
	Chairwoman Comstock. So directed.
	Mr. Lipinski. And if the Chairwoman----
	Chairwoman Comstock. Without objection.
	[The information appears in Appendix II]
	Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. And if--allow me to go on another
	minute?
	Chairwoman Comstock. Sure.
	Mr. Lipinski. I just want to talk a little bit about this,
	what I just inserted for the record. In her testimony before
	the Committee two weeks ago, Ms. Lerner stated that there were
	175 cases of research misconduct reported in the OIG semi-
	annual reports over the last four years. Immediately after the
	hearing, she notified the staff that she had erred in her
	testimony and there were only 75. At the same hearing, she
	testified that there had been a significant increase in the
	number of substantial allegations of research misconduct in
	recent years. Committee staff followed up the same day by
	asking her for the data, and yesterday she shared a 12-year
	history of allegations, investigations, and findings of
	research misconduct at NSF.
	When you look at the data, you will notice two striking
	things. First, it would be very hard to discern any clear trend
	over the last decade, let alone a significant increase. Second,
	looking just at fabrication and falsification, which are
	arguably much worse than plagiarism, and what the IG claims to
	have been referring to her in testimony, you will see an
	average of 12 OIG investigations per year for the past 12
	years, 15 cases per year if you look just in the last five
	years. When it comes to actual agency findings of misconduct,
	the average is 2.6 per year over 12 years and 3.2 over the last
	five years. It is important to point out that these numbers
	apply to all NSF proposals, not just funded grants. NSF
	receives 50,000 grant proposals per year. Fifteen cases of
	substantive allegations of research misconduct represents 0.03
	percent of all of those proposals; 3.2 findings of research
	misconduct per year represents .0064 percent of all proposals.
	Research misconduct is a very serious issue, but I think it is
	important to keep these numbers in mind.
	I look forward to discussing all of these issues. I thank
	all of the witnesses for being here today, and I yield back.
	Thank you.
	[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And Chairman Smith has a
	schedule conflict this morning, so we have a statement for the
	record to submit on his behalf.
	[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith appears in
	Appendix II]
	Chairwoman Comstock. And I now recognize the Ranking Member
	of the Full Committee for a statement. Ms. Johnson?
	Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, and good morning. I want
	to thank the Chairwoman and Ranking Member Lipinski for holding
	this hearing, and welcome to our very distinguished panel of
	witnesses.
	I believe that the stated purpose of this hearing is
	something we can all support. The process for setting research
	priorities at the National Science Foundation has always been a
	combination of science-driven and policy-driven, or bottom-up
	and top-down. The Congress does have a role to play.
	Reproducibility is a well-documented challenge across all
	STEM fields and one for which this Committee can help promote
	progress. Research misconduct is the rare exception.
	Nevertheless, we should remain vigilant and promote good
	policies, including education and training, to minimize
	misconduct everywhere.
	I strongly support open science and data sharing. For the
	last two Congresses I cosponsored the Public Access to Public
	Science Act with Representative Sensenbrenner. To this date we
	have been unable to convince the Chairman to take it up in a
	Committee. I hope that we will continue to look forward to
	considering it. Along with every other Science Committee
	Democrat, I also cosponsored with Representative Tonko's
	Scientific Integrity Act that promotes open science and data
	sharing while protecting privacy and confidentiality. I
	encourage the Chairman to take that bill up as well.
	However, data sharing is never as simple as it sounds, and
	our witnesses will help shed some light on the complexity.
	While the core STEM disciplines remain essential, many
	scientific frontiers are at the boundaries between disciplines.
	We must continue to look for policies and funding incentives to
	promote transdisciplinary research. National Science Foundation
	has come a long way just in the last decade. However, unhelpful
	stovepipes between disciplines remain, especially at our
	research institutions. Finally, there are few topics that I am
	more passionate about than developing a new generation of STEM
	workers. On all of these topics, I have no doubt that the
	experts sitting before us today have many wise recommendations
	based on many decades of collective experience. Those of us
	sitting on this side of the dais would be most wise to heed
	their recommendations.
	For example, I am quite confident that none of these
	witnesses will endorse slashing funding for the geosciences or
	social and behavioral sciences in order to increase funding for
	other fields. I also doubt that any of these witnesses confuse
	research reproducibility with research misconduct, yet I often
	hear the rare cases of misconduct being used as a sledgehammer
	to impugn scientists broadly.
	We can set priorities and develop good science policies
	without stifling scientific inquiry or shutting down entire
	fields of research. If we truly care about developing a new
	generation of STEM workers, if we truly care about our nation's
	economic and national security, and if we truly care about the
	well-being of our children and grandchildren, we will listen to
	the experts before us today and the many other scientific
	leaders who have so thoughtfully developed recommendations for
	the future of the National Science Foundation and U.S.
	leadership in science and technology.
	I so look forward to the testimony from our panelists
	today, and I thank you, Madam Chair, and yield back.
	[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I'll now introduce our
	witnesses. Our first witness today is Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy,
	Acting Chief Operating Officer of the National Science
	Foundation.
	Prior to this role she served as Assistant Director of the
	NSF for Education and Human Resources since February 2011 and
	has been at NSF in various capacities since 2007. From 1999 to
	2011 she held an appointment at Michigan State University where
	she was a University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics
	Education. She was elected a fellow of the American Association
	for the Advancement of Science in 2011. Dr. Ferrini-Mundy holds
	a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of New
	Hampshire, and she is a resident of the 10th District in
	Chantilly. We welcome you here today.
	Dr. Maria Zuber, our second witness, is Chair of the
	National Science Board. In 2013, Dr. Zuber was appointed Vice
	President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of
	Technology where she oversees more than a dozen
	interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers. Dr. Zuber
	was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in
	2004, and in 2008 she was named to the U.S. News list of
	America's Best Leaders. She received a Bachelor of Arts in
	Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a
	Master of Science and Ph.D., both in Geophysics from Brown
	University.
	Dr. Jeffrey Spies is our third witness, and he is the Co-
	Founder and Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Open
	Science and Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia.
	Dr. Spies was recently named the Association for Psychological
	Science Rising Star for early career scientists whose work has
	already advanced the field and signals great potential for
	continued contributions. He completed his undergraduate work at
	the University of Notre Dame where he also earned his Master's
	Degree in Psychology and Computer Science. He also holds a
	Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from the University of
	Virginia.
	Dr. Keith Yamamoto is our fourth witness, and he is the
	Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy at the
	University of California, San Francisco, where he joined the
	faculty in 1976. He chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences
	and sits on the National Academy of Medicine's Executive
	Committee, the National Academy of Sciences, Division of Earth
	and Life Studies' Advisory Committee, and the Executive
	Committee of Research America. He is also an elected member of
	the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the
	American Association for the Advancement of Science. He
	received a Bachelor of Science from Iowa State University and a
	Ph.D. from Princeton University.
	I now recognize Dr. Ferrini-Mundy for five minutes to
	present her testimony.

	TESTIMONY OF DR. JOAN FERRINI-MUNDY,

	ACTING CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER,

	NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF)

	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thank you. Good morning Ranking Member
	Johnson, Chairwoman Comstock, Ranking Member Lipinski, and
	distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Joan
	Ferrini-Mundy, and I am the National Science Foundation's
	Acting Chief Operating Officer. Previously I served as the NSF
	Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources. Before
	coming to the National Science Foundation, I was a Professor of
	Mathematics and Education and an Administrator at Michigan
	State University.
	I appreciate the opportunity to testify as the Foundation
	celebrates nearly seven decades of funding scientific
	discoveries. The mission of NSF is to promote the progress of
	science; to advance the national health, prosperity and
	welfare; and to secure the national defense. I will highlight
	four features of NSF's approach to enacting the mission that
	have served science and the nation well since our beginnings:
	fundamental research, flexibility, partnerships, and people.
	For nearly 70 years, NSF has focused on investing in
	fundamental research across all fields of science and
	engineering. When grants for fundamental research are made, it
	is often impossible to immediately see what the direct impact
	on society will be. Yet, NSF investments have benefitted the
	lives and livelihoods of generations of Americans. NSF
	investments drive U.S. economic growth, strengthen our nation's
	security, and give the country the competitive edge we need to
	exert our global leadership.
	A second hallmark of NSF's approach is maintaining the
	flexibility to fund the very best scientific ideas from
	wherever they may come. This means having evolving mechanisms
	for investing in ideas and solutions that span existing and
	established scientific fields and lead to new ones that cross
	disciplinary boundaries and that are high risk for potential
	for high reward. Our gold standard merit review process ensures
	a fair and expert hearing for each of those ideas. Flexible
	collaborations across our disciplinary directorates ensure that
	we are able to make awards for the very most promising ideas.
	Third, I wish to highlight the centrality of partnerships
	in NSF's effectiveness. We partner across government with the
	U.S. and international scientific community and with the
	private sector.
	Through the NSF Organic Act of 1950, the Foundation is
	established as a partnership between the National Science Board
	and the National Science Foundation Director. Our nation's most
	distinguished and respected researchers prepare decadal surveys
	and synthesis reports for the National Academies of Science.
	The pool of nearly 50,000 NSF proposals received annually and
	the reviews that we obtain for them from partners in the
	scientific community provide a rich snapshot of the directions
	and trends of U.S. science and engineering. The private sector
	relies on the steady stream of basic science that fuels their
	efforts at innovation and enhances their efficiency and
	productivity.
	NSF promotes the growing emphasis on open science through
	its policies for sharing publications and managing data.
	Finally, and I know of great importance to this Subcommittee,
	are people. Government, universities, colleges, business, and
	industries all depend upon a steady supply of well-prepared
	people in science and engineering, drawing on talent from
	across the diversity of our nation. All should have the
	opportunity to be inspired by the wonders of science,
	technology, engineering, and mathematics through learning
	opportunities in K through 12 schools, community colleges,
	universities, as well as in informal, self-directed, and
	lifelong learning environments.
	NSF has a unique role to play to nurture the next
	generation of STEM talent. That generation will carry the
	mantle of discovery and innovation into the future.
	NSF looks forward to its continuing responsibility for
	advancing the frontiers of discovery, innovation, and learning.
	I thank the Subcommittee for your support of the Foundation.
	This concludes my oral testimony. More detail on the four
	points I have briefly highlighted today can be found in my
	written statement. I will be pleased to answer any questions
	that you have.
	[The prepared statement of Dr. Ferrini-Mundy follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I now recognize Dr. Zuber.

	TESTIMONY DR. MARIA ZUBER, CHAIR,

	NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD

	Dr. Zuber. Good morning. Thank you very much. Chairman
	Comstock, Ranking Member Lipinski, and Members of the
	Subcommittee, I appreciate the chance to speak with you on
	challenges and future opportunities for science. I would also
	like to acknowledge Chairman Smith in absentia and Ranking
	Member Johnson.
	In 1945, after radar and the atomic bomb changed the course
	of World War II, Vannevar Bush outlined a vision for the
	future. In Science, the Endless Frontier, he wrote, scientific
	progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to
	our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of
	living, and to our cultural progress. Bush's vision resulted in
	the National Science Foundation.
	For nearly 70 years, NSF has trained scientists and
	catalyzed discoveries in all fields of science and engineering.
	Our unwavering commitment to promoting the progress of science
	has opened new windows on the universe, made possible new
	industries, and improved the lives of all Americans.
	NSF investments have given us the internet, touchscreen
	technologies, and better natural disaster warning systems.
	These discoveries have put millions of Americans to work and
	improved our nation's prosperity and security.
	The question before us is will the world's richest, most-
	powerful nation continue to invest in our future? Do we still
	want to be the first to know, to understand, to discover, to
	invent? The Board is fully aware of these challenges: budget
	constraints, questions about priorities in the role of
	government, and of course, growing competition. Our government
	plays a unique role as a supporter of basic research. The
	private sector will not, cannot, invest large sums in open
	questions for 20-plus years as we did for the LIGO
	gravitational wave detector, for example.
	The discoveries of the past 70 years were made possible by
	Congress, presidential administrations, and the research
	community working together with a common purpose. We cannot
	allow today's challenges to unravel the partnerships that have
	supported NSF's core mission and benefitted our country.
	I offer three suggestions for how to move ahead. First,
	maintain the Federal Government's unique investment in
	discovery research across all fields of science and
	engineering. Second, prepare a STEM-capable workforce so that
	all Americans can participate in and benefit from scientific
	progress. And third, for the research community, maintain the
	trust and confidence of the American public.
	One of the Board's key responsibilities is to help NSF
	realize its vision. The Foundation must continue to push the
	frontiers of science investing wisely without fear of failure.
	This means in part identifying and setting priorities that will
	serve our long-term national interest. NSF has not picked
	winners and losers or determined in advance what discoveries
	will emerge in a project or even a field of science. Instead,
	NSF must continue to take advantage of the creativity and
	ingenuity of the best minds in America to drive science
	progress and let discovery be our guide.
	While the education and training of scientists and
	engineers remains at the heart of NSF's mission, to secure our
	future, we need a STEM-capable U.S. workforce at all
	educational levels. On the farm, the factory floor, the
	laboratory, and everywhere in between, workers are using STEM
	capabilities to innovate, adapt, install, and debug. This
	workforce must include women, underrepresented minorities, and
	blue-collar workers who have been hard-hit by automation and
	globalization.
	NSF is realizing this future through its unique integration
	of basic research and education and through its investments in
	fundamental research into STEM. Investing in people not only
	ensures that all Americans have the tools to thrive but it also
	guarantees that U.S. businesses will have the talent necessary
	to compete in a global economy.
	Finally, the scientific community must do its part. We must
	be champions of transparency. Our processes, institutions, and
	the conduct of research itself must be unassailable. We must
	work together to stamp out fraud, be forthright about the
	limits of our knowledge, and hold ourselves to our highest
	ideals. We must publish our data and describe our methods
	clearly so our peers can critique our results. For NSF, this
	means ensuring the integrity of merit review, advancing the
	best ideas, and promoting the progress of science in a way that
	is transparent, accountable, and can be understood and
	appreciated by taxpayers.
	As this Committee has recognized throughout its history,
	promoting the progress of science is essential to America's
	future. We look forward to working with you toward a
	reauthorization of NSF that empowers the nation's scientists to
	explore those endless frontiers. Thank you.
	[The prepared statement of Dr. Zuber follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you, Dr. Zuber. Now we'll hear
	from Dr. Spies.

	TESTIMONY OF DR. JEFFREY SPIES,

	CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER,

	CENTER FOR OPEN SCIENCE AND

	ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

	Dr. Spies. Chairwoman Comstock, Ranking Member Lipinski,
	Ranking Member Johnson, other Members of the Subcommittee,
	thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.
	I'm the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of the
	Center for Open Science, a non-profit technology company
	missioned to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility
	of scholarly research.
	NSF has had a tremendous record of success by trusting
	sound scientific process. My recommendations today are in
	service of making an already-efficient process work better. To
	be clear, the issues that I will describe are not the same as
	headline-grabbing cases of fraud or misconduct, which are
	relatively rare. Science doesn't have an honesty problem. It
	has a communication problem.
	Scientific results gain credibility by demonstrating that
	evidence can be independently reproduced. This means that
	someone else can obtain similar evidence with the same data or
	with the same methodology. Reproducibility requires that the
	process used to obtain a result is described in sufficient
	detail. But science is complex. Brief descriptions of
	scientific papers cannot provide enough detail to capture the
	nuance necessary to facilitate reproducibility.
	We need to fall back on two simple concepts that everyone
	learned in elementary school: show your work and share. Because
	if much of the scientific process is open as reasonably
	possible, the materials, methods, data, software analyses, then
	replication can occur more easily, more frequently, and with
	greater efficacy. Openness should be the default for scientific
	communication, but currently it is not. The reward system in
	science is built around publishing. Getting published, however,
	has very little to do with research being reproducible. It has
	to do with novel results and clean narratives. But science is
	often messy and ambiguous. And if we hide the messiness away,
	we hamper scientific progress. We need to show our work and we
	need to share.
	These same solutions can also prevent and correct those
	rare cases of misconduct. And even when we can't show all of
	our work, for example when data must be kept private, there are
	still incremental steps that can increase credibility.
	Openness has another benefit. If paired with outreach and
	education, individuals who would otherwise not be able to
	participate in science would now be able to do so. And because
	these individuals are likely to be from groups typically
	underrepresented in science, we would see greater efficiency
	not only from an increased number of contributors but from the
	benefits that diversity brings to collaboration and innovation.
	NSF has already taken steps to encourage openness. In my
	written testimony submitted for the record I detail
	recommendations to expand upon that process. These fall into
	five categories.
	First, metascience. NSF could fund investigations of
	reproducibility and reproducible practices.
	Second, infrastructure. NSF could fund technology that
	could, for example, facilitate open reproducible practices or
	enable the analysis of data that must remain private.
	Third, training. NSF could add reproducibility training to
	its research fellowships and trainingships.
	Fourth, incentives. NSF could encourage the release of
	preprints for rapid dissemination of research. It could also
	fund pilots, like registered reports, where publication and
	award are based upon the importance of the research question
	and quality of the methodology, rather than the outcome.
	And fifth, community. NSF could convene stakeholders to
	discuss and adopt guidelines that would increase the pace of
	change.
	The scientific process that continuously improves our
	current understanding of the world is itself continuously
	improving. Critique and new evidence lead towards
	understanding. When we invest in NSF, we're investing in this
	process. When we invest in openness and reproducibility, we are
	making the path towards understanding easier to navigate. This
	path leads us incrementally towards the next innovation that
	will increase the quality of life here and abroad. I would like
	to see us get there as quickly as possible, and I believe that
	an increased focus on openness and reproducibility will do just
	that.
	Thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to your
	questions.
	[The prepared statement of Dr. Spies follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. And now we will hear from Dr.
	Yamamoto.

	TESTIMONY OF DR. KEITH YAMAMOTO,

	VICE CHANCELLOR FOR SCIENCE POLICY AND STRATEGY,

	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO

	Dr. Yamamoto. I am Keith Yamamoto, Vice Chancellor for
	Science Policy and Strategy and a molecular biologist
	researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
	Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you today two
	topics important for consideration of the future of NSF. First,
	the opportunities, imperatives, and barriers to achieving
	transdisciplinary science, and second, the wisdom and perils of
	prioritizing research around scientific or societal needs and
	challenges.
	First, transdisciplinary science which is virtually a
	merger of the physical and natural sciences, engineering, and
	computation as distinct from interdisciplinary or
	multidisciplinary interaction or cooperation between distinct
	endeavors.
	Reports from the National Academy of Sciences and the
	American Academy of Arts and Sciences call for the construction
	of a computational knowledge network that detects the
	relationships between different concepts, data, and
	technologies, enabling assembly of transdisciplinary teams,
	each team member with different specialized expertise working
	together to tackle difficult, important problems.
	Importantly, the role and need for specialization is
	maintained, but a general transdisciplinary literacy would fuel
	network approaches to solving problems that are invisible or
	intractable within siloed disciplines. Transdisciplinary teams
	would elevate the risk profile of academic research and
	increase the number of spectacular, unexpected advances.
	Of the 25 or so federal agencies that currently support
	scientific research, NSF is the best situated to establish
	transdisciplinarity, thanks to Vannevar Bush who we heard about
	before who proposed creation of the NSF in his remarkable
	report, Science, the Endless Frontier.
	He proposed the NSF as the sole federal agency to support
	all U.S. basic research and education programs. It is wholly
	possible, wholly probable, he said, that progress and the
	treatment of refractory diseases will be made in subjects
	unrelated to those diseases, perhaps in chemistry or physics.
	Support of all basic research and advanced science
	education should be centered in one agency because separation
	of the sciences in more than one agency would retard scientific
	knowledge as a whole.
	While Bush lost the battle for a single basic science
	agency, today's NSF is divided into seven disciplinary
	directorates that cover much of the scientific landscape
	necessary for today's and tomorrow's research and education.
	However, bureaucratic and fiscal silo walls establish
	intellectual silos as well, inhibiting effective
	transdisciplinarity.
	To achieve transdisciplinary research and education,
	actions are needed both within and outside of NSF. Within NSF,
	I suggest creation of a new organizational layer that floats
	above the directorates and are sectored into big idea or big
	challenge research programs that cross directorate boundaries.
	The directorates would retain most of the funds to be awarded--
	let's say 90 percent--with the remainder transferred to the
	idea or challenge programs which would oversee the peer review
	process and supplement awards to transdisciplinary projects, in
	effect, returning funds to directorates that choose to co-host
	transdisciplinary teams.
	Education programs would continue to emphasize specialized
	expertise but would additionally build transdisciplinary
	literacy to motivate team-based research.
	Outside of NSF, the OSTP, for example, might be charged
	with framing a few societal grand challenges with funding to
	incentivize multiple federal agencies to develop joint programs
	to leverage their particular strengths and resources. This
	would begin to address current inefficiencies, fragmentation,
	and competition between federal agencies.
	My second topic examines prioritization of NSF research
	around scientific or societal needs and challenges. Despite
	Vannevar Bush's passionate prioritization of curiosity-driven
	basic research, careful development of NSF grand challenges, or
	big ideas, is justified by the urgency to address certain
	societal needs and by the imperatives of social justice to
	correct disparities in access to social services.
	Well-enunciated grand challenges will broaden the minds of
	those who participate and will broaden the tent to attract new
	participants. Imagination will still rule.
	The scale and scope of the challenges will determine if
	they best reside within NSF or rather merit attention and
	support across multiple agency boundaries.
	In conclusion, NSF meets its mandate to support a broad
	spectrum of basic research. However, the well-justified
	organizational boundaries that separate its directorates create
	barriers to achieving transdisciplinary science. Novel
	organizational approaches should be considered both within NSF
	and between agencies to lower those barriers.
	Finally, NSF can stay true to its mission to support basic
	discovery and even improve upon it by careful framing of
	support programs in the context of big ideas and grand
	challenges.
	This concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer
	any questions that you might have.
	[The prepared statement of Dr. Yamamoto follows:]
	[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you all. And I now recognize
	myself for five minutes.
	I appreciate the three guidelines, Dr. Zuber, that you laid
	out, maintain the investment. And I know we're not addressing
	the budget at all today but I can say for myself and probably a
	few others here, we are very interested in maintaining that
	budget. And so we are seeing discussion of cuts elsewhere. I
	think this is a very important time and very important work
	that we need to maintain that type of investment. And of
	course, the STEM-capable workforce that you mentioned is
	another important area to both create that pipeline but then
	also make sure those kids know that we are going to maintain
	the investment. So this is going to be a continued priority for
	us. And then thirdly, maintaining the trust and confidence of
	the public, which you've all addressed today.
	And so I wanted to focus a little bit on that
	transdisciplinary approach and how we are going to take
	advantage of this opportunity I think we have now where you
	have the private sector very interested in investment, you need
	to maintain the public investment, and how are we best going to
	maximize both? And I want to emphasize that anything private is
	not a substitute for the public because we still need that
	basic research, and much of the private can often be a little
	bit more risk taking. And I often hear that in talking to
	people who are interested in the private research, that they
	realize they are going to have opportunities that are a little
	riskier or a little more outside the box than by nature some of
	the public research.
	But I wanted to follow up with Dr. Yamamoto. What has been
	your experience when sort of taking outside-the-box ideas to
	the National Science Foundation and how can we make that easier
	for them? And what guidelines might be the best to adjust or
	how do we best make that work?
	Dr. Yamamoto. Right. So let me start by saying that I think
	that NSF is as an agency quite welcoming to broad-based ideas.
	But as I said, the barriers that are intrinsic to bureaucratic
	separation of directorates in this case are problematic. And my
	own experience in carrying some big transdisciplinary ideas and
	approaches to the NSF was sort of met with being handed an org
	chart of NSF and said go out and shop your idea around to the
	separate directorates. There's not a home, an intrinsic home,
	for these big kind of ideas.
	So my idea would really be to create such a home, to be
	welcoming of those kinds of approaches for every grant
	application that's made, that currently, that when they cross
	those boundaries, struggle to find a natural home and may
	struggle in peer review as well for that reason. And so I think
	that that is the kind of thing that is necessary. I might say
	that this idea of kind of programmatic focus that floats over
	the boundaries that separate disciplinary approaches is
	basically the way that we've organized the research approaches
	at UCSF where we have conventional departments like every other
	institution that are separated by these disciplinary
	approaches, and then floating over those are research programs
	that really have a big say about how resources are deployed,
	how we reach into different departments and bring together
	investigators that can merge their skills and really go after
	problems that otherwise would not be solvable or even
	detectible by individual researches.
	So this is an idea and a way that has been tested and I
	think would help to address this challenge and opportunity for
	transdisciplinarity.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And Dr. Spies, could you
	address when we have more openness and we get that, how that
	both helps the public research as well as the private and how
	that might help us maximize the value in both areas as well as
	make them more usable, data and information, and how you would
	see that working in an ideal situation.
	Dr. Spies. Yeah. I appreciate the question. In an open
	framework, we think about knowledge as a public good, and
	therefore its accessibility and the credibility that openness
	brings to it is available to anyone. Obviously we need to
	facilitate that sometimes, but that basic accessibility is
	still there.
	We've heard many examples of what has come out of the NSF
	from a basic science standpoint. So if we can increase the
	quality of that and increase the efficiency of that work, the
	work that comes out of this basic science programs, we can see
	then these end users receiving those benefits. They'll see the
	same efficiency gains. They'll see the lower risk perhaps
	because the quality would have been increased.
	Chairwoman Comstock. And maybe in terms of the community,
	is there some of the fear as you were talking about that
	everybody makes mistakes. We were talking about how we find
	problems and things. But is there sort of a cultural fear of
	having that out there instead of sort of understand, well,
	let's have a whole bigger community that's finding those
	mistakes sooner that we all make and sharing it in a way that
	helps for collaboration? You know, Thomas Edison obviously had
	to go through a lot of experiments before things got right. If
	he was sharing this in a bigger community, it might have all
	happened faster, right? Not that you don't want to--you know,
	when you have your research, you want to maybe keep that to
	yourself, too. I understand. But do we have a culture in the
	scientific community that makes it sort of punishing to have
	that information out there and shared?
	Dr. Spies. This is certainly a cultural issue, and I don't
	know if it's necessarily punishing, but we don't really allow
	discourse around failure. Peer review happens after the work
	has been done. And so there's really very little influence that
	that can have because you already did the work.
	And so it's a cultural issue. The perhaps fear I think is
	across any area. No one wants to make mistakes, and no one
	wants to be seen for these mistakes. But we need to embrace
	them. That's a critical role in science. It's a very important
	part of the scientific process.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Okay. I know I'm over my time, but if
	our other witnesses had anything to comment in that area, I
	just wanted to give you an opportunity, too.
	Dr. Zuber. So I would just say that, you know, in science,
	if you make a mistake, it's okay. But it's better if you
	correct the mistake yourself rather than have somebody else
	correct the mistake. So I think we ought to incentivize a
	system where mistakes within groups are--that it's recognized
	in a positive way.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Okay.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I would just add, and perhaps we'll have
	more time to talk about this later, that issues of open science
	and the ways in which sharing can occur happen in very
	different ways across different scientific fields. And so
	learning across fields in fields like astronomy, for example,
	where public data has been a norm for so long, we have a lot to
	learn about how mistakes are determined and how we can share
	and accelerate findings.
	So there's a lot on this topic that's of great interest to
	us at NSF.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Great. Thank you. And I now recognize
	Mr. Lipinski for five minutes.
	Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I want to start with Dr. Spies. I
	want to applaud your work on making data more open. We know
	there are issues around that that sometimes there's reasons why
	there have to be--some data cannot just be all put out there
	directly as it is. But some have proposed that government
	agencies should only be allowed to make regulations based on
	studies that have posted all their data on line. But in
	practice, this would make the majority of available research
	off-limits to government agencies.
	Are there ways the government can increase the openness of
	the research it relies on without undermining its ability to
	use all the available science?
	Dr. Spies. Yeah, there are many cases where we simply can't
	be completely open with work with respect to data privacy,
	security, or even just proprietary advantage. Some people need
	to maintain that intellectual property. But there are many,
	many ways that you can still be open, you can still be
	transparent and really, gaining that efficiency and credibility
	and accessibility by taking certain steps. It's not an all-or-
	nothing thing.
	For example, with data privacy, there's a concept called
	secure computing where the data can remain private, but you can
	still analyze it. Other people can still analyze that, but the
	data is never made fully available. Or you could release your
	methods and materials. So keep the data private but release
	everything else around it, and this adds to the credibility. It
	might not add to the accessibility of that data, but you can
	still have a credible experience. You can still allow people to
	come into that and audit that process if need be. So we can
	still gain that credibility that we need in science.
	Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I want to move on. I want to ask
	Dr. Yamamoto, can you just briefly say what is the difference
	in your mind between interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
	research?
	Dr. Yamamoto. Sure. Transdisciplinary research really
	attempts to merge the sciences. I think we have an opportunity
	to do that now. It's quite remarkable, in which the concepts,
	the driving concepts that are at the basis of different
	disciplines are applied and used to move forward, other
	disciplines that haven't had those concepts before or
	approaches. And so----
	Mr. Lipinski. Okay. Let me come back to you. I just want to
	make sure that we had that out there because I had that----
	Dr. Yamamoto. Right.
	Mr. Lipinski. --question. I just wanted to make sure I
	understood that that's what it was. I want to ask Dr. Ferrini-
	Mundy, a few years ago there were funds that were set up to
	fund interdisciplinary research at NSF, and that no longer is
	there. What happened with that? How did that go?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I think you may be referring to our
	INSPIRE Program?
	Mr. Lipinski. Yes.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. And that ran as a pilot. One thing that
	we're finding now at NSF over time is that our work across the
	directorates is just as prevalent for us as our work within
	directorates. And so we have already initiated a number of
	efforts at NSF that are transdisciplinary as well as
	interdisciplinary, new language that is in the same family as
	convergence research that brings together experts from multiple
	fields.
	And so I would put examples on the table. Our innovations
	at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems is one of the
	initiatives that we started that was meant to draw in
	scientists from multiple fields to solve challenging problems.
	Understanding the brain is another. Risk and resilience is yet
	another, NSF includes as another.
	So what we've been moving toward are a variety of efforts
	that signal our serious commitment to promoting science that
	cuts across disciplines in various ways.
	We also do have a follow-up within our sort of options for
	continuing to propose interdisciplinary research that occurs
	and it's called RAISE. It's an interdisciplinary program that
	has some of the same elements as INSPIRE had. It's a way that
	people who bring an idea that doesn't squarely fit a particular
	discipline can at least follow a set of steps to bring that
	idea to the Foundation.
	But what we are seeing in our efforts is a lot of interest
	that spans directorates, a lot of partnerships among
	directorates to encourage this kind of research.
	Mr. Lipinski. And Dr. Yamamoto, do you think that this--you
	had talked about some things that you would like to see. Is
	there anything else that you believe NSF could do better in
	order to encourage this type of research?
	Dr. Yamamoto. I think what NSF is doing is quite good. I
	think that my concern is that we're missing opportunities
	because programs, investigators, teams of investigators that
	come to the NSF with ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries
	are sort of viewed as secondary, secondary case. Not as
	secondary citizens but secondary case in which they really need
	to find, go out and find a home.
	And what I would suggest is that NSF recognize this
	opportunity for transdisciplinarity by setting itself up to
	welcome and support every application that comes forward in
	this mode to ask where are the best ways, what are the
	directorates that can best support this kind of approach that's
	being brought forward to us so that it's not a special case,
	that every case that comes forward recognizes that we have an
	opportunity to use transdisciplinarity and that it's not
	something that's new or separate.
	Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I yield back.
	Chairwoman Comstock. I now recognize Mr. Hultgren.
	Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all so much
	for being here. I appreciate your work and I also appreciate
	you coming here, testifying today. This is a very important
	subject to me, I think for all of us. But I am grateful. Being
	from Illinois, the great ecosystem of science that we enjoy in
	Illinois, some wonderful universities, our great laboratories,
	the cooperation that we see between them, mutual benefit. And
	so with all of that, I think there's a reason why Illinois is
	well-represented on this Committee. I've got some great members
	that we really enjoy working together, getting good things done
	in science in Illinois.
	One thing that has been important to me is access for
	researchers to the most advanced scientific infrastructures at
	facilities such as Blue Waters supercomputer at the University
	of Illinois. I've also had the opportunity to tour Stampede
	down in Texas last year.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, if I could address my questions to you,
	how does NSF look at the capabilities of a tool like Blue
	Waters when taking into account the different kinds of
	questions researchers are asking? Many researchers have
	described to me the issues with data management being more
	important than just raw speed for certain types of problems.
	Does NSF need to have differing capabilities in computing
	infrastructure, and how does NSF plan to address any type of
	gap when one of these tools goes off-line?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thank you for your question, sir. NSF,
	through its Office of Advanced Cyber Infrastructure, supports
	the development, acquisition, and provision of state-of-the-art
	cyber infrastructure resources as you know. Those include tools
	and services, and they focus both on the high performance
	computing capabilities, such as those at Blue Waters, that are
	essential to the advancement of science and engineering
	research as well as--so we call that leadership computing.
	Those are the unique services and resources to advance the most
	computationally intensive work such as what is carried out at
	Blue Waters.
	We also focus on what we call innovative high-performance
	computing resources. So these are a set of diverse, highly
	usable resources at large scale. The work at Stampede that you
	mention is in that category.
	So regarding Blue Waters, it's not appropriate for me to
	comment here on any future solicitations or investments, but we
	are mindful of the importance of avoiding gaps in our
	leadership computing services. I also would point to a recent
	National Academy study titled Future Directions for NSF
	Advanced Computing Infrastructure. That has a number of
	recommendations, one of which is that NSF should provide one or
	more systems for applications that require a large, single,
	tightly coupled parallel computer. And we certainly take the
	strategic advice of the community very seriously.
	Mr. Hultgren. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, I'm going
	to continue with you if that's all right. But switching gears a
	little bit, the average age for a first-time principal
	investigator for NIH-funded research has risen to 43 years of
	age. Albert Einstein, as we know, was in his 20s when he
	presented his theory of relativity. He was 46 when he won the
	Nobel Prize. An average age of 43 for first-time PI seems to
	miss the most creative and productive years in a scientist's
	career. I wondered, do you know the average age of a scientist
	receiving their first regular NSF grant?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. So thank you for the question. We
	actually do not request information about age or date of birth
	in our applications, and we do make an optional check box for
	people to indicate the date of their degree. So we can speak in
	terms of date of receipt of the Ph.D. in terms of age. And what
	we have seen is that in general, the early career, which would
	be people who are seven years or less from their Ph.D. at the
	time of proposal action, the funding rate for our early career
	folks in comparison to those who are past that time, who are
	later, is quite close, roughly 18 percent for our early career
	folks, 22 percent or thereabouts over the years for our people
	coming in from later careers. So that is, you know, like 18
	percent of the early career applicants are getting awards
	versus 22 percent of the later career applicants.
	In terms of the percentages, sort of how the balance of our
	portfolio looks, it's sort of about a 20/80 balance with about
	20 percent of the awards going to the early career PIs and
	about 80 percent going to those of later careers.
	Mr. Hultgren. Would that be with regular awards or is that
	special set-aside programs?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Those are--that's across the full
	spectrum of awards. We do have a wonderful program called the
	Faculty Early Career Award Program that is meant to bring
	people in within some number of years of their Ph.D., and
	that's really a special program for us.
	Mr. Hultgren. I appreciate the conversation. I do think
	it's important for us to continue to discuss this----
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Yes.
	Mr. Hultgren. --of making sure that we're maximizing
	opportunities to those who are younger, you know, more quickly
	after they've gotten their degree. Sounds like there's some
	steps there, but I want to make sure that we keep that focus.
	So thank you. My time's expired. I yield back. Thank you.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Okay. I now recognize Ms. Esty.
	Ms. Esty. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock and Ranking Member
	Lipinski and to our members of the panel for this very
	important hearing today.
	We had some discussion some of us last week at a briefing
	with NSF and the Department of Energy about the critical
	importance of infrastructure, the basic scientific
	infrastructure for attracting the best minds. There's been
	discussion, all of you to some extent, are talking about the
	importance of supporting researchers but encouraging and
	supporting that STEM workforce.
	So Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, could you talk a little bit about
	that? I look at the fact that, for example, the discussions we
	had about the Hadron collider last week. I look at Yale
	University just outside my district and the work that's being
	done there on precision detectors and how that fits into these
	larger investments. Could you talk about that for a moment,
	please?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Sure. And there are so many factors that
	relate to these decisions. It's a lot about prioritization and
	how the National Science Foundation, in partnership of course
	with the scientific community, with the Congress, with the
	National Science Board, with the Administration, how we
	actually set priorities, and it's an activity that's under way
	constantly with us. And one very strong commitment, of course,
	for the agency has been our investment in infrastructure over
	may decades through our Major Research Equipment Facilities
	Construction Account where we are always looking at advice from
	the community. So decadal surveys are quite critical for us as
	we think about what next infrastructure is needed.
	But at the same time we need to take some risks, and we've
	heard about LIGO, and we know that there will be some piece of
	that infrastructure investment that needs to be focused towards
	the high-risk and potentially high-reward investments that we
	can't predict where the science will take us.
	The other balancing piece in this business of prioritizing,
	of course, is in ensuring that we have the adequate resources
	to fund the basic research that occurs in that infrastructure.
	And so it's a constant calculation for us where we're
	considering lots of inputs and lots of factors. But suffice it
	to say, we're certainly committed to our role with scientific
	infrastructure as we have been for so long.
	Ms. Esty. Thank you, and I again want to underscore what
	many of you've talked about. And it has been a bit of a
	contention in the last few Congresses about whether Congress
	should be directing that research or not, and frankly, I think
	for the basic research, I would rather rely on scientists who
	have a better sense of where the science may be going and my
	commitment to continue to support that.
	I know in fact many Members of Congress tend to be science-
	phobes. We may not be the best people to be directing that.
	That's not that we don't have an oversight role. Of course, we
	do. But I think as you've amply illustrated, that the United
	States has a leadership role in basic science, and we have to
	follow that where it takes us.
	You've all also mentioned the importance of
	interdisciplinary and interdirectorate work. So a quick answer.
	If people have ideas, are there things Congress should or could
	be doing that would incentivize or remove barriers for that
	interdirectorate work?
	Dr. Zuber. Well, the most important thing that Congress
	could do is not take steps to create additional silos, okay?
	And so by specifying funding in directorates, that, of course,
	creates silos.
	Ms. Esty. Thank you. And again, that goes back to my
	earlier point about deferring somewhat to the scientific
	community to have the flexibility to move funding where the
	research takes us.
	Dr. Spies, you talked a little bit, actually quite a lot,
	about the incentives to share work. This is something we
	discussed a lot over the last Congress or two. Can you help us
	think a little bit about--and this is probably a subject for
	another hearing--this problem about publication and the
	incentives to publish something novel and not to share results
	that don't turn out in a novel way or that don't actually lead
	to something directly actionable but in fact is really
	important for other people to know about because you may know
	this is not a profitable avenue. How do we square this right
	now? We have this problem about needing to publish to get
	research money, and yet if people are hiding their results
	because it doesn't seem actionable, it means you may have
	wasted money with a lot of people kind of following down that
	same path. Anyone have thoughts on that point?
	Dr. Spies. Yeah. We have an incentives problem around
	publishing. And so we need to find a way to incentivize people
	to be more open, to take the risk, to be okay with failure, to
	put that out there and realize that that is adding to the
	corpus of knowledge. Any evidence is valuable in thinking about
	science.
	And so there are ways to do this. We really need to think
	more about this and test some of these things. The field of
	metascience, we need more of a commitment to that to really
	understand what are the most efficacious ways to incentivize
	these things? Registered reports I think is a very good example
	where we review the work based on the impact of the questions
	and the soundness of the methodology. And then no matter what
	the outcome, you still get a publication. Scientists still get
	funding. They still get the publication. They still get that
	reward. And so they have no reason then to need to hide things
	or gloss over details to sell it to journals.
	Ms. Esty. Thank you very much. I'm seeing that I'm over,
	but maybe we could have a hearing on this issue because I think
	it is really important and it's something we could contribute
	in the field right now because a lot of scientists are very
	frustrated with the imperative right now. So maybe we could ask
	the Chairman and Ranking Member to do that. Thank you very
	much.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Ms.
	Bonamici for five minutes. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Webster for five
	minutes. Sorry.
	Mr. Webster. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Yamamoto, I had a
	question about one of the things you said. You talked about an
	additional organization layer, and we here in Congress are
	fantastic at doing that in government. And I'm just wondering,
	does that add to maybe an inefficiency to it or give me a
	little more explanation.
	Dr. Yamamoto. Sure. Yeah, the kind of knee-jerk response to
	any additional bureaucratic layer is that it's going to slow
	things down or add complexity. The object of this additional
	layer is in fact to have research programs that float over the
	disciplinary directorates. And so it crosses those boundaries
	in a natural way. So that would be the idea of this additional
	layer and that they would define the elements of the different
	directorates that would come into play, that cooperate together
	to work in a given research programmatic area.
	So that's the object, is to undo the damage, the natural
	damage, that bureaucratic boundaries do in setting up an
	organization that's necessary to have such separate entities.
	But anytime you do that, you've created a silo. And so this
	additional layer would float over those and cross those
	barriers.
	Mr. Webster. So would it be more free-flowing?
	Dr. Yamamoto. That would be the idea is that every grant
	application, for example, that would come into the NSF, would
	flow first into these research areas. And that entity would
	then say this is an opportunity to draw from these two or three
	or four directorates that could best come together to address
	this.
	So I would imagine, I would hope, that downstream what we
	would see increasingly is that teams of researchers composed of
	investigators with very different backgrounds and expertise
	would come to the NSF with ideas that definitely don't fit into
	any single directorate. But by going into this additional
	layer, they would always have a home and that that additional
	layer would then sort out which directorate would be able to
	contribute to that application.
	Mr. Webster. Thank you very much for that answer. Dr.
	Spies, would your--matter of fact, I liked what you had to say
	about an open process. We need some of that here, too. But my
	question would be would this open process add to or maybe
	remove from the subjectivity of the grants and resources and
	the distribution thereof?
	Dr. Spies. Open scientific process is going to be adding to
	what we know about science. And so as much as the quality of
	that is increased, I would think that it would increase
	decision-making. Related to subjectivity, the scientific
	process doesn't care about outcome. It's not an important part
	of it. The outcome is what happens from the scientific process.
	And so if we focus more on the process, more on the work flow,
	more on these other components that lead us to these outcomes,
	which we as humans really appreciate, which you appreciate in
	making policy, but if we focus on that process, then we can
	have more objectivity I think just across the board. And so
	again, if that can aid decision-making, then it should do so
	with regards to that process, to those methods.
	Mr. Webster. So you would believe that the better the
	process, the more perfect the outcome?
	Dr. Spies. The better the process, the smoother the way
	towards understanding, whatever that is. I won't say perfect.
	Science admits that it's never perfect. We are always
	incrementally moving forward. But process, good process, open
	process, can make that a more efficient track down that road.
	Mr. Webster. Thank you very much. I yield back.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I now recognize Ms.
	Bonamici for five minutes.
	Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Chair Comstock, and
	Ranking Member Lipinski. And thank you to all of the witnesses
	for being here today. It's been a very good discussion and kind
	of a continuation of our earlier hearing.
	One of the things I wanted to follow up on, Dr. Ferrini-
	Mundy, you talked a little bit about risk taking. And that's
	something that we have to recognize as policymakers when--I
	share the concerns raised by some of my colleagues about the
	problems of having Members of Congress decide which
	directorates to fund at certain levels. Do we have oversight
	responsibilities as Ms. Esty said? Of course, but making those
	decisions when we don't know what's going to be at the end of
	the research is something that we have to keep in mind as we're
	deciding funding. Can administrations set priorities?
	Absolutely, but they shouldn't be at the risk of other areas.
	So I've enjoyed several times participating in the Golden
	Goose Awards, an event that the American Association for
	Advancement of Science, AAAS, has helped launch and organize
	each year to recognize the importance of federally funded basic
	scientific research. We don't know what discipline the next
	innovative transformative research will come from, but we know
	that NSF-supported basic research has led to advances in
	technology, in medicine, agriculture, and many more fields.
	Last year one of the Golden Goose Awardees was the honeybee
	algorithm. So in the late 1980s, several engineers collaborated
	with a bee researcher, and they studied how honeybee colonies
	allocate foragers. And years later then, two researchers
	applied that honeybee foraging model to shared web hosting
	servers, something that wasn't thought of in the early '80s
	when they were doing the original modeling. And their research
	resulted in an algorithm that speeds up the process every time
	we check our bank account balances, do an internet search,
	check the score of a March Madness game which some people might
	be doing at this moment.
	So a question for all of the panelists, that the honeybee
	algorithm is a great example of obscure or perhaps silly
	sounding basic research that led later to technological
	advances. So what might be lost by withholding federal funding
	from research areas where we don't know what the benefits will
	be at the outset? We don't know where that research will go.
	So what are the problems? What do we lose by withholding
	funding because of that uncertainty or that risk? Dr. Ferrini-
	Mundy, let's start with you.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for the
	question and the great explanation of the honeybee algorithm.
	Very helpful.
	First of all, it needs to be--we need to be clear that all
	at NSF take very, very seriously the responsibility of
	carefully investing taxpayer dollars----
	Ms. Bonamici. Of course.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. --and being prudent and responsible. At
	the same time, as you point out, it's very difficult to tell
	with certain basic research proposals what the long-term impact
	and payoff on the country, on our economy might actually be.
	And so we have so many wonderful examples. You've pointed
	out one, but there are wonderful boons to industry that started
	with no obvious commercial applications. And we have results
	about GPS, the internet, AI and computers where at any stage
	some of that basic funding in its proposal form might have not
	looked like it would lead to anything.
	So I think I certainly agree that we need to stay open. We
	need to use the expertise of the scientific community to select
	the, you know, one in five grants that we are able to fund,
	both for those that will continue to move science along
	incrementally as is needed and for those that look like long
	shots but that have great promise in terms of their basic
	contribution. There's one other point I'd want to make on this
	which has to do with choosing among areas of science. It's a
	tricky business because keeping the basic investment going in
	all areas of science, the fundamental research investment, is
	quite important so that there is this constant pipeline and
	flow of new ideas accumulating, new theories being developed,
	which may then find their use someplace else.
	Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. I'm going to try to get in another
	question. Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, the social, behavioral, economic
	sciences grants have funded ground-breaking research across the
	nation including at Oregon State University some important
	research on how communities research extreme weather events. If
	funding for the SBE grants at NSF were to be cut significantly,
	some are suggesting by 50 percent, this would also result in
	fewer SBE program officers within the agency. So given the
	breadth of research in the directorate currently, there could
	be gaps in expertise. So is that a reasonable assumption and
	how might this affect the ability of the agency to review SBE
	grants for their merit or potential to benefit the nation? And
	maybe we can get Dr. Zuber in the last couple seconds as well.
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. So I just want to reiterate our central
	commitment to the importance of the social, behavioral, and
	economic sciences investments. The benefits coming that we have
	seen in cybersecurity, disaster preparedness, detecting reading
	problems early on--all of these fan from fundamental research
	that would be missing if we were not able to invest in the ways
	that we do.
	Dr. Zuber. Again, if I could just add, you know, trying to
	think about research that actually serves the nation, a couple
	of things in SBE--facial recognition studies actually went into
	the analysis, the algorithmic analysis of identifying the
	marathon bombers in Boston. And another recent study, that
	violent extremism, the tendency to go into it, isn't just an
	economic thing, that there are actually moral imperatives. So
	if one is trying to dissuade young people from joining extreme
	groups, one needs to find a moral alternative.
	And another thing that I think is really the 800-pound
	gorilla is that we need to think about jobs and job retraining.
	And that is squarely a social science issue. And so I think at
	this time where we have so many issues in the country that
	really affect people, okay, that the social sciences really has
	an ever more important price to pay.
	Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. My time is expired. I yield back.
	Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Mr.
	Beyer for five minutes.
	Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. And thank all
	of you for being here. This is--the best part about being on
	the Science Committee is being able to talk to you.
	I wanted to pile on to Congressman Hultgren's comments
	about the age mismatch. Some quick research. Albert Einstein
	was 27, 1906, in Bern, Switzerland, when he came out with
	Brownian motion, photoelectric effect, special relativity.
	Werner Von Heisenberg was 26 when he articulated the
	uncertainty principle. Marie Curie was 30 when she articulated,
	discovered radioactivity.
	And I'd be very grateful if you and Dr. Cordova would look
	at the 80/20 mix and figure out where to make it 20/80. It's
	sort of part of the--I'm not a mathematician, but I've heard
	again and again that there are very few genius mathematicians
	beyond age 30. Almost all prodigies are young. Doctor?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thanks so much, and I would just add to
	that, we have a significant investment in young professionals
	through the graduate student programs and through post-doctoral
	programs, too. So we really are working very hard to make sure
	that we keep that next generation ready and able to lead us in
	science in the future.
	Mr. Beyer. Great. Thank you. Dr. Yamamoto, I'm going to
	pick on you because you're a professor of cellular and
	molecular pharmacology. And I love the physical sciences, you
	know, particle physics and cosmology and relativity and
	biochemistry. But equally important are all these social
	sciences, the SBE that we've talked about.
	I'm especially thinking, you know, Daniel Kahneman, in his
	Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, has gotten so much attention
	about how we make decisions which, given that we're here in
	U.S. Congress, is phenomenally important.
	Can you look at it as a biologist, chemist, physicist, on
	what you think the importance of the social and behavioral
	sciences are?
	Dr. Yamamoto. I can approach this through an issue that's
	very important to me. I was involved in launching this notion
	of precision medicine. And precision medicine has at its heart
	an understanding of biological processes that is founded in
	understanding the mechanisms of the ways that those processes
	function. And so when you start thinking about disease, you
	come up right against the complexity of biological systems and
	realize that the Human Genome Project, for all the things that
	it brought us, the genome is just one element that goes into
	the risk of an individual for getting a disease, the course of
	that disease when they get it, and so forth and other elements.
	There are many other elements that come into play, objective,
	scientific elements like small molecules that are in the
	bloodstream, the microbiome that inhabits all of us. But in
	addition, the impact of environmental factors, social and
	behavioral elements that very much contribute. So what
	precision medicine says is that we need to mound all of these
	layers of information in a Google Maps like way that allows us
	to see correlations and connections that were otherwise
	invisible when the disciplines are maintained separately.
	And so if we can do that, build that Google Maps and be
	able to establish what the links are between a given behavioral
	component or environmental component and what we see in the
	gene or small molecule or a microgut's inhabiting of the
	organism, then we can begin to better understand what the
	various components that contribute to a biological process or a
	disease.
	So it's a long way of saying that I think it's really
	essential that as biological scientists that are sort of bound
	by collecting objective evidence, that these other components
	are just as important and we really need to build that in.
	So it's great that the National Science Foundation
	understands that and has a directorate that really is focused
	in that way.
	Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Doctor, very much. And Dr. Zuber,
	just a few seconds of building on that. Looking at psychology,
	especially as a so-called soft science, SBE, as Chairman of the
	National Science Board, what's your perspective on the
	importance of investing that for America's mental health?
	Dr. Zuber. So obviously it's crucially important, and NSF
	of course does the fundamental science, the basic science, that
	then feeds into the more directed, health-related work that's
	done at the NIH, okay, and there really is very good cross-
	agency discussions on these and other basic science/more
	disease-related problems.
	But I just wanted to make the point here that we are on the
	verge of a real revolution in the social sciences. So right
	now, computation in the social sciences, high-performance
	computing, they're using as much in those fields as math and
	physical sciences that NSF used ten years ago, okay? So
	something that's considered a soft science is really becoming
	very data-driven, very quantitative. And you know, we're
	essentially at the beginning of a golden age here. So it would
	be a shame to cut it back.
	Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. Thanks, Madam Chair.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I know Dr. Zuber and I
	had talked about young people yesterday and the importance of
	having them engaged. And I just wanted to, in addition to
	having Eric Young here from Dominion High School, shadowing us
	here today, I know we had some other students here. But I
	wanted to just mention, because this is such an extraordinary
	young man who I was able to meet with yesterday, I think he's
	interested in the precision medicine area and has now been
	accepted at MIT but has a few other options available. But
	let's see. He just won--his name is Pratik Naidu. It's N-a-i-d-
	u if I'm not doing it justice. But he is a senior at Thomas
	Jefferson High School, and he was one of the ten finalists in
	the Regeneron Science Talent Search, one of our nation's oldest
	and most prestigious science competitions for seniors in high
	school. And he created a machine learning software that can now
	examine how cancer genomes interact and help with new drug
	therapies. He was working with researchers up in Boston. So he
	is partnering with them from his high school up in Boston. So
	I'm sure they'll be thrilled if he goes to MIT and is up in
	that area. It was titled The DNA Looper. And this device can
	actually learn and give new insight in the ongoing search for
	cures for cancer.
	And then just for an add-on because he was such a charming
	young man, he happened to be an Eagle Scout in eighth grade. So
	clearly an overachiever here. And then also on the side he had
	founded a reading group for veterans, and he called it The
	Classics Project where he was studying classical war texts and
	how they relate to our current society. And he was--of course,
	he took Latin so he was reading these I guess in the original,
	Homer's Odyssey, and then taking that and working with our
	veterans.
	So I think that kind of leads to the overlapping of how you
	have somebody like this who whatever project he might come to
	in the future, we'll want to have some type of box to fit him
	in. But he clearly was a very talented young man here. So I
	think it kind of brings to life all the testimony that you all
	have given today. Dr. Yamamoto, if you'd like----
	Dr. Yamamoto. I wonder if I could just comment on this age
	issue. I think it's terrific that NSF, NIH, other agencies are
	building programs to single out early investigators that are
	coming to these agencies for funding. But in my view, the
	harder the problem is not that we're not giving enough grants
	for young investigators. It's that they're getting to the
	system too late. The training is taking far too long, and I
	think that we need to go back and look at sort of first
	principles of what is needed for a Ph.D., for example, in the
	sciences? And there's a National Academy study that is just
	getting going. I'm on the committee to look at STEM graduate
	education and see if we're really doing the right thing. That
	is, are we really providing students with what they need to
	then emerge as Ph.D.s and go out and be successful? How
	important is the post-doctoral study period? What should be in
	that element and how does it contribute or not? Are we just
	aging our trainees because we need them to be the workforce to
	do experiments in our laboratories, for example? And I think
	that going back and looking at those principles is really
	critical. In my view we could shorten the training period a lot
	and really--my own goal would be to say can we develop a system
	that goes from the first day in graduate school to being
	independent investigators from what it is now to something in
	the four- to six- to eight-year range, getting registered to
	being an assistant professor applying for an NSF grant? And I
	think that that's a very doable thing. We've been remiss in not
	looking at those principles, and I think that we've fallen into
	the trap of thinking that we need this mass of people to man
	our laboratories and carry out our experiments, rather than
	thinking about what is it that they need, when can they use
	their energy and creativity in the most efficient way?
	Chairwoman Comstock. Right. I think that was that ecosystem
	that you talked about creating. So, thank you for that
	additional insight. And I'm sorry, we had two people come back.
	So we recognize Ms. Rosen for five minutes.
	Ms. Rosen. Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member Lipinski,
	and to our panel for being here today. And Dr. Yamamoto, my
	husband did his medical residency at UCSF along with many of
	his friends. And so we have a soft spot in our household for
	UCSF. And I thank you for all the work you do there and the
	kind of graduates I know you produce. So I'll just go to that.
	So I'd like to hear--I love my husband. So I have to put
	that plug in, right? So I'd like to hear your thoughts on
	several related topics on how we consider evaluating and
	funding scientific research, the value of course our basic
	research core areas and how they relate to our national
	interest. Because oftentimes it's unclear. You know, I'm a
	former computer programmer systems analyst who started writing
	software in the 1970s. No PCs. No cell phones. There's more
	right here than we could have ever imagined when I was at
	University of Minnesota writing on computer card decks in the
	BASIC lab in the math department, right?
	So we've come a long way, and we couldn't predict it. So we
	want to be able to allow for these kinds of research that have
	no--that we can't even imagine what's going through. So
	following up on Representative Bonamici's question, I'd like to
	ask you all, what is lost to the nation if we stop funding
	research in a whole discipline because somebody doesn't see the
	potential? If we stop funding core fields like biology,
	chemistry, or physics because we think all the discoveries have
	been made, which they have not. And like you go to the
	mistakes, a lot of mistakes turn out to be the foundation for
	something else in the future. And if we refuse to fund a field
	we've never heard of, that might be a key that unlocks
	mysteries that are yet untold.
	So the wholesale defunding of particular fields of science,
	is that really a wise way for us to go?
	Dr. Yamamoto. I think it's a disaster. I think that the
	existence of the National Science Foundation as proposed by
	Vannevar Bush really puts a stake in the ground for basic
	research, research where you actually don't know where it's
	going to lead. And we are very far from--you know, the amount
	that we don't know still so vastly outweighs what we do know,
	that stopping any of those investigations would mean that our
	future for being able to have knowledge that we can then apply
	will go away. So we absolutely have to maintain this.
	I might just say one more thing about reproducibility that
	bears on your question and that is at least in the biological
	sciences. There's an element of reproducibility that hasn't
	been addressed here that I think bears mentioning and that is
	that because of past successes, we are now able to work in
	experimental systems including populations of human beings that
	are vastly more complex than we've been able to work on before.
	So the scientific ideal for planning an experiment is to
	control all the variables except the one you're trying to test,
	right? We're very far from that now, and it's good news that we
	are, that we understand enough to work on more complicated
	systems. But we need to acknowledge that when we do that, that
	when we control all the variables we can think of, underneath
	that is a vast number of variables that we don't know about,
	right? I call it the Rumsfeld effect. And acknowledging that
	says that the attempt to reproduce an experiment, ending up
	with a different result, doesn't mean that either experiment
	was wrong. I have to point out that it also doesn't mean that
	either experiment was right. And it simply means that the
	robustness of being able to reproduce it is not there. It very
	often will be it's not there because there are unknown
	variables below what you've tested. So just to give you a silly
	example that I think makes it easy to understand is that no
	reviewer of a grant application or a finished product that is
	submitted to a journal for publication would say, oh, this
	looks really terrific. You've really carried it out. It's a
	beautiful set of experiments. Could you please go back and do
	them all again at a tenth of a degree lower temperature, right?
	And that could be the variable that would change all the
	results and make two attempts, two very solid attempts to
	reproduce the study, come out with different results.
	And so remembering this is that we don't know about the
	robustness of a lot of these complex studies because of those
	unknown variables. And I think it calls into question in a way
	attempts to fund studies, to simply try to reproduce complex
	results, understanding robustness is critical. But being able
	to label something as right or wrong based on whether it's
	reproducible I think is problematic.
	Ms. Rosen. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I thank you
	for what you're doing, especially in creating a quicker path
	for people in STEM, people like myself who started their
	career. It's so important that we build that people pipeline,
	create opportunities as early as possible in the youngest
	grades so people know it's creative and innovative and not
	boring in the least sense and that they can all do it and not
	be science-phobes as someone else said. We need to generate
	that excitement. So I thank you for what you're trying to do
	with a lot of the programs you're working on. I yield back.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Tonko
	for five minutes.
	Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I find this
	discussion very uplifting, especially in light of President
	Trump's budget presentation which seems to disinvest in
	America, which is a troublesome notion.
	I'm concerned, Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, that cuts to the
	geosciences could hurt our national security, our economic
	security and our public health and safety. Are you aware of any
	NSF-funded research that came out of the geosciences
	directorate that produced valuable results?
	Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thank you for the question and of course
	the research that goes on in our geosciences directorate spans
	a very broad range of topics and areas. Fundamentally, we fund
	research that helps us better understand our planet. And so let
	me just give a couple of examples. We fund research to
	understand how the physical and chemical processes in the ocean
	and the atmosphere affect how ecosystems operate. And that not
	only brings us fundamental understanding of how heat
	redistribution happens, but it generates knowledge about marine
	ecosystems that ultimately can have applications about informed
	management of the fisheries industries, for example.
	Another area where we do terrestrial research has to do
	with knowledge generation that gets us understandings of
	groundwater and surface water systems that contribute to
	informed decisions about the use of water resources and
	therefore have implications for agriculture, potable water
	supplies, and recreations.
	Those are just a couple of areas where investment in the
	geosciences has affected our country in serious and important
	ways.
	Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And Dr. Zuber?
	Dr. Zuber. Yes, since I'm in earth science, I can add a few
	things to this. So one example is that subsurface prospecting
	and the study of subsurface materials really has provided the
	scientific framework for hydraulic fracking, okay, which has
	brought this country really far in the direction of energy
	independence.
	And I will also add that NSF's earth science program also
	includes the space environment surrounding Earth. And so for
	example understanding solar storms and their effects on, you
	know, if the GPS constellation goes out, if our cell phones go
	out, if the electric grid goes out, obviously that's bad for
	America, okay? And those studies are crucial in understanding
	that.
	Also the health of the oceans, coastal erosion factors that
	affects so many people that live along our coasts. And finally
	I would add that the geo program supports the polar programs
	including fully the Antarctic program.
	Mr. Tonko. Sounds like very valuable information that can
	guide us with some very important actions that we may need to
	put into place.
	New York State has had a number of devastating natural
	disasters in recent years including devastation from Super
	Storm Sandy, certainly Hurricane Irene, and Tropical Storm Lee.
	In New York's 20th District, my home district, we used to talk
	about storms that came once every 100 or once every 500 years.
	This type of talk is no more with devastating weather events
	happening time and time again.
	I've sat with families who have lost everything and have
	witnessed the exorbitant costs that we are still trying to pay
	off from these extreme events. Extreme weather events are
	incredibly expensive to our communities and our nation. So my
	question to the panel is does research in the geosciences help
	to ensure better predictions or better understanding of natural
	environmental hazards? Dr. Zuber?
	Dr. Zuber. Okay. Well, the answer to that is yes. So
	actually, there are studies that are being done and the state
	of prediction, near-term weather prediction and extreme storms,
	that work is underway. And it's critically important and we
	need to invest greater in it. There have been some studies done
	and they need to be verified that as severe storms move up the
	East Coast, they typically go out to sea, okay? However, with
	the loss of sea ice, okay, over the Arctic Ocean, it changes
	the wind patterns so that there's a higher probability of a
	storm coming up the coast, not taking a right turn.
	And so one can just envision what the economic consequences
	would be if we have more Hurricane Sandys coming up and hitting
	the East Coast. And that's just a single example. You know,
	obviously severe storms, droughts, and floods, are devastating
	to the economy. And so this requires field work. It requires
	data collection. It requires greater investment in high-
	performance computing. So it's really, really cross-discipline.
	Mr. Tonko. And I would hope it would instruct us and issues
	of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
	Dr. Zuber. Well, certainly, but so you know, understanding
	weather on a short-term timescale is really fundamental in
	understanding if we're going to be able to extend those models
	to understand future climatic situations.
	Mr. Tonko. Dr. Zuber, I thank you. And Madam Chair, I yield
	back.
	Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I thank today's
	witnesses for their testimony and the Members for their
	questions. We really appreciate your insight and ideas, and I
	think we certainly have more food for thought for future
	hearings also. So thank you. And thank you for your good work
	in this arena. And the record will remain open for two weeks
	for additional written comments and written questions from
	Members. This hearing is now adjourned.
	[Whereupon, at 11:44 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

	Appendix I

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	Additional Material for the Record


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