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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →A new PNAS Nexus Perspective proposes a “Discovery Compact”: a renewed social contract in which government, researchers, industry and the public treat scientific discovery as shared infrastructure that must be funded, maintained and governed across generations—not rebuilt only after a crisis.
Sergio Carbajo, Asad Madni and Julia Powles set out the proposal in Discovery as public infrastructure: Renewing the social contract for science, published 13 October 2026. Their argument is that restoring research budgets or making grant cycles more predictable, while necessary, will not by itself repair a system strained by faster technologies, fragmented institutions, workforce pressures and declining public trust.
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They describe the postwar U.S. research settlement as a social contract: public investment supported open-ended inquiry, universities and laboratories supplied knowledge and talent, companies and agencies turned discoveries into capabilities, and democratic institutions provided oversight. The authors say that settlement now needs an explicit renewal. “We propose the Discovery Compact, a renewed social contract among government, science, industry, and the public that treats discovery as shared public infrastructure—capacity a plural society builds, tends, and holds in common across generations.”
Why the postwar model is under strain
The Perspective identifies five mismatches between established research processes and present conditions:
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- Speed: artificial intelligence, automated experimentation, biotechnology, advanced materials, quantum systems and semiconductors can advance more quickly than conventional proposal, review, appropriation, procurement and regulatory calendars.
- Convergence: important work increasingly crosses disciplinary and institutional boundaries, while funding and evaluation systems often remain organized by narrow fields.
- Talent: discovery depends on technicians, engineers, data stewards, staff scientists and early-career researchers as well as principal investigators, yet these roles can be treated as secondary or insecure.
- Institutional resilience: abrupt political or budgetary disruption can eliminate facilities, teams and institutional memory that take years to rebuild.
- Legitimacy: scientific independence must coexist with accountability, public participation and credible safeguards around risk, security and integrity.
Administrative requirements can also consume researchers’ time, while uncertainty makes it harder to retain people and maintain specialized capacity. The authors therefore frame discovery as an infrastructure question: capabilities must exist before an emergency exposes their absence.
The five principles of the Discovery Compact
| Principle | What it would require |
|---|---|
| Sustain discovery as infrastructure | Predictable multiyear support for laboratories, facilities, measurement systems, clinical networks, data, standards, talent pipelines and institutional memory, backed by transition planning and regular capacity assessments. |
| Move at the speed of science without sacrificing rigor | Keep conventional peer review where it fits, while adding differentiated mechanisms, staged commitments and portfolio authority for highly novel, convergent or time-sensitive work. |
| Build capacity through people, openness and mobility | Recognize early-career researchers, staff scientists, engineers, technicians and data stewards as core infrastructure; give them a stronger voice in program design; and support international mobility with proportionate safeguards. |
| Translate discovery without depleting its source | Create bridges from foundational research to use—shared testbeds, translational centers, regional consortia, standards organizations, public-private co-development, regulatory pathways and challenge-driven funding—without diverting all support from basic inquiry. |
| Secure democratic legitimacy and institutional resilience | Pair scientific independence with anticipatory governance, visible accountability, integrity protections, community participation and institutions able to withstand political change. |
How funding and review could change
The proposal does not call for abandoning peer review. Instead, it argues that a single review-and-award pattern is poorly suited to every kind of research. Stable baseline funding would protect long-lived capabilities, while staged commitments could let programs expand, redirect or stop as evidence develops. Portfolio authority modeled in part on agencies such as DARPA, ARPA-E and ARPA-H is presented as one possible way to back risky, cross-disciplinary or urgent work without removing accountability.
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Transition planning is central to the infrastructure idea. When a program, facility or major grant ends, agencies would assess what happens to people, data, equipment and specialized know-how rather than treating closure as a purely annual budget event. Regular capacity assessments could identify fragile dependencies before a crisis makes them visible.
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Under the compact, workforce policy is not separate from research policy. Early-career scientists need credible paths into independent work; technical staff and engineers need recognition and continuity; and data stewards need a role in maintaining trustworthy, reusable records. The authors also call for cross-training that includes ethics and the humanities, so technical decisions are considered alongside social consequences.
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International mobility remains valuable for ideas and skills, but the proposal acknowledges genuine safety, integrity and national-security concerns. Its approach is proportional safeguards rather than blanket closure: protect sensitive work while preserving reciprocal talent exchange, trusted collaboration and scientific diplomacy.
Translation without hollowing out discovery
Foundational research and translation have different time horizons and risk profiles. The compact therefore separates them conceptually while building deliberate connections. Shared testbeds can let researchers and companies evaluate ideas before full-scale investment. Translational centers and regional consortia can provide equipment and expertise that no single institution can afford. Standards organizations, manufacturing capacity, material procurement and clearer regulatory pathways can remove bottlenecks between a promising result and a usable product or public service.
This is not a demand that every basic project demonstrate an immediate application. It is a proposal to fund the connective tissue so that discoveries are not stranded and foundational work is not depleted in an attempt to produce short-term outputs.
Who would be responsible?
| Participant | Responsibility in the compact |
|---|---|
| Government | Sustain capabilities whose benefits are broad, uncertain, delayed or difficult for private actors to capture. |
| Research institutions | Protect rigor, openness, integrity and intellectual risk while maintaining durable infrastructure. |
| Industry, mission agencies, philanthropy and public institutions | Build pathways from knowledge to useful applications and help share translation costs. |
| Researchers | Pursue excellence and accept responsibility for the social and institutional settings in which their work operates. |
| Democratic institutions | Provide oversight while protecting independent scientific assessment. |
| The public | Participate in defining legitimate purposes, acceptable risks and what counts as shared value. |
That allocation is intended to prevent two common failures: leaving long-term capacity to markets that cannot capture its full value, and treating scientists as exempt from public accountability. Legitimacy, the authors argue, depends on visible conduct and broadly shared benefits, not communication campaigns alone.
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U.S. starting point, international ambition
The proposal begins in the United States because the postwar compact it revisits was forged there. Its tensions are not uniquely American, however. Countries face similar trade-offs between openness and security, autonomy and accountability, mobility and national competition, speed and regulatory capacity, excellence and inclusion, and innovation and legitimacy.
The authors therefore point toward trusted international collaboration, shared standards, reciprocal talent exchange, scientific diplomacy and cross-border governance. The Discovery Compact is a framework for negotiating those arrangements, not a ready-made treaty or agency blueprint.
What the proposal is—and is not
The Perspective is an invitation to redesign how societies maintain discovery, not a legislative template. It supplies principles and institutional directions rather than a single budget, bill or implementation timetable. As the authors write: “This Perspective is not a legislative template but an invitation to a national and international process of protecting and renewing the institutions and infrastructure through which societies discover, generate, protect, and prepare.”
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesIts practical test would be whether future policy protects the people, facilities, data, standards and trust that make breakthroughs possible between headline projects—and whether those assets survive changes in administrations, markets and emergencies.
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