Robert Williams: Who are the current science providers and how the research market is being reconfigured.

As other nations announced ambitious science funding goals, guess what was happening back here in the United States? Congress was passing a FY24 budget that slashed funding for the National Science Foundation – one of our main research-funding agencies – by almost half a billion dollars.” Barbara R. Snyder president of the Association of American Universities and a former president of Case Western Reserve University.

Australia:

In the 2023–24 financial year, the government will invest an estimated:

• $9.2 billion in direct support for research and development
• $3.4 billion through the Research and Development Tax Incentive
• $1 billion in other programs and activities related to science, research and innovation

Global Health EDCTP3 budget grows from €1.6 to €1.86 billion, following an increase of the European Union (EU) and EDCTP Association contributions. Part of the additional budget will be used to support research activities under the 2024 Work Programme.

On 24 May 2024, the Horizon Europe Steering Board approved an increase of the EU financial contribution to Global Health EDCTP3 of €110 million. This raises the overall EU financial contribution to the programme to up to €910 million. https://globalhealth-edctp3.eu/news/global-health-edctp3-overall-budget-increases-eu186-billion

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) budget for the 2024 fiscal year totals ￥297.7 billion. https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-organization/budget/

EU: China’s expenditure on R&D was 40% higher than the EU’s, the third biggest spender

The South Korean government has unveiled a substantial 16.6% reduction in research and development (R&D) spending in its budget proposal for 2024, taking the country’s science community by surprise.

Question? Who are the current science providers and how the research market is being reconfigured.

The immediate need is AI and the defense industries (see ongoing wars), medicine, branches of medicine that have produced billions through pandemics, and antidote addiction.

Now we ask what role universities have and even less so the national academies are discriminated against as it happens in countries with poor budgets but… with a powerful human resource that would give science value and utility?

Why are national academies with high standards of being recognized as a researcher or scientist isolated on discriminatory grounds in relation to other entities?

Probably the training of a scientist takes too long and everything stops at universities or simply obtaining a PhD degree to be able to work in high-performance laboratories with impressive budgets being the dream of any researcher, so we have the growth of mercenaries in the field of science.

The main suppliers of scientists remain universities with direct beneficiaries private entities, and then nations, through governments  are buyers and not their own investors in national needs.

By

Robert Williams

Editor in Chief