ROME—If you learned that there was a tool that could expand your understanding of every aspect of the world you lived in, helping you lead a longer, healthier life and providing inventions that would make that life more pleasant and interesting, would you want it? Would you pay for it? Would you want your government to support it?
Over the past 21 months, in the country that has leveraged research to greatest effect, the government is slashing funding for it, closing centers where it is done, politicizing grant-making decisions, and bullying its single biggest engine: universities. The costs will be far greater than many realize.