Basic Research 



Indicators of the state of basic research presented in this chapter are confined largely to the 

 resources expended for such activity. These include indicators of the national expenditures for 

 fundamental research; levels of basic research in universities and colleges, Federal laboratories, and 

 industry; and trends in expenditures among scientific disciplines. 



Input measures such as these provide only an indication of the level of basic research activity, not 

 its effectiveness or productivity. A research effort, moreover, may be regarded as either basic or 

 applied, depending upon whether the perspective of the sponsor of the reserach or that of the 

 organization performing it is taken as the pciint of reference. Additional uncertainties are presented by 

 differing treatments of costs associated with basic research. For example, the construction costs of 

 large government-financed research facilities such as the National Accelerator Laboratory are not 

 included as basic research expenditures, whereas NASA space probes include the costs of spacecraft 

 and launch vehicles. To compound the difficulty of comparability, industrial firms include in their 

 reported expenditures for basic research an annual depreciation cost of the facilities invcilved, whereas 

 Federal laboratories do not include such costs. 



INDICATOR HIGHLIGHTS 



Basic research expenditures, in current 

 dollars, rose continually during the period 

 1960-72, although the rate of growth slowed 

 after 1968; in constant 1958 dollars, basic 

 research spending in 1972 was approxi- 

 mately equal to the 1967 level, and some 6 

 percent lower than the peak year of 1968. 



The 1968-72 decline in constant 1958 dollar 

 expenditures for basic research was least in 

 universities and colleges (3 percent) and 

 largest in industry (14 percent). 



The share of total basic research expendi- 

 tures used by the different sectors changed 

 significantly between 1960-72; the universi- 

 ties' share increased from 43 to 57 percent, 

 while industry's share fell from 28 to 16 per- 

 cent. 



The Federal Government provided 62 per- 

 cent of the total 1972 funds for basic research 

 in the United States, as compared with 52 

 percent in 1960; basic research funds pro- 

 vided by universities and colleges rose from 

 some 16 percent of the total in the early and 

 mid-1960's to approximately 20 percent in 

 1972. 



Basic research funds (in current dollars) pro- 

 vided by the Federal Government increased 

 rapidly between 1960-68 but slowed to small 



annual increments thereafter; in constant 

 1958 dollars, however, a 10-percent decline 

 in funding occurred between 1968-72, which 

 included a 16-percent reduction in basic re- 

 search funds to industry, a lO-percent reduc- 

 tion to universities and colleges, and a 7-per- 

 cent decline for nonprofit institutions. 



Total expenditures (Federal and non-Federal) 

 for basic research in universities and col- 

 leges increased in current dollars between 

 1968-72 for 8 of 10 major fields. i In constant 

 1961 dollars, expenditures increased for the 

 biological sciences, clinical medicine, social 

 sciences, and psychology and decreased for 

 astronomy, physics, chemistry, and engi- 

 neering. 



Federal funds (in current dollars) for basic 

 research in universities and colleges in- 

 creased between 1968-72 for all fields except 

 astronomy and physics; in constant 1961 

 dollars, funds declined from the 1968 level in 

 all fields except the environmental sciences 

 and psychology. 



' The scientific fields included were astronomy, biological 

 sciences, chemistry, clinical medicine, engineering, environ- 

 mental sciences, mathematical and computer sciences, 

 physics, psychology, and the social sciences. 



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