195 



Huffman 

 7-U-93 



Written Response* to the 

 Subcomaittees Written Questions 



Ql . What should be most effective for public sector research? For private 

 sector research? Answer: I believe that the number of new nationally assisted 

 agricultural research facilities should be kept small in number and of high 

 quality. A large number of poorly located and mediocre facilities will be 

 largely a waste of public funds. New facilities should be ones that facilitate 

 development of the general and pretechnology scientific base needed for future 

 U.S. applied agricultural research and technology development. Also, facilities 

 for applied research that have national applicability, e.g., dairy, broiler 

 research, seem to me to be next in priority. Public facilities that support only 

 local needs and interests should be of low priority for federal funding. 



Private sector research facilities should be located wherever the private 

 sector wants to place them and without direct federal financial assistance.. 



Q2. You have presented data about the returns to agricultural research 

 investments. Do you have any figures comparing the effects of facility placement 

 to returns on other investments. Answer: We have not conducted any research on 

 the rate of return to investments in public agricultural research facilities 

 separate from other inputs going into public agricultural research. 



Q3. How do you suggest we can better evaluate research quality? What role 

 should Congress play in this process? Answer: The quality of agricultural 

 research, like the quality of other goods, is difficult but not impossible to 

 evaluate. I suggest that emphasis be placed on multiple indicators of research 

 output: number of professional publications, patents obtained, and graduate 

 students trained or supervised. Some quality indicators that might be used are 

 frequency of citation of publications and patents in later scientific 

 publications and patent applications and frequency of scientists' participation 

 in programs of national and international scientific meetings. 



It is my assessment that Congress should encourage better research quality 

 evaluation primarily through inclusion of "quality" as one characteristic on 

 which research is to be evaluated. This is an indirect approach, but it will 

 create Incentives for some researchers to do work to improve measurement of 

 research quality. Congress could also assign the Office of Technology Assessment 

 the task of reviewing indicators of research quality and making recommendations 

 about their adequacy for evaluating research quality. 



QA. Given recent budgetary pressures, how do we determine which universities 

 should be our research intensive universities? Clearly they cannot all be. 

 Answer: In my opinion, the designation of a major research university is one 

 largely of ranking institutions by their past performance and then picking the 

 best ones as the research intensive ones for the future. It does seem to me, 

 however, that there is an important distinction between those that excel in 

 advancing the state of knowledge (i) in general sciences and (11) in applied 

 sciences and technology development. Few universities excel in both areas, but 

 they are both important to long term useful technology development. 



Q5. You mention a system of limiting livestock research facilities to certain 

 regions; how do you foresee this concept fitting into our current Land Grant 



