A blue-ribbon committee of scientists and science policy experts has urged federal agencies, universities, and industry to step up their support for the research projects of early-career scientists and engineers and for high-risk, “potentially transformative” research. The panel also broke new ground in calling for research universities to pay a greater portion of their faculties’ salaries.
The committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences says that early-career scientists are being squeezed out by their senior colleagues in the competition for limited federal research funding. Sponsoring agencies should establish new targeted programs and grant mechanisms or adapt existing grant programs to foster potentially transformative research, which could produce breakthroughs but also carry a high likelihood of failure. Proposals for such research are typically rejected by the traditional peer-review process in favor of less risky applications.
Other reports in recent years have made similar recommendations, and NSF and the National...
