Science Policy in the Time of Trial

Image Source: Tightwad Technica

When hard times come in your family, you cut back on spending, eliminating luxuries and substituting less expensive for more expensive consumer goods. You postpone capital expenditures but you find a way to pay for the maintenance of your home and your car.

Hard times are coming to American science. The recession is going to lead corporations to cut back on R&D expenditures. State governments are going to have to cut back on support of science, and federal government leaders will be looking for savings on expenditures and federal support for science will be a tempting target. Foundations will see their incomes from investment fall, and will cut back on grants. Families under pressure will donate less to charity, and the charities will in turn have less to invest in R&D. Indeed, I expect the research intensive universities will face reductions in support of all kinds, and they too will cut back on support for science.

From my days as a researcher, I remember that it takes time and effort to build a strong and efficient research team. If the country lets its research teams deteriorate and disband, at best it will take time and money to rebuild the lost capacity. Scientific capacity depreciates in many ways: facilities wear out or become outmoded, people lose their grip on the frontier of research, researchers leave teams to retire or to move to non-research occupations.

More globally, research paradigms change, and older researchers tend to stay with the old paradigm. New fields arise; in my lifetime these included computer science, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Alternatively, some fields mature, with discoveries coming less frequently and with less importantly. There is a need to reallocate human and financial resources to maintain a balance that maximizes scientific productivity.

In our decentralized system, institutions at all levels will have to make their own adjustments to maintain their capacity in the face of the financial crisis. I would underline, however, that the federal government should be very careful in the ways it cuts science funding. "Eating the seed corn" is not a good way to assure future harvests.