"This is not to say that basic research yields no return. It is true that an individual project is unpredictable; it may take a long time, change direction abruptly, or even come to a dead-end. But taken in the aggregate, the returns to society from basic research are enormous.""In other words, much of the return on basic research does not come back to the innovator and may not be patentable. Others can profit from an invention almost as quickly as the inventor. Economists estimate that the social return on basic research is about twice as large as the private return.
This, together with large risk factors and long time horizons, is why industry is reluctant to fund basic research, and why underinvestment in R&D is such a serious problem. Only the government has the resources and long-term view to fund substantial basic research and await the returns that will benefit the society it represents."
-Phillip Griffiths"Measuring "quality" is notoriously difficult in almost any context. It is particularly tricky when seeking to evaluate individuals who may be good at one thing and not quite so good at another, whose capacity for growth is hard for anyone to judge, and whose future performance will almost certainly depend as much on personal strengths as on pure academic competence, defined narrowly. No one who has made hiring decisions and then observed the consequences will gainsay the problems or minimize the subjective nature of the judgments that must be made. In short, all of the usual caveats need to be underscored."-Bowen & Sosa, Prospects for Faculty in the Arts & Sciences, 1989, pg. 110"The United States accounts for roughly 44 percent of the industrial world's R&D investment total and continues to outdistance, by far, the research investments made by all other countries. Not only did the United States spend more money on R&D activities in 1993 than did any other country, but also it spent more than the next four largest performers - Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom - combined."-NSF Science and Engineering Indicators, 1996