Elias Zerhouni: Science and Technology is the Best Guarantor of our Economic Future. (February 20, 2009)

Science asked the immediate past director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Elias Zerhouni, to write its editorial this week. And in a careful analysis he explains that if the US penny pinches on STEM it'll stuff itself. His cautionary words are just as relevant to Australia as the US, but it remains to be seen if the blinkered views of the parliamentary Liberal opposition and their think-alikes will hobble the resolve of the Rudd government.

National research budgets are not subsidies but strategic investments to be sustained even in the worst of times. Thanks to the relevant administration and congressional leaders, science has been well served in the stimulus package just signed by President Obama. The US$21.5 billion for R&D projects over the next 2 years is the result of compromises based on a variety of opinions as to the proper levels of support for U.S. science.

But Dr Zerhouni asks the pointed question: "So what should the appropriate level of support be beyond the stimulus? Is there a quantifiable rationale beyond 'more is always better?'"

And he worries:

Many universities have announced deep cost reductions and freezes on new positions that will have particularly negative consequences for young scientists. I have testified in Congress that for every $1 billion shortfall in the NIH base budget, an estimated 6000 to 9000 scientific jobs are lost, with an equal number of jobs lost in indirect support activities. With increased layoffs in industry, one has to be deeply concerned about the human research capacity of the United States across all sciences, a key determinant of our future competitiveness. The economic stimulus will lessen these risks in the short term. But it is only a partial answer. It will not stave off the loss of talented scientists unless it is coupled with a longer-term increase in the base budgets of the research agencies.

As an example of what can happen when forward planning is insufficient he sites the funding plateau for the NIH following the doubling of its budget in the early part of the decade: "The NIH lost 15% of its purchasing power, or $4 billion, between 2003 and 2009."

Furthermore, the increasing dependence of the biomedical sciences on the fundamental sciences and engineering emphasises that support for them "has decreased to an even greater degree; these critical research fields would require additional support variously estimated at about US$6 billion per year to reach a better balance between biological and physical sciences".

The bottom line: "[T]he base science budgets of the relevant domestic agencies should increase by at least US$10 billion per year, a minimum goal to strive for by fiscal year 2012," and "A nation's most strategic resource is the strength of its scientific workforce."

Well, come March 17,18 under FASTS' banner Australian Science will once more meet Parliament.

We live in hope.