sonnel, assistance in establishing local institutions to eval- 

 uate and use acquired technological capabilities, and fos- 

 tering local science and technology programs. The United 

 States has participated in a range of those assistance 

 efforts over the past 20 years, as have many other indus- 

 trialized countries. These levels of effort have been spon- 

 sored under both public and private sector auspices. 

 However, many analysts believe that a greater commit- 

 ment to those ends is demanded of the industrialized 

 countries (AAAS-6; AAAS-7). 



Achieving effective technology transfer is not without 

 difficulties. In addition to the problem of msufficient 

 indigenous scientific and technical capabilities, there are 

 problems related to the nature of the technology to be 

 transferred. Technologies suitable for, or appropriate to. 

 problem solving in the industrialized nations may not be 

 appropriate for use in the developing countries. In many 

 cases, adoption of technologies that are routinely applied 

 in industrial countries can cause major social and political 



Generic Policy Issues 25 



disruptions in the developing countries, such as increased 

 unemployment. Therefore, technologies frequently must 

 be modified or adapted to local needs and conditions, and 

 both determining the appropriate form and, then, achiev- 

 ing the technology transfer can be difficult tasks 

 (AAAS-7). 



There also are major legal/political constraints on tech- 

 nology transfer from the industrialized to the less de- 

 veloped nations. One major problem concerns proprietary 

 rights. Most industrialized democracies are signatories to 

 international conventions governing questions of who 

 owns the patents to technologies. However, the less de- 

 veloped countries frequently are not. Therefore, patent 

 rights often appear to have no force in the less developed 

 countries, and that can impede the technology transfer 

 process. Constraints on technology transfer will require 

 continued debate and action in the coming years before 

 such transfer can be accomplished both expeditiously and 

 equitably (AAAS-7). 



REFERENCES 



1. National Academy of Sciences. Energy in Transition: 1985-2010. 

 San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980. 



2. Technical Change and Economic Policy. Paris: Organization for 

 Economic Cooperation and Development. 19S0. See also NAS-13. 



3. Ibid. 



4. Unless otherwise stated, data and trends noted m this subsection are 

 adapted from Paul M. Cocks. Science Policy: USAiUSSR. Volume II. 

 Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1980. 



5. Loren R. Graham. "The Development of Science and Policy in the 

 Soviet Union," Science Policies in Industrialized Nations. Edited bv T 



Dixon Long and Christopher Wright. New York: Praeger Publishers, 

 1975, 



6. See. for example. Cocks, op. cit. (Ref 4|. 



7. Ibid. 



8. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education. 

 Science and Engineering Education for the /yW> aiul Beyond. Wash- 

 ington. D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1980. 



9. Roger Revelle. "Energy Dilemma in Asia: The Needs for Research 

 and Development," Science. Vol. 209 (July 4, 1980), pp 164-174. 



10 Ibid, 



E. Science, Technology, and Policymaking 



The empirical data derived from scientific research, cou- 

 pled with the conceptual and analytic tools developed by 

 various scientific disciplines, can provide a systematic 

 means to help define and illuminate many current and 

 emergent problems on the national policy agenda ( A A AS- 

 Obs.). Many, though by no means all, of those problems 

 are associated with science and technology themselves. 

 Additionally, science and technology can contribute con- 

 cepts or constructs that lend precision to decisions and to 

 views of the world about which decisions must be made, 

 although, of course, science and technology cannot 

 provide a complete basis for decisions about issues that 

 involve value choices and political judgments (SSRC-1). 

 Since science cannot provide the sole basis for policy 

 decisions, methodological and policy debates are likely to 

 continue to surround the application of scientific concepts 



and methods to the assessment of national issues; first, 

 because there are always residual uncertainties associated 

 with attempts to measure, interpret, or predict the future 

 course of the complex physical, biological, ecological, or 

 social systems associated with national policy; second, 

 because measurements themselves and (particularly in the 

 case of the social and behavioral sciences) the interpreta- 

 tions that emerge from them often touch upon or challenge 

 deeply held individual or social values. 



Despite the limitations of science as a policymaking 

 tool, three convergent trends suggest the increasing im- 

 portance of devising more systematic and broadly accept- 

 able ways to use information derived from the full range of 

 the natural, social, and engineering sciences in the deci- 

 sionmaking and policymaking processes. 



First, both the time frames and the financial resources 



