However, not all scientific infoimation is directly usable 

 for helping to define and illuminate national policy issues, 

 in part because the goal of research in many disciplines 

 such as mathematics, radio astronomy, high-energy phys- 

 ics, and molecular biology is to obtain a deeper under- 

 standing of nature rather than to provide reliable informa- 

 tion and tools to assist in decisionmaking outside the 

 disciplines themselves. There are. however, scientific dis- 

 ciplines in which principal research goals are directly 

 related to improving the quality of the infonnation needed 

 for weighing policy options. 



Survey methodologies, for example, provide means for 

 sampling the characteristics, actions, or opinions of large 

 groups of people. By yielding information about such 

 things as voter preferences, unemployment rates, or the 

 market intentions of consumers, the results of such sur- 

 veys can aid decisionmaking in both the public and the 

 private sectors. Commercial enterprises, for example, 

 make heavy use of survey data and demographic projec- 

 tions in deciding where to locate offices or retail stores and 

 in choosing products to produce and the marketing strat- 

 egies to follow (SSRC-1; SSRC-3). The Federal Govern- 

 ment, in turn, often uses survey data as a base for the 

 allocation of funds or as a basis for designing public 

 programs (SSRC-3). 



Likewise, during the past 20 years, a great deal of effort 

 has been focused on developing sound sets of data about 

 the current status of various institutions, such as industrial 

 firms, educational institutions, and the government, and 

 about the ways in which their status changes from year to 

 year. Collectively, those social indicators provide a broad 

 view both about the state of society at a given time and 

 about its rates and forms of change. For example, govern- 

 ment officials, businessmen, and the larger public fre- 

 quently are asked to address problems associated with 

 current and changing patterns in such societal elements as 

 crime, the birth rate, health care, and employment oppor- 

 tunities. Having the necessary factual information about 

 the current status and rate of change of such conditions is 

 crucial, both to making informed and appropriate choices 

 among options and to framing effective policies 

 (SSRC-3). 



Such indicators are regularly applied to the science and 

 technology enterprise and are published biannually in the 

 National Science Board's series. Science Indicators. 

 Those indicators are used to inform decisionmakers about 

 the effects of science and technology activities on areas of 

 national concern, such as industrial productivity, and, 

 reciprocally, about the impacts of public policy upon 

 science and technology. That is, they can provide a basis 

 for framing science policy and for maximizing the contri- 

 bution of science and technology efforts to the national 

 well-being (SSRC-5). 



Additionally, related methodologies are frequently 

 used to predict and evaluate the effectivess of planned 

 policy actions, and they can aid in the design, conduct, 

 and interpretation of the results of pilot projects. For 



Generic Policy Issues 27 



example, the Federal Government has sponsored experi- 

 mental pilot programs to evaluate, using social science 

 concepts and methods, the potential impacts of such pro- 

 posed national efforts as income maintenance, health 

 insurance, and housing subsidies (SSRC-I). The evalua- 

 tion of the effects of Federal regulations is a special, 

 important case, as discussed in the next subsection. 



SCIENCE AND REGULATORY PROCESSES 



On February 17, 1981, the President issued an Executive 

 Order calling for greater precision in assessing both the 

 need for, and the potential impacts of, a broad class of 

 Federal regulations.- Subsequently, the President's Task 

 Force on Regulatory Relief was established under the 

 chairmanship of the Vice President to conduct a broad 

 assessment of Federal regulatory laws and policies. Those 

 actions reflected a widespread opinion that the Federal 

 Government overreacted during the 1970s in framing reg- 

 ulations to eliminate or minimize risks to health, safety, 

 and the environment associated with, or resulting from, 

 scientific and technological activity. While few would 

 question the desirability for some controls over par- 

 ticularly hazardous products and processes, there is evi- 

 dence that some Federal regulations have had negative 

 impacts on industrial innovation and on advances in sci- 

 ence and technology (Sections I-B and I-C). The Presi- 

 dent's February 1981 order requires the positive and nega- 

 tive effects of regulations to be weighed against each 

 other. Whatever the specific recommendations of the Pres- 

 ident's Task Force turn out to be, they will almost certainly 

 be designed to improve the rational basis for establishing 

 regulatory priorities. Thus, there is a clear need for de- 

 tailed information about risks and their impacts and for 

 analytical tools for weighing risks, costs, and benefits. 



How, then, can science and technology be used in 

 assessing risks and weighing alternative strategies for 

 eliminating or mitigating those risks? The first step in- 

 volves the identification of risks. To that end, it is useful to 

 consider two classes of risks: those associated with the 

 results of science and technology and those associated 

 with the conduct of science itself. 



The first type of risk is exemplified by the hazards 

 associated with the production, use, and disposal of toxic 

 chemicals. The reasons that toxic chemicals are candi- 

 dates for some type of regulation are obvious: virtually all 

 chemicals, in sufficiently large concentrations, can cause 

 damage to health, safety, or the environment; a few can 

 cause damage even in minute quantities. Thus, some sort 

 of control is required on chemical production, use, and 

 disposal. Recognition of the need for control is the point at 

 which the appropriate form and extent of regulation be- 

 come issues. 



An example of the second type of risk includes those 

 associated with biomedical research on human subjects. 

 In that case, regulations govern the activities of scientists. 



