This is pet peeve of mine. The high-energy physics community used arguments like "We're really smart and therefore deserve to be funded" and "We've thought up some unlikely reasons why this could be a good thing, but they're obviously bullshit; all we want is your money" in support of the Superconducting Supercollider-- and unsurprisingly, it was a debacle.

What's frustrating is that there actually is a good, non-elitist argument for basic research. Basic research brings a large number of very bright people into science, subjects them to the most rigorous possible training at the lowest possible salary, and then, since there are very few long-term jobs, sets them loose. Everybody, IMO, benefits.

In the application of basic science, having the teams in place and working with the researchers is an enormous advantage.

Getting to market first is always a plus, and rarely do late-arrivers overtake the first-responders (Microsoft excluded).

So, yes, having the research done here, in our universities and corporate research facilities IS an advantage.

Once the technology is perfected, then replicating the products is relatively easy.

The real trick is being able to do the research, apply it to products, and maintain a lasting advantage in the manufacture, sale and distribution. That combo is very hard to do, but the US has historically done it very well, thank you.

And, BTW, the basic research is not THAT expensive, relative to the cost of applying the research to make products. Research is a very good investment, but often it is best done by government-funded entities, since a bottom line payout is often elusive.

Do you think we might just be big enough that the widely-distributed benefits of basic science research make a net gain for us?

Re: As far as I know, no scientific discoveries of any consequence have ever been made in Canada or Iceland ...

Ernest Rutherford, born in New Zealand, is best known for discovering the basic structure of atoms in England around 1911, but his earlier Canadian research wasn't chopped liver.

"Barred in the near term from advancement at Cambridge, Rutherford in 1898 accepted a professorship at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. (The following year Cambridge University changed its rules to allow earlier promotion to Fellowship.) The laboratories at McGill were very well equipped. As Rutherford wrote to his wife-to-be ``I am expected to do a lot of work and to form a research school in order to knock the shine out of the Yankees!''

Rutherford returned to New Zealand in 1900 to marry Mary Georgina Newton, the daughter of his landlady in Christchurch. They were to have one child, Eileen.

Canada

At McGill Rutherford promptly discovered radon, a chemically unreactive but radioactive gas. In this he was assisted by his first research student, Harriet Brookes. Rutherford, with the later help of a young chemist, Frederick Soddy, unravelled the mysteries of radioactivity, showing that some heavy atoms spontaneously decay into slightly lighter atoms. This was the work which first brought him to world attention. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and of London in 1903. His first book Radioactivity was published in 1904. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry `for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances.' As a bemused Ern often told friends, the fastest transformation he knew of was his transformation from a physicist to a chemist.

On realising that lead was the final decay product of uranium, Rutherford proposed that a measure of their relative proportions and the rate of decay of uranium atoms would allow minerals to be dated and, subsequently, this technique placed a lower limit on the age of the formation of the Earth. Radioactive dating of geological samples underpins modern geology. Throughout his time in Canada Rutherford was regularly head-hunted by American universities and institutions, for example Yale and the Smithsonian Institute. The main result of these approaches was that McGill kept upping his salary. Rutherford always had a shift in mind, but only to Britain in order to be nearer the main centres of science, and to have access to more, and better, research students."

From http://www.rutherford.org.nz/biography.htm

One thing I've noticed in my travels overseas is that technological know-how is an important component of the U.S.'s image overseas, an image linked to news about new innovations and discoveries. This in turn makes us a favored destination among those interested in studying the sciences. Another factor is that research is often tied to patents, which if they're in the hands of U.S. companies theoretically benefit the U.S.

Wow, Matt. I mean, really. Wow.

Do you really think there's a fixed amount of scientific research that will be done, regardless of whether it is funded by the United States? Or do you think perhaps the funding of research in the United States either is or isn't, and if it is happening, the research will be done, and if it isn't, it's not going to be "taken up" by some mythical free market replacement entity.

Only a 20-something policy wonk could advance the idea of non-funding science as a good idea for a major nation. Do you think the "free market" is going to take care of the need for technological advances? I'd have to say the history of American corporate management would not support this argument. American corporations are only interested in profits and shareholder value. Very little basic research is done in the private sector.

Let's get down to brass tacks here. Are you suggesting that the NIH shut down operations? The NSF? Department of Energy research? Center for Disease Control?

What a phenomenally stupid idea this is.

One of the unforeseen consequences of Judge Greene's breakup of AT&T was the effective destruction of Bell Labs as one of the leading basic research centers in the world. The fragment that went to AT&T, and then split further when AT&T split into three pieces, was no longer at critical mass to support major basic research programs. I forget the number of Nobel Prizes won by Bell Labs researchers, but it was comparable to any top research university in the US.

Even though the old Bell System seems to be reconstituting, much as did the little pieces of monster in the 1960s Japanese "blob" horror movies, the Labs is unlikely to come back.

Some companies do substantial amounts of basic research, such as IBM.