
Great 15-Year Project to Decipher Genes Stirs Opposition (1990) - raldi
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/05/science/great-15-year-project-to-decipher-genes-stirs-opposition.html?pagewanted=all
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raldi
_> They also doubt that the project can be completed in anything close to its
original deadline and budget._

Spoiler: It was completed two years ahead of schedule and 10% under budget.

~~~
dalke
I suggest you view it in a different light. In the 1980s, as this article
points out, the human genome project was funded by the DOE and worked on at
the national labs. The NIH came in and earmarked money just for the project.
This pushed it from being second class citizen to being on a pedestal.

Much of the doubt expressed was based on the experience of the previous 10
years of the project, and the changing budget situation that took money from
other fields.

As a somewhat distant parallel, the HST, once fixed, produced great astronomy.
How much other great science wasn't funded to put up the HST?

> Opponents doubt that the human genome project will quickly cure any
> diseases, either.

Spoiler: they were right.

~~~
cromwellian
How much other science isn't funded because we spend far too much money on
other stuff? I'm sick of seeing engineers and sciences fight over a penny and
demeaning the importance of each other's projects while we spend trillions on
wars and other nonsense.

If you want more funding for other science projects fight to increase science
budgets overall by taking money from stuff we don't need like yet another
aircraft carrier. How many science projects weren't under because of just one
of those?

Due to the long term nature of science benefits it's impossible to know the
real importance of any one project anyway.

~~~
titzer
Cannot +1 hard enough. The F-35 will eventually cost $1 trillion.

~~~
brandonmenc
> The F-35 will eventually cost $1 trillion.

Yeah, but for over half a century of procurement and use, and including all
operating costs and inflation.

~~~
akiselev
So, the equivalent of over half a century of the DARPA budget ($3 billion/yr)
five times over, or two National Science Foundations ($7 billion/year), or
half of another National Institutes of Health ($30 billion/year).

The NSF alone is responsible for over 20% of public nonmedical basic research
in the United States so for the price of _one_ boondoggle we can increase that
total pool of funding by 50%. _For over half a century._

Or we could nearly double NASA's budget and give it an economy of scale it
hasn't had since the Apollo program to carry out even more basic research into
astrophysics, climate change and metrology, geophysics, flight, material
science, and countless other technologies that _actually_ trickle down into
the public market

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valhalla
Definitely hard to believe 15 years later. Especially with the possibility
(however distant) of the benefits that personal genome sequencing will give to
patients: ability to live a lifestyle that can lessen the likelihood of
chronic diseases and drugs that are more effective and have less side effects
since they are more or less tailored to a patient's DNA. Plus, the patient
will take the drug for a shorter duration and at the minimum effective dose
based on their needs.

~~~
raldi
I hate to make you feel old, but 1990 was _25_ years ago.

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asgard1024
I like ambitious projects. It's incredible how many of them actually succeed.

This reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Brain_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Brain_Project)
as there is also lot of skepticism if it's doable. But maybe we just
underestimate human ingenuity.

~~~
dalke
Do you have a tally of the ones that failed?

Fifth generation computing -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer)

Strategic Defense Initiative -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative)

Expeditionary Combat Support System -
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/military/us-
ai...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/military/us-air-force-
blows-1-billion-on-failed-erp-project)

The Field Data Collection Automation for the US census -
[http://calleam.com/wp-
content/uploads/US_Census_FDCA_Case_St...](http://calleam.com/wp-
content/uploads/US_Census_FDCA_Case_Study_V1.0.pdf) (the failure added $3
billion to the cost of the census).

How do you score the Space Shuttle? It didn't come close to meeting its design
goals, but throw enough money at something (as we did with SDI) does result in
_something_.

~~~
asgard1024
But those are all engineering projects.. In a way, it's a lot easier to
parallelize work on scientific project than engineering project. Competition
from the industry actually helped Human Genome Project.

Anyway, my bet is that we don't actually need a very big supercomputer to
emulate what brain does. We just don't yet know why it is so efficient, we
don't know _the trick(s)_. And I think, there is a possibility, as Human Brain
Project will evolve, we will get better at figuring out what really needs to
be simulated and what is just a fluff. And this will make possible to scale it
up even on current hardware. Anyway, at least that's why I think it should be
supported.

~~~
dalke
You said "ambitious projects". Now you're limiting those to scientific
projects.

Again I ask, "Do you have a tally of the ones that failed?"

Would it include the Superconducting Super Collider? ($2 billion for a hole in
the ground).

Actually, it's a trickier question than that. What does failure in an
ambitious science project mean to you? Do you classify the two failed Orbiting
Astronomical Observatory (of four) as an engineering failure, or a scientific
one, or both?

For that matter, what is on your list of ambitious scientific projects, and
how many of them have a success which is not primarily due to being a well-run
engineering project? That is, the success of the Large Hadron Collider surely
is due mostly to being a successful engineering project.

My experience is that the high-end science projects like what you are talking
about (eg, the so-called 'Grand Challenge' projects), are constructed so they
_cannot fail_. They lack a solid, measurable goal, and any advancement is
counted as a success. This failsafe means they are more likely to get
political backing.

~~~
asgard1024
I thought about your comments a bit and I think what's actually interesting in
projects like HG or BB (or "Man on the Moon") is perhaps not scale as much as
the fact that they are open ended. We don't know how the solution will look
like. And that means that the solution may look really difficult or
complicated today, but it's also possible that it won't be that difficult in
the end.

So what I mean, I think, is not ambition in terms of resources, but rather
ingenuity.

