A New Path for Science? (original) (raw)

he scientific challenges of the 21st century will strain the partnerships between government, industry, and academia that have developed and matured over the last century or so. For example, in the United States, beginning with the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950, the nation's research university system has blossomed and now dominates the basic research segment. (The applied research segment, which is far larger, is primarily funded and implemented within the private sector.) One cannot overstate the successes of this system, but it has come to be largely organized around individual science disciplines and rewards individual scientists' efforts through publications and the promotion and tenure process. Moreover, the eternal "restlessness" of the system means that researchers are constantly seeking new ideas and new funding [1, 2]. An unexpected outcome of this system is the growing disconnect between the supply of scientific knowledge and the demand for that knowledge from the private and government sectors [3, 4]. The internal reward structure at universities, as well as the peer review system, favors research projects that are of inherent interest to the scientific community but not necessarily to those outside the academic community.

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