U.S. Falling Behind in Science

Dec. 2, 2004 — -- The current generation of Americans may live through two extremes: The rise of the United States to world dominance as the planet's only superpower, and the decline of the same country to mediocrity as other nations wise up to what it takes to guarantee a prosperous and strong future.

That may sound alarmist, but the evidence is there.

The country has largely ignored the exporting of blue collar jobs with the expectation that our national calling was to a higher level. Let the rest of the world do the menial tasks. We'll build the supercomputers and the high performance aircraft and all the other high-tech gizmos that only a country such as ours can produce.

But while we've been resting on our laurels, much of the world has been turning a corner. And guess what? We don't have the high road all to ourselves anymore.

"The trends are real," says David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology and a Nobel prize winner in medicine for his research on viruses.

In a commentary published recently in the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore warned that our standard of living, and our future as a world power, is in jeopardy because we are locked in a "fortress" mentality and we aren't making the investments that are so essential to our future.

What are those investments? It shouldn't come as any surprise to see that Baltimore, a scientist, sees our salvation in science. More money, better educational systems and a change in attitude away from the "anti-intellectualism and the cult of the sound bite" would help head off what he sees as an economic and national disaster in the years ahead.

OK, so there's nothing new about a scientist asking for more money and claiming that he and others of his persuasion can lead us out of the wilderness. But what does science have to do with economic prosperity?

Just this. Science is the driver behind our economy. It always has been, and that's true now more than ever.

"Investments in science and technology have driven economic growth and improvements in the quality of life in America for the last 200 years," Neal Lane testified before Congress four years ago. Lane, then science adviser to President Clinton, went on to say that science had "generated new knowledge and new industries, created new jobs, ensured economic and national security, reduced pollution and increased energy efficiency, provided better and safer transportation, improved medical care, and increased living standards for the American people."