January 29, 2007
America must not surrender its lead in life sciences
By Lawrence Summers The 20th century was shaped by developments in the physical sciences. Issues of national and international security were transformed by the revolution in solid state physics that allowed mankind to take flight and split the atom. Advances in our understanding of physics also led to the development of the transistor, the semiconductor and ultimately to the information technology explosion that transformed economic life. The 20th century was an American century in no small part because of American leadership in the application of the physical sciences. While the foundational ideas of relativity and quantum mechanics were developed in Europe, the practical application of these ideas occurred in the US. If the 20th century was defined by developments in the physical sciences, the 21st century will be defined by developments in the life sciences. Lifespans will rise sharply as cures are found for chronic diseases and healthcare will come to be a larger share of the economy than manufacturing. Life science approaches will lead to everything from further agricultural revolutions to profound changes in energy technology and the development of new materials. The “drugs that help you study” that are now pervasive on college campuses are just a precursor of developments that will make it possible to alter human capacities and human nature in profound ways. It is natural to ask whether the US will lead in the life sciences in this century as it did in the physical sciences in the last. It is a profoundly important economic question, but one whose implications go far beyond to embrace issues of national security and moral leadership. At present, if one looks at levels of investment or at research output or at the prestige of leading institutions, the US is clearly leading in the life sciences. But past performance is no guarantee of future success. In the first third of the 20th century, Europe and Europeans were the dominant source of discoveries in physics. Yet, for various reasons, Europe became less dominant as America asserted its leadership. If America is to maintain its leadership in life sciences in the 21st century, important steps must be taken. Most abstract but most important, there needs to be respect for the scientific method and its results. In sharp distinction to the situation in other industrial countries, there is an increasing move away from respecting the scientific method in US schools. Polls demonstrate that up to one-third of high school biology teachers have as much faith in intelligent design as in evolution. Some surveys suggest that as many as 70 per cent of the American people agree with them. Matters are not helped when the president advocates the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution as a “different school of thought”. Second, funding has to be a priority. During the past three years, when there has been more possible in the life sciences than there has ever been, when we are on the cusp of achieving important breakthroughs in everything from stem cells to the treatment of cancer, government funding for science research has been cut in real terms. This has been particularly hard on young researchers starting out in their careers. In 1980, 50 per cent of first-time grant recipients from the National Institutes of Health were under 40 years old. Today, that is closer to 20 per cent. In addition, NIH grants are getting harder to come by. In the fiscal year 2006, only 10 per cent of grant proposals to the NIH were funded, representing one of the lowest percentages ever. Funding, however, is more than just a matter of aggregate resources. It is also a matter of the compensation levels that are taken as norms in society. In today’s economy an outstanding graduate of a leading business school earns a substantially higher salary than a potential Nobel prize winner graduating with a PhD in biology. Several years after graduation the differences are even more pronounced. It should not be a surprise that in light of this economic reality more of our talented young people are not headed towards careers in basic research in the life sciences. Third, we need to control the role of politics in allocating science dollars, which are currently tossed around like so many political footballs. The fact that diseases that afflict the relatives of key congressional appropriators receive a disproportionate share of research dollars is not a step towards scientific progress. And it is not a step towards a healthier 21st century to allow the views of a vocal minority in effect to cut off funding for embryonic stem cell research – which is likely to lead to revolutions in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and cancer within the next generation. Finally, we need to support clusters of extraordinary performance. If competition is individualistic, the US is going to have a very difficult time because salary levels adjusted for talent are going to be much lower in other parts of the world. Rather than focus on each individual as an island unto him or herself, the US needs to focus on fostering clusters of innovation – such as Silicon Valley in information technology, Boston in the life sciences, New York in finance – where each talented individual derives his or her strength from all that is around. Competing with that on price is much more difficult. These are not issues that can be addressed in a year or even a presidential term. Nor are they issues that will have a large predictable impact over a period of several years. But over the long run, few issues are as important to a nation’s long-term economic security and global standing as being a leader in moving life sciences forward. The writer is Charles W. Eliot university professor at Harvard
Andrew J Oswald: Viewed from the point of view of the United States, I agree with Larry Summers. His case - America must stay ahead in the life sciences - makes natural sense. I am also sympathetic to his concerns about respect for the scientific method, and, like him, I worry about so-called intelligent design.
But there is another and more subtle question. Americans won all the 2006 Nobel prizes in the natural sciences. Andrew Fire of Stanford University and Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts were joint winners of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Roger Kornberg of Stanford University received the solo award in Chemistry; the prize in Physics went to John Mather of NASA and George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley. An American, Edmund Phelps, also won the award, although it is not technically a Nobel Prize in the original sense of Alfred Nobel, given in our subject, Economics.
Ought we to be concerned about such dominance? For the good of mankind’s creativity, I mean. Might it be better if planet Earth had its scientific talent (and funding) spread around more evenly?
Most people in the UK are unaware of the extent of our brain drain to other countries - particularly to the US. My research group is currently trying to study this issue. We are slowly collecting data. Some important work was published in 2004 in a fine but comparatively little-known article by John P.A. Ioannidis in the FASEB Journal, that is, the Journal of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. It makes striking reading.
Here is a statistic that I hope my countrymen and women will find both remarkable and a concern: 56 per cent of UK-born elite scientists have left the United Kingdom and currently live abroad.
To be precise about the source of these data, the calculation is done in the following way. First, look at the world’s 250 most-cited scientists across all fields; they are helpfully listed on a website called www.isihighlycited.com. Then count up all those who were born in the United Kingdom, and compare with where they now work. In this way, one gets an estimate of the elite UK brain drain: 56 per cent of our most brilliant scientists have gone.
Admittedly we are talking about a small number of individuals; nevertheless, they are exceptional individuals. Clusters, as Larry Summers persuasively points out, do seem to be productive in intellectual endeavour. That suggests there might be a powerful case for one country to scoop up the world’s best people and push them together to spark off one another in a mutually valuable way. Yet a difficulty remains.
When one reads the biographies of leading scientists, one is struck by the fact that great discoveries usually came from unconventional ways of thinking. This makes me believe that dropping so many of planet Earth’s scientists into the same American part of the globe may make them worryingly homogeneous. Such intellectual homogeneity could, in the long run, be bad for scientific knowledge and thus for human welfare on our planet.
There is more to this debate than ensuring that the US leads other countries. What we need, and I expect Larry Summers would agree, is that the world of thought flourishes.
Reference
Posted by: FT Economist Forum | January 30th, 2007 at 6:21 pm | Report this commentJ.P.A. Ioannidis. Global Estimates of High-Level Brain Drain and Deficit. FASEB Journal. June 2004. Vol. 18. 936-939.
Martin Wolf: Andrew Oswald has made an important contribution on Larry Summers’ column. Non-Americans do not have a strong reason to care about US scientific success, except to the extent that it increases global success. If the US raises the world’s scientific game, we have to be delighted. But merely transporting brilliant scientists from one country to another does not generate a net addition to global research output.
If the UK is losing scientists, it is because we have made such a dreadful mess of our universities - underfunding, over-regulation and excessive interference by politicians and bureaucrats. From this point of view, competition from the US is a help: either the UK will raise its performance now or its scientific prowess - the second best in the world at the moment - will founder.
Posted by: FT Economist Forum | February 1st, 2007 at 5:43 pm | Report this commentLawrence Summers: Andrew Oswald is right to highlight that my perspective in my last column was to a significant extent on American rather than world welfare. But the question of how research resources should be allocated is a tricky one. Given the network character of research, there is a significant element of increasing returns. Marginal biologists are likely to contribute more where there are already many biologists than where are few. So I am not sure that establishing multiple locations around the world is enhancing of progress.
Indeed, I think it is fair to say that political efforts in the United States to override peer review so as to incubate “many centres of research excellence” have been inimical to scientific progress. On a global scale the issue seems quite complex.
Posted by: Lawrence Summers | February 7th, 2007 at 12:16 pm | Report this comment