Since the inception in California of the science-technology domain now known as “biotechnology,” the United States has been its leader internationally. Indeed, the U.S. is a major force—if not the major force—in most bioscience activity around the globe. A 1987 National Science Foundation study of 3,500 journals published worldwide found that the U.S. was the source of 20,000 of some 51,000 articles in molecular biology, pharmacology, immunology, cardiovascular research, and agricultural sciences.
However, this dominance can drop dramatically in the next decade, and only partially for reasons of increasing capability among other nations. Much more significant, the U.S. has not invested adequately in its own scientific future. For example, more than 60% of U.S. high school math teachers have not taken a college level course in applications of math to problem solving. A fourth have not taken a college-level course involving probability and statistics. One seventh have not even taken ...
