Sciences, Boffins & America

There is an interesting New Your times article about how the U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences (free registration required). I suspect that as well as the reasons postulated in the article, another factor is that big dollar research doesn't require dollars quite as big as it used to.

Also, the big dollars that are still required are more frequently coming from commercial entities who are waking up to the gains to be had from funding academic research.

This, however, is raising new issues of tainted research, with many journals finding they can no longer apply as rigerous independance standards as they used to. (There was a good discussion of this with experts recently on NPR's All things considered radio show. Looking through the story archives it must have been one of the recent stories on the American FTA's decision regarding the morning after pill—but I can't figure out which one since airing times here in Australia are a bit behind).

Some costly research, however, is still the domain of the US and big Europeans. like slowing a neutron to 15mph!! That's crazy talk! But apparently it has been done in Los Alamos, as reported by The Register article: Boffins slow neutrons to 15mph.