Reduced public funding for basic research leaves U.S. in the scientific dus

A new report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lists four landmark scientific achievements of the last year: the first spacecraft landing on a comet; the discovery of a new fundamental particle, the Higgs boson; the development of the world's fastest supercomputer; and new research in plant biology pointing to new ways to meet global food needs.

Then comes the punchline: None of these were U.S.-led achievements. The first two were the products of European-led consortia and credit for the second two belongs to the Chinese.

Widespread concern over "a growing U.S. innovation deficit" is well placed, the report's authors say, at least partially attributable to "declining public investment in research." (See accompanying graphic.)

The MIT report is ominously entitled "The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit." It joins several other studies of the declining public funding of basic research, and its implications for America's economic competitiveness, as well as the nation's health and national security. Almost all the arrows point down and the lights are flashing red.

In February 2014, the Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed more than 67,000 researchers with grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. The publication compiled a dismal picture from the 11,000 responses it received. Nearly half the respondents had been forced by economic pressures to abandon an area of investigation they thought "central to their lab's mission." More than three-quarters had been forced to pare back their recruitment of graduate students and research fellows. Nearly half were advising their students to seek careers outside academia or abroad.