In it’s May 27 issue, Nature has two pieces on the broader impacts criterion mandated by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Frequent readers should remember that I’m a fan of encouraging research that acknowledges, if not embraces, broader impacts, so I’m happy to see the editorial and news article covering the criterion and encouraging further development of a support infrastructure for facilitating the connections between research and broader impacts.
Do read the pieces, because I think the point about developing the infrastructure to support research on broader impacts and the implementation of those broader impacts is a necessary step. With a support system in place, researchers may be more inclined to take the criterion seriously. With infrastructure better able to measure impacts, science advocates may have better data from which to advance their causes. While I don’t think broader impacts should be exclusively the responsibility of institutions, building such a capacity in universities (and in funding agencies – an NSF Broader Impacts Office could be of great use) helps their outreach and service missions, and may provide additional career opportunities for all those Ph.D graduates that won’t get tenure-track jobs.
While there was some mention of efforts in the U.K. and the European Commission to do similar work in making more explicit the connections between scientific research and broader impacts, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a bit more effort to make a stronger connection of lessons learned both for other countries and for the U.S. This is particularly true if new U.K. Science and Universities Minister Willets goes through with a campaign promise to give the Research Excellence Framework a more thorough review.
The Nature news article cites three articles for additional reading, two of them from this special issue of Social Epistemology. I recommend those interested in the topic to take a look at the whole issue, or at least the article by Melanie Roberts. Her review of NSF broader impact data is in that issue and was alluded to in the news piece.
Broader impacts aren’t going away, and the House passage of the COMPETES Act reauthorization (not yet a reality when the editorial was written) suggests that not only will there be some additional support for broader impacts work, but a refinement of what that means. Kudos to those who have been working in this area, and to Nature for shining a long-overdue spotlight on the matter.
Pasco Phronesis 