US Losing Basic Science Edge?

Scientific American reports on a recent European study indicating that while the EU is still behind the US in terms of basic science metrics, the EU’s growth rate has risen while the US’s rate has “flatlined”.

There’s surely an element of boosterism by the authors, and alarmism by SA, but the figures stated for citations, GDP investment in science (Sweden now leads the US), and so on seem compelling. “There has been a decline in U.S. number of publications since 1995, following years of almost linear growth”. In fact, Scandinavia seems like a hotbed of research, because “On a per capita basis, Swedish, Danish and Finnish researchers produce up to twice the number of papers as the U.S., Japan or the E.U. as a whole.”

Of course, the US has always enhanced its science infrastructure by absorbing the best and brightest from overseas, but even here the wily Scandinavians seem to have developed some acuity: in Sweden “a quarter of foreign researchers’ income is tax-free for up to three years.”

The article is short on analysis but offers up one explanation for the decline in US science publications:

A possible reason for the comparative decline in U.S. science output may be related to commercialization. The number of patents is still overwhelmingly higher in the U.S. than in the Old World, which suggests that U.S. researchers may be more likely to seek a patent than to divulge their results immediately.

Which of course opens up that continuing argument about whether or not the new corporate-led culture of research->patent instead of research->publication enhances or restrains scientific development.