Paul Cottle: Slashing science, harming our nation — why NSF cuts are a mistake

Should our nation support research in basic science that does not have any clear near-term economic applications?

Since World War II, the United States has provided support for such research through the National Science Foundation (NSF). Now our nation’s leaders are questioning whether we should continue that investment. President Donald Trump’s budget proposes reducing the NSF budget from $8.8 billion in the present fiscal year to $3.9 billion for the fiscal year that begins in October. That would be a 55% cut.

Furthermore, the President’s budget states that the remaining funding should be focused on two fields with clear near-term economic impacts, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The budget document characterizes the other scientific efforts presently funded by the NSF as “low priority areas of science.”

I am a nuclear scientist whose research is supported by the NSF. I wholeheartedly agree with Trump that NSF funding levels for artificial intelligence and quantum information science should be maintained. However, I disagree with the characterization of other scientific efforts at the NSF in the president’s budget document as “low priority areas of science.”

One example of science that should be a high priority is the nuclear science we perform at the John D. Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory, which is located on Florida State University’s Tallahassee campus.

Our research is pushing the frontiers of knowledge on how elements are produced in stars and how protons and neutrons interact within atomic nuclei. The funding for this research has been granted by the NSF in a highly competitive process, based on the scientific merit of our work and the innovations coming out of our laboratory.

However, what we do for our nation goes far beyond the scientific results we produce. For over a century, the field of nuclear physics has driven innovations in detection technology and the production of radioactive isotopes, advancing medicine and other industries.

We do not know which efforts we are pursuing today will result in diagnostic tools and therapies 20 or 30 years from now. Still, nuclear medicine is a rich field that owes its genesis to basic research in nuclear science, such as that conducted at the Fox Laboratory.

Furthermore, and maybe more importantly, our laboratory’s Ph.D. graduates are important assets for our nation, who go on to serve in a variety of roles. One of our recent graduates, Jesus Perello, is now a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs. We are a member of a consortium funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (the unit in the U.S. Department of Energy that is responsible for the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons) that provides our graduate students with opportunities to pursue careers in the weapons labs, which are becoming more important to our nation as geopolitical challenges build.

Our Ph.D. graduates also assume a variety of roles in industry, as well as in academic and national laboratory research.

With the geopolitical competition our nation is currently facing on several fronts, it is essential to support a broad range of scientific research, including artificial intelligence and quantum information science, as well as nuclear science and other fields that contribute to the defense of our nation and the well-being of our citizens.

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Paul Cottle is a professor and associate Chair of the FSU Department of Physics.