Here (in PDF) is a refreshingly blunt speech from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on recent issues of science in NASA. No bureaucratic mombo-jumbo here. Here are some choice excerpts:


On science as a priority:

I have on many occasions heard the accusation that NASA has betrayed the scientific community because, it is said, the Vision for Space Exploration was “sold” as being “affordable”, to be “go as you can pay”. To many scientists, that means very explicitly that Exploration is to be funded after, and only after, all prior science commitments were satisfied. The idea seems to be that, after we’ve done JWST, Europa, SIM, TPF, and every other mission in the pre-VSE NASA budget, then and only then can we embark upon renewed human Exploration of deep space. Well, that is simply not how it works. “Affordable” does not mean that all of Science is of higher priority than anything in Exploration. The programs above were approved in an earlier time, with different budget assumptions for NASA. There have been very significant budget cuts and many unplanned requirements for funding since the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. The impact of those cuts cannot fall to any single entity in NASA’s portfolio. “Go as you can pay” applies to all of NASA, not just to isolated pieces of its portfolio.

On exploration having intrinsic and economic benefits apart from science:

But, as always, there is another view, best and most tersely captured by the President’s Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, in his March ‘06 speech at the AAS Goddard Symposium. Jack noted that the Vision for Space Exploration is fundamentally about bringing the resources of the solar system within the economic sphere of mankind. It is not fundamentally about scientific discovery. To me, Marburger’s statement is precisely right.

So a key point must be made: Exploration without science is not “tourism”. It is far more than that. It is about the expansion of human activity out beyond the Earth. Exactly this point was very recently noted and endorsed by no less than Stephen Hawking, a pure scientist if ever there was one. Hawking joins those, including the Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, who have long pointed out this basic truth: The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species. So to me exploration is, in and of itself, equally as noble a human endeavor as is scientific discovery.

On complaints about NASA’s spending priorities:

Finally, there is the issue of control. Many members of the scientific community fully understand that the President and Congress have made decisions about the Shuttle and ISS programs that will not be undone. They understand that the proportion of funding at NASA that goes to SMD is at an historic high, and that they should pocket their gains over the last decade and remain quiet, lest someone notice! They understand that NASA is unlikely to grow in real terms, and that therefore many projects which all of us would like to do earlier, will in fact be done later. They get all of that.

The problem is that these folks do understand these real-world limitations, and in a world with such limitations, they want to be in charge of the distribution of resources. Put bluntly, they want to exercise the inherent authority of government to decide what is being done with the money which is available for science at NASA, but without having to come to Washington, put on a NASA badge, make all the associated sacrifices, and live with the consequences of their decisions, which mostly means that when you decide to do one thing, you are also deciding not to do something else that someone else would like to do, and you have to be publicly accountable for that fact.

On scientists as advisors to NASA:

Some of these external folks really seem to believe that NASA program selection and planning should be vetted through “the community” for approval. It is one thing to say that, broadly, we should be guided by the decadal plans of the NAS, the organization to which Congress looks for strategic advice in such matters. I emphatically support this view, while also being of the belief that sometimes, circumstances change on time scales shorter than a decade, and also that sometimes good advice comes from other directions. But it is another thing entirely to suggest that “the community” has an inherent right to review and modify our annual budget. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of this practice is that the very same people who stand to benefit from particular distributions of NASA funding would be advising NASA as to what those distributions ought to be.

Let us for a moment consider the situation in the abstract. The market for scientific goods and services, while dominated in the space sciences by the government, is nonetheless a market like any other. So, each year the President and Congress (mostly upon the advice of scientists) determine that the pursuit of certain goals in space and Earth science is in the best interests of the United States. Each year, the Congress approves the purchase, through NASA, of scientific goods and services to that end. As with most markets, there are more parties desiring to provide such products than can be procured, and so a variety of closely supervised competitive procurement mechanisms are employed to determine the successful suppliers of these products. Thus, from a legal, contractual, and managerial perspective, members of the external scientific community are suppliers to NASA, not customers.

My point is that if we were to substitute above any other noun besides “science”, the inherent conflict between the role of the scientific community as a purveyor of products to the government, and its role as the primary source of advice as to which products the government should purchase, would not be tolerated. Yet, the scientific community simply must be involved if we are to set intelligent priorities among the nation’s various scientific goals. The whole process is ethically defensible if, and only if, a proper “arm’s length” separation is maintained between advisors and implementers

On NASA scientists seeking to influence the advisory process:

. . . it was my observation that NASA managers have sometimes used these advisory committees to assist in shaping the direction of our programs to a degree that I find unseemly, in view of the inherent potential for conflicts that I have outlined above, and in a manner tending to reduce responsibility and accountability on the part of NASA officials.

On the distinction between advice and authority:

How many of you present here today, and who are organizational managers at any level, would appreciate external advisors – or even other managers – bypassing you to provide “tactical” advice to those who report to you? Any takers for this approach to organizational governance? And if not, would it make a difference if the staff members and the advisors are “scientists” as opposed to other employees?

Moving on, it has also been alleged that, in reshaping the advisory committee reporting structure, I am “preventing scientists from talking to scientists”. This is also nonsense. As far as I am concerned, anyone can talk to anyone, and probably should! I desperately hope that the staff of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate converses widely and frequently within the community. The NASA scientific staff absolutely must be of the scientific community, and active in it, to be effective in the planning and execution of their work. But the rendering of formal advice from an advisory committee to officials of a Federal agency is hardly “scientists talking to scientists”, nor should it be.
In fact, with regard to scientific advisory committee input to NASA, the real issue is not whether “scientists can talk to scientists”, but whether the Administrator is to be included in the conversation! By requiring formal advice to be debated in and provided through the NAC, the scientific community’s advice to NASA comes to the Administrator and simultaneously to the Science Mission Directorate. Under the prior structure, with numerous committees reporting directly to lower-level organizational managers, the Administrator usually had no direct knowledge as to the advice being provided to the Agency by external groups. This is not a responsible approach to organizational management.

Thus, at this point, I am back to basic organizational management principles. Responsibility and accountability for planning and executing NASA’s science program must rest with NASA’s managers, not the external scientific community. Execution of these responsibilities must be appropriately informed, and to this end we must, and will, make intelligent use of our advisory committee structure. But the final responsibility and accountability for Agency programs can lie nowhere other than with us, the NASA staff.