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The authors draw on an immense range of data, covering everything from counts of PhDs to analysis of citations.
作者们引用了大量的数据，涵盖了从博士数量到引文分析的方方面面。
In order to identify a causal link between public science and corporate R&D, they employ a complex methodology that involves analysing changes to federal budgets.
为了确定公共机构的科研和企业研发之间的因果关系，他们采用了一种复杂的方法，包括分析联邦预算的变化。
Broadly, they find that scientific breakthroughs from public institutions “elicit little or no response from established corporations” over a number of years.
总体来说，他们发现，公共机构的科研突破在过去几年里“很少或根本没有引起老牌企业的反应”。
A boffin in a university lab might publish brilliant paper after brilliant paper, pushing the frontier of a discipline.
大学实验室里的一名研究人员可能会发表一篇又一篇精彩的论文，将学科边界不断向前推进。
Often, however, this has no impact on corporations’ own publications, their patents or the number of scientists that they employ, with life sciences being the exception.
然而，这通常不会对企业自己的出版、专利或雇用的科学家数量产生影响，生命科学是个例外。
And this, in turn, points to a small impact on economy-wide productivity.
这继而又表明，整个经济方面的生产力也没受到多大影响。
Why do companies struggle to use ideas produced by universities?
为什么企业很难应用大学产生的创意想法？
The loss of the corporate lab is one part of the answer.
企业实验室的没落是原因之一。
Such institutions were home to a lively mixture of thinkers and doers.
企业实验室是思想家和实干家的活跃混合体。
In the 1940s Bell Labs had the interdisciplinary team of chemists, metallurgists and physicists necessary to solve the overlapping theoretical and practical problems associated with developing the transistor.
在20世纪40年代，贝尔实验室有由化学家、冶金学家和物理学家组成的跨学科团队，这对解决与开发晶体管相关的理论与实践交叉重叠的问题是必要的。
That cross-cutting expertise is now largely gone.
这种横跨各领域的专业团队现在基本上已经不复存在。
Another part of the answer concerns universities.
另一个原因与大学有关。
Free from the demands of corporate overlords, research focuses more on satisfying geeks’ curiosity or boosting citation counts than it does on finding breakthroughs that will change the world or make money.
没有了企业老板的要求，研究更注重满足极客的好奇心或提高论文引用率，而不是寻找能改变世界或赚钱的科学突破。
In moderation, research for research’s sake is no bad thing; some breakthrough technologies, such as penicillin, were discovered almost by accident.
适度地为研究而研究并不是一件坏事，一些突破性的科技，如青霉素，几乎是偶然发现的。
But if everyone is arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin, the economy suffers.
但如果每个人都在争论“有多少天使在针尖上跳舞”这种空洞问题，经济就会受到影响。（注：引号中的话语是新教徒讽刺中世纪神学家只会空谈的说法。）
When higher-education institutions do produce work that is more relevant to the real world, the consequences are troubling.
当高等教育机构确实在产出与现实世界更相关的成果时，后果令人担忧。
As universities produce more freshly minted PhD graduates, companies seem to find it easier to invent new stuff, the authors find.
作者们发现，随着大学培养出更多应届博士毕业生，企业发明新东西似乎变得更容易了。
Yet universities’ patents have an offsetting effect, provoking corporations to produce fewer patents themselves.
但大学的专利具有抵消作用，会促使企业自己产出的专利减少。
It is possible that incumbent businesses, worried about competition from university spin-offs, cut back on R&D in that field.
由于担心来自大学科研衍生产品的竞争，现有企业可能会削减该领域的研发。
Although no one knows for sure how these opposing effects balance out, the authors point to a net decline in corporate patenting of about 1.5% a year.
虽然没有人确切地知道这些相反的影响是如何互相抵消的，但作者指出，公司的专利申请每年净下降约1.5%。
The vast fiscal resources devoted to public science, in other words, probably make businesses across the rich world less innovative.
换言之，投入公共机构科研的大量财政资源可能会降低富裕世界企业的创新能力。
Perhaps, with time, universities and the corporate sector will work together more profitably.
或许，随着时间的推移，大学和企业会以更能盈利的方式进行合作。
Tighter competition policy could force businesses to behave a little more like they did in the post-war period, and beef up their internal research.
更严格的竞争政策可能会迫使企业的行为更像二战后的时期，并加强企业内部研究。
And corporate researchers, rather than universities, are driving the current generative AI innovation boom: in a few cases, the corporate lab has already risen from the ashes.
推动当前人工智能创新热潮的是企业研究人员，而不是大学：在少数几个领域中，企业实验室已经从灰烬中重生。
At some point, though, governments will need to ask themselves hard questions.
然而，在某个时候，各国政府将需要扪心自问一些尖锐的问题。
In a world of weak economic growth, lavish public support for universities may come to seem an unjustifiable luxury.
在经济增长疲软的世界里，公共财政对大学的慷慨支持可能看起来像是不合理的奢侈挥霍。
