My friend Darlene Cavalier (we worked together, in the Late Cretaceous, at Discover magazine) has a provocative op ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer about public support for science. Darlene, who was once a cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers, is the brains behind the new blog ScienceCheerleader.
In the Inquirer, she makes the economic case for Washington investing in science: “Roughly half the nation’s growth in gross domestic product over the last 50 years has arisen from science-related innovation, yet the U.S. government invests less in all physical sciences research than International Business Machines Corp. spends a year on research and development. The United States, long the center of science innovation, is producing fewer scientists. And a commonly cited projection suggests that more than 90 percent of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia by 2010.”
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