Go Elsewhere, Young Scientist

It’s hard to measure the economic consequences of sequestration, but surely this is not a good thing:

James E. Rothman, the chairman of the cell biology department at Yale, said Tuesday that he now tells students they should pursue scientific careers in other countries because of inconsistent and declining federal funding for research.

“I advise my students not to stay in the United States,” Professor Rothman, who will share the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, said Tuesday during a panel discussion with other American laureates at the Swedish Embassy in Washington.

Other members of the panel, which included all nine of the Americans who will receive Nobels this year, echoed his concern that sequestration and the October federal government shutdown were disrupting basic science.

“We are systematically disinvesting in scholarship and we are seeing people return to their countries because of the funding problems here,” said Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who will share the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Professor Rothman. “It’s not just in prospect, it’s actual damage that is occurring right now.”

Professor Rothman expanded on his concerns after the discussion. He said basic science requires steady and predictable funding. His own prize-winning work, he said, developed over 15 years and was almost entirely financed by the federal government.

There is still a lot of money available for research, he said, but researchers increasingly are pressured to produce results quickly, and as a result, they are likely to pursue incremental work that has a greater certainty of success.

Professor Rothman said that if he were beginning his career in the United States today, “I might have had the ambition to do what I did, but I would not have the means to see it through.”

Looking for a bright spot?

Professor Rothman said with a laugh that so far, few of his students are taking his advice to move to other countries.

He said that they were acting on another of his principles for good science: “Never take advice from anyone.”