Balentine Op-ed Published

In an op-ed published in The Hill, Provost and Executive Vice President Jerry Balentine, D.O., warns that proposed funding cuts for basic scientific research would be a grave mistake for our nation’s long-term economic success. “Far from reducing the debt burden, cuts to federal funding contribute to it by diminishing the fund of new knowledge that drives economic growth,” he writes.

The for-profit sector can take basic research and turn it into useful products, but often, their origin point isn’t a business. It’s research institutions or universities, operating with federal funding. “Proposed cuts would have far-reaching consequences for more than 300,000 researchers across the country,” Balentine notes. And if funding dries up, potential breakthroughs slip out of reach, as science typically advances incrementally, with discoveries building upon decades of previous work.