
Let’s waste more money on science - chriskanan
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/12/11/let-waste-more-money-science/afvbusk8G5T5IcrgldkmJJ/story.html?event=event25
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Nzen
tl;dr we should resist an insistence that federally funded science ought
prioritize by free-market principles. Thomas Levenson provides examples of
basic research that took long periods, often initially focused on non-
remunerative subjects. Ex, Thomas Brock studied boring microbes at
Yellowstone, which led to studying unrecognized extremophiles. Those
bacteria's enzymes contributed to the use of PCR to identity genes cheaply.

(Sure, we can't predict the positive consequences of boring science, but is
federally funded money science any less likely to accomplish the same?
Distinguished from corporate money science, ala Marlboro's tobacco studies.)

<edit for phrasing of first sentence>

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credit_guy
This is a good tl;dr.

I have a reservation with this conclusion. For each positive example of basic
research that led to some unexpected applications there are hundreds that
didn't. One might argue that maybe many of these unapplied pieces of research
are still waiting for their time to come. But unfortunately, most scientific
results are simply forgotten. One can then continue the argument by pointing
out that this is the way of research: one tries a thousand ideas, and only a
handful prove fruitful. And in order for this trial and error process to work,
you need an environment that promotes interaction, exchange of ideas, and more
importantly, risk-taking. And risk-taking is difficult to encourage within the
confines of the corporate world, where people live and die by the quarterly
earnings.

At all other times, I would agree that this is a fair point, but not
necessarily today. Today there's a tremendous amount of good quality research
that is being done in the corporate world. Deep learning comes to mind.

Here's an interesting quote that I found in a book by Stephane Mallat about
wavelets: "I cofounded a start-up [...]. It took us some time to learn that in
three months good engineering should produce robust algorithms that operate in
real time, as opposed to the three years we were used [in academia] to having
for writing new ideas with promising perspectives."

I hope that people don't share your view that the corporate science is
represented by the Marlboro's tobacco studies. I contend that the vast
majority of corporate science is good science, and moreover the corporate
culture promotes efficiency in research. This comes at a steep cost though,
that of severely restricting the movement of ideas and interaction across
corporate entities. I don't personally have a solution for this problem, or
rather I can see that one solution is the industry consolidation and emergence
of corporate giants (Google, Facebook), but I can't say I like this.

