Sir

Your News story “Fears for basic science as Bush backs use of investment criteria” (Nature 413, 5; 2001) expresses concerns over the fate of research funding and policy under the Bush administration, owing to the establishment of research-and-development performance criteria. The Bush administration is indeed examining explicit criteria for federal investment in research according to its President's Management Agenda.

This initiative was prompted by two excellent reports by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) — Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government Performance and Results Act (1999; see http://books.nap.edu/html/gpra) and Implementing the Government Performance and Results Act for Research (2001; see http://books.nap.edu/html/gpra2) — and by other observations from the scientific community, such as the US House of Representatives Committee on Science 1998 report Unlocking Our Future: Toward a New National Science Policy (http://www.house.gov/science/science_policy_report.htm). The administration's efforts will start with applied research programmes, and apply the lessons learned to the evaluation of basic science. The administration supports explicit criteria for the quality, relevance and appropriate federal role of projects, rather than basing funding levels on vague anecdotes and previous-year funding levels.

The administration does not believe all basic research should be done by industry, nor are we developing criteria in isolation with merely 'green-eyeshade' views of research investments. We fully understand the difficulties of applying performance measures to basic research programmes, but this does not exclude good management and high performance. We have had extensive consultations with COSEPUP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, members of Congress and their staff, and other leading researchers. These have provided useful insights that we are incorporating into our work.

The National Academy of Sciences has laid a foundation for us. We invite the scientific community to continue to work with us as we tackle the difficult task of implementing these sound ideas.