

Science is shackled by intellectual property - drallison
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/science-shackles-intellectual-property

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hnhg
Interesting that the manifesto came from Manchester. I was there until very
recently and there is intense pressure to commercialise every project.

However, getting the public to pay twice (first by funding for the research
and then for the commercialised product) is a bit cheeky, especially as the
university has had to undertake absolutely _no risk_ to produce the product.
If universities want to commercialise themselves I feel they must divest
themselves from the public purse and accept the consequences of possible
failure in the market.

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bbgm
Being a little more general, what model would you propose for funding
research? With exceptions (e.g. the Gates foundation) the vast majority of
research funding is taxpayer funded, and replacing that source is pretty much
impossible. Now how that funding system works is another story.

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furyg3
Research should that's publicly funded should be given back to the public. To
put it another way, the public should, as a condition of giving out money to
researchers, require that the results of that research belong to the public.

If the public gives you an NSF grant then your papers/articles should be
released via a Creative Commons license (or similar) in addition to being
published in a journal. Your data should be immediately available to other
universities and researchers. Any products you engineer should be in the
public domain.

~~~
nzmsv
There's a lot more to building a university spin-off company and a successful
product than just completing the original research. The research grant is like
seed funding in this case. The university benefits from its involvement, which
means its students benefit. Not to mention that the possibility of starting a
spin-off company is a motivator to do great research. Do you really want to
take all this away?

Sure, a lot of research ends up just sitting there, unused. Some of this is
because of licensing, but not always. Most research results are quite
experimental, and just can't be used in their raw form to make a product. They
are useful for further research though. And no one is disallowing researchers
to study and cite previous work.

I'm not saying the system is perfect. But it might be better to proceed with
small changes, rather than trying to revolutionize research overnight.

~~~
flipbrad
>> the possibility of starting a spin-off company is a motivator to do great
research

There's appallingly little rational justification for what you're saying, or
historical evidence. Oxford, for example, has done nothing but slip down
international rankings since diverting its focus from its international
academic reputation towards commercialisation. The science of motivation,
meanwhile, seems to operate on very different lines to the ones you assume in
making that statement: <http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

In my experience researchers are already motivated to do great research - the
whole citation/impact scoring system they compete in already has plenty of
external motivation to add to their internal one, and unlike financial
external motivation you advocate, this system is fully geared towards
producing quality research Don't forget these are often quite selfless people,
and they certainly don't often have the distractions of directing their work
down low-risk, high commercial viability channels. They wear socks and
sandals, not suits, and do PhDs, not MBAs - and their research is just fine,
thanks very much. Better they stay motivated as they are, and not have to face
onerous intellectual property blocks to going about their work, than the
opposite you advocate as being more productive.

~~~
nagrom
However, we see that a lot of great researchers are being motivated to leave
research because the financial markets and large corporations can offer
salaries 3-4x those available to people in universities, while working fewer
hours. By allowing people to exploit some of their work for commercial gain,
you offer an amount of _freedom_ and potential economic gain that corporations
cannot. And often, the university gets some of the money from the company that
gets ploughed back into research. So the university gets some money, the
researchers get some extra benefit from staying in the university system and
are usually motivated by the university to share the results of their work in
some sense - not the commercial secrets, perhaps, but the pure science behind
what has been done. They then continue to produce results that can be shared
with the public.

Everyone wins - the university gets more money, the researchers stay in
science and produce more results and the public gets the benefit of having the
most driven, creative people staying inside the university system producing
public gain rather than private gain.

The citation/impact scoring system offers no motivation to do 'great'
research, in my experience. Rather, it offers a lot of motivation to do the
administrative work that gets your name on papers with little to no risk,
rewarding networking skills and knowledge of the system over any great
creative insight. In fact, I would say that this requirement to have citations
and impact statements actively drives away the people who are most likely to
do the research.

I don't think that universities should focus on commercial exploitation,
that's for sure. It's not fair to private companies, it's not fair to students
and it's not fair to taxpayers who fund the university system. But
stereotyping anyone who is good at research as a selfless, socks-and-sandals
proto-hippy shows a certain lack of familiarity with a large cross-section of
researchers. And to say that the culture of research that we have right now is
just fine? Wow. The way I see research right now, the science 'managers' get
rewarded and long term research is put at risk by political meddling at the
highest levels. Of course, we may come from completely different cultures.

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drallison
Robert Laughlin, Stanford Physics Professor and Nobel Laureate, reaches many
of the same conclusions in his book,The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of
the Scientific Mind (<http://tinyurl.com/ydfyozk>).

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RevRal
It is also sad when the poor farmer meets a man in a business suit.

"You seem to be growing our patented plants."

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Also. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

