Opinion The uncertain fate of young American scientist

This American brain confidence has led to over 400 Nobel Prizes, more than any other country in the world. Since 2023, it is estimated that 1.2 million people around the world have been holding a doctorate in science, engineering or health they won at an American institution. The United States accounts for 27 % of total research and development activity in the world – most of each nation – though China, at 22 %, closes. This is still far ahead of the next biggest players: Japan (7 %), Germany (6 %) and South Korea (4 %).

This investment was necessary for our economy. More than 408,000 jobs are supported by NIH grants. It is estimated that each NIH funding dollar produces $ 2.56 in economic activity.

So much of this success is because the US government was willing to support the kind of basic scientific work that lasts for years, even generations, before leading to monumental discoveries. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars have established the foundations for basic discoveries in MRNA technology before the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped to success in success. OZEMPIC and other GLP-1 drugs were partly inspired by NIH-backed research on Venom Monster Gila in the 1980s. Without this project, we may not have the current revolution decades later. Fifty years ago, less than 60 % of children diagnosed with pediatric cancer survived five years. Now, thanks to the treatments funded and pioneered by NIH, the survival rate is 85 %.

America was also an attractive destination for science because of its explicit support for free research – the ability of researchers to study what was most important to them, even if there was no direct career for success and profit. This commitment seems to collapse. “They mourn a world in which science has to defend itself through its finished products, not its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25 -year -old postgraduate student at Stanford University who is studying. “When efficiency is obliged, the current and future career are lost or abandoned. If scientific funding becomes dependent on immediate beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature?

The careers of young scientists are linked to the grant application cycle. Carole Labonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told Podcast Odd Lots to think of laboratories as small businesses running on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years will have to be renewed in the third year. And if you can’t do this, people have to leave quickly – which almost always means inferior members of the laboratory. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is not sure if the doe and NSF grants that help fund the program will be renewed – he is not sure that he can hold his three postdoctoral, all who are already considering other positions, including Europe.