Larry Summers says that R&D spending should not be part of an economic stimulus package, contrary to what many scientists were probably hoping for.

Summers actually has a good point. The rationale for current ideas about a fiscal stimulus package is that government deficit spending is helpful during times when monetary policy isn't getting traction, but such spending has to be followed by a commitment to deficit reduction during better times. So now we spend like it's 1943, but when things pick up we need to cut back.

As Summers points out, that's not really a good thing for research budgets:

In the context of a short-run macroeconomic stimulus, that is to say, programs of stimulus that are explicitly temporary, it does not strike me that running up the research budget and then running down the research budget is a terribly rational way to run a country.

But that doesn't mean Summers' thinks we should skimp on science - he argues for "much more public support" for science, basic science in particular. This support, Summers argues, will be critical for the long term economic health of the US.

Summers also told an interesting anecdote, after asking whether we need to do more to encourage talented college students to choose science careers:

It's a cliché that too little American talent goes into science, and that too many people go into banking, and that our education system is said to be failing because of those effects. To some substantial effects it must be true. I found myself on a business trip to Europe and lucky for me I was sitting in business class. Seated not far from me in business class was a young woman who had graduated from Harvard 14 months before and who was working for a major financial institution and she was traveling to Europe and when people travel for that major financial institution they travel in business class. I like to walk when I'm on a plane, so I wandered. I walked back to coach and on that airplane in coach was a distinguished physicist who I had known when I was president of Harvard who I think probably is close to even money to win a Nobel Prize one day. He was going to a conference like professors of physics do and he was going like professors of physics like him go, which is in coach. And I didn't say anything to either of them, but I thought to myself there was something odd about the reward structure of our society.

(h/t to the AAAS for their policy alert emails)