Future National Research Policies Within the Industrialized Nations Report of a Symposium (1992) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 78-94
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From page 78... ...
As you well know, divining the long-term future of federal science and ecnnology policy trom a single year's budget document is something like trying to figure out the plot of a movie from a single still photograph. Nevertheless, if the still has all of the movie's characters in it, perhaps the plot can be explained.
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From page 79... ...
But basic research, and particularly the large fraction of basic research done by individual investigators in universities and colleges, is the wellspring from which new knowledge and technical advances flow, not only in the United States but around the world. Recognizing the many essential contributions of basic research to our national future, the Fiscal Year 1992 budget proposes actions in several federal agencies designed to strengthen the individual and small group investigator component of the scientific enterprise.
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From page 80... ...
, which is the Cabinet-level group in the federal government responsible for coordinating and implementing federal science and technology policy. Part of this program consists of basic research at the nation's universities designed to develop the hardware, software, networks, and human resources needed to ensure American leadership in all advanced areas of highperformance computing and networking.
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From page 81... ...
I am convinced that groups of knowledgeable industrial and university scientists, meeting with laboratory management and senior scientists and engineers, can add a very important new dimension to the selection of program emphases andpriorities at the outset with the laboratories. In so doing, this process will lead to significantly improved coupling throughout the research programs and in the use of their outputs.
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From page 82... ...
By doing so, and by being able to take forward to the rest of the administration and to the President such items as the federal program on global change, the federal program on high-performance computing, the federal program on education in science and mathematics, we have been able to convince all of those involved that these are indeed very important areas-areas deserving of special support. At a time when we, probably unique among the developed nations, are very certainly playing a zero-sum game in constant dollars, I think all of us here should take real encouragement from the fact that the budget reflects the increases I have mentioned, for that means that other programs with strong constituencies have necessarily been cut back to provide the funds that have been moved into the support of science and technology.
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From page 83... ...
I would like to tell you about a few factors that influence my own thoughts on these matters. If one uses the index of citations to each nation's literature in the world's scientific literature new data from the Institute for Science Informationnormalized for the size of the country, this is what one concludes: the United States leads by a large amount according to this indicator of scientific productivity, and it is the only country in recent years with a positive slope.
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From page 84... ...
They believe that growth can be persuasively argued in terms that the public and politicians can understand, that increased funding of science is not that expensive compared to other national priorities, and that science will founder unless it continues to grow. My own view is that the outcome will be somewhere in the middle.
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From page 85... ...
I think that those companies that do it well will be role models for the others, and I believe as well that the effective use of R&D by Japanese companies may be a role model forAmer can compames. As for our national laboratories, the personnel there and the political supporters of these laboratories are in search of new missions as the sponsoring agencies change their priorities.
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From page 86... ...
The large science budgets that we are enjoying makes science very, very visible. Increasingly, we will be asked as a community, with so much invested in science onr1 _ _ _: ,1_ _ _ 1 1 1 ~ Looking ahead, I think American industry mill shift a majorfraction of its fundamental research to research universities and unll reserve targeted research more related to productsfor their own industrial laiooratones.
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From page 87... ...
These industrial scientists go and spend time, Torahs at a time, at the universities, and the university people sometimes spend an equal amount of time in the industrial laboratories. This is a new concept that seems to be very successful.
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From page 88... ...
Thus, it is now approximately where it was in 1960. This low percentage is not because federal investment decreased; it actually increased by abou t 50 percent in real terms during the 1 980s.
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From page 89... ...
Are the big accelerators included? Because when using the NSF's own data in scientific indicators, you will see that the average grant size does not seem to follow the trend you have mentioned.
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From page 90... ...
~ i; :, go. 1 have In mind about a dozen American companies that have relationships with universities of the kind that I described.
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From page 91... ...
GENERAL DISCUSSION ProfessorAlan Beyerchen: A major transition that has occurred, naturally, is the unification of Germany: something that was not foreseen by anyone German, American, or otherwise-that I know of in 1989. I am very concerned at this point about the manner of the West German restructuring of East German scientific institutions, and I am concerned as well about the reports coming out of East Germany that indicate that certainly people in the eastern provinces of Germany realize that there was a great deal of overstaffing and so on.
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From page 92... ...
Where you do find employment for researchers in the big chemical industry, or the big engineering sector, the investment is very slow and very difficult to arrange. What really happens is that the average person hitting a big; company say one of our comnanv industries he to i'.c~i67 in faring r 1 · .
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From page 93... ...
The only way which we have discovered to retain talent is to have the government invest and then to attract more money Tom outside in very qualified research universities. Research universities provide something that keeps people in their home communities and gives them support, because it is the young people from the region who are educated there, and education provides chances for the future for them.
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From page 94... ...
western European orBritish, American, German, and French based on individual activity and individual responsibility, and (2) let's say, Asian, Japanese, Taiwanese, South Korean.
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