When it comes to supporting basic scientific research with federal dollars, President Bush and members of Congress talk the talk. Last summer, they passed a law affirming the primacy of federally funded science in maintaining U.S. economic competitiveness.
Walking the walk is another matter. Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab in Illinois became collateral damage in the recent budget fight between Bush and Congress. The labs face a $43 million cut in their combined $850 million in annual funding. That will force them to shrink staffing and facilities.
There will be an immediate local impact at the facilities, which together employ 5,000 people. But the greater harm will be in the corrosion of scientific research capability, which will weaken the innovative spirit upon which this country’s post-World-War-II economic dominance has been built.
Research funding often gets short shrift because it can take years, even decades, for what can seem like esoteric physics and engineering projects to reach their practical applications. Visible light-emitting diodes, the building blocks of our newfangled LCD flat-screen TVs, were developed more than four decades ago, in 1962, by Nick Holonyak Jr., now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The technology used to build MRI machines started as a project at Fermilab.
Basic scientific research — on radar, lasers, optics and nanotechnology — has contributed to the vital military superiority of the U.S.
Such innovation also gives this country an edge in manufacturing high-technology goods. And it can bring in a king’s ransom in intellectual property fees.
Our competitors realize that. A November 2006 report produced by a coalition of business, scientific and university organizations found that between 1995 and 2004, the U.S. increased its research and development expenditures by 43 percent. In that time, China, Ireland, Israel, Singapore and South Korea collectively upped their R&D spending by 214 percent.
That report, by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, found that “… the share of the Department of Defense (DOD) investment in science and technology devoted to basic research has declined significantly, from 20 percent in 1980 to less than 12 percent in 2005” (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
The National Science Board’s biennial report on science and engineering, released this month, showed that 2006 marked the fifth straight year in which the U.S. faced a deficit in the international trade of high-technology goods.
U.S. students lag much of the world in math and science proficiency. We’ve maintained our edge in the sciences by importing top talent from abroad — luring people with our superior research facilities and funding. But graduate school applications from foreign students are down. There aren’t enough H1B visas — which allow foreign scientists to work in the U.S. — to meet demand.
In 1990, just 27 percent of science and engineering PhDs under age 45 were foreign born. By 2000, that had risen to 52 percent. But more of those foreign workers are returning home: The reverse brain drain cost the U.S. 1,000 workers a day in 2005, according to author and former finance executive David Heenan.
To no surprise, talent follows the money. Asian countries outpace the U.S. in the growth of state-supported research funds. A 2006 study of 186 top companies found that 77 percent of the new research and development sites they planned for the next three years will be in China or India.
If the cuts that threaten to weaken Fermilab and Argonne aren’t reversed much of the research that American companies conduct there could be sent abroad. As Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, wrote to leaders of Congress: “If there is no government support to those areas that will dictate our competitiveness for the next century, then we might as well just accept that and make our investments elsewhere.”
Private industry spends hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development annually. But most of that goes toward applied research and development. Because of the risk and long wait for reward, companies don’t fund much basic research. The government, in essence, primes the pump.
“Many of the really big changes that will transform our lives will come from unpredictable [research] breakthroughs,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
If we want to ensure that the U.S. profits from those breakthroughs, Congress needs to fund basic science and engineering research. Restore the vital work done at Argonne and Fermilab.
