An article in this month’s Scientific American, entitled “American Science Slips into Dangerous Decline, Experts Warn, While Chinese Research Surges,” takes its point of departure from the June 26 “State of the Science” presentation by Marcia McNutt, the president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The article notes some of the problems raised by McNutt in her speech. “By international standards, American students perform in the middle of the range in science; they are below average in math,” McNutt had said. She noted that foreign-born individuals play a key role in maintaining U.S. STEM prowess, accounting for 19% of the nation’s STEM workforce and 43% of its STEM PhD population.”
While these figures are telling, a prominent role has always been played by foreign-born scientists in the U.S. Both the Manhattan Project and the U.S. space program would probably have been nonexistent, had it not been for the presence of foreign-born scientists, who were crucial in these projects. Chinese students, who now are shunning the U.S. because of the Justice Department “Chinese Initiative,” have always added great intellectual stimulus to the atmosphere in U.S. universities. This year China is remembering the passing of 97-year-old Nobel Prize physics laureate Professor Tsung-Dao Lee, who, as a professor at Columbia University, introduced an entire generation of American and Chinese students to the mysteries of nuclear physics.
The U.S. has a declining share of the most cited science papers, and while the U.S still spends more money on research and development than China, China is soon set to outpace that as well, McNutt said. China currently files more patents than the U.S. and hosts more than a quarter of the world’s clinical trials, as compared to only 3% in 2013.
The article notes some of the solutions McNutt proposed, for instance, the development of a strategic research plan at the national level and improving STEM education in K-12. Observing that the federal government is not the major funder of S&T, but that corporations and foundations delivered the bulk of support, which often have a more limited goal of profitability or specific interests, she simply calls for more coordination between these entities, rather than boosting federal funding.
McNutt’s proposals fall far short of a real solution. Mary Woolley, president of the non-profit medical and health research advocacy alliance “Research!America,” says that more has to be done to confront the problem. “I, for one, believe we need to go faster and stronger,” Woolley said. She feels that progress in reviving STEM in K-12 requires a “heavy lift.” The NAS issued a report on the worrisome state of K-12 STEM education entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.” in 2005. Five years later, in 2010, the authors updated the report as “Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5,” indicating how the situation had become even worse.
Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a political gambit to bring semiconductor production under the control of the U.S. government, also promised $170 billion in broad research funding over the next five years, including funding for STEM at the K-12, college and graduate levels. Little of that money has been spent at this point. The same is the case with Biden’s infrastructure program.
The article also explains that federal funding for science began to decline in the 1980s. Public math and science proficiency also fell during that decade, bringing fewer Americans into the STEM workforce. It should be made clear that in this period the two possible “science drivers” available, namely the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980 and the Strategic Defense Initiative of 1983—both products of the work of U.S. economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who was then “railroaded” to jail by corrupt government elements—were denied the necessary funding, and “paper-shuffling accountants” were put in charge of economic policy at the cost of our science and engineering cadre. Only if this situation can be reversed, can we ever hope to return the country to a position of eminence—or respect—in the realm of science.