“The US is like a frog that is slowly boiling in water. It doesn’t jump out because it doesn’t notice it is about to die.” So says Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, about growing concerns that complacency will lead to the US losing its global scientific pre-eminence within a decade.
Fear of falling behind prompted the US National Academies of Sciences to propose a plan of action on 12 October, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. One significant stumbling block, says the report, is immigration policy. “After 9/11 we became less welcoming,” says Chu,…
