Fight to Remove Effort Reporting Shows Progress

Since 1966 most of the Harvard scientists who receive support from the federal government have had to file effort reports. And since 1966 most of the Harvard scientists who file effort reports have opposed them.

Richard G. Leahy, coordinator for government relations and director of the laboratories of the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, said yesterday that the opposition may be making some headway.

Leahy said that he was "very encouraged" by a visit in January by a three-man inter-agency committee from the Bureau of the Budget. The committee, he said, visited 21 universities across the nation in an attempt to guage the general feeling toward effort-reporting among the nation's scientists.

"The committee had even heard arguments that I hadn't heard," said Leahy, who has led the opposition at Harvard. "They seemed to have a very good idea of the problem," he said.

Leahy said that he had met with the committee--composed of Cecil E. Goode of the Bureau of the Budget, Robert Boyden of the National Science Foundation, and Susumu Uyeda of the Government Accounting Office in Washington last week.

He said that the committee had been "very sensitive in trying to devise a more rational approach to the problem." Their report will be submitted to the Budget Bureau within the month.

Unpopularity

Effort reports--the center of the controversy--have been unpopular among scientists since their inception. They require each scientist holding a government grant to state what percentage of his total working "effort" he spends each month on the project for which he receives support.

Leahy said in an interview last fall that he saw two main arguments against effort-reporting: the pettiness of the method of accounting to the government, and the arbitrary process of deciding who must file reports. (Scientists holding contracts--as opposed to grants--from the government need not file reports.)

Any solution to the problem, Leahy said last night, will have to take into account two problems that Leahy feels are inevitable. First, Congress is not likely to yield its prerogative for debating each appropriation to the government scientific agencies. The other difficulty, he said, "is simply that a recipient of government funds must account for that money some way."