Science and technology impacts virtually all aspects of public policy (e.g., in health, natural resources and environment, energy, national and homeland security, communication, transportation, and other areas of national importance). Research and Development (R&D) is the process whereby the nation advances scientific understanding and develops new technologies. Thus, R&D is also a matter of S&T policy. The federal government funds R&D, mainly in universities and national laboratories. It regulates how R&D is performed and it establishes and enforces laws that protect intellectual property rights that contribute to the U.S. position of leadership in S&T in the world.
One frequently hears the principle "policy should be based on sound science." This is more easily said than done! In our system of representational democracy, with a strong separation of powers, politics is inextricably connected with policy. This is true for S&T as for any other area of human activity. We have in our society, and in those of many other nations, a complicated "three-body" problem (see Figure 1). The "three bodies" (or three circles, on a diagram), in this purely metaphorical representation, are science (and technology), policy, and politics, with forces between them that we cannot describe in any simplified way. Carrying this a bit further, we also observe that each of us understands this problem differently, depending on our position in society. Scientists and other technical professionals spend most of their time in the science circle. Politicians in Congress, the White House, and in the top levels of the federal agencies, have their focus in the politics circle. The civil servants and the bureaucrats, who actually make the government work, spend their time in the policy circle. Finally, the vast majority of us in society are in none of these circles, and it is very difficult to understand what goes on inside them or between them.