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Sci-Finance: No money
for the National Science Foundation means fewer business innovations
Sci-Finance: No money for the National Science Foundation
means fewer business innovations - Smarts - Brief Article.
IT GAVE US RADAR SYStems, bar codes that identify virtually every product
and numerous other innovations. Yet funding for the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the federal organization whose grant money has led
to so many business innovations, has fallen behind that of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), which focuses on biomedical research.During
the Cold War, federal R&D money was channeled into physical sciences
like engineering that were tied to national defense. But between 1985
and 2001, federal spending on physical sciences as a percentage of GDP
plummeted 29 percent.
nstead, R&D money has been targeted toward NIH.Biomedical research
is primarily limited to NIH and large drug companies,
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Ibut NSF gives
out thousands of grants through its Small Business Innovation Research
Program. Often, these grants are the only seed money smaller companies
can obtain.As this federal funding has declined, private-sector research
and development has increased, but primarily among major corporations
with money to burn. What's more, even those small businesses that still
receive NSF seed money have difficulty finding talented staff.
"As the money goes toward biomedical research, more university
students gravitate toward biomedical," says Kei Koizumi, director
of budget and policy programs at the American Association for the Advancement
of Science.All is not lost. In 2000, NSF got a 17 percent budget increase.
And some scientists believe the current preoccupation with terrorism--including
bioterrorism--will raise the profile of basic research.Yet Koizumi notes
that, thus far, the attention paid to bioterrorism has not translated
into more funding for science research. "Almost all the money in
the emergency fiscal homeland security package and the 2002 budget will
be used for upgrading our current security infrastructure against a
bioterrorist attack," he says, "not for new science research.".
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