This should have happened in America, but we're simply losing our edge. Perhaps we can petition Congress to cut loose of some of the money they have stashed in the basement and kindle some interest in science.
I was thinking about this issue recently from an economic point of view. Many companies, when up for sale, gut their R&D departments in order to give the appearance of better margins and a better P/E ratio in order to entice buyers. Downside is that the buyer gets stuck with a company which is less competitive because the R&D pipeline has noting in it and competitors jump ahead in the innovation/value added department. Could something analogous be happening to the U.S.? Then again, there are many on FR who believe that taxes should not be spent on R&D and your observation is what they desire.
No, this is happening in the U.S.
Gravity Probe B is likewise testing General Relativity (and the internal results so far have got Standford scients throwing out data from "spacecraft anomalies"). GP-B
Which is to say, the results announced next April (2007) should likewise deal another blow to General Relativity along the lines of the experiment for this thread showing a larger GravitoMagnetic field than predicted by GR.