BioCentury This Week Looks at Innovation and Incentives

Academic scientists might not like to admit it, but science and money are joined at the hip.

Witness the fiscal cliff. If the U.S. falls over, budget sequestration would slash $2.5 billion from NIH, which could eliminate 25% of the agency’s grants next year.

But the links between science, money and progress go beyond politics.

Indeed, Dr. Paula Stephan, Professor of Economics at Georgia State University, argues that perverse incentives are sucking productivity out of American research.

In her book How Economics Shapes Science, Dr. Stephan warns the U.S. system is rewarding universities for producing too many Ph.D.s and promoting “safe” science over breakthrough research.

But in a report commissioned by PhRMA, Battelle says nations around the world have studied how the U.S. turned biomedical research into an engine for economic growth.

Now they’re adding new chapters to the American innovation playbook, according to Mitchell Horowitz of Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice.

On the newest edition of BioCentury This Week television, both authors dissect the interplay between science, economics and policy.

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