
Canada and science: NRC will now only do science that promotes “economic gain” - buo
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/13/canada_and_science_nrc_will_now_only_do_science_that_promotes_economic_gain.html
======
cperciva
A note for the non-Canadians reading this: NRC is a government agency which
does "in-house" research, but it is distinct from NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR,
which provide funding (almost exclusively via universities) for research into
the sciences-and-engineering, social sciences, and health.

I'm still not a big fan of this change, but it would be incorrect to read this
as meaning that _all_ government-funded research is limited to "social or
economic gain" projects.

------
zeteo
From Galileo to WW2, science progressed at an amazing pace with little and
sporadic government support (mostly in the way of prizes). Then governments
stepped in and started throwing insane amounts of money at research projects -
who was going to say no? Now everyone's addicted to public funds, and waking
up to the realization that who pays the piper calls the tune.

~~~
rayiner
Through that entire time, the cost of every incremental discovery has
increased exponentially. It's not that people are addicted to public research
funds, it's that it's no longer possible to do experimentally-rigorous science
without massive amounts of money.

You see this phenomenon all over the place, and it's impact on industries.
E.g. each generation of microprocessor fab is exponentially more expensive
than the last, and the result has been that companies have been spinning off
their fabs until only a handful have fab capability left.

~~~
zeteo
There are several good reasons to reject the argument that costs make massive
government intervention necessary.

First, a good telescope in the days of Galileo or an electric generator in
Tesla's were still pretty expensive high-tech toys. They got financed through
private means anyway.

Second, the number of subfields that truly demand massive capital investment
is small, and mostly confined to physics. Many, if not most projects these
days can be conducted with a few graduate students / postdocs, who are paid
close to minumum wage and use existing equipment. Still, this kind of "cheap"
research is nonetheless conducted overwhelmingly with government funds.

Third, money doesn't guarantee quality. Major scientific advances of the past
were achieved not so much by people who were very well funded, but rather who
had leisure to think about their field in novel ways (Maxwell, Darwin, Mendel,
Einstein etc.). The constraints, stress and uncertainty of the grant-award
process are not conducive to a similar environment.

Finally, increased costs are also a symptom of lack of innovation [1]. Maybe
we're just on the final legs of existing logistic curves and have no new ones
to latch on to?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations>

~~~
jjoonathan
Those aren't good reasons, and at the risk of sounding more patronizing than I
would prefer, I suspect that you aren't very well acquainted with the research
world outside of Math/CS.

> First, a good telescope in the days of Galileo or an electric generator in
> Tesla's were still pretty expensive high-tech toys. They got financed
> through private means anyway.

100% of the research done x number of years ago was funded using the funding
methods of x years ago; the existence of successes is no indicator of the
efficiency of the process. Plenty of alchemists threw their funding away on
projects that would never meet the standards demanded by the NSF, NIH, and
DOD.

We both know that science funding would fall precipitously if it were left to
the private sector. Do you really think that money would go to a better use?

> Second, the number of subfields that truly demand massive capital investment
> is small, and mostly confined to physics.

This is the reason why I accused you of not being well acquainted with modern
research. The set of subjects in which science is cheap looks more like {CS,
Math} than ~{Physics}. Chemists have to buy (pay the depreciation of, if you
insist) their spectrometers (NMR, IR, mass), chromatographs, calorimeters,
Schlenk lines, proprietary reagents, and gloveboxes. Biologists rely on
sequencers, synthesizers, designer enzymes & antibodies, synchrotrons
(monochromatic X-ray sources for crystallography), nanofab tools for
microfluidics (all insanely expensive because of the semiconductor industry),
patch clamps, and a million specialized commercial assays and imaging
techniques. Astronomers depend on tons of custom made hardware: mirrors,
specialized ASICs/FPGAs/CCDs, lenses, buildings in the most inhospitable
places on earth, not to mention their space platforms. Ecologists and
geologists need to travel to exotic locations almost by definition (requiring
specialized transport & shelter) to set up sensor networks and the like.

Although data-crunching is important, it doesn't even constitute the bulk of
the scientific process. You can't replace academia with a bunch of weekend-
warriors on laptops (outside of CS, that is).

> Third, money doesn't guarantee quality. Major scientific advances of the
> past were achieved not so much by people who were very well funded, but
> rather who had leisure to think about their field in novel ways (Maxwell,
> Darwin, Mendel, Einstein etc.).

Theorists have the most impressive long-term returns. By definition, they
define their fields. This says very little about science in general or the
utility of intermediate physical results, which inevitably guide the
development of the underlying theories. Thought alone can't tell you which
theories are right; at some point you have to test them. Einstein would have
been ridiculed had it not been for the availability of ludicrously precise
measurements of Mercury's precession and the Michelson-Morley experiment, both
of which failed to match any metric of usefulness before their importance was
understood. Darwin was inspired by his travels and Maxwell essentially had the
E&M problem dropped in his lap by the experimentalists. Quantum Mechanics
managed to derive macroscopically useful results (MO theory, semiconductor &
condensed matter models, etc) by puzzling over observed atomic spectra. Who
would have wondered why the rainbow had holes in it if nobody bothered to go
look? Nobody.

The "huh?" always precedes the theoretical explanation and the "huh?" usually
comes from experiment, as well as countless guiding nudges along the way that
eliminate possible explanations. Theory & experiment exist symbiotically. I
don't think focusing on theory to the exclusion of experiment will benefit
science as a whole.

> The constraints, stress and uncertainty of the grant-award process are not
> conducive to a similar environment.

Agreed, but I'm pretty sure the process of begging money off of rich
individuals is even less conductive to scientific progress. Grant committees
are much less susceptible to buzzwords & unrealistic promises than uninformed*
private investors and even so they sometimes falter. NSF = due dilligence. It
sucks, but someone has to do it, and I'm not convinced that the private sector
could do it cheaper/better, given that it doesn't have any incentive to:
science yields much more favorable ROI to society than individuals because the
goods it produces aren't excludable and take 100 years to perform a proper
valuation on.

* = not an expert in everything, I don't mean to imply investors are stupid.

> Finally, increased costs are also a symptom of lack of innovation [1]. Maybe
> we're just on the final legs of existing logistic curves and have no new
> ones to latch on to?

That's exactly the case. It's also _usually_ the case. When a breakthrough
happens it only takes 5-10 years to climb the curve you linked to (I'm basing
this claim off of the development of QM). The academic world has an
extraordinary capacity for innovation (and not in the "look I built a CRUD app
that makes somebody's life infinitesimally easier" sense of the word),
although this capacity typically goes unappreciated due to the 99.9% failure
rate of experiments conducted in the interim between periods of readily
available low-hanging fruit (where failure := negative ROI). It's unfortunate
that breakthroughs happen much less frequently than every 5-10 years but there
really isn't any way to shortcut the process, at least not one I can think of
(and not one that any of the world's experts in the field can think of, else
they would simply go pursue that line of inquiry on their own).

I don't think defunding America's scinetific apparatus would accelerate
scientific progress and I think we would run a terrible risk of handing the
next wave of industrial dominance to China & India if we tried. They're
rapidly catching up in terms of publication counts/funding and it's no secret
that new industries are born out of academic discoveries and that early entry
into a new market conveys a huge advantage. The bulk of the spoils go to the
victor, so I desperately hope the USA stays in the race.

~~~
zeteo
Don't worry, I wasn't proposing to cut funding. My point was simply that, if
government hadn't taken over research since the 1940s, science would be in a
better fundamental shape right now. Alas, that did not happen, and killing the
NSF overnight is probably a worse cure than the disease. Also, science is
first and foremost a possession of humanity as a whole, not a tool of
industrial domination.

------
darxius
As a Canadian, this makes me extremely sad. I always saw Canada as progressive
... hopefully the next government will flip this around.

~~~
nickff
The next government will flip it around, and use NRC to further THEIR ends.
Please forgive my cynicism, but the act of thinking that one political party
is "better" than the other is a triumph of optimism over experience.

~~~
tensor
It is actually possible for one party to be "better" than another. In this
case, we are talking about science, and it is very obvious that limiting
science in this way is "worse." Science doesn't respect your political bias.

~~~
nickff
I was not addressing the possibility of impartial administration of research
funding. I was merely stating that, given the record of Canadian (and other)
governments, impartiality is unlikely, regardless of party affiliation.

I should also state that any budget is, by definition limited, as it is an
allocation of scarce resources; so any budget will "limit science".

------
themstheones
This is a pretty thinly veiled attempt to defund climate science.

~~~
bhb916
If true, why veil it at all? Why not just defund it alone? The government
reserves the right to not fund whatever it wants to. This will have an awful
lot of collateral damage. So much so that I doubt the primary motivation was
simply defunding climate science.

~~~
vkou
The Cons have never been overly concerned about collateral damage. (And have
been stung by government-critical environmental findings enough times as-is.)

It's a government that's made it explicit that it does not govern on the basis
of scientific findings.

------
grecy
Canada have also sold out public museums.. they'll only cover topics approved
by the current in-power government, making them the definition of the ministry
of truth.

~~~
corresation
_Canada have also sold out public museums.._

Do you have any citation or source for this?

~~~
grecy
Sure, take your pick.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/museum-of-
civil...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/museum-of-civilization-
to-change-name-focus-only-on-canadian-history/article4611129/)

[http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/10/16/civilization_e...](http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/10/16/civilization_ends_history_begins_at_canadas_biggest_museum.html)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/03/harper-
conservatives...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/03/harper-
conservatives-canadian-history_n_3208625.html)

[http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-
harper-s-...](http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-harper-s-
tories-aim-to-whitewash-canadian-history-1.147710)

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/10/16/ottawa...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/10/16/ottawa-
canadian-museum-civilization-becomes-canadian-museum-history.html)

~~~
corresation
They are all concerning the same action regarding the Ottawa Museum of
Civilization. I wasn't sure about the claim that they sold out "public
museums", when the vast majority of Canadian museums are not at the federal
level, and have zero accountability of concern about the federal government.

------
edmond_dantes
If research is done purely in the private sector, then how do the research
findings make it into the wider scientific community? Especially if the
processes become patented. There is no communal well of scientific knowledge
to draw from.

------
protomyth
I find it interesting that sentence in the article that the title is taken
from actually says 'they will only perform research that has “social or
economic gain”'. A bit of a change. That sentence is a hyperlink to the
following article: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/research-
counci...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/research-councils-
makeover-leaves-industry-setting-the-agenda/article11745246/)

------
freshhawk
As a Canadian ... how are the broadband speeds in New Zealand these days?

~~~
thangalin
Not amazing when I visited there last year. Stick to the larger cities and you
should be fine, though. If you are on the West Coast of Canada, I'd highly
recommend moving before October, 2014 -- that's when higher concentrations of
Caesium-137 (from Fukushima) are predicted to strike our coastal waters.

~~~
geoka9
Citations or sources please?

------
RyanMcGreal
It's like Stephen Harper knows he's running out of time, and he's trying to
screw up as many remaining parts of the Canadian federal government as he can
before the end.

------
throwaway1980
This isn't limited to the Canadian government. Try to get a STEM paper
published in a respectable venue in any field that has no appreciable economic
utility. Nobody cares about finding things out simply because they are
interesting (at least not enough to do something about it), they all have to
have an obvious application that generates money.

Another way to look at this is that it's Canada's way of increasing the
publication rate of its scientists.

------
ronaldx
Governments should only fund science that doesn't promote immediate economic
gain - such economic gain will fund itself.

Government funding should be un-economic.

~~~
dnautics
that's a cute thought. How do you, then pick which projects aren't run by
total charlatans - to fund them? I suppose you could have grant review boards.
But these grant review boards are then populated with other 'expert
scientists' who are merely people who were funded by the exact same process.
Eventually the whole thing becomes a cyclical echo chamber populated by an
elite cadre of politically connected scientists, who, because of perverse,
monetary or non-monetary incentives (such as status), performance might be
unhinged from any character traits actually important to science, like ability
to craft smart experiments, ability to pick up scientific insight, or ability
to do experiments without fudging data.

~~~
ronaldx
I'm not exactly sure if that's different from current academia :)

------
corresation
"Over the past few years, the Canadian government has been lurching into
antiscience territory. For example, they’ve been muzzling scientists,
essentially censoring them from talking about their research. Scientists have
fought back against this, though from what I hear with limited success."

The government has not muzzled any scientific research: It is posted just as
it always has been, uncensored and without any approval process.

What they _did_ do is essentially try to reign in government paid researchers
who were looking to make a name for themselves, often by providing dire
sounding, attention grabbing soundbites from preliminary research to a media
too ignorant to understand what they were being told. I think all of us know
that the general media is _horrendous_ at reporting on research, and when they
had a complicit partner in crime who is interested in seeing their own name in
print, things get ugly.

If you work for someone, they often have a say over what you do with your
work. There is nothing particularly surprising about this, and the Soviet-
style descriptives -- almost all of it politically motivated -- does nothing
to clarify the situation.

~~~
jgon
Yes exactly, it was all about glory-chasing who just wanted to see their names
in print. It had nothing to do with climate and environmental scientists
warning of the impact of governmental policies when their studies and models
fell on deaf ears.

Of course the Canadian government hasn't muzzled any research, they have just
systematically defunded all research aimed at establishing the environmental
impact of the petroleum industry as it operates in Canada. Experimental Lakes
project? Good-bye, but of course that is not "muzzling" science. Polar
Environmental research lab? Axed, because we don't need studies of the warming
arctic getting in the way of those petro-dollars. And now we finally get down
to brass tacks. Unless you have industry funding or backing, don't bother. And
of course industry just loves to fund rigorous investigations into the
externalities they create.

I don't know why you are trying so hard in this thread to shout "Nothing to be
seen here!" but I really have to ask why you are trying so hard to remain
oblivious. The current government's stance on the environment is pretty well
established and is in no way secret. To claim ignorance of this requires
serious effort, or serious dishonesty.

~~~
corresation
_Experimental Lakes project?_

Your best example of the oil agenda of the government is a very long running
project having nothing to do with global warming or the oil industry at all?
The other one -- an arctic station built to monitor the ozone layer --
provides zero scientific measurements that aren't replicated a thousand times
over by many other arctic measurement stations, but maybe that'll hide global
warming?

Good stuff.

Sarcasm, a bit of a conspiratorial closing note (such a nice way of offering a
counterpoint). Absolutely _nothing_ proving anything.

And yes, I __despise __political-agenda driven bullshit, which is just
incredibly common in Canadian politics. The misinformation and vilification
for anything and everything grows tiring to anyone with a concern for
discerning reality from fantasy.

~~~
leot
Oh for heaven's sake. The NRCC is _run_ by a non-academic oil engineer raised
in Edmonton. They could have chosen almost anyone -- a university president,
e.g., or even, god forbid, someone -- anyone -- with a PhD.

But they didn't. It's a conspiracy, but not the secret kind.

~~~
corresation
_They could have chosen almost anyone -- a university president, e.g., or
even, god forbid, someone -- anyone -- with a PhD._

Or maybe a petroleum engineer with an excellent CV and a long list of
successes, most recently on environmental efforts (CO2 recapture).

This is the same _garbage_ that has people ranting about the credentials of
federal ministers (hey wait...you did that as well) when the position has
never, ever, in the history of Canada, demanded specific skills for the role,
and instead is a leadership and reporting position.

~~~
leot
> and instead is a leadership and reporting position.

You're absolutely right in that the specific technical skills associated with
having a PhD in, say, physics, or math, or even (heck) engineering have little
to no bearing whatsoever on what the person at the top of the organization
will do during their tenure.

But there are more things learned during a PhD than a bunch of technical
skills. You might learn something, e.g., about the very nature of scientific
inquiry. About the nature of the challenges of collecting and analyzing
scientific data. About explaining complicated research to a lay audience.
About trying to convince higher-ups of the scientific merits of a project even
when said merits are subtle. About why something qualifies as "science" while
something else doesn't -- and knowing the difference between the two decidedly
_does_ matter when you're in a leadership position.

"'Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value,' John
McDougall, president of the NRC."

... I don't think John Holdren would have said this. Indeed I think one would
be hard pressed to find anyone with a PhD who would say this.

------
ucee054
The example from the article is really ignorant and self-defeating. Maxwell
didn't come up with anything himself, he just formalized and turned into Greek
squiggles what Faraday had discovered. And Faraday's claim to fame was working
for Davy, doing things like inventing electric motors and lamps. So if you
want to use that history as an example, it says applications come first, and
hypotheses and research papers and scientific conferences and the rest of that
crap are just the documentation of the new invention.

~~~
mchouza
_Maxwell didn't come up with anything himself [...]_

Maxwell "invented" the displacement current:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_current>

~~~
jjoonathan
The discovery of the displacement current was extremely important: it proved
that light was an electromagnetic wave, paving the way for how we would come
to understand the interactions between light and matter.

It's no mistake that it took a theorist to find the displacement current since
it mostly appears between the plates of capacitors and that valume is one that
engineering demands call for minimization of!

~~~
ucee054
No, the application comes _first_ , the theory follows.

I don't know that Maxwell would have been anywhere near that discovery if it
hadn't been for Faraday's work first.

Go take a look at first year engineering PhD students, and see how they flail
around looking for a "hypothesis".

They have no idea what to look for because their work isn't _grounded_ in
anything.

In the end they often end up bodging together two or three previous research
papers and going with that rather than solving a _real_ problem. Because who
cares about applications, right?

The PhD students' work usually ends up gathering dust on some shelf while the
next breakthrough is usually made by three drop-outs with a year's supply of
ramen in a trailer in Palo Alto.

~~~
kyzyl
> The PhD students' work usually ends up gathering dust on some shelf while
> the next breakthrough is usually made by three drop-outs with a year's
> supply of ramen in a trailer in Palo Alto.

No, no, no, no, NO! That is just wrong. Yes, a lot of PhD work is highly
specialized and remains largely unapplied (at least directly). But that is the
nature it; science is an affair of serendipity. You simply do not know what
problem you're going to figure out, what problem you're going to make progress
on, or where you're going to get stuck. In fact, science largely has very
little to do with YOU in particular. It's about building a body of work that
many people to come can work with.

This notion that most of science is brilliant people going "ahah!", and
subsequently publishing a seminal work in their field that drives industry for
decades to come is bullshit. That is not how it works. In very rare
circumstances people have really significant eureka moments, but even then it
takes the body of researchers, engineers, undergrads, and all their combined
work to make things _really_ happen.

Most breakthroughs do not come from drop-outs in silicon valley hacking on
Rails apps, or building PCs out of wood and spite, or figuring out how to make
lasers encode information at very high density. Those are the exceptions. As a
culture we just love to hear about the exceptions that made it big, complete
with the highly biased, over-simplified and glory hogging narratives that
accompany them.

So stop spreading disinformation and putting down PhD students, and other
academics, who are devoting years of their life to figuring out how to cure
your ailments, build your LCD screens and save you from dying of hunger.

~~~
ucee054
_save you from dying of hunger_

The reason I'm not dying from hunger is because of mostly Fritz Haber and
partly Norman Borlaug. The work of everybody else is irrelevant. So, two
geniuses. And Fritz Haber wasn't working in "theory", he was working in
"application" for the Second Reich. Maybe you should stop using such terrible
examples and maybe you should stop being so _damn badly informed_. There's a
whole field called _History of Science and Technology_ about how this stuff
happens, as opposed to the self-serving narratives academics give you about
how it happens. Try learning some of it.

 _So stop spreading disinformation_

I'm not, the standard academic propaganda that you stated above is the
disinformation. The truth is that academics often _don't give a shit_ about
applications. They care about getting _publications_ and about getting
_tenure_.

Try working on a project for an academic. If you give him a hypothesis to
investigate that you can submit to a big journal, he'll give you the go ahead.
If you instead suggest something which you can actually _make_ , which will be
_helpful_ for _Aunt Tillie_ , which she actually might be able to _buy_ in her
local shop, he'll say something like "That's not SCIENCE!" and veto you. Go
on, try it. I dare you.

~~~
kyzyl
> The work of everybody else is irrelevant. So, two geniuses.

Are you trying to sound like an idiot? Don't be so narrow minded.

> Maybe you should stop using such terrible examples and maybe you should stop
> being so damn badly informed.

This is a very typical argumentation failure. I make a statement where
specifics of the examples are entirely irrelevant to the point, and you cherry
pick one of them and throw some info about it that you presume I'm not aware
of. You then go whole hog straw-man, trying to tear me down over the apparent
ignorance, which you manufactured. Yet, it remains that you _missed the entire
fucking point_. Let me get my crayons out: Academia does research into many,
many problems, and some of it is 'pure', meaning there is no accompanying
application. Some other research _does_ have immediate applications.
Nevertheless, research is a highly complex process, but has tremendous
value... _beyond it's immediate commercial ramifications_. This is why people
are complaining about the NRC's recent claims, which are bullshit.

>I'm not, the standard academic propaganda that you stated above is the
disinformation. The truth is that academics often don't give a shit about
applications. They care about getting publications and about getting tenure.

I'll grant you that some, even many, academics are highly driven by things
like publications, fundable research and tenure. However, if you'd had any
experience in academia (and kept your eyes open!) you would have seen that
this is merely a circumstantial hoop, and often times the top level academics
who are doing this are also the ones get the funding to allow all sorts of
other research to continue for its own sake. Sometimes applications come
early, sometimes not. You're being naive to think that all academics are
simply giving us 'the run around'.

> If you instead suggest something which you can actually make, which will be
> helpful for Aunt Tillie, which she actually might be able to buy in her
> local shop, he'll say something like "That's not SCIENCE!" and veto you. Go
> on, try it. I dare you.

And he would be correct to do so. Getting something into the shop for people
to buy is not the job of academia. Go buy a year supply of ramen noodles and
drop out of that's what you want to do. You may not _like_ it, but science
actually, really does have a theoretical component to it, and a lot of your
fancy shit (which you bought in stores) is the direct result of people using
academic research. If you can't understand that, then you're the one who is
badly informed.

~~~
ucee054
_Are you trying to sound like an idiot?_

No, but YOU are succeeding.

 _And he would be correct to do so_

Bingo! There you go, sounding like an idiot and proving my point.

Getting something into the shop for people to buy is _deployment_. Deployment
is how science _started_. Look up Archimedes, because he was the guy who
started math and physics, building siege engines to defeat the Roman navy. Oh
yeah, and medicine and biology started with Imhotep and also the Sassanid
hospital system.

This crap ideology you are pushing only came about relatively recently, and I
don't remember anyone asking the taxpayers about it.

Something that only exists on paper is no good to anyone, especially since it
hasn't been tested so it is not known what it's true costs are and whether the
assumptions behind it are even valid. The only reason for pure theory to even
be allowed to exist is because it might lead to application in future, but
science has become so corrupt that the dominating majority of the "scientific"
output is stupid theory, and actual application gets no respect at all, or as
you say "is not the job of academia".

The corruption has gone even further, because there used to be a division
between scientific fields and _engineering_ fields, where engineering
specifically meant application. But now you can get the same "That's not
SCIENCE" bullshit from Professors even if you're in the engineering
department.

I'll give you one of many concrete examples. Design for manufacture for
antennas could really help improve wireless internet, if you could get handset
antennas to narrowcast data instead of broadcasting it, thereby avoiding
interference. Try pitching that to a Professor and you'll get shot down.

Next, try AI-based packet scheduling and collision prediction for wireless
handsets. The topic is a complete fraud, because you have no idea when the
other handset is going to transmit without knowing the future. But you can get
lots of Greek squiggles out of that topic, so you'll get greenlighted.

 _and often times the top level academics_

So if there's a problem with academics it's because they're not _top level_
academics, and somehow only the tiny percentage who are top level count... You
love your No True Scotsman fallacies, don't you?

~~~
kyzyl
> No, but YOU are succeeding.

You actually just used the "No YOU'RE stupid!" retort. I'm afraid I'm not the
one making sweeping generalizations like "the work of everyone else is
irrelevant" when speaking about the development of global agriculture.

There are so many things in your post I want to respond to I don't even know
where to begin.

> Bingo! There you go, sounding like an idiot and proving my point.

All you've done is quoted me disagreeing with you and then called me an idiot.
And pray tell, what exactly _is_ your point? That deployment is all that
matters? This is a pretty common sentiment among engineers... that the general
edification of the human race is not a worthwhile endeavor. You know, to
become smarter and better people, in addition to building bridges?
Unfortunately a lot of the rest of the educated world seems to disagree.

>Getting something into the shop for people to buy is deployment. Deployment
is how science started. Look up Archimedes, because he was the guy who started
math and physics, building siege engines to defeat the Roman navy. Oh yeah,
and medicine and biology started with Imhotep and also the Sassanid hospital
system.

What does this have to do with deployment vs. theory? You're giving examples
where those people worked on what you call deployment. I'm sure they also
worked on theory, because you don't know what theory is going to be deployable
until you work on it. Even if those guys were pure engineers, and never worked
on theoretical matters, how does what some guy decided to do in triple digits
BC have to do with what the NRC should/shouldn't fund now? Nothing.

> This crap ideology you are pushing only came about relatively recently, and
> I don't remember anyone asking the taxpayers about it.

Okay just to be clear, what ideology is it that I'm pushing? That theoretical
work can have some intrinsic value? People have been working on theoretical
pursuits for a long time.

> Something that only exists on paper is no good to anyone, especially since
> it hasn't been tested

Do you seriously propose to know what could come of every piece of theoretical
work that could be? No? Well then you also don't know what is and is not of
value. Do you disagree with that? Please explain. Also, you seem to be talking
about pure theory ("hasn't been tested") on one hand, and on the other hand
speaking about unproven technical work (such as AI packet inspection) that has
a theoretical bent. Do you think that literally everything that is not yet
working and sold is useless? I doubt you do.

>The corruption has gone even further, because there used to be a division
between scientific fields and engineering fields

What you're seeing is engineers intelligently realizing that there is more to
engineering that just jumping right into the lab.

> you can get the same "That's not SCIENCE" bullshit from Professors even if
> you're in the engineering department.

It sounds to me like you've had some experience asking professors to let you
build something you wanted to build just because you wanted to, and they told
you no, so you're angry about it. I have never heard a professor exclaim
"That's not SCIENCE!" to any reasonable request. That doesn't mean I haven't
heard them say "No.", but I'm sure some other folks here on HN could tune in
(if anybody was still reading this thread) and back up my feeling that this
sounds like fiction.

>I'll give you one of many concrete examples

I don't know anything about your specific examples, so I can't speak to the
details. However, are you claiming that the antenna idea is a sure thing and
needs development, yet has been shot down (you've tried?) by many professors
(surely you wouldn't characterize all of science based on your experience with
one person...) simply because it's not theoretical enough? That hardly seems
likely.

> So if there's a problem with academics it's because they're not top level
> academics, and somehow only the tiny percentage who are top level count...

Erm... I don't think you understood what I said. I said that perhaps the top
level academics, who often run labs full of many other academics, are highly
driven by the publish-or-perish game because that is how they get funding, and
without funding NO research gets done, applied or theoretical. I don't think
there's any logical problem with what I said.

