LOIS TEMA PHOTOGRAPHY
I predict that the future of science funding is rosy—except in the United States. If there were agencies akin to Standard & Poor’s charged with rating life-sciences futures in the US, we would be looking at a downgrade. We would owe such a downgrade largely to the complacency of federal policymakers, too many of whom appear willing to watch the US research enterprise wither on the vine. The increasingly common decampment of US researchers to China, India, Singapore, and elsewhere reflects this reality. One researcher recently told me that his move to India was prompted by that government’s view of research as an investment rather than a cost. US policymakers used to consider funding research a sound investment, and as a result we spent decades ...
