“Industry now accounts for the vast majority of national R&D, which has been growing for decades.” That’s a quote from a January 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science report on national research and development. While there was a brief uptick with the American Recovery Act, federal research and development has been on a steady downward trend as a portion of gross domestic product for many decades even as commercial R&D has increased. According the AAAS, industry R&D has grown to just under 2 percent of GDP while federal R&D has fallen below 1 percent.
