Sci. Funding Increasingly Biased Against Basic Science

In this hyper-polarized political year, a consensus has quietly emerged inside the Beltway. Fears that the American “innovation engine” is stalling — potentially leaving China to gain competitive advantage — have translated into bipartisan efforts to reignite the engine with big federal spending.

Unfortunately, these policy proposals almost invariably focus on technologies of the moment to the exclusion of long-term scientific research. In so doing, they overlook the crucial and characteristically unpredictable ways in which science contributes to technological innovation. By ignoring this role for science, such policies fail to address one of the biggest weaknesses of our current federal R&D regime: a bias towards applied research and development — technology — over basic science.