Science vs Engineering and why we should care
In late October I came across an OpEd piece in Nature. It’s a topic of interest to me, and one that I’ve been thinking about for some time. The OpEd titled, “Scientists vs Engineers: this time it’s financial” by Colin Macilwain, explained that the current financial pressures are opening up fissures between scientists and engineers as they compete for funding.
The linear model of R&D suggests that science ‘discovers’ new phenomena that engineering ‘exploits’ in ways that benefit society. A classic example is the use of technology trickle down to justify NASA’s funding. More recently people looking at innovation have recognized that this linear model doesn’t represent the way things happen in the real world. Many innovations start with engineering innovations (viz. the steam engine and jet engines) and then science helps us understand them well enough to make improvements that make them truly game changing.
Does this mean we should shift more public funding to engineering and less to science?
I don’t believe so. While it is crucial that there be enough investment in engineering to determine solutions to our critical problems, much of this funding comes from the private sector. The basic sciences on the other hand receive less private investment today than ever before and we are at risk of losing our leadership in a number of fields from nano-technology to genomics.
Many innovators cross over to the ‘dark side’ (as did I) and move from basic science research to more outcomes oriented engineering. I believe that training in basic science provides a critical foundation for innovation that we are currently underinvesting in.
Today the U.S. is facing tremendous global competition from countries that have learned from our own playbook. China and India are investing large amounts in educating scientists and in basic science research in the hope that this will create the human capital and intellectual infrastructure to power their economies in the 21st century. This is just what the U.S. did following World War II. Unfortunately, we lost our focus in the early 1980’s and shifted much of our public funding to outcomes based research that is more properly conducted by the private sector.
With the New Year and a new congress let’s re-examine our public funding of R&D and invest in our future by investing in science to ensure we have the critical talent for the future.