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Universities are quietly skirmishing with US government contract officers over new restrictions on research and eyeing ominous language in the Homeland Security law which they fear portends more trouble in the future.
Duke University used to see about one government contract a year that required scientists involved in fundamental research to submit manuscripts for pre-publication review. Such clauses are anathema to most universities, which consider free communication of findings essential to the scientific enterprise.
But in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the North Carolina-based institution encountered contract after contract with pre-publication review requirements even though the research was not classified.
"There was a rush of these that appeared," James Siedow, Duke vice provost for research, told The Scientist. Normally Duke saw one restrictive contract a year. Four appeared in the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; three or four more showed up in 2002.
Like other university research executives, Siedow recalled that most of the trouble clauses came from the Army. In one case, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was across the table from Duke negotiators, demanding review rights. It did not get them. In another case, however, Duke had to refuse a contract worth about $250,000 per year.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has also persuaded the Department of Defense to drop some restrictions on unclassified research. But in September 2002, MIT turned down a $400,000 contract from the National Security Agency, which insisted on approving any foreign researchers working on the project.
"So far, pushing back seems to have worked," Siedow said. "Most people are sticking by their guns. Everybody that I've talked to in universities has said they have not accepted research restrictions and they're not going to start now."
While the rash of restrictive contract clauses appear to be the scattershot product of security-conscious administrators, language in the Homeland Security Act that creates a new category of regulated information, "sensitive but unclassified," has research executives bracing for systemic change.
"There are faculty in the school of engineering who have been doing unclassified research and working with unrestricted information for years, but if the government decides to tighten up, a lifetime of research can become, essentially, classified, overnight," Siedow says.
The law creating the new domestic security complex gives President George W. Bush power to "identify and safeguard homeland security information that is sensitive but unclassified." The phrase threatens to change decades of understanding that protected universities from much government regulation, as long as they avoided taking on classified research projects.
"Everybody is very worried about this whole notion of sensitive but unclassified. We don't know what it means," the Duke executive said. "That's a phrase you can drive a truck through."
While waiting for the Homeland Security language to play out, university research units are grappling with restrictive contract clauses that appear to emanate mostly from the Army.
Although various contracting authorities within the Army could be handing out different guidance, no directive from the top authorizes the strictures, Army procurement policy analyst William Kley said. The issue of prepublication review of science findings is a long-standing one within the Defense department, which has seen localized, occasional strictures in the past.
"There's always the temptation to say, 'You're spending my money and I'm accountable for it, so why would I let you do what you want with it,'" Kley explained. "I can understand the concern of universities, though."
When it comes to science, contractors are supposed to adhere to a Reagan-era directive that says fundamental research should remain unrestricted, said James C.I. Chang, deputy director for basic science at the US Army Research Office. Most federally funded research at colleges and universities comes under the definition of fundamental research.
"On the other hand, nothing is black and white and if you should happen to touch on something sensitive, that's a separate issue," Chang said.
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