
Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science - melarina
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html?hp
======
jdonaldson
Universities also privatize science through patents and IP. Research
publications privatize research by bundling and charging exorbitant fees for
journals and proceedings. Our generation doesn't have a NASA or Bell Labs. The
closest thing to those outfits are vanity projects from billionaires...
SpaceX, etc.

~~~
Aqueous
The only reason we have a shot at affordable commercial spaceflight, as well
as an eventual affordable journey to Mars, is because of that vanity project.
If it was left up to the public sector alone, I don't think we'll be able to
go to Mars in 20 or 30 years.

But this hasn't really changed. Even in NASA's hey day space missions weren't
government-only projects - The space capsules and Saturn V were built by
contracted private firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, North American
Aviation. Nothing really has changed in that regard - NASA is still
contracting private companies, only now we have an American company, SpaceX,
that can not only build a rocket, but design and launch one as well.

Ultimately having innovators like SpaceX who can contract out to more than
just the American government will drive the cost of spaceflight down. This can
only be a good thing, in my book.

Musk is doing the same thing with electric cars. As far as I can tell the only
way we're going to get highly reliable, affordable, mainstream electric
vehicle in the next ten years is because of his vanity project, Tesla.

I mean, I'm as skeptical as anyone about pinning the future hopes of humanity
on a few extremely rich people. But it's also comforting that incredibly
wealthy people like Elon Musk are preoccupied with how to benefit humanity,
and not just themselves.

~~~
mempko
Really? Public money got us to the moon in 10 years but couldn't get us to
mars in 30? I think it is more about a lack of will than a lack of resources.
Driving down costs isn't an issue. Imagine if we had the will to go to mars
and spent the one trillion dollars we spent to go to Iraq on a mars project
instead.

Driving down costs isn't the issue...

~~~
tsotha
Getting to Mars is an order of magnitude more difficult than a quick jaunt to
the moon, so it's really shouldn't be surprising we haven't gone. Not least
because there isn't any reason to go. Hell, there isn't any reason to go to
the moon, which is why we haven't bothered to return for forty years.

In fact, I would argue the moon landings were a mistake, in that we spent a
whole lot of money building a system that did one useless but amazing thing
instead of spending less money figuring out how to give ourselves the
capability to do lots of useful and amazing things at a reasonable cost.

If Elon Musk wants to pay for a Mars trip I'll cheer him on, but nobody's ever
been able to articulate a compelling reason for it. A trillion dollars is a
lot of money, and I'd rather see it go toward tax cuts or paying down the
national debt.

Driving down costs is not only an issue, it's the _primary_ issue. If we have
to pay $10k per kg to get stuff into LEO none of the activities that would
support a permanent presence in space are worth doing.

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jcampbell1
> A look at major initiatives suggests that the philanthropists’ war on
> disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by
> personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people
> — like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.

The #1, #2 richest Americans have specifically targeted funding research for
diseases that affect only the poor. I think this is a more valid criticism of
the NIH rather than philanthropists.

~~~
tsotha
... diseases that affect the poor in other countries. As an organization
funded by US tax dollars, NIH is primarily responsible for advancing the
health of Americans. It's not an international charity.

~~~
logicchains
Unfortunately, the poor in America are more affected by 'lifestyle diseases'
(smoking and obesity related illnesses, for instance), which may be more
difficult to cure as they need to be addressed from a social angle, not just a
medical one.

~~~
tsotha
More difficult than malaria or AIDS? I doubt it. Diabetes will probably be a
much easier nut to crack than either, with or without lifestyle changes.

~~~
logicchains
Well according to some graphs I found on Google, malaria mortality rates have
reduced significantly in the past few decades [1], as have AIDS death rates
[2]. Diabetes rates and mortality have however been continuously increasing.

1\.
[http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1995/land05.jpg](http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1995/land05.jpg)

2\.
[http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/images/colorbox...](http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/images/colorbox/drugfactshiv2.jpg)

~~~
tsotha
So diabetes should be the easiest one to attack.

~~~
logicchains
How might it be attacked, from a medicinal perspective?

~~~
tsotha
We already have at least one drug that increases sensitivity to insulin.
There's room for improvement, though.

Also, artificial pancreases are in the trial stage.

------
vinceguidry
> American science, long a source of national power and pride, is increasingly
> becoming a private enterprise.

Oh how quickly journalists forget the past. The only reason we ever became a
scientific superpower in the first place is because of one man, John D.
Rockefeller.

~~~
dredmorbius
Do tell.

------
jrs99
I don't know why you would employ a science adviser who thinks that physics
isn't "sexy." It's damn sexy. And anyone who really understands even a small
amount of physics will think that physics is "sexy."

~~~
beloch
Think about what these uber-rich entrepreneurs would find sexy. Curing cancer,
a condom people actually want to use, extending human life, saving the world
from meteor impacts, bringing mammoths back, flying to space... It's all near-
future, commercializable stuff. Next, go read some article titles/abstracts
under quant-ph on arxiv and think about how many would of those would really
grab these rich dudes by their eyeballs and make them drop a few million.

A huge portion of physics is driven by basic curiosity, has no commercial
applications in the near future, and is so esoteric that even other physicists
have to work very hard just to understand what's going on. Much of this stuff
will wind up being dead-ends, but some of it is the foundation the future will
be built on top of. No trained physicist currently alive can predict what will
change the world and what won't. Why should we let people whose only
qualification is money try to decide what's important?

~~~
vixen99
'Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide
what's important?'. Let! Gosh, lovely implications. What constraints do you
have in mind to fetter the lawful activities of very rich people? Who is the
'we' and how will you define 'important'? But it's the 'let' that worries me.

~~~
beloch
What constraints? Adequate public funding for fundamental science so that
brilliant minds and productive labs can pursue their chosen field of inquiry
rather than abandoning it to chase grant money reserved for sexier topics.

------
csense
The more philanthropy or private investment we can attract to scientific
innovation, the better.

The public gets the benefit of inventions that wouldn't have existed without
this investment (assuming they're marketed in the short term, and in the long
term the patents eventually fall into the public domain).

Or alternatively, if billionaires start doing more research, this could be
offset by cutting, or slowing the growth of, taxpayer-funded research
spending. And give the money back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts,
deferred tax hikes, or different services.

Also, there's less of the waste and uncertainty associated with government
spending (think about how many articles you see on long-running science
experiments disrupted by Washington's latest budget spasm; if Gates has dumped
$100 million into AIDS research and needs $100 million more to produce a
vaccine, he's probably going to follow through).

And if things go awry the fallout's not as bad (if Solyndra had happened to
some billionaire spending his own money, I don't think anyone would have been
outraged).

------
lexcorvus
I don't expect the NYT to have a multi-century sense of historical
perspective, but is a multi- _decade_ sense of perspective too much to ask?
The present government-funded model of science was created by Vannevar Bush
less than seventy years ago—"in the lives of those now living."

------
tn13
I did not know that it was American government that invented light bulb,
electric motor, transistors, IC chips and so on.

------
Fomite
From the article: “They target polio and go after it until it’s done — no one
else can do that,” he said, referring to the global drive to eradicate the
disease. “In effect, they have the power to lead where the market and the
political will are insufficient.”

This is actively not true. The eradication of small pox was an international,
government-led effort. That we have since abdicated that ability doesn't mean
we "can't", just that we have chosen not to.

------
wallflower
"Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me
can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to
war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly.

The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized
that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and
promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to
World War II...

Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world.
Governments went into the science business big time.

Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the
most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that
economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...

James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a
rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public
scientific issue. Very little experimental verification has been done to
support important societal issues in the closing years of this century...

People believe these things...because they have faith."

-From Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner (and the genius inventor of PCR) in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field".

------
001sky
Non-profits are not public entities, and most universities are "billionaires"
and "not public".

Other than that, I have no concerns.

------
ThePhysicist
Seems like the US response to the EU flagship research and innovation
programme, "Horizon 2020", which aims to provide 80 BN € (110 BN $) for
groundbreaking research withing the next 7 years. One of the "flagship
projects" selected for this programme is the "Human Brain Project", which
seems similar to what Obama calls “the next great American project: a $100
million initiative to probe the mysteries of the human brain.". Although he
should probably add a few digits to that number if he really means what he
says, because I think 100 M$ will hardly be enough to unravel the mysteries of
the brain.

In any case, as a scientist that's exactly the kind of competition I want to
see more of!

------
rjzzleep
here's an anecdote from a german communication network professor i was sitting
at lunch with.

as comparison, the pay for a professor here is 50k a year, but can be more.
you heard that right, that's what a bsc in low pay southern states gets.

he said the following thing which made me rethink the whole thing a little:

"conversely i get to research anything i want to, and i don't have to worry
about pleasing business with my research results"

germany though has a big problem of americanization like so many other
countries.

i've heard of so many research in the us getting shut down, or the researchers
discredited, because they pissed off the wrong company funding the department
they were working for.

it's a double edged sword.

EDIT: it's funny this got downvoted. i was personally involved in evaluating
software that was written for the DHS by a huge contractor SAIC. they paid 20+
million for that piece of junk, and my supervisor was scared of passing on the
assessment, because they were scared we would lose opportunities on further
grants(they were impressed by the assessment, apparently we were the only ones
that did such a thorough assessment).

i never said professors in germany don't have to get research money or grants,
but they are way less dependent on what outcome the industry dictates.

~~~
facepalm
Does it really work that way? My impression was that professors are constantly
trying to raise money from the government. Instead of proving industry value,
they have to convince bureaucrats that their ideas are worth pursuing. I think
strong cases have been made that that's not the optimal way of allocating
money for scientific research. For example:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/posi...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/positive_black_swans.html)
(government funding is not good in pursuing wild ideas)

~~~
rjzzleep
german academics get a lot of money from industry too. but the numbers are
absolutely not comparable to the numbers in the us.

this is not always the case as you can see from the nepomuk thing[1]

but to further strengthen your point, in europe program code or implementation
is not considered research. european scientific funding is reserved for
research, so a lot of the research you see will never be turned into viable
products. that notion also exists in german universities. universities of
applied sciences see this differently, but people sometimes joke that these
are not real universities.

a lot of what was turned into money is actually european inventions. most
americans, don't even know that europe has a lead in neuroscience
research(that includes countries like spain). or at least used to, most
americans also don't know how great the cs dpt of the tu wien(vienna) is for
example.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPOMUK_(framework)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPOMUK_\(framework\))
rdf based semantic metadata thingie with a cost of 17 million that is now
being ditched partly because it's rdf

------
ChristianMarks
I suppose this means that mathematics and the humanities will advance more
than disciplines that require significant funding.

------
clef
The cause of man's suffering is: "this belongs to me" (Anthony De Mello)

Science and knowledge belongs to everybody and to no one, regardless of where
you are from. Nationalism was pretty fancy and efficient a long time ago, if I
see myself as more "American" or "French", than "human", humanity is screwed.

------
bmmayer1
...and this is bad because...?

------
RickHull
Responding strictly to the headline:

What distinguishes _American_ science, and why is this distinction important?

~~~
auvrw
> What distinguishes American science, and why is this distinction important?

this isn't one of the article's complaints, but one distinguishing
characteristics of american science _funding_ \-- indeed, of the u.s. govt's
entire budget -- is disproportionate spending on the military. see the chart
at

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_States)

anyway, i agree with most of the other comments as i don't see anything
seriously wrong with private investment in science. perhaps the fact that
these are individuals rather than committees is what the author finds most
loathsome, but my perspective is probably biased b/c the first thing that came
to mind on reading the title was the allen institute for brain science, that's
the first example in the article, and i think it's doing interesting and
important research.

------
conformal
i absolutely hate paywalled sites and refuse to read the articles.

that said, this is entirely unsurprising since scientific and mathematics
research were almost entirely patronized fields until the rise of the modern
university. this is very similar to computing in that first monolithic
centralized computing was the path, then it was the PC, then it was the cloud,
now it's moving back to a decentralized network. these things are bound to yo-
yo and academic research is no different than most human-designed processes.

------
runewell
Paywall news article complaining about privatization of information, enough
said.

~~~
imron
It's not a paywalled article. Turn cookies on and click the link again.

If you have cookies off when you click the link it redirects to the login
page.

~~~
psychometry
You can't read it if you've already read 20 articles in the past month,
either, thanks to evercookie.

~~~
imron
Never had a problem. I use a plugin for auto deleting regular cookies and
evercookie requires javascript, which I have disabled by default.

That being said, I probably wouldn't read more than 20 articles a month on the
NYTimes either - just the occasional one posted to HN that catches my
interest.

------
j2kun
Obama thinks this is a problem? SPEND MORE ON RESEARCH!

~~~
te_chris
I may be wrong, but the way I understand it he couldn't do that even if he
wanted to due to congress having ultimate authority to approve/disapprove
spending?

~~~
kiba
Not to mention that we are already in deep debt. We may have allocate part of
our budget from other areas to science.

For example, reallocate defense spending to pure scientific research.

~~~
_delirium
It seems to have gone more in the other direction. At least in CS, if you want
big funding nowadays you need to do DARPA research, because their budget has
fared better. And DARPA research has gotten more micromanaged; gone are the
days where they'd hand out large block grants to promote general American
excellence in areas of "national importance". Nowadays they partner you with
effectively a professional "minder" (called an "integrator") from a contractor
like Lockheed or BBN, whose job is to make sure your research stays on the
DARPA agenda and is going to deliver what they want.

Partly because I think we no longer feel much of a need to prove we're better
in science/tech than a major rival, which was once the Soviets, so general
science/tech advancement is a harder sell.

~~~
wolfgke
> Partly because I think we no longer feel much of a need to prove we're
> better in science/tech than a major rival, which was once the Soviets, so
> general science/tech advancement is a harder sell.

Isn't China a new "dangerous" competitor?

------
nirnira
I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and
scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend
their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and
encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you
that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many
philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have so much bile and resentment
towards individuals choosing freely and harming no one?

Whatever happened to America being the land of the free? When did it turn into
the land of cutting down tall poppies?

~~~
mempko
Their success is on the backs of people who do the real work. They are also on
the backs of the American people who contribute significant amount of money
through government sponsorship. The tech we use today is based on government
investment that the private industry coudn't stomach.

So no, I do not celebrate their success and I will judge them sharply for
profiting so handsomely from public investment.

And don't give me crap about how we benefit too. If our economy was working as
a free market that the same billionaires feel it should, they coudn't be
billionaires.

Profit has no space in "real" free markets.

~~~
hueving
>Profit has no space in "real" free markets.

What kind of drivel is that? If you create a product/service which nobody else
can duplicate and the demand for it is there, you are going to make a profit.
That's exactly how a "real" free market functions.

~~~
mempko
why wouldn't someone be able to duplicate? You keep things secret? Government
protects you via patents and copyright? I mean econ 101 is that markets bring
profits towards zero. A perfect market with perfect information means zero
profit. Any market that tends towards "perfection" would therefore be anathema
to any capitalist.

In other words, fuck man, capitalists hate markets. They would prefer that you
don't have a choice but to buy from them.

~~~
Tycho
Profits would only go to zero if everybody was equally talented, equally
educated, equally industrious, and equally lucky. Reality, of course, is quite
different.

~~~
mempko
So you are saying that of you win the genetic lottery, you make profits?

~~~
Tycho
There are lots of factors that have nothing to do with genetics.

~~~
mempko
Or right, you mentioned luck being a factor. Sounds fair to me /s

