Conclude there’s no crisis, and what do you get? Official Washington and the mainline press pass you by without a sniff.

That’s pretty much what’s happened with an intriguing report recently issued by the RAND Corporation, “U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology.” Contrary to establishment doctrine, RAND’s researchers concluded that the American scientific enterprise leads the world by a wide margin in expenditures and research output, continues to grow at a healthy pace, and is not slumping into decrepitude.

Piling on the heresies, they assert that the U.S. is not short of scientists or engineers, and U.S. expenditures per student on elementary and secondary education are on par with those of other rich nations.

There are problems, the report acknowledges, such as poor student performance in math and science and disruptive financial ups and downs in particular fields of science, but these are not seen as fatal. Moreover, RAND asserts, the large immigrant contingent in American science is a blessing, not a danger, and these foreign scientists are mainly staying on, not returning home, despite woeful forecasts of imminent departure. “Wage and employment trends do not show the traditional signs of a shortage of scientists and engineers,” the report states. Conclusion: By world standards, we’re doing very well in science and technology. There is no crisis.

Conducted by RAND’s National Defense Research Institute for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the study contrasts sharply with the drumbeat of doom emanating for decades from the scientific establishment, with attendant echoes in the general press. Drawing on generally accepted statistical data, RAND found: The U.S. accounts for 40 percent of the world’s R&D spending, 38 percent of patented new technologies by the industrialized nations, employs 70 percent of the world’s Nobel laureates, and is home to 58 percent of the world’s top 100 universities. In R&D spending, the U.S. is growing faster than the European Union and Japan.

Regarding the globalization of science — often cited as a threat to the American research enterprise — the report points out that inventions and discoveries, regardless of where made, can and often do benefit the U.S.

The RAND report stands out because gloomy findings predominate in assessments of American science. In 1985, for example, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the National Science Foundation expressed exasperation with the din of doom: “It’s the same argument every year, about losing the lead.” In 2005, the National Research Council — the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences and its subsidiaries — issued a blockbuster compilation of R&D anxiety, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which still reverberates around Washington as science-policy gospel.

To be noted about the standard reports is that they generally come from organizations dominated by senior scientists, university administrators, and corporate executives. The scientists and university administrators genuinely believe that science at their institutions, but elsewhere, too, requires more government money than is available at the given moment. More is better, in their opinion, and they are not concerned with opportunity costs or the possibility that, perhaps, some science money is ill spent.

In recent years, their corporate colleagues have been pulling out of basic research, shunning it as expensive, uncertain in outcome, and vulnerable to exploitation by competitors: not a wise investment for a company beset by Wall Street sharks. The preference of the corporate chiefs is federal government finance of the science they need and used to do. With full conviction in the accuracy and urgency of doomsday reports, they sign on.

The RAND study was expertly reported by Richard Monastersky June 13 in the Chronicle, “Despite Recent Obits, U.S. Science and Engineering Remain Robust.” The full report is available at http://www.rand.org.