The most recent estimate from the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) puts nanotechnology risk research investment at $68 million for 2006 (the only year complete figures are currently available for—apparently). Yet theProject on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has just completed its own assessment—and could only find $13 million associated with research projects primarily focused on addressing nanotechnology risk in the same year. What gives—are the feds indulging in a bit of creative accounting; or have PEN forgotten the basic rules of arithmetic?
Let’s be honest, I’m not a great fan of bean-counting. Evaluating research in terms of dollars invested (or Pounds or Euros) is a crude tool at the best of times. But when it comes to assessing investments and returns, the fact is that bottom-line figures count.
Faced with counting research dollars, organizations have two choices: use the figures to justify past performance, or employ them to inform future actions. The former is the easy option—matching what was invested to what was done, rather than what should have been done. But using past spending as a feel-good exercise is a disaster when it comes to future planning—because the assessment is invariably based on wishful thinking rather than reality.
Admittedly, the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative has taken a structured approach to evaluating investment in risk research. As outlined in its recently-published nano-risk research strategy [PDF, 2.2 MB], nanotechnology risk research needs have been divided into five overarching areas; each consisting of five specific research priorities. Research funded by the federal government in fiscal year 2006 (running from October 2006 to September 2007) has then been evaluated in terms of its relevance to these research priorities.
The result: 246 projects that were identified as addressing nanotechnology risks in 2006.
From the report’s executive summary:
“In FY 2006, the Federal Government invested $68 million in 246 projects at seven agencies. Although research categories were not prioritized with respect to each other, there is consensus among members of the NEHI Working Group that research in the Instrumentation, Metrology, and Analytical Methods category is cross-cutting, supporting research in every other category, and therefore is generally a high priority. Among the five research categories, the distribution of projects and spending was: 78 projects ($26.6 million) in Instrumentation, Metrology, and Analytical Methods; 100 projects ($24.1 million) in Nanomaterials and Human Health; 49 projects ($12.7 million) in Nanomaterials and the Environment; five projects ($1.1 million) in Human and Environmental Exposure Assessment; and 14 projects ($3.3 million) in Risk Management Methods. In short, the analysis demonstrated that the Federal Government is supporting more EHS research than has been previously identified, and the research is well-distributed across key priority areas.”
$68 million in one year sounds a lot. But what does this mean—that all of these projects were dedicated to addressing critical knowledge gaps in the quest to develop safe nanotechnologies, or that 246 projects could somehow be justified as having some relationship to the five research categories? The distinction is crucial—on the one hand you have a strategically important assessment; on the other, a justification for past actions.
Assessing the value and relevancy of research is not easy—as well as projects dedicated to addressing risk, there are those where risk research is a major component of a more general nanotechnology project; or projects supporting research that could be relevant to understanding risks—if it was applied in the right way.
Reading through the government’s strategy document, I suspect that the NNI lumped all of these different types of research together without making clear distinctions. For instance, when assessing research relevant to nanomaterials and human health, the NNI report states:
“Much of the research reported for FY 2006 focuses on medical applications. While this focus does contribute to the overall body of knowledge for human health effects, more systematic, targeted study of classes of nanomaterials and the relationship of their physical and chemical properties to biological response would provide better integrated data sets for risk assessment and risk management. These efforts should build upon the existing research whose primary focus is human health and safety.”
But how were these applications-focused projects evaluated in terms of their relevance to risk? How well does the reported $68 million reflect research that will provide clear answers to well-defined risk questions, and to what extent (if at all) were nano-applications projects used to pad this figure? Unfortunately, the report does not divulge this—just as it does not list project-specific funding that would enable an independent evaluation of the report’s assessment.
It is this lack of transparency that prompted the PEN analysis of risk-research funding for 2006. Staring with the 246 projects listed in the NNI document (and removing those projects listed more than once), we matched the projects—where possible—to publicly available information on funding. We then assessed the summary of each project (available on-line here), and determined whether the research being undertaken was highly relevant to addressing nanotechnology risks, substantially relevant, had some relevance, or was only marginally relevant. We also classified the research in terms of whether it was primarily focused on engineered nanomaterials, or nanomaterials from other sources (incidental or naturally occurring).
Just to clarify; projects primarily focused on addressing nanotechnology risk (such as toxicity and exposure studies) were classed as being highly relevant. Those focused on applications (or basic research), but with a major component addressing risk were classed as substantially relevant. If a project was primarily focused on basic research or nano applications, but was generating information of direct use to understanding and addressing risks, it was classed as having some relevance. And finally, research that could conceivably be useful to addressing risks—but only if there was increased investment in applying it to environmental health and safety implications—was classed as having marginal relevance.
The results of this exercise are freely available in the PEN Nanotechnology Environmental Health and Safety Research inventory – accessible here. Although reproducing our assessment of the NNI-listed research is tough because the inventory contains a number of relevant projects that the federal government missed, the data can be searched and evaluated to give a reasonably clear idea of risk-relevant research funded in the U.S. and many other countries.
Our classification of the NNI-listed projects is also available in testimony to the U.S. Congress House Committee on Science and Technology hearing on the National Nanotechnology Initiative Act of 2008, held 16th April 2008 [testimony available here]. This list contains estimates of annual funding for each project, and may be used to verify the PEN assessment of the NNI’s 246 risk-relevant projects.
And the assessment is revealing. We could only find $13 million invested in research projects that were highly relevant to nanotechnology risk and received funding in 2006. These are the projects that directly address environmental, health and safety impact.
Including substantially relevant projects in the assessment brings this figure up to $29 million—still a little shy of the NNI-reported $68 million!
If these figures look low, take a look at the projects listed in Wednesday’s testimony and see whether the categorization looks reasonable. To whet your appetite, here are examples of listed projects from each category:
Highly relevant: Example – Monitoring and Characterizing Airborne Carbon Nanotube Particles (NIOSH, Est. funding $400,000 over 3 years). [link to inventory record]
Substantially relevant: Example – Nanoparticles for efficient delivery to solid tumors (NIH, Est funding $333,084 over 3 years). [link to inventory record]
Some relevance: Example – Nanoscale Science & Engineering Center for Integrated Nanopatterning and Detection Technologies (NSF, Est. funding $12,702,550 over 6 years). [link to inventory record]
Marginal relevance: Example – National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NSF, Est. funding $171,883,246 [not a misprint] over an estimated 6 years). [link to inventory record]
I would be the first to agree that research in the areas of drug development and metrology—which account for many of the projects in the “substantial” and “some” categories—may be very beneficial to addressing risks. But in the short term, this is not research that is going to answer the questions on the top of most people’s “urgent” list. To pretend otherwise is like going to the doctor with a headache, and being told that there are millions of dollars being invested on research on cancer drugs that might also offer insight into the underlying mechanisms for head pains—when all you wanted was an aspirin!
Fortunately, Europe seems to be a little more on the ball—in terms of honest reporting at least! Risk research listed in the recent document “EU nanotechnology R&D in the field of health and environmental impact of nanoparticles” [PDF, 400 KB] lists projects that are almost all highly relevant to addressing risk (in my assessment at least). And crunching the figures, you arrive at a European-wide investment in highly relevant nanotechnology risk research for 2006 of around $24 million—not far off twice the U.S. investment.
These figures are also in the PEN inventory—for anyone to see and verify.
The NNI’s $68 million may be a feel-good figure; it may be an attempt at international one-upmanship; or it may just reflect a naïve understanding of how to assess the true relevance and value of risk research. Whatever the explanation, it does little to enable a true assessment of what still needs to be done to find answers to critical questions.
In terms of bean-counting to justify past performance or inform future actions, I have to conclude the NNI is guilty of the former. The last sentence in the NNI quote above seems to confirm this:
“In short, the analysis demonstrated that the Federal Government is supporting more EHS research than has been previously identified, and the research is well-distributed across key priority areas.”
The PEN assessment provides in my opinion a much more honest perspective on what is and is not going on, that has the potential to inform future research strategies. The good news is that it is also the basis for the OECD Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials international database on environment, health and safety research [further details here]. Hopefully the release of this database in June of this year will bring some much-needed transparency and accountability to what has so far been a less than transparent process.
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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in April 2008