The Washington Post is sponsoring “America’s Next Great Pundit Contest.” The Post received 4,800 entries from people who hoped to write better commentary than they had been reading.   The Post selected ten entries to move to the next level of the competition. The winner of the contest will be  hired to write a weekly column.

Among the ten finalists was the Nobel Prize -winning physicist, Burton Richter,  who opined about  the need for Congress to  re-establish the Office of Technology Assessment. He pointed out that a 1974 OTA report, “Drug Bioequivalence,” is relevant in recent discussions of health care costs.  He also recommended  one of his favorite OTA reports, “Renewing Our Energy Future,” which discussed the potential of secondary sources for biofuels.

According to Richter, “A new OTA will not settle all the arguments because there are political dimensions to major technical issues, but at least it can help Congress arrive at a common starting point for complicated legislation.”

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones News kindly provided a  summary of the columns at “Pundit Watch” for those wishing to save a little time.

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A column about measuring the size of underground nuclear blasts by their seismic waves refers to a 1988 OTA report, “Seismic Verification of Nuclear Testing Treaties,” that suggested that it might be difficult to detect a nucleat test smaller than 5 kilotons.

In the two decades since that report, verification has improved and now smaller blasts can be detected, the article says.

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In an op-ed article,  Rep. Holt makes the case that it is time for Congress to restore an important science resource to its rightful place – referring, of course, to OTA.  Holt points out that since very few members of Congress are scientists, they need their own source of science advice. He said:

While members of Congress do not suffer from a lack of information, we lack time and resources to assess the validity, credibility, and usefulness of the large amount of scientific information and advice we receive as it affects actual policy decisions. The purpose of the OTA was to assist members of Congress in this task. It both provided an important long-term perspective and alerted Congress to scientific and technological components of policy that might not be obvious.

Holt mentioned that OTA wrote comprehensive reports in the 1990s on issues that the Congress and the President are preparing to address today, for example: clinical preventive services, patient cost-sharing, health care in rural America, and health technologies. OTA also reported to Congress on energy efficiency, including how to save energy on transportation.

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An article gives a brief history of OTA and argues that the Congress needs technical support much more today than when OTA was orginally created.  The article also points out that OTA is not just for scientists:

Ironically, the scientific community’s strong support for OTA may have created the false impression that OTA primarily served to support scientists. This is like saying that television weather announcers primarily serve to support professional meteorologists—which is, of course, precisely backwards. Meteorologists already know the weather. The role of television weather announcers is to take meteorological forecasts, turn them into language the rest of us can understand, and enable us all to make better plans. The scientific community supported OTA not because it benefitted scientists directly, but because it enabled members of Congress to make better decisions about policy issues with significant scientific and technological components.

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An article about nuclear power plants and laser isotope separation refers to a 1977 OTA report, Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards Appendix Volume II Part 2.

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A blog post about globalization, neoliberalism and agricultural biotechnology policy refers to a 1991 OTA report,  U.S. Dairy Industry at a Crossroads: Biotechnology and Policy Choices.

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By Philip H. | The Intersection | September 2, 2008

This blog post mentioned the OTA Archive and discussed some ideas about how to communicate science to Congress.  Referred to several OTA reports on issues that are still being debated:  a 1990 report, Replacing Gasoline: Alternative Fuels for Light Duty Vehicles and Preparing for an Uncertain Climate Volume I and Volume II published in 1993.

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The disturbing incidents of ‘friendly fire’ deaths suffered by the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf War focused new attention on an old problem. U.S. forces shooting at their own units caused 24 percent of U.S. combat deaths in the war. The fraction of losses due to friendly fire, or fratricide, seemed extraordinarily high and caused considerable public concern and international friction. The OTA report, Who Goes There: Friend or Foe?, explores the causes of friendly fire and some of the remedies that might be found in new technology, training, and doctrine.

Click here to read the full 1993 OTA report, “Who goes there: friend or foe?”

More report briefs will be posted on this page in the coming days.

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The press release says:

The ongoing project to map human genes will almost certainly expand the number of DNA-based tests for genetic disorders by an order of magnitude over the next decade. How health insurers view such tests will affect their use, says the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).
An OTA background paper issued today describes the results from a 1991 OTA survey of U.S. health insurers’ attitudes toward genetic tests and genetic information – both their attitudes towards genetic information in making determinations of insurability and how they might reimburse consumers for genetic tests.

This press advisory is one of eight newly available documents released in the summer and fall of 1992. Click here to check them out. We’d be happy to collect and scan similar documents if anyone has them.

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This blog post discusses the benefits and drawbacks of paying for psychotherapy with employer-issued health insurance versus out of pocket funds. Ms. Carnabucci cites this 1991 OTA report, “Medical Monitoring and Screening in the Workplace: Results of a Survey“, which found that “almost a third of the employers that maintained employee medical records let their personnel departments read those records without notifying the employee.”

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