The United States’ preeminence in science and technology has long played an underappreciated but vital role in ensuring U.S. economic and geopolitical leadership. But the United States risks squandering this precious asset today through neglect and misguided ideology.
After World War II, the country came to dominate global research and development (R&D) by building the best model for nation-scale innovation the world has ever seen. Before the war, the United States was, at best, a second-tier science power. The Manhattan Project, for example, relied heavily on expatriate European scientists. But between 1947 and 1950, the Truman Administration and Congress, in a series of decisions, adopted one of the most consequential policy objectives in history: to make the United States into the world’s unrivaled science superpower.
It worked for decades, but today the United States is losing ground in R&D. Stagnant federal investment, growing sclerosis within the country’s research system, and the decided turn at many leading universities against objective research and toward ideological activism are undermining America’s leading position in science and technology. It’s time to reverse each of these self-destructive trends. This means raising federal R&D investment as a share of the economy, reforming public universities (and hoping some of the leading private ones will follow), and insisting on renewed commitments to free inquiry and objective research as a condition for federal support for university research.
A winning model
The model the United States adopted after World War II – which drew from the landmark 1945 report Science – The Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development – consisted of four components. First, Congress would fund most basic research at levels far above any other nation through agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NASA. Second, researchers at nonfederal universities and labs would do most of the front-line work, with federal grants awarded through merit-based peer review processes – with little interference from politicians or bureaucrats. Third, grantees could follow their work wherever the science led them, with no censorship from government or university authorities. And fourth, Congress created the world’s best environment for turning discoveries into world-changing products by not just allowing but encouraging innovators to claim patents over their inventions, including those developed through work funded partly by federal grants.
This model gave rise to a division of labor so familiar today that few people realize how remarkable an innovation it was at the time. University scientists generally specialize in basic science – exploring the structures of the physical, chemical, and biological world – and sometimes develop product prototypes. Private sector firms, meanwhile, license these ideas and bring commercial products based on them to market. Today, university scientists in the United States conduct approximately half of all basic (as opposed to applied) research, with a majority of it funded by federal grants. Business R&D often depends on this research. One study by leading intellectual property experts showed that more than 73% of papers cited in private sector patents during a period in the 1990s originated from research at universities. Innovation is becoming even more dependent on university research today as private industry’s engagement with basic science recedes due to the decline of once-great research centers like Bell Labs and Xerox Park.
America’s postwar R&D model has been a resounding success. According to one global ranking, U.S. universities constitute 46 of the top 100 research institutions in the world and eight of the top 10 for the quality of their patenting activity. U.S.-based scientists account for 30% of citations in top-tier scientific journals, according to 2022 data from the NSF. That compares with 20% for Chinese researchers and 21% for all of Europe.
Read the rest of this piece at BushCenter.org.
J.H. Cullum Clark is Director, Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at SMU. Within the Economic Growth Initiative, he leads the Bush Institute's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth. Before joining the Bush Institute and SMU, Clark worked in the investment industry for 25 years.
Photo: Researchers working to develop superconducting materials for quantum computing, Oak Ridge national Laboratory via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.
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