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The United States is losing the race for global leadership in science and technology.

This is a major conclusion of “State of Science in America,” a December 2023 report by Science & Technology Action Committee (STAC). STAC is a non-partisan group of 25 science and technology leaders representing corporate, academic, and non-profit institutions and organizations.

Losing the Edge

The STAC report is based on a survey of nearly 2,000 professionals representing five sectors of the American economy: K-12 education, business, healthcare, STEM, and military/national security. Key findings of the report are:

• The U.S. is perceived to be losing the race for global leadership in science and technology. Over 75% of respondents believe the U.S. is losing or has already lost this critical competition, and 60% say China will be the leader within five years.

Those who work in health care or in the military/national security are more likely to say the U.S. has already been overtaken by other countries, while those in STEM fields are more likely to say that the U.S. is losing ground.

• The federal government is viewed as the primary driver of U.S. science and technology advancements.

A majority of respondents across all sectors and political identifications agree that federal funding of science and technology is vital and that federal government investment in science and technology is so important that it should be protected from budget cuts.

• Nearly 80% of respondents (91% of Democrats, 79% of independents, and 69% of Republicans) are concerned about the growing public distrust in science.

More than 75% of respondents (89% of Democrats, 79% of independents, and 65% of Republicans) raised concerns about politicians discrediting scientists.

• Respondents in every sector surveyed believe that the top obstacle to future scientific advancement in the United States is the quality of K-12 STEM education.

The other top obstacles are the abundance of red tape in the U.S. scientific research process, the lack of a national science and technology strategy, and inadequate funding for research and development.

The report puts forward the following recommendations:

• Create a comprehensive national strategy for advancing science and technology innovation in the United States.
• Foster additional coordination among the 20+ federal agencies engaged in science and technology.
• Increase federal funding for science and technology from 0.7% to at least 1.4% of the U.S. GDP in the next five years.
• Bolster STEM education at all levels, starting with K-12.

However comprehensive the STAC report might be, it’ll hardly change anything. In fact, it reminds me of another report, the one composed in September 2019 by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. (I covered the report here.)

Written by a group of 20 experts and titled “Innovation and Security. Keeping Our Edge,” the report argued that after leading the world in technological innovation for the past three-quarters of a century, the United States was at risk of falling behind its competitors, mainly China — and this may have profound negative consequences for U.S. national security.

Characteristically, the CRF report pointed to the same problems threatening the U.S. leadership position in science and technology, such as insufficient federal investment in research and development (R&D) and poor state of the STEM education.

The fact that no progress has been made over the past five years is telling.

Will the STAC report trigger more action than the CFR?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Losing Trust

One finding in the STAC report especially troubles me: the growing public distrust in science.

Unfortunately, distrust in science is hardly something new. As a trend, it has emerged over the past 40 years and been specifically driven by conservatives. (The trust in science remains at rather steady levels among moderates and the liberals.)

For some time, distrust in science among the conservatives has been mostly confined to their skepticism about anthropogenic origin of climate change.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up new frontlines in this “‘war on science.” A December 2020 Pew Research Center report showed that while 84% of Democrats considered COVID-19 as a major threat to public health, only 43% of Republicans agreed.

The same “blue vs. red” divide has formed over such scientifically straightforward and seemingly non-partisan issues as wearing masks and COVID-19 vaccination.

Distrust in science naturally morphs in distrust in scientists. 60% of Republicans (compared to 23% 0f Democrats and 41% of Independents) believe that scientists should stick to their business and stay out of politics. 37% of Republicans think that scientists have already too much influence in public policy debates; only 9% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans share this point of view.

Writing on this topic in 2021, I predicted that the trend may result in increasing calls to “defund science,” both in Republican-controlled states and, worse, at the federal level.

Sadly, I was right.

Losing Money

It amuses me how differently we treat private vs. public R&D funding.

It’s common to call private R&D funding “investment.” An entry to Investopedia reads: “Why You Should Invest in Research and Development (R&D).”

Public R&D funding, however, is often characterized as an “expense” (or “spending”). Note that in the federal budget, R&D funding falls in the discretionary spending bucket. Investopedia defines discretionary spending as “a cost that a business or household can survive without, if necessary.” (Apparently meaning that as a country, we can survive without spending money on R&D.)

I can see where it comes from.

The principal metric by which the private sector measures the effectiveness of its investments is return on investment (ROI). Given that the industry spends most of its R&D money on short-term projects, ROI can be easily calculated. Your investment either works or not, but you know what happens to the money.

Not so with public R&D spending. Public money goes mostly to basic science, with the outcomes being uncertain for many years to come. Measuring ROI becomes tricky, if possible at all, creating an impression that there is no “return” on the money. So, no matter what happens to this money, the R&D funding is becoming an “expense.”

Worse, some call it “waste.”

Then, inevitably, fiscal conservatives begin “cutting waist.”

The Biden administration’s budget proposal for FY2024 calls for an almost 10 percent increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a major source of support for biomedical research.

In contrast, House Republicans suggest cutting NIH funding by eight percent. Characteristically, the biggest cut, 23 percent, is proposed for research on infectious diseases. This may sound like a sick joke at a time when the country is still recovering from the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another major, three-fold cut — from $1.5 billion to $500 million — is handed to ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health), whose purpose is to take on long-term/potentially high-reward projects not readily accomplished through traditional federal biomedical research. (The Cancer Moonshot initiative is an example.)

Losing Control

The conservatives seem to have developed a taste for cutting specific scientific programs they dislike.

Remember George W. Bush administration’s 2001 ban of federal funding for creating new human embryonic stem cell lines, a policy that wiped out the U.S. dominance in this promising area of biomedical research?

But the banning machine shows no signs of losing steam.

Last November, the Republican-led House of Representatives approved a ban on federal funding for “gain-of-function” (GOF) research, a research that involves the modification of risky pathogens in ways that can make them more harmful to people (under all proper regulations and safety measures, of course).

Critics of the ban argue that GOF studies are crucial to vaccine development and that due to its vague language, the ban could halt work on annual flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

Fortunately, the ban wasn’t approved by the Democratic-led Senate, so the banning game moved to the state level. Now, Wisconsin and Texas consider statewide GOF bans. Such a ban is already law in Florida, a curious development given that no GOF research takes place in this state.

Let’s get real. Given the depth of the partisan polarization in Congress over budget, there is no way for the funding for science and technology to be doubled any time soon.

Besides, does anyone believe that there is even a bit of a political will to deal with the complex issue of the quality of K-12 education, an issue that too gets politicized with a frightening speed? I don’t.

Sure, I can see the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issuing a report or two that it’ll call strategic. Will these reports make any more difference than the STAC and CFR reports? No.

I predict the problems with science and technology in America will keep accumulating.

The only thing that could change that is either a spectacular loss of American science at the hands of our competitors or a serious threat to our national security due to insufficient R&D support.

In other words, we need another Sputnik moment.