Here, its solution is grand in scope. It views the maker community, which is mostly interested in scratching personal itches, as a sign that the US public wants to make things again. The SNGA authors figure that they would be perfectly happy making things for science. “Establish national fellowships for skilled craftspeople,” they suggest, “practitioner-in-residence programs embedding machinists and technicians alongside Ph.D. researchers, and portable industry-recognized credentials in advanced manufacturing and lab techniques.”
It’s unclear what these machinists will be doing with the researchers. But the results will be glorious: “By rebuilding the link between science and hands-on craft, federal leadership can ensure that the economic returns of discovery, including the jobs, supplier networks, and process knowledge encoded in the hands of workers, accrue to Americans.”
Its example is Detroit in its heyday, although that seems to have been a period of engineering refinements that lacked a notable scientific component. And it’s unclear what scientific research center the SNGA associates with that time.
Are there some fields that can be revolutionized by things like a 3D printer and a bit of time with the maker community? Robotics seems like an obvious choice; developmental biology does not.
Elsewhere, the report returns to the familiar claim that regulations are also stifling the potential for science-driven commercial innovation. The only specific area that’s cited, however, is nuclear power: “nuclear energy stalled in America not because the physics failed, but because regulatory choices over the past half-century made building uneconomical.” That is not a realistic reading of the history, as there is little indication that regulations are the primary cause of the massive delays and cost overruns that plague nuclear plant construction.
Political grievance and Silicon Valley
The complaints about regulations are one of the many cases where SNGA descends into political and cultural grievance. The most obvious case is where it detours to grumble about the role of the scientific community in the arguments over COVID school closures, but there are many additional ones.
