America's pre-eminence in science at risk, AAAS chief warns

Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, gave a hard-hitting assessment of the state of US science at the EU ministerial conference held in Copenhagen on February 1. America's scientific eminence, he said, 'is at risk' due to tight budgets. This, coming in the midst of an EU debate over research funding as part of the Commission's proposed €80 billion Horizon 2020 programme, took many EU officials by surprise: Perhaps the grass isn't greener in the US, after all.

Here is the text of that speech, reprinted by permission of Alan L. Leshner and the Danish government, which hosted the conference. (Science|Business Editor Richard L. Hudson moderated the conference.)

“It’s an honour and a pleasure for me to be here and to have the opportunity to speak a bit about how the US is approaching the support of research and innovation. Having been in Washington for over 30 years and having served in three different agencies of government before coming to AAAS, I’ve watched what I think of as the cycling and re-cycling of science and policy issues with great interest.

Although the issue of science and innovation is certainly not new, there are some important new twists to how we’re approaching it.

Obviously, innovation and economic competitiveness do not depend only on research and development. There have to be policies conducive to innovation and to converting innovation into economic growth. My comments really are restricted to the role, contribution and approaches to the R&D part of the sequence or cycle.

Virtually every major issue – challenge or opportunity – of modern life has a science and technology component to it, either as a cause or a cure. Although different issues seem to have different levels of both public and policy priority at different times, the only way we can make real progress is to provide sustained, stable support for efforts to deal with them and avoid what one might think of as “roller coaster funding” or “feast and famine”.

The NIH Cliff

We had a bit of that in the US when the very useful doubling of the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was followed by flat or decreased support, in inflation-adjusted dollars. This has been referred to by many in the field as the “NIH cliff”.

The US has been investing heavily in research and development at least since World War II, and the country has been justifiably proud of its scientific accomplishments and contributions to the nation’s overall vitality – its economic prowess, the health of its people and the strength of its military. For many years, the US has seen itself as the world’s leader in science and innovation, although its pre-eminence in science and technology has certainly been challenged with the revitalisation of European science and the emergence of new and very talented scientific communities, particularly in Asia but really in virtually every part of the world.

In fact, Europe has been out-publishing the US for the last 15 years. And, according to the US National Science Board’s Science Indicators, released on January 17, “The latest data clearly show the economic consequences of the eroding competitive advantage the US has historically enjoyed in S&T. Other nations clearly recognise the economic and social benefits of investing in R&D and education, and they’re challenging the US leadership position.”

My own view is that not only is American pre-eminence being challenged but that in many fields, America’s very eminence – it’s high standing in science - is at risk. The US is no longer in the very top rank across the board.

Research is the seed corn

The current significant investment by the US federal government in basic and applied research reflects an understanding among policymakers that research is the seed corn of technology development, innovation, and economic growth. There’s an often-cited statistic that half of US economic growth since World War II has been the result of advances in science and technology.

Other studies show that the economic return on academic research exceeds 28 per cent, and overall estimates for the economic return on publicly funded research range from 20-67 per cent, depending on the subject area.

These kinds of data – coupled with the recognition of the challenges to American scientific and economic stature – provided the basis for the well-known arguments for increased scientific investments articulated in the two Rising Above the Gathering Storm reports from the US National Academies of Science. The original report was published in 2007 with an update in 2010.

These kinds of data also were the underpinnings of the America Competes Act (America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act), first passed by the US Congress in 2007 and re-authorised in 2010. This bipartisan legislation called for an array of actions to promote science-based innovation and improve the quality of science education for all students. A major recommendation was to double over the next 10 years the budgets of major US science funding agencies, like the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Unfortunately, the US economic situation has made the promise of the America Competes Act just that – a promise – since the budgets of those agencies have fallen way behind the promised doubling track.

Winning the race for the future

So, what will happen to science in the US? It’s hard to know given the rather unpredictable way our political system has been functioning recently. At the end of January, during the State of the Union Address, President Obama once again expressed his commitment to funding science, particularly basic science. To quote, “Innovation also demands basic research. … Don't gut these investments in our budget. Don't let other countries win the race for the future. Support the same kind of research and innovation that led to the computer chip and the Internet; to new American jobs and new American industries."

In the past few years, science has been spared most of the draconian cuts experienced by other programmes. Basically, the S&T budgets for 2012 are overall just a bit below 2011, which in turn was level with 2010. That means three years of basically flat overall R&D budgets.

Having been an Institute Director at the NIH during the famous doubling of its budget starting at the end of the Clinton Administration, I never thought I would be feeling even momentary relief at a level budget for S&T. A comment I often hear among the advocates for science budgets is that “flat has become the new doubling”…We’re happy not to be suffering big budget cuts and are not expecting much more than level funding.

In spite of the flatness of the budgets for the past few years, the US has implemented some shifts in innovation funding and policy, and recently has instituted some new programmes and more intensive investment in the innovation process itself. 

Transformative research

I’ve been struck by the emergence of two new terms or concepts aimed at fostering innovation that have been implemented in these new programmes. One is a new emphasis on what’s called “transformative research”. Many in the past have called this “high risk-high payoff” research. But as you know, legislatures are more and more fearful of risk or failure, so now we call it “transformative research.”

The idea is to stimulate more truly novel research that will fundamentally change the way we confront problems. These are novel approaches that will advance fields of science much more than incrementally – that will transform the way we think about things. And virtually every agency, including NSF and NIH, have developed new, transformative research programmes that involve set aside funding and special, less conservative peer review processes.

The second concept is “translational” research. This refers to activities intended to bridge what are thought of as the “black holes” or the “valleys of death” between basic and truly applied research or applied research and innovative product development. There is much discussion about how best to foster this kind of translation. As one example, NIH just this month established its new National Center for Advancing Translational Research with a $722 million budget, to foster innovative thinking and more rapid translation of science findings into treatments, many to be developed in closer partnership with industry.

A few years ago the Department of Energy developed the ARPA-E programme to stimulate thinking in non-traditional ways about energy sources. The Department of Defense’s DARPA programme has long been a source of many new technologies and innovations, and ARPA-E is modelled after it. The National Science Foundation recently launched its Innovation Corps and the US Congress increased the set aside funding at all major science agencies for research done in small businesses from 2.5 to 3.2 per cent.

New partnerships

That sounds like a small percentage change, but it’s actually a lot of money – an increase of some $600 million, to about $2.9 billion in small business research funding. All of these steps are intended to increase the speed with which scientific research finds its way into new products and services. Many of the new programmes, like the small business programmes or the NSF’s Innovation Corps, include expanded or new kinds of partnerships between government and industry – what we call “public-private partnerships”.

You get the point, tying science much closer to innovation – even without increased overall funding – is a much more clearly articulated priority in the US, and more programs are being developed to deliver on that priority.

My own view, however, is that the overall goal of advancing innovation and fostering economic growth will not be achieved unless the US substantially increases its overall science funding. Level budgets are of course decreases when inflation is taken into account, and the American scientific community is struggling mightily under that strain. Overall productivity is beginning to suffer. And the funding situation is affecting the rate at which we can recruit and retain the best and brightest students into science careers.

Adding to that strain, is the fact that the support of public universities – the major research universities supported by the individual States -- are suffering from ever-decreasing budgets…some now receive less than 25 per cent of their total budgets from the States, further increasing the strain on their scientific capacities.

Unnecessary administration

In addition, in order to fully exploit the potential of science to fuel innovation and economic growth, we will have to ensure that the entire science and technology enterprise is operating at maximal efficiency.  To do that at a national level or even international level, we need to make sure, among other things, that we are not wasting researchers’ time on unnecessary or duplicative administrative tasks. A frightening statistic is that in the US, researchers spend an average of 42 per cent of their research time on administrative tasks like writing detailed proposals, producing detailed and often duplicative activity reports across agencies, compliance assurances, etc.

I’ve been delighted to see that Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn has made reducing bureaucracy a major priority for Horizon 2020. I hope it works, and I hope we in the US learn from your experience.

Speaking of efficiency, I’d like to finish with a suggestion for us all. First, as we all know, more and more countries are investing in science, and the science and technology enterprise is becoming ever-more global in character itself. Science is going on almost everywhere, and multi-national collaboration has become – or is becoming - the norm.

Science anywhere is good for science everywhere

Second, although some or much technology development is proprietary in nature, basic research – the seed corn of eventual innovation – is by and large open and accessible to everyone. And I would argue that the more seed corn, the better for everyone. Any nation’s competitive advantage will ultimately come from its ability to harvest the corn and convert it into innovative products, not from how much basic research it can horde itself. As my friend and colleague Subra Suresh, the Director of the US National Science Foundation, says “Science anywhere is good for science everywhere”, and the more the better.

I believe that among the smartest things we could do as a world community of scientists and science policymakers – whether to build individual economies or to solve global societal problems - is to find much more efficient and effective ways to pool and leverage our science resources – our intellectual resources -- and foster easier and greater global collaboration in basic science.

We then would all benefit from the increased overall amount of seed corn, and we can leave the task of converting the corn into comparative economic advantages to later stages in the science–innovation-economy sequence. Horizon 2020, which includes some significant mechanisms to foster community-building or collective knowledge generation, is an excellent start for Europe. On a trans-Atlantic scale, we can do a much better job of leveraging each other’s scientific talent by making our respective policies and practices much more coherent and compatible with each other.

If Horizon 2020 - an elaborate and very creative and exciting programme - is going to succeed, it will be essential that it supports only the highest quality and the most novel science. I advise you to resist the impulse to worry too much about the geographical distribution of funds, or to go simply with the most famous names of scientists or the safest kinds of so-called proven but only incremental research. Innovation demands both the highest quality and the most novel research as its starting point.

Alan I. Leshner, is Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher, Science