This paper examines the role of bibliometrics in exploring the question of the effect of commercialization upon the health of American science. It approaches the problem through the question: What would constitute relevant evidence documenting decline in the number of scientific articles published by American authors in the last two decades? Because even the data have been privatized recently, it begins by criticizing article counts used in other venues. It concludes by demonstrating that the problem of decline is not merely in relative shares between countries, but also an absolute decline in American-authored articles across the board. We close with some proposed causes of the decline.
