Reply To: March 5-9 2007: 7th Symposium on Current Trends in International Fusion Research in DC

[Rezwan]

“Little Science”

vansig wrote: unfortunately for small research companies, an investment fund manager would rather have one $100M account than one hundred $1M accounts.

You’re talking about “long tail” science. Both big government and big business are geared to cut things off at a certain point, and to look for immediately obvious hits.

True that Aeronauts numbers are easier to put on a spread sheet than achieve.

My favorite “how best to deploy markets to the aid of science” fantasy revolves around developing “long tail” organization approach for science research.

Scientists put their proposals online: “Marine biologist at xyz institute seeks $100k to investigate mating habits of the bleurplassian molusk. Project will assess impact of nearby cement plant on fertility and look at molusk adaptation patterns. This project mostly helps molusks. No molusks will be killed. Here’s a picture of a really cute molusk. Oh, and funding will mostly go to pay the salary of 1 marine biologist and 2 stipends for easily exploited grad students. Biologist has a family of 4 and resides in the great state of ____, at least 80% of project money will recirculate into this economy.”

Then, you allow people to invest (without that barrier that they need to be an accredited investor – a special law would have to be written to make this venture an exception to the SEC rules. No doubt, the ever paternalistic big gov and big biz will “worry about our safety” (try to keep us out of the game), but we could set caps on investment – a max based on income or something – but really, it’s none of anyone’s business what you throw your money away on). Now you have pools of investors forming over various science projects – based on popularity, but also a lot of information is out there – people discussing the quality of previous research, vouching for one another, etc. A public beyond the academic journals, but informed by them as well. A much freer flow of information about various endeavors, quicker feedback, and – as money is a factor – people are putting their money down on this – a good measure of true preference & value of the broader population.

Now you have a pool of investors growing for various projects, and when you get enough for the project – it kicks over. The dude gets the $.

We can also link this to government – get matching funds from Government. What we’ve done here is taken the decision-making out of government, and given it to whoever logs on to this scienceamazon site – taken it away from easily influenced individuals in office and diffused it across many more people. Harder to skew influence (although people still follow herds, so that won’t be eliminated).

Anyway, most of these projects will not have an immediate financial gain for “investors” – however, algorithms could be developed that model the value of commercial products that emerge, and trace them back to their basic science research, and you get a little bit of a financial return – or just really get to see your impact in the global economy. So for example, after this study, when there is a boom in molusk population due to applying the findings of this study, and the fishing industry has a surplus, and the surplus is taxed, the portion of the money that was your investment gets credited back to you. And you can go on and reinvest it, because you’re more interested in bragging to your friends about what a great patron of the sciences you are and how many nifty things you’re responsible for.

We really have not begun to exploit the long tail of science. Maybe because science is a bit reductive to begin with. Some kind of engineering mentality. Try to simplify things. Not too holistic or organic?

Below, a long tail image from http://www.aurorawdc.com/ci/000340.html

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