Measuring the Economic Value of Research is an important book, edited by a distinguished group of researchers who focus on the science of science policy, an emerging interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the scientific enterprise. The book offers a case study of government to the level, apportionment, human capital needs, and physical facility requirements of public investments in research and development (R&D) and the impacts or returns that these investments have on policy objectives. The food safety case study is a collaborative undertaking, with individual chapters authored by interdisciplinary teams of experts on the subject matter as well as on statistics, information science, and other areas as needed. As such, it presents a multidimensional array of findings relevant to decisions about the funding and assessment of food safety research, the future supply and competencies of the field's labor force, and prospective career and employment opportunities for students enrolling in graduate studies in related disciplines. Additionally, interspersed throughout the book's opening and concluding descriptive chapters are salient observations that connect its methodology and findings to a range of contemporary science policy trends of relevance both to food safety R&D and a swath of federal research investment decisions. These include the increasingly targeted character of federal support of food safety research; trends away from smaller, less costly, single-investigator-driven work to larger, more expensive multidisciplinary projects; and overall declines in real levels of research support.
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