29 



change and improve a lot over the last few years. The ARS has be- 

 come much more conscious about their need to cash some of this 

 technology out there in the public sector. They are saying, "we've 

 made this public investment in it, and now to really cash it, we've 

 got to get it out there and get people using it." I think they've es- 

 tablished more CRADA's than any other Federal agency and are 

 working through a lot of different ways to transfer the technology 

 to the private sector. 



So if universities or other people are looking for a model to do 

 that, I think they should go talk to ARS. They're doing a pretty 

 good job of that. 



Mr. DOOLEY. Thank you. 



Mr. Stenholm. Mr. Allard. 



Mr. Allard. Dr. Savage, you had a lot to say about earmarking 

 in your testimony. Do you think it would be appropriate to have 

 a peer review before we go through the appropriations process 

 where earmarking occurs? 



Mr. Savage. If you're going to have earmarking, there needs to 

 be some sort of evaluation of it before and after, and that's one of 

 the big problems. I've seen this work, I've participated in it, and 

 what happens is that some researcher has an idea, gets the univer- 

 sity to sponsor it, and the university administration is often sort 

 of passive in this process because they don't know the science in- 

 volved in it, but they go ahead because they want to satisfy the re- 

 searcher, and they bring it to a member who wants to help out the 

 university. There's a proposal usually attached to this, but there's 

 no up-front evaluation of how good this is. There's little or no seri- 

 ous evaluation after the project has occurred. 



If you're going to have earmarking, then certainly some sort of 

 process to determine whether or not this is good science is appro- 

 priate, but it also has to be a serious review, because, quite frank- 

 ly, the evaluations that have occurred are very lukewarm because 

 the agencies are afraid of antagonizing Members of Congress. 



Mr. Allard. Do you have any thoughts about whether formula 

 funding or just strictly competitive bidding for research is the best 

 way to go, or do we need a combination? 



Mr. Savage. I think the combination has worked reasonably 

 well. The issue is, again, whether it's a formula or not or whatever 

 the process is, there has to be some sort of serious process that 

 evaluates whether or not the taxpayer's dollar has been used well 

 and what is the outcome. If an institution or researchers have not 

 been putting those dollars to work in a proper fashion that's useful, 

 then there should be some mechanism of cutting that off. 



Mr. Allard. I guess with formula funding, we're making an as- 

 sumption that if you're in an area that has more agriculture in it, 

 there would be more agricultural need for research. That's sort of 

 the basic underlying assumption, I would assume. It doesn't nec- 

 essarily reflect the quality or the ability of those researchers to do 

 that research, and I wish you'd address that a little bit. 



Mr. Savage. What you've got basically is an entitlement, and 

 you're saying, "You should get this because of past practices or per- 

 haps because you have so many people in the agricultural area in 

 your State" or something. It's an entitlement that doesn't provide 

 for serious merit review, and you could do that for any area. Sup- 



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