The ¥14 trillion supplementary budget for fiscal 2009 has a problematic feature. It allocates as much as ¥4.36 trillion — about 30 percent of the budget — to 46 funds, 30 of them newly established. Money in the funds can be used "flexibly" for more than a year, raising the possibility that bureaucrats will plan claptrap projects just to use up the money.

Among the funds is a ¥270 billion fund to support state-of-the-art scientific research. The government should exercise utmost care to ensure that the money is used for truly meaningful research projects that will broaden and strengthen the nation's scientific base.

The government created the fund as an economic stimulus measure proposed by the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren). The ¥270 billion amounts to about 1.5 times the annual subsidies doled out by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for scientific research. It could greatly affect the way scientific research is conducted in Japan.

It is envisaged that about 30 researchers will each receive ¥3 billion to ¥15 billion — or an average ¥9 billion — to spend over a three-to-five-year period. This is more than the most generous spending terms at present — about ¥2 billion over five years. Candidate research themes include development of high-efficiency solar batteries and new superconducting materials, and research on induced pluripotent stem cells.

A working group in the Cabinet Office is examining applications from researchers. About 30 percent of its members are from various industries. But it must be remembered that science is not the slave of industry or the government. It would be wrong to conclude that advances in scientific research will directly increase the international competitiveness of commercial products.

The autonomy of science and scientific research must be respected. Simply pouring a large amount of money into research projects may lead to a deterioration in the quality of research. The government must take sufficient time in its selection process to ensure that only the most promising researchers receive funding.