Government vs. Science

[vansig]

Tulse wrote: vansig, what you say may be true for commercial research where the goal is to patent, but isn’t the case for much of basic academic research, which often doesn’t have direct commercial application.

I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

[Rezwan]

vansig wrote:

vansig, what you say may be true for commercial research where the goal is to patent, but isn’t the case for much of basic academic research, which often doesn’t have direct commercial application.

I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

There are a lot of factors which reduce collaboration and have a negative impact on discovery. You have inspired me to add Taleb’s “Peer cruelty” essay to the site.

Also think it could use a fresh forum thread.

[Tulse]

vansig wrote: I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

But for pure academics (i.e., those without commercial ties), publication is the coin of the realm — it’s what gets you tenure, it’s what gets you promoted, it’s what builds your reputation. Such researchers may not share unpublished work, but that’s because they are eager to scoop others in official published articles. In other words, the motivation in academics is to “share” via publication. There is no such motivation for commercial research.

[Brian H]

Tulse wrote:

I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

But for pure academics (i.e., those without commercial ties), publication is the coin of the realm — it’s what gets you tenure, it’s what gets you promoted, it’s what builds your reputation. Such researchers may not share unpublished work, but that’s because they are eager to scoop others in official published articles. In other words, the motivation in academics is to “share” via publication. There is no such motivation for commercial research.
Once again, I insist that you misunderstand the purpose of patents. They require full disclosure, with protection against commercial exploitation by others for a period of time. Whether that period of time is appropriate to each class or type of invention or application is a separate question. In a sense, the race to be “first to publish” is similar in academia: secrecy up until disclosure.

Once a patent is in place, the information in it often/usually stimulates others to research variations or modifications or upgrades sufficiently different to warrant their own patents.

In a way, both environments attempt to channel and ration resources to the most productive and successful. Both environments have plenty of people whose expertise consists mainly of gaming the system, or abusing it (e.g., patenting overarching concepts, or naturally occurring genes and DNA, etc.) Wishing for a system or environment with unlimited co-operativeness and resources to solve that problem is just silly, IMO.

[Tulse]

Brian H wrote: Once again, I insist that you misunderstand the purpose of patents.

Brian, I am not talking specifically of patents. Perhaps I have indeed misunderstood the issue you’re pursuing, but all I was addressing is the original claim that government grants impede the free flow of information among researchers. My point is that researchers who are publicly funded have no motivation to avoid publishing in academic journals, whereas the kind of “publishing” that commercial researchers do is often just patents, which are applied for well after the basic research is done, and which do no tend to offer the same wealth of information that academic journal articles do. I am not at all against commercial research or patents, but I think it is important to recognize the enormous and foundational contribution to the general knowledge of our species that is performed by publicly funded researchers who freely share their findings with each other and with us.

[Brian H]

Tulse wrote:

Once again, I insist that you misunderstand the purpose of patents.

Brian, I am not talking specifically of patents. Perhaps I have indeed misunderstood the issue you’re pursuing, but all I was addressing is the original claim that government grants impede the free flow of information among researchers. My point is that researchers who are publicly funded have no motivation to avoid publishing in academic journals, whereas the kind of “publishing” that commercial researchers do is often just patents, which are applied for well after the basic research is done, and which do no tend to offer the same wealth of information that academic journal articles do. I am not at all against commercial research or patents, but I think it is important to recognize the enormous and foundational contribution to the general knowledge of our species that is performed by publicly funded researchers who freely share their findings with each other and with us.

“freely share” ignores the actual money and decision flows. “Publicly funded” researchers compete for the favor of bureaucracies, described as Grantsmanship, resulting in bottlenecking and filtering by consensus and Big Science policy priorities, e.g.

As Vansig said above, “I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.”

[Lerner]

Right you are. But the solution is to make the research funds adequate, then there is no cutthroat competition for them. There was a far better climate among physicists when it took 2 grant proposals to get a grant then today when it takes 20. So what we need is a great expansion of government-fudned research. The money there if we, say, stop useless wars and take back the bank bailout to name just a couple of examples.

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: Right you are. But the solution is to make the research funds adequate, then there is no cutthroat competition for them. There was a far better climate among physicists when it took 2 grant proposals to get a grant then today when it takes 20. So what we need is a great expansion of government-fudned research. The money there if we, say, stop useless wars and take back the bank bailout to name just a couple of examples.

Considering the billyuns going down the ITER and Tokamak ratholes, the quantity of money is not the problem. It’s what they’re trying to buy. Big Science provides it. Little Science (including LPP/FFS) does not.

[vansig]

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

[Aeronaut]

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

Thus the appeal of a micro-funding network of 1M $100 investors. Buy low, sell at IPO prices. :coolsmile:

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

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

Thus the appeal of a micro-funding network of 1M $100 investors. Buy low, sell at IPO prices. :coolsmile:
:cheese: Such numbers are much easier to enter into a spreadsheet than to actually achieve.
…
…
Step 3) convince the participating institutions that the FF process is viable.
…
…
Step 6) Persuade target public that you’re trustworthy.
…
…
Step 9) Go to step 6.
etc.

[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

Attached files

[Rezwan]

The key goals here are to bring more science projects online, to diversify, to move away from monopolistic tendencies.

Also, to lower the cost of collaboration and information.

Eventually, if done right, you might even be able to ween off the government entirely, make a self-sustaining online science market – provided that most people are investing with a sense of triple bottom line and not just for financial return.

i.e., They’re not looking primarily to make money, they see the intrinsic worth of the knowledge. They’re looking at the jobs created for scientists, the fact that their kids now see science as a viable field to go into, socially relevant with or without results, feel good, and adequately funded. They genuinely want to know about that mollusk and their world.

I suspect that, over time, many world changing inventions, methodologies, ideas will emerge from this process, theoretically more than we’re getting with our current system. The pool will actually make a lot of money and be shown to support more innovation than the system we have now.

Of course, I don’t know for sure. Just a fantasy for now. It’s got to be designed and tested. Which means, of course – we just need funding for a project to set this thing up.

[Aeronaut]

Brian, I agree that numbers are easier in concept than action. Until the tipping point, that is. The hardest 2,500 or so sales is to the local person or group that can see Rezwan’s triple bottom line and popularize it in his, her, or their community. This is simply a variation of think globally, act locally. Science/engineering really is cool, and when they’re promoted correctly, you should be seeing 4th and 5th graders exploiting the help system of a delta-v space plane game, for instance.

So in the next 10 to 20 years we’re graduating a bunch of techies competing for jobs like new teachers are today. By adding a fourth branch to the government vs industry vs academic research environment, we’re not upsetting anybody else’s funding. My fantasy runs more along the lines of an announcement that the

“Podunk Development Co-operative seeks 50,000 partners contributing $100 annually to build and operate cutting edge aneutronic fusion research and tooling support lab to employ 2 degreed physicists, 10 physics undergraduate students, and up to 100 physics majors and promising high school students, who will graduate with solid work experience. Other intangible benefits include mentoring opportunities while developing a community of motivated problem solvers in all areas of business and the community. Creating and maintaining a global reputation for the highest energy density aneutronic fusion generators is the driving focus. Contact _____ “

Now we’re out of the ownership mentality and back into the frontier-style barn raising thinking. Do I own any of the barns I’ve helped build? No more than anybody who helped build mine owns part of mine. The tangible and intangible community benefits are worth far more than $100/yr for almost anybody. LPP’s got a barn to build. So might polywell and tri-alpha.

Now, imagine 2,500 of these communities’ political impact. “Speak softly and carry a big stick” said Theodore Roosevelt.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote:

So in the next 10 to 20 years we’re graduating a bunch of techies competing for jobs like new teachers are today. By adding a fourth branch to the government vs industry vs academic research environment, we’re not upsetting anybody else’s funding. My fantasy runs more along the lines of an announcement that the

“Podunk Development Co-operative seeks 50,000 partners contributing $100 annually to build and operate cutting edge aneutronic fusion research and tooling support lab to employ 2 degreed physicists, 10 physics undergraduate students, and up to 100 physics majors and promising high school students, who will graduate with solid work experience. Other intangible benefits include mentoring opportunities while developing a community of motivated problem solvers in all areas of business and the community. Creating and maintaining a global reputation for the highest energy density aneutronic fusion generators is the driving focus. Contact _____ “

Now we’re out of the ownership mentality and back into the frontier-style barn raising thinking.

Yes, that’s it!

FYI, my Mollusk example was to show that this doesn’t just apply to Focus Fusion, it’s broadly applicable to any number of innovative ventures.

The issue here is timing. Emergent social media technologies suggest that the time is right. We no longer need to settle for amputated markets but can unfurl the full scope of the market. Radically pro market. But there are quite a few SEC laws that oppose this. So – I don’t know if the timing will work for Focus Fusion.

[Author]

Posts