Contract, Grants, and Bias

One especially troublesome observation over the past 15 years in directing the funding of science has been government mis-use of contracts for research. Science must proceed on the basis, ultimately, of peer review and appreciation (or not) by what Polanyi calls the process of mutualism. (This is in an exceedingly insightful chapter titled "Society of Explorers" in his book The Tacit Dimension). The establishment of truth in science is accomplished by review and duplication of effort independently by others. History is filled with cases where the opposite has been the case, and the results often had serious consequences.

Peer review, as the National Science Foundation conducts it, is perhaps the ideal case whereby Polanyi's process is implemented. NSF also provides grants for research for the most part because, after the award, they do not believe that the agency has the right to interfere in the process of the research, except in the most gross circumstances of fraud, misrepresentation, or failure to attempt to achieve proposed goals.

Some of the other agencies of the Federal Government have recognized that the NSF process tends to select the top researchers in the country and have piggy-backed on the NSF as a mechanism to provide funding to researchers on specific topics. Most of this funding was from agencies of the Intelligence Community which, I believe, do not have granting authority. They can only provide contracts for research.

While I certainly do not believe agencies must all follow the NSF model (NIH does not operate in exactly the same way and yet has a stellar record in this regard), some have pursued general research by awarding contracts. This may seem possible, but I believe the term "research contract" is an oxymoron. Contracts are awarded to achieve specific milestones and are often of time and material form such that tight controls can be, and usually are, exerted by the sponsor. When such contracts are successful, I believe they are better termed development contracts, not research contracts. For this reason, most Universities will not accept time and materials contracts to do research, preferring to accept grants for that purpose.

The problem of research contracts appears most egregious in cases where the government sponsor wants to control the details of the research rather than let it proceed as it might. There may be many reasons for this, one possibility is that it tends to create a virtual government laboratory where Congress did not approve one. Since indirect costs are part of contract fees, a few Universities and most of Industry will accept this situation in spite of the fact of the severe limitations it imposes on the directions and uses of the research.

While lots more could be said about this topic, the main point, in summary, is that it appears, from my own experience, that some agencies of the Federal Government have sought ways to circumvent Congressional approval for expansion in research by subverting research dollars and using contracts as vehicles to do this.