US Science in Chaos - a Bibliography
Some of the academic and institutional research that went into the Scientific American article "State of American Science." If you have trouble surmounting a paywall on any of this, ping me and I'll see what I can do.
Aldridge, T. Taylor, and David Audretsch. “The Bayh-Dole Act and Scientist Entrepreneurship.” Research Policy 40, no. 8 (2011): 1058–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.04.006.
Arora, Ashish, Sharon Belenzon, Jungkyu Suh, and Hansen Zhang. The Rise of Absorptive Research in Corporate America: 1945-1980. Working Paper No. 33713. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025. http://www.nber.org/papers/w33713.
———, Andrea Fosfuri, and Thomas Rønde. “The Missing Middle: Value Capture in the Market for Startups.” Research Policy 53, no. 3 (2024): 104958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.104958.
Azoulay, Pierre, Matthew Clancy, Danielle Li, and Bhaven N. Sampat. “What If NIH Had Been 40% Smaller?” Science 389, no. 6767 (2025): 1303–5. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aeb1564.
——— and Wesley H. Greenblatt. “Does Peer Review Penalize Scientific Risk Taking? Evidence from NIH Grant Renewals.” Preprint, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 11, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3386/w33495.
——— and Danielle Li. “Scientific Grant Funding.” In Innovation and Public Policy, edited by Austan Goolsbee and Benjamin Jones. University of Chicago Press, 2022. https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/innovation-and-public-policy/scientific-grant-funding.
Babina, Tania, Alex Xi He, Sabrina T. Howell, Elisabeth Ruth Perlman, and Joseph Staudt. “Cutting the Innovation Engine: How Federal Funding Shocks Affect University Patenting, Entrepreneurship, and Publications.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 138, no. 2 (2023): 895–954. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac046.
Besley, Timothy. “State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract.” Econometrica 88, no. 4 (2020): 1307–35. https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA16863.
Bloom, Nicholas, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb. “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” American Economic Review 110, no. 4 (2020): 1104–44. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180338.
Bloom, Nick, Mark Schankerman, and John Van Reenen. “Identifying Technology Spillovers and Product Market Rivalry.” Econometrica 81, no. 4 (2013): 1347–93. https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA9466.
Brooks, Harvey. “The Research University: Doing Good, and Doing It Better.” Issues in Science and Technology 4, no. 2 (1988): 49–55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43310477.
Bush, Vannevar. Science: The Endless Frontier. Office of Scientific Research and Development, 1945. https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/EndlessFrontier75th_w.pdf.
Carugo, Alessandro, and Giulio F. Draetta. “Academic Discovery of Anticancer Drugs: Historic and Future Perspectives.” Annual Review of Cancer Biology 3, no. 1 (2019): 385–408. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-cancerbio-030518-055645.
Casselman, Ben. “Trump’s Science Policies Pose Long-Term Risk, Economists Warn.” The New York Times, March 31, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/trump-research-cutbacks-economy.html.
Clancy, Matt. “Science Is Getting Harder.” Substack newsletter. What’s New Under the Sun, June 1, 2022. https://mattsclancy.substack.com/p/science-is-getting-harder.
Cohen, Jack. “The Revolution in Science in America, 1900-1950.” Substantia 5, no. 2 (2021): 85–95. https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-1256.
Collison, Patrick, and Michael Nielsen. “Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck.” The Atlantic, November 16, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/.
Cologna, Viktoria, Niels G. Mede, Sebastian Berger, et al. “Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society Across 68 Countries.” Nature Human Behaviour 9, no. 4 (2025): 713–30. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02090-5.
Crichton, Danny, host. Rethinking the Science of Science Funding with Sam Arbesman. Riskgaming. March 31, 2022. 16:27. https://www.luxcapital.com/content/rethinking-the-science-of-science-funding-with-sam-arbesman.
Dattani, Saloni. “Real Peer Review Has Never Been Tried.” Works in Progress, July 21, 2022. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/real-peer-review/.
Dell’Acqua, Fabrizio, Edward McFowland, Ethan R. Mollick, et al. “Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality.” Preprint, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573321.
Dyèvre, Arnaud. “Public R&D Spillovers and Productivity Growth.” Preprint, January 22, 2024. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/shared/pdf/2024/EFCB_2024_Dyevre_paper.pl.pdf.
Else, Holly. “COVID ‘Fast Grants’ Sped up Pandemic Science.” Nature, August 3, 2021.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02111-7.
Fieldhouse, Andrew J., and Karel Mertens. The Returns to Government R&D: Evidence from U.S. Appropriations Shocks. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 2024.
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/papers/2023/wp2305.
Fieldhouse, Andrew J., and Karel Mertens. “The Social Returns to Public R&D.” Working Paper No. 33780. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2025. https://doi.org/10.3386/w33780.
Flexner, Abraham. “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.” Harper’s, November 1939.
Furnas, Alexander C., Nic Fishman, Leah Rosenstiel, and Dashun Wang. “Partisan Disparities in the Funding of Science in the United States.” Science 389, no. 6766 (2025): 1195–200. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adx5154.
Ginexi, Elizabeth. “I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14.” Substack newsletter. Elizabeth Ginexi, March 15, 2026. https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-research-funding-announcements.
Godin, Benoît. “The Linear Model of Innovation.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 31, no. 6 (2006): 639–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243906291865.
Gonzalez, Ignacio, Juan Montecino, and Vasudeva Ramaswamy. Preliminary Estimates of the Macroeconomic Costs of Cutting Federal Funding for Scientific Research. Institute for Macroeconomic & Policy Analysis, American University, 2025.
Gros, Claudius. “An Empirical Study of the Per Capita Yield of Science Nobel Prizes: Is the US Era Coming to an End?” Royal Society Open Science 5, no. 5 (2018): 180167. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180167.
Gruber, Jonathan, Simon Johnson, and Enrico Moretti. “Place-Based Productivity and Costs in Science.” In Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, vol. 2, edited by Benjamin Jones and Josh Lerner. University of Chicago Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1086/723239.
Hao, Qianyue, Fengli Xu, Yong Li, and James Evans. “Artificial Intelligence Tools Expand Scientists’ Impact but Contract Science’s Focus.” Nature, ahead of print, January 14, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09922-y.
Hausman, Naomi. “University Innovation and Local Economic Growth.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 104, no. 4 (2022): 718–35. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01027.
Hayek, Friedrich A. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 519–30.
Herd, Pamela, and Don Moynihan. “Are Universities Too Dependent on Federal Support.” Can We Still Govern?, April 23, 2025. https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/are-universities-too-dependent-on.
Hostler, Tom. “Scientific Reform, Post-Academic Research, and Academic Identity.” Substack newsletter. Critical Metascience, August 8, 2023. https://markrubin.substack.com/p/scientific-reform-post-academic-research.
Jalali, Mohammad S., and Zeynep Hasgul. “Potential Trade-Offs of Proposed Cuts to the US National Institutes of Health.” JAMA Health Forum 6, no. 7 (2025): e252228. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.2228.
Jessop, Bob. “On Academic Capitalism.” Critical Policy Studies 12, no. 1 (2018): 104–9.
https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2017.1403342.
Jones, Benjamin F., and Lawrence H. Summers. “A Calculation of the Social Returns to Innovation.” NBER Working Paper Series 27863. Preprint, September 2020. http://www.nber.org/papers/w27863.
Kaelin, William G. “Killing the Science Golden Goose.” The American Journal of Medicine 138, no. 9 (2025): 1181–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2025.04.003.
Kedrick, Kara, Ekaterina Levitskaya, and Russell J. Funk. “Conceptual Structure and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge.” Nature Human Behaviour 8, no. 10 (2024): 1915–23. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01957-x.
Krauss, Alexander. “New Scientific Fields Are Triggered by Powerful New Methods.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (2025): 1590. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05797-6.
Kustov, Alexander. “Academics Need to Wake Up on AI.” Substack newsletter. Popular by Design, March 2, 2026. https://alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/academics-need-to-wake-up-on-ai.
Liu, Michael, Kushal T. Kadakia, Vishal R. Patel, and Harlan M. Krumholz. “Characterization of Research Grant Terminations at the National Institutes of Health.” JAMA 334, no. 6 (2025): 534. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.7707.
Loise, Vicki, and Ashley J. Stevens. “The Bayh-Dole Act Turns 30.” Science Translational Medicine 2, no. 52 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.3001481.
Lonsdale, Joe. “Make the FDA Great Again!” Joelonsdale.Com, May 19, 2025.
https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/fix-the-nih-to-fix-american-science.
Lucking, Brian, Nicholas Bloom, and John Van Reenen. “Have R&D Spillovers Declined in the 21st Century?” Fiscal Studies 40, no. 4 (2019): 561–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12195.
Macfarlane, Bruce. “The Spirit of Research.” Oxford Review of Education 47, no. 6 (2021): 737–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2021.1884058.
McGreivy, Nick. “I Got Fooled by AI-for-Science Hype—Here’s What It Taught Me.” Understanding AI, May 19, 2025. https://www.understandingai.org/p/i-got-fooled-by-ai-for-science-hypeheres.
Merton, Robert K. “Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science.” American Sociological Review 22, no. 6 (1957): 635. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089193.
Milkoreit, Manjana, and E. Keith Smith. “Rapidly Diverging Public Trust in Science in the United States.” Public Understanding of Science 34, no. 5 (2024): 616–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625241302970.
Mitroff, Ian I. “Norms and Counter-Norms in a Select Group of the Apollo Moon Scientists: A Case Study of the Ambivalence of Scientists.” American Sociological Review 39, no. 4 (1974): 579–95.
Mumford, Lewis. “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (1964): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.2307/3101118.
Nayak, Rahul K., Jerry Avorn, and Aaron S. Kesselheim. “Public Sector Financial Support for Late Stage Discovery of New Drugs in the United States: Cohort Study.” BMJ, October 23, 2019, l5766. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l5766.
Nielsen, Michael, and Kanjun Qiu. “A Vision of Metascience.” October 18, 2022. https://scienceplusplus.org/metascience/.
Novosad, Paul, Sam Asher, Catriona Farquharson, and Eni Iljazi. Access to Opportunity in the Sciences: Evidence from the Nobel Laureates. Discussion Paper No. 19551. CEPR, 2024. https://cepr.org/publications/dp19551.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. “From Anti-Government to Anti-Science: Why Conservatives Have Turned Against Science.” Daedalus 151, no. 4 (2022): 98–123. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01946.
Park, Michael, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk. “Papers and Patents Are Becoming Less Disruptive Over Time.” Nature 613, no. 7942 (2023): 138–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x.
Patel, Sandeep. “Why Science Needs a Marketplace.” Substack newsletter. Catalyze, October 30, 2025. https://catalyzernd.substack.com/p/why-science-needs-a-marketplace.
Pece, Christopher V., and Gary W. Anderson. Analysis of Federal Funding for Research and Development in 2022: Basic Research. NSF 24-332. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2024. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf24332.
Pendlebury, David. “The Legacy of Eugene Garfield: A Pioneer of Information Science.” Academia & Government. Clarivate Academia & Government, September 16, 2025. https://clarivate.com/academia-government/blog/the-legacy-of-eugene-garfield-a-pioneer-of-information-science/.
Reddi, Vijay Janapa. “The Academic Pipeline Stall Why Industry Must Stand for Academia.” Computer Architecture Today, May 6, 2025. https://www.sigarch.org/the-academic-pipeline-stall-why-industry-must-stand-for-academia/.
Roe, Anne. “The Psychology of the Scientist.” Science 134, no. 3477 (1961): 456–59. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.134.3477.456.
Rogers, Adam. “Silicon Valley Bets on Science—Without Strings.” Science, December 19, 2025. https://www.science.org/content/article/silicon-valley-bets-science-without-strings.
———. “Why Some of the Most Important Money in Tech Might Be About to Disappear.” Inc., September 2, 2025. https://www.inc.com/adam-rogers/trump-cuts-to-research-grants-threaten-innovation/91228216.
Sauter, M. R. “Up and to the Right: The Development, Diffusion, and Impact of the Casey Life Cycle Model on Venture Capital Policy and Practice.” Enterprise & Society, October 10, 2024, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2024.27.
Spector, Jonathan M., Rosemary S. Harrison, and Mark C. Fishman. “Fundamental Science Behind Today’s Important Medicines.” Science Translational Medicine 10, no. 438 (2018): eaaq1787. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaq1787.
Tian, Chaolin, Yurui Huang, Ching Jin, Yifang Ma, and Brian Uzzi. “The Distinctive Innovation Patterns and Network Embeddedness of Scientific Prizewinners.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 40 (2025): e2424143122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2424143122.
Tripodi, Giorgio, Xiang Zheng, Yifan Qian, et al. “Tenure and Research Trajectories.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 30 (2025): e2500322122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2500322122.
Trump’s War on Science. US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Minority, 2025. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/HELP-Committee-Minority-Report-Trumps-War-on-Science.pdf.
Uzzi, Brian, Satyam Mukherjee, Michael Stringer, and Ben Jones. “Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact.” Science 342, no. 6157 (2013): 468–72. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1240474.
Vance, Ashlee. “Exclusive: Altman And Masa Back a 27-Year-Old’s Plan to Build a New Bell Labs Ultra.” Core Memory, November 10, 2025. https://www.corememory.com/p/exclusive-altman-and-masa-back-episteme-louis-andre.
Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (1980): 121–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652.
Wright, Gavin. “The Origins of American Industrial Success, 1879-1940.” American Economic Review 80 (February 1990): 651–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2006701.
Wu, Lingfei, Dashun Wang, and James A. Evans. “Large Teams Develop and Small Teams Disrupt Science and Technology.” Nature 566, no. 7744 (2019): 378–82. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0941-9.
Wu, Xiangting, Linhui Wu, Michael Park, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk. “Is Innovation Becoming Less Disruptive? An Inventory of the Literature.” arXiv:2602.05140. Preprint, arXiv, February 4, 2026. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.05140.
Yang, Alex Jie, Jianming Guo, Yujie Shi, Sanhong Deng, and Star X. Zhao. “Repeat Collaboration and Scientific Innovation: Evidence from Dynamic Ego Networks of Nobel Laureates.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (2025): 1620. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05887-5.
Zang, Dongyu, and Chunli Liu. “Exploring the Clinical Translation Intensity of Papers Published by the World’s Top Scientists in Basic Medicine.” Scientometrics 128, no. 4 (2023): 2371–416. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04634-4.