The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.
A shift toward more circular, transparent systems would not only reduce waste and increase efficiency, but also unlock new business models, strengthen supply chain resilience, and give consumers better, more reliable information about the products they choose.
By better harnessing the power of data, we can build a learning healthcare system where outcomes drive continuous improvement and where healthcare value leads the way.
In this unprecedented inflection point (and time of difficult disruption) for higher education, science funding, and agency structure, we have an opportunity to move beyond incremental changes and advocate for bold, new ideas that envision a future of the scientific research enterprise that looks very different from the current system.
Assigning persistent digital identifiers (Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs) and using ORCIDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs) for key personnel to track outputs for research grants will improve the accountability and transparency of federal investments in research and reduce reporting burden.
Research funding agencies should apply the content of grant applications to AI tools to predict the future of scientific and technological breakthroughs, enhance peer review, and encourage better research investment decisions by both the public and the private sector.
Rebuilding such labs in a 21st century “Bell Labs X” form would restore a powerful and uniquely American approach to technoscientific discovery—harnessing the private sector to discover and invent in ways that fundamentally improve U.S. national and economic competitiveness.
The federal government should establish a system for awarding bounties to people who identify fraud in federally-funded research.
As surrogate markers are increasingly being accepted by FDA to support approval of new drugs and biologics, it is imperative that patients and clinicians understand whether such novel endpoints are reflective of meaningful clinical benefits.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services should launch a Department-wide initiative to reduce wasteful spending on health services, drugs, and ineffective medical devices, saving many lives as well as billions of dollars annually.
Bureaucracy significantly hinders federally funded scientific research, diverting scientists’ time from discovery to low-value administrative tasks.