Mr. Freeman, among others, questions whether there is a shortage of scientists in the United States. He cites evidence suggesting that American dominance in science will decline over time and that we should worry less about purported shortages at home and more about “developing new ways of benefiting from scientific advances made in other countries.”

Of course, scientific knowledge isn’t a thing, like a child’s toy or an electric motor, so the day may never come when “science” can be purchased from a Chinese or Indian catalog. For the foreseeable future, United States companies will need their own highly paid scientists “to evaluate the purchase of foreign science and to make sense of it in their own labs,” says Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.

While the United States is expected to remain the home of choice for the world’s best scientists for some time, industry is increasingly striking deals with scientists in developing countries eager for wider exposure.

Seagate Technology, a leader in digital storage, pays scientists in Singapore to do basic studies, and even benefits from subsidies given those scientists by Singapore’s government, making the relationship even more affordable. Seagate runs a research laboratory in Pittsburgh. Roughly 10 to 20 percent of the lab’s budget for outsiders goes to scientists working abroad.

Benefiting from foreign science isn’t new. Last October, the Nobel Prize for physics, for instance, was shared by French and German scientists for their basic discovery of what is known as the “giant magnetoresistance” effect, which enables much more digital data to be stored on a disk drive. The breakthrough, by Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, had essentially no commercial impact in Germany or France. But by using open scientific literature and attending conferences, Seagate found ways to capitalize on the breakthrough, which had been financed by European governments.

“This is a really good example of how foreign scientists help,” says Mark Re, Seagate’s senior vice president for research and head of the company’s research center in Pittsburgh.

Commercializing science isn’t easy, which is the main reason that rising scientists from India, China and other countries can’t readily achieve business success. In the case of the magneto effect, Seagate engineers ended up using different materials  at different temperatures  than the Nobel winners.