Last month a colleague in Paris gave me an article about general funding of research by governments and companies in Japan, The United States and in Europe. The results of the study were fascinating to me, from my prospective as an American scientist living in Paris. The basic findings were that in terms of money, Europe spends less on Research and Development than the United States, and has less researchers. It also showed that there are less patents applied for in Europe than in the United States. The one area where Europe exceeded the United States was in number of scientific papers published. These numbers were surprising to me for a few reasons. In general my feeling is that science education is more rigorous, and scientists more respected in Europe. I had also been a part of a European funded research project that gave me a lot of confidence in the European focus. So I have kept this study in mind as I have been working out of the lab here in Paris, and collaborating with scientists. I have found several examples where these results make a lot of sense.
- France seems to be a country of polymaths, and ideas. There is a long and very respectable history of this, which included people like Descartes, Lavoisier, and even Voltaire, who in addition to being a philosophical novelist, went to England to seek out Newton. This reverence for knowledge has not gone away. When teaching a course in Paris, an engineering student brought me a Baudelaire poem to illustrate a point I had made in a previous lecture. This is a wonderful intellectual and historical curiosity, and can lead people down the path of publications. It doesn't however lead to the type of specialization that would be considered basic research. Over lunch at a university south of Paris, I spoke with the head of the chemistry department about specialization. He nostalgically recalled a time 200 or so years ago when it was possible to learn all of the known scientific knowledge available. He recognized that this is no longer possible, yet his romantic longing for such broad knowledge must in some ways translate to his research, which is at a very high level, but not focused enough to be modern Nobel Prize innovation. I can certainly relate to this, as I am not only interested in various disciplines of science, but equally in music, poetry and art. If he is frustrated not to be able to know everything scientifically, imagine how frustrated I am? Still this ideology is revealing. As with the other differences it leads me to wonder which comes first, the lack of funding, or the lack of focus to achieve the funding.
- As we are all aware the United States is a highly competitive place, where innovation has historically led to some major advantages. It may very well be that our government labs and leaders are savvier than I have often given them credit for. There may very well be a realization that research is the best way to fuel technology, which in turn grows the economy. It is hard however to think that Europe doesn't have as much of this focus. After all, Chancellor Merkel of Germany is a Ph.d Physical Chemist, where most of our leaders couldn't pass high school physics. I think though that research just happens to be the place where American economic interests are currently best served. It is business, not science that is in fact inspiring the science. So thinking of research as a business, it becomes easier to see how Europe may be behind. Starting a business in Europe is a much more difficult process than doing it in the United States. I have done both. It is also something, which in France at least, is not as sought after. While I mentioned that scientists are respected in Europe, I get the sense that entrepreneurs are more respected in the United States. I have heard some of the best ideas from colleagues here in Paris for inventions. These ideas would be the seeds for patents and new companies in the United States. In France they become research papers, or subjects for lectures. It is likely therefore that a government would not see the financial returns of research investment without first reforming barriers to create companies, and the mindset that goes with it.
- The last point that I want to make though, is that I think these statistics, and this history are becoming less relevant, as the world economy, and scientific collaboration unite. Every day we e-mail Chinese, Indian, American and Thai researchers. We co-author papers with people we have never met in person. We open businesses in countries we have not visited. The budgets, I would guess, will become similar throughout the world, and innovation will not be national. I met an entrepreneur yesterday with a growing 100 person French company. He is opening his first US factory in the spring. By next year he will no longer be reliant on European funding and business structure alone, but on the The United States as well. This goes both ways, and will continue to do so. These new generations of researchers are more business savvy and more international than the previous generation. Hopefully this means that in The United States we will benefit from European philosophical prospective, history and polytechnical abilities, while Europeans benefit from our willingness to take risks in exploiting sciences discoveries. I feel very confident that this is happening.
