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Science has a concrete outcome: knowledge. And there are established procedures for evaluating it, things like peer reviews of research proposals. The procedure

by lutorm 11y ago

Science has a concrete outcome: knowledge. And there are established procedures for evaluating it, things like peer reviews of research proposals. The procedure surely has its flaws, but I doubt they are more significant than the problem of evaluating whether some commercial invention actually was beneficial to society.

dnautics 11y ago
leave basic science to private nonprofits. It's not impossible. Peter Mitchell discovered the chemiosmotic effect (how the mitochondrion worked) using a private nonprofit... Janelia Farms is working on some groundbreaking neuro stuff. Peer review of research proposals. It's seriously one of the most broken 'established procedure' out there. There is not a single scientist out there that doesn't whine about the capriciousness of the grandfunding process, there's even a coined term "grantsmanship" which refers to one's skill in essentially scamming the government into funding what you want to work on by shoehorning it into their call for proposal.
- lutorm 11y ago
  Proposal funding breakage notwithstanding, are you saying that there is a working procedure for figuring out what "profitable" research should be? (It's not even clear to me what you mean by that, should it be profitable to the government, to a few individuals, or to the nation as a whole?) Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards. I'm confident that we can leave the commercializable science to those wanting to make a buck. Public funding for basic science is the only workable way. Sure, nonprofits help in certain areas, but those are also usually "earmarked" for specific fields or tasks. I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    You don't know your science history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell > I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people. And having it decided by popular people (politicians), spending other people's money, is any better? Moreover, just because science is privately funded doesn't mean that it's coming from rich people.

by lutorm 11y ago

dnautics 11y ago

leave basic science to private nonprofits. It's not impossible. Peter Mitchell discovered the chemiosmotic effect (how the mitochondrion worked) using a private nonprofit... Janelia Farms is working on some groundbreaking neuro stuff. Peer review of research proposals. It's seriously one of the most broken 'established procedure' out there. There is not a single scientist out there that doesn't whine about the capriciousness of the grandfunding process, there's even a coined term "grantsmanship" which refers to one's skill in essentially scamming the government into funding what you want to work on by shoehorning it into their call for proposal.

lutorm 11y ago
Proposal funding breakage notwithstanding, are you saying that there is a working procedure for figuring out what "profitable" research should be? (It's not even clear to me what you mean by that, should it be profitable to the government, to a few individuals, or to the nation as a whole?) Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards. I'm confident that we can leave the commercializable science to those wanting to make a buck. Public funding for basic science is the only workable way. Sure, nonprofits help in certain areas, but those are also usually "earmarked" for specific fields or tasks. I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
- dnautics 11y ago
  You don't know your science history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell > I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people. And having it decided by popular people (politicians), spending other people's money, is any better? Moreover, just because science is privately funded doesn't mean that it's coming from rich people.