With assistance of the APSA, the political science members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) held their standing meeting at the annual APSA convention in Chicago. The purposes of these meetings are two-fold: First, as required, to discuss ways that political science can fulfill the NAS mission in providing scientific evidence to address consequential public issues that come from queries posed by various agencies of government; and second, to increase the presence of political scientists in the Academy, where membership from our discipline is, in our view, much lower than political scientists' contributions to the scientific community, and does not adequately recognize the many political scientists who merit election. While we have made some progress toward this second goal, it is a complicated battle: 2,179 members and 437 foreign associates across scientific disciplines have been elected to and currently serve in the NAS, but only 21 are political scientists.Footnote 1 Although the science-based mission of NAS does not seek to represent all of the highly pluralistic discipline of political science, far more research relying on methods that are recognized in the natural sciences is produced in our field than is presently represented in the NAS.
Although the NAS is an honorific society, its members have a responsibility to the US government. As its mission statement reads: “The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Nearly 500 members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes” (See http://nasonline.org/about-nas/mission).
For the past century and a half, members have investigated and responded to questions posed by our national leaders as a form of service to the nation without financial recompense. As Ralph Cicerone, president of the NAS, never fails to relate to new members at the annual installation ceremony, while our advice is often solicited—its first report to the Lincoln administration addressed whether our country should adopt the metric system, and sent back a consensus “yes” answer—this advice is not always followed. Scientific objectivity is the goal of the Academy, not political advocacy.
The NAS has its own research infrastructure, with political scientist members performing three roles.Footnote 2 First, political scientist members of the NAS serve as article editors for submissions to the NAS journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which has a vast readership across all scientific disciplines with an impressive citation count for its publications. The NAS also oversees a large staff of salaried professional researchers (usually not members of the NAS) who constitute the National Research Council (NRC). In the context of the NRC, political scientists in the NAS perform two further roles. First, they are often asked to serve as members or reviewers of committees that oversee research reports both in the natural sciences (where political scientists are asked to address questions of how scientific recommendations can be implemented effectively) and in the social sciences. Second, NAS members play a role in a branch of the NRC called DBASSE (the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education) that approves and oversees contracts with government agencies. The many arenas of research of DBASSE can be accessed at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/index.htm. Presiding over DBASSE presently is political scientist Kenneth Prewitt. Scholars who are not NAS members also regularly participate as members of NAS committees, and we urge all political scientists to give serious consideration to these requests.
The discussion at this year's meeting of NAS-member political scientists at the APSA convention centered on how to effectively transmit the best social science knowledge to the government through the NRC. One issue facing the NRC in general and the DBASSE in particular is that by charter the NAS is not permitted to solicit contracts from government agencies, but merely to respond to their queries. In fact, after a query is posed, NRC staff can discuss how the proposal can be massaged in a way that will allow the scientific community to focus its attention on a specific problem. However, NRC staff are appropriately constrained on how much soliciting they can do, and therefore some excellent ideas for policy relevant research coming from both staff and from members do not always get funded. There are no easy answers here, but our discussion at this year's meeting sustained a conversation on how we can provide better research to relevant government agencies.
