What are they smoking in Washington? Congress recently cut the budget of the National Science Foundation by $105 million, or roughly 2%. That’s beyond insane.
What are they smoking in Washington? Congress recently cut the budget of the National Science Foundation by $105 million, or roughly 2%.
That’s beyond insane. Today’s productivity increases are the direct result of R&D funding – most of it by the government – in the 1970s and 1980s. Government-subsidized IT research in those decades transformed the face of businesses in the 1990s and today. A few figures:
• Research directly drives business, according to the Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America. MIT alone has spun off 4,000 companies with 1.1 million employees and annual revenues of $232 billion.
• Studies indicate that up to 75% of all economic growth is directly attributed to innovation.
• The primary source of basic research funding is the government. In 2003 it was responsible for 85% of all basic research, most of which was performed in universities and national laboratories.
Bottom line: Research creates jobs and, more broadly, prosperity. Government funding creates technology research. Congress just cut the fuel supply to the greatest economic engine on the planet.
How dumb is that? Let’s just say I’d rather have my elected representatives inhaling illegal substances – at least then, the only brains they’d fry would be their own.
But hey, as someone who’s made a living from science and engineering for the past couple of decades, I might be just a tad biased. So let’s look at some of the obvious questions you might have:
Q: Won’t other agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), take up the slack?
A: No. It’s true that some of the most successful initiatives have involved funding from multiple sources (both the NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the early Internet, for example). And DHS has been a willing partner in recent funding initiatives that clearly fall within its sphere of interest, such as Internet security. But the DHS quite rightly will focus primarily on its own challenges – and funding only the research that solves immediate problems is shortsighted.
Q: Do we really need publicly funded research? Isn’t private investment preferable?
A: Private R&D is necessary, but not sufficient. Quite reasonably, private companies often refuse to share their findings with competitors. Privately funded research often can be tainted. One reason the danger of the drug Vioxx (which is now known to trigger heart attacks) was previously unknown was that the Food and Drug Administration had no funding for independent evaluations. The agency had to rely on research financed by the drug’s manufacturer, which failed to pick up any risks.
Q: Isn’t this whole issue a politically motivated swipe by Democrats at the Republicans who control Congress?
A: Not according to Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.), who says: “This decision shows dangerous disregard for our nation’s future. . . . Reducing this funding is extremely shortsighted.”
Amen, Ehlers. Let’s hope your colleagues on both sides of the aisle are listening.
