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SCIENCE POLICY Incorporating WASHINGTON NEWS and policy news from around the world.

U.S. May be Abandoning Leadership in Science and Innovation The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, a coalition of hightech industry, scientific societies, and higher-education associations, has warned that the United States is in danger of losing its leadership role in science and innovation. Business and academic leaders, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on February 16, identified the weakening federal commitment to invest in science and research as a root cause of the problem—and as a necessary part of the solution. Craig Barrett, chief executive officer of Intel Corporation, said, “The competitiveness of the U.S. economy and its technological leadership depend on our companies, universities, and research institutions having access to the world’s leading talent. U.S. employers are being forced to look overseas, as they face shortages of qualified technically trained talent in the U.S. As research goes, so goes the future. If this trend continues, new technologies, and the constellation of support industries surrounding them, will increasingly develop overseas, not here.” According to the task force, the proportion of U.S. citizens in science and engineering (S&E) graduate studies within the United States is declining. From 1994 to 2001, graduate S&E enrollment in the United States declined by 10% for U.S. citizens, but increased by 25% for nonU.S.-born students. In 2001, approximately 57% of all S&E postdoctoral positions at U.S. universities were held by nonU.S.-born scholars. The task force reported on rapidly increasing retirements from S&E jobs, leading to a potential shortage in the S&E labor market. For example, the task force said, more than half of those with S&E degrees in the workforce are age 40 or older. Unless more domestic college-age students choose to pursue degrees in critical S&E fields, there is likely to be a major shortage in the high-tech talent

required by the U.S. defense industry, key federal research and national defense agencies, and the national laboratories, reported the task force. The task force also pointed to the publication rate of scientific papers. The U.S. share of S&E papers published worldwide declined from 38% in 1988 to 31% in 2001. Europe and Asia are responsible for the bulk of growth in scientific papers in recent years. U.S. output was passed by Western Europe in the mid-1990s, and Asia’s share of the total is rapidly growing. “It is easy to ignore long-term needs because of pressures from short-term needs,” said Burton Richter, Nobel Laureate in physics and the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences at Stanford University, in a written statement. “We have been able to get away with it for decades because we were so far ahead of the rest of the world. But the rest of the world is catching up. The foundations of new technological products now generally start with laboratory breakthroughs achieved by scientists conducting government-funded,