Science seen as slipping in U.S.

Hidden amid the hoopla of finding planets orbiting other stars, decoding the human genome and discovering miracle materials with nanotechnology, there's a seemingly improbable but perhaps even more important story — U.S. science may be in decline.

After 50 years of supremacy, both scientifically and economically, America now faces formidable challenges from foreign governments that have recognized scientific research and new technology as the fuels of a powerful economy.

"The Chinese government has a slogan, 'Develop science to save the country,' " said Paul Chu, a physics professor at the University of Houston who also is president of Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. "For a long time they have talked about it. Now they are serious."

According to the National Science Foundation and other organizations that track science indicators, the United States' share of worldwide scientific and engineering research publications, Nobel Prize awards, and some types of patents is falling.

A recent trend in the number of foreign students applying to U.S. schools is even more troubling, scientists say.

As American students have become less interested in science and engineering, top U.S. graduate schools have turned increasingly toward Europe and Asia for the best young scientists to fill laboratories. Yet now, with post-Sept. 11 visa rules tightening American borders, fewer foreign students are willing to endure the hassle of getting into the country.

"Essentially, the United States is pushing the best students from China and other countries away," Chu said.

The new restrictions also hassle students who are already here, like Lijun Zhu, a physics graduate student at Rice University since 1998 who returned two years ago to China to get married. The honeymoon became a nightmare when he and his new wife were stranded for more than two months, awaiting visa renewals.

"I was afraid of going outside my home for even a moment and missing the call from the consulate," Zhu recalled.

Losing future students like Zhu would cost more than just prestige in ivory towers. It could very well mean losing the nation's technological leadership, with implications for the nation's job market and security, to say nothing of culture.

Decline called 'ridiculous' Although President Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, dismisses as "ridiculous" the notion that America could lose its scientific prestige, scientists and policy-makers lay the blame in several areas: the drying well of foreign students, limited stem cell research and less federal funding for basic science research.

Since the visa restrictions were tightened in 2002, foreign-student applications to U.S. universities have fallen from 400,000 a year to 325,000, a 19 percent drop. Graduate school applications nationally are down even further, by up to 40 percent, said Jordan Konisky, vice provost for research and graduate studies at Rice University.

The problem, he said, is that when additional screening requirements were added, extra staffing in U.S. consulates to handle the workload was not.

And the atmosphere in these foreign offices, simmering with tension from terrorism's threat, breeds caution.

"No bureaucrat wants to make a mistake and approve a visa for someone that comes to this country and causes a problem," Konisky said. "So they tend to be very conservative about this, and that's good. But I think they're being overly conservative."

Graduate science programs at Rice and elsewhere are heavily dependent on foreign students.

Nearly half of engineering graduate students are foreign, as are more than one-third of all natural sciences graduate students.

These students invigorate research, professors say. They publish papers, bring new ideas and play a major role in patent applications.

Afraid to leave the U.S. In 2003, the Rice graduate physics program admitted 16 foreign students. Two were delayed more than six months, and three were permanently blocked from entering the United States. Southern Methodist University has a smaller program, and in 2002, the two foreign students who were accepted didn't get visas. School officials briefly considered ending the program, but enough students gained visas in 2003 and this fall to keep it open, said Fredrick Olness, the SMU physics department chairman.

Yet even if students make it into the United States, their visa troubles, as evidenced by the plight of Zhu, aren't over.

Scientific conferences are held worldwide, and many students with families or looming deadlines at school opt not to travel for fear that they won't be able to come back. Likewise, meeting planners say the number of foreign scientists attending conferences in the United States has dropped because they don't want to bother with obtaining a temporary visa.

Then there are the physicists who want to work at some of the world's best particle accelerators, which are in Switzerland and Germany.

"All of the foreign faculty we have are afraid to leave the country because of visa problems," Olness said. "If this keeps up, the United States is going to take a hit on its stature in the worldwide physics community."

Seizing the opportunity Marburger, himself a physicist, said changes to streamline visa problems, including adding staff in U.S. consular offices abroad, should be announced soon.

"This has very high visibility in Washington, all the way up to the president," Marburger said.

The winner, for now at least, is clear — scientific enterprise everywhere else.

At Hong Kong University, applications from Chinese students have more than doubled in the past three years. Chu says his faculty is thrilled.

Chu said Great Britain and Australia have seized the opportunity and opened recruiting offices in China. The European Union, too, has set a goal of having the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010.

What concerns U.S. scientists is that a decades-long brain drain into America may be coming to an end.

America began attracting scientists in the 1930s when the shadow of Hitler's political and religious persecution fell over Europe. Hordes of leading scientists such as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, whose work with nuclear chain reactions led to the atomic bomb, immigrated to the United States.

Focus on science funding After the war, the United States began spending billions of dollars on basic and defense-related research. Other great foreign scientists followed, drawn to new facilities and money. Their work laid the foundation for the technology bonanza of the 1990s, when one-third of Silicon Valley start-up companies were begun by foreigners.

Attracting top graduate students from other countries, then, is the first step toward continuing the trend.

"The United States used to welcome foreign scientists," said Zhu's adviser at Rice, physics professor Qimiao Si. "Nearly a century ago, the center of gravity shifted to the United States. We don't want that to happen in a reverse direction."

There are other policy areas that U.S. scientists say harm their ability to compete. Scientists say the Bush administration's policy to limit the use of embryonic stem cells will blunt advances made in biomedical research. "The stem cell decision has certainly put us behind at the front end of the curve," said Neal Lane, Clinton's science adviser. "It's a huge barrier."

The president's decision also led some U.S. researchers to seek private funds for their work. But this, said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, usually a stalwart ally of Bush, is no solution to the issue.

"It's the federal research that is the big opportunity," the Texas senator said. "That's where the big dollars are. And to have these avenues to federal resources closed is going to hurt us in the long run."

Another problem, said Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is an increasing focus in the federal budget on applied military and homeland security research. Excluding a modest increase for biomedical research, nondefense research and development in the proposed 2005 federal budget would decline 2.1 percent, according to the association.

Marburger said federal science spending is still far greater than in any other country. The United States, he said, spends 1 1/2 times more on research and development than all of the European Union countries combined.

"It is probably wrong to say U.S. science is currently in decline," he said. "But it is certainly in danger of declining. We're perched on the edge."

Another troubling trend A fundamental problem, scientists and policy-makers say, is the lack of interest in science from American children.

Between 1994 and 2001, the number of U.S. students enrolling in science and engineering graduate programs fell 10 percent. Foreign enrollment jumped by 31 percent to make up for the shortfall.

National reports on this trend have offered suggestions to address the problem, such as giving money to community colleges to assist high-ability students in transferring to four-year science and engineering programs.

"Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet," said President Clinton's science adviser, Neal Lane.

Although there are some encouraging trends — the number of U.S. Hispanics enrolling in science graduate programs between 1994 and 2001 increased by more than one-third — the number of U.S. minorities in science graduate programs remains well below their representation in the total population.

Is 70% overwhelming?

You could suppress male outliers until you were blue in the face, and 600 would still get through your screen. Lopping off the top 600 and saying, "There? See that? Doping up boys on Ritalin while their brains are still forming has no effect at all. Tossing them into dumbed-down 'special ed' classes if they fidget more than girls is actually good for them!"

Never mind the 600 math Ph.D.s. Look at the TIMSS results. Our brightest kids — the ones in the advanced classes — are no better than average kids in other developed countries. We are obviously doing something in our K-12 education system that chops the performance of our smartest children. Arguing about whether we can still find 600 smart ones when the feminists are done celebrating Girl Power for 12 years is missing the forest for the trees. Sixty per cent of the incoming freshman classes are female, and a big fraction of the science and engineering majors are foreign. You don't need to know any more than that to understand what's going on. Enough with the anecdotal hoo-hah.

Look who's above us. Look who's below us. Does this make you think there's nothing wrong?

I don't know the context of his remarks but I do know he is very pro space and Moon, Mars and Beyond.

Washington Times writer, Charles Rousseaux, said it was Marburger who got him to realize the importance of a renewed space program and from that understanding he wrote this: Space Vision Misunderestimated

And here is Marburger's House testimony: A New Paradigm for Space Exploration

I noticed something was wrong in 1970 when the hugh layoffs of engineering trained personnel began and the increase of foreign patents versus US patents became noticeable. This was hardly more than a decade after Congress went into Sputnik-induced panic mode.

The kids are as bright as ever, but a teamster warehouseman can do better financially than a EE. If they choose to take some college courses as well they will pick something useful such as English or business.

The kids are as bright as ever, but a teamster warehouseman can do better financially than a EE.

Unable to refute my evidence that our school system is failing to prepare our next generation for the future, you resort to spraying arm-waving nonsense.

I'm just not an arm-waving kind of guy, and I can look up wages as fast as I can look up test scores. These are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Occupation Title	Employment (1)	Median Hourly	Mean Hourly	Mean Annual
Electrical Engineers	146,150	$33.48	$34.66	$72,090
Electronics Engineers, Except Computer	137,320	$34.31	$35.16	$73,140
Computer Hardware Engineers	72,550	$36.53	$38.15	$79,350

Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand	2,255,780	$9.58	$10.41	$21,650
Machine Feeders and Offbearers	159,160	$10.57	$11.27	$23,430
Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators	604,350	$12.68	$13.46	$27,990

No more hoo-hah, please.

From my view (I have worked both unmanned at JPL and manned "Space Station"), the space program derailed itself in late 60s and then again in the early 70s. Many of my current colleagues agree.

IMHO, there were four cancellations that led us down the path we are currently on.

First was the cancellation of the X-15 and the subsequent follow-on. I personally believe that if we had pursued that to its ultimate end, we would have SSTO today.

Second was the cancellation of the NERVA. They were finally working the kinks out of it and poof, gone like the rest. Now we are renewing our interest in nuclear propulsion, however, 30 years have slipped by.

Third was the cancellation of the Saturn launch vehicle. Now we rely on Russian engines for one our heaviest lift vehicles. Even the Titan program is dead.

And finally the cancellation of the SP-100 space based nuclear power system and subsequent follow-on.

Now President Bush has initiated "Moon, Mars and Beyond" to create a space infastructure that will use the Moon's resourses to explode a space industry and get us into the solar system.

IMHO, this was political. Not a hope of accomplishing what you are advocating on the budget mentioned in that very same speech.

We're about to be derailed again on Mars exploration.

The emphasis, once again, is getting the cart-rider before the horse or the cart.

Just a few weeks ago, influentials (which I can't name, so you can take this for the anonymous and unaccountable observation it has to be) in the planning stages of the Mars venture are hopelessly focused on "what we'll do when our guy is on the planet." Hoo boy. There's this thing called "air" we need, first. Not to mention that awful deal-breaker "home again, home again, riggedy jig."

A long way from what we'll do when we get there.

scientists and policy-makers lay the blame in several areas: the drying well of foreign students, limited stem cell research and less federal funding for basic science research.

I love how they bat ZERO in listing the real problem here. Public education K-12 is completely failing our children. The public school system is so completely immersed in pushing their agenda of political correctness and multiculturalism that they don't teach even the basics to our children. The sciences, when taught, are taught poorly and the books used are not great, but are p.c.

I also love how they push the limited stem cell research as being the REAL reason we are now in "decline". (i.e. Its Bush's fault.) That's right --- limited embryonic stem cell research has brought scientific r&d in this country to a complete standstill. Yeah, right.

I agree with you completely!

IMHO, Manned Mars is the last place we should be focusing our money on. The infrastructure is just not up to par yet. Robotic missions are still the best method of exploring anything outside of cislunar.

Not only that...but it is so do-able!! We've got the stuff. We all could go...now, not just a few crowned heads. Send the eyes and ears and hands. Pour that "riding" cash into robotics--think of the spinoffs, the big boost we'd enjoy in home hardware. All those little machines in hospital operating rooms could be retooled to go operating on the surface of another planet.

It drives me crazy.

Again, I agree completely. I still feel we can exploit the Moon, however, we have squandered 30 years even doing that.

I still am honored and humbled that I was able to work at JPL and "fly" interplanetary spacecraft.

think of the spin-offs, the big boost we'd enjoy in home hardware. All those little machines in hospital operating rooms could be retooled to go operating on the surface of another planet.

Agreed. Moore's Law dictates that robotic autonomous spacecraft are not only doable, but also imminently practical.

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