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> conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. This seems entirely rational to me. A pr

> conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. This seems entirely rational to me. A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. Capital tends to flow towards those who are best able to convert it into happiness for other human beings. Public institutions have no such constraint. Logically, one would conclude that they would be less efficient at converting capital into happiness for other human beings. Is there any evidence of which I should be aware which supports the proposition that publicly funded research outperforms privately funded research?

iskander 9y ago
Have you ever worked in a research capacity at either an academic or for-profit institution? My experience has been that private for-profit entities are good at scale and terrible at discovering new ideas.
- alexryan 9y ago
  Small sample size? I believe there are a few private for-profit companies which have discovered a new idea or two.
  - iskander 9y ago
    In biomedicine, at least, I'd really need some examples. Every break-through I can think of came from publicly funded research, which then gets turned into a product.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    I'd bet that the vast majority of industry innovations can be linked to corresponding work in academia. That's not to say that industry doesn't innovate, but they clearly feed off each other in a mutually beneficial way.
jamesrcole 9y ago
Do you think they're better for basic research? Where would society be without the basic research that was done over the last century?
- thanatropism 9y ago
  What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? AT&T has 8 Nobel prizes under its belt. At least three are fundamental science: 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. 1998: Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    > What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? I'm not sure what you mean by limit, could you elaborate? Re AT&T - I don't see how that indicates private companies are good for getting basic research done in general.
    - alexryan 9y ago
      > Re AT&T - I don't see how that indicates private companies are good for getting basic research done in general. True. But it is evidence against the proposition that basic research can only be done in public institutions. Which organizational form is better at doing it seems to be an open question. If the basic research in question has applications that potentially meet real human needs and thus is of value, I would presume that private corporations would step forward to meet those needs if public institutions were not doing so.
      - jamesrcole 9y ago
        > it is evidence against the proposition that basic research can only be done in public institutions. I never made that claim. > If the basic research in question has applications that potentially meet real human needs and thus is of value, I would presume that private corporations would step forward to meet those needs if public institutions were not doing so That is nonsense. The whole thing about basic research is that it's generally very difficult to predict whether any particular kind of basic research is going to bear fruit and what sorts of applications it will have. You can't predict well, in advance. History shows this pretty clearly. You have to make a lot of diversified bets. There will be rare but massively profitable (long term) payoffs. Discovering Quantum Mechanics has had huge benefits for society but no one could have predicted them in advance. And think of how much accumulated research was required over the years to lead to it, where it couldn't have been predicted that they'd lead to QM and its applications.
Cyph0n 9y ago
The evidence is this: try to name one private corporation that either internally or externally funds basic research that is guaranteed to have no application in the next 10 years at the very least. You most probably can't. The reason is that private corporations have a very short-term outlook and are (understandably) looking for short-term returns.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  Depends on how you define basic research. I don't think there is a tremendous amount of difference in the type of research being conducted at many departments at MIT and Google or SpaceX. I recently had dinner with a Harvard Medical School professor who said he often encouraged bright academically-minded students to go to work at Google rather than pursue the tenure track because Google offered more freedom and a simpler path to resources.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    The incentives are totally different. Industry will fund research if it may potentially provide an ROI. Google and SpaceX may be willing to take bigger and longer term risks, but ROI is unquestionably their goal. Academics aren't incentivized by ROI. Instead, they want intellectual distinction and recognition, and pursue problems if they are perceived to be intellectually curious or may have a large impact on society. Sometimes the actual work that is being done can overlap, but underneath the motivations are completely different, and each have their own pros and cons. We need both.
    - replicatorblog 9y ago
      Yes and no. I'm not sure Google's research into glucose-sensing contact lenses is motivated by R&D in any sense a Wall Street analyst would recognize. Likewise with their research into life extension science. These are decade long bets that do not slot into any commercial structure at the company. Sure, if they cure death, it'll be huge, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of urgency, or ability, to commercialize that research. More important than ROI are these two factors (IMO): + The founders retain a lot of control via the company stock structure, are nerds, and seemingly want to recreate a Bell Labs style culture. + Doing crazy science keeps up their brand as a tech thought leader current, even though 95% of their revenue comes from a pretty simple set of products that about 20 years old. This helps them recruit the best and brightest. Doing this kind of research also gives them a plausible potential growth story to sell to the Street. So it's not that commerce doesn't cross their mind, but it's not in the short-term sense that a lot of people think of it as. I'm not opposed to university research, I just think people underweight the corporate side's contributions.
eecc 9y ago
“Capital tends to flow towards those who are best able to convert it into happiness for other human beings.” Hmm, that’s a pretty strong statement, can you provide evidence it’s an observable phenomenon - a natural law - rather than an initial hypothesis, a postulate?
- alexryan 9y ago
  Fair. I kind of assumed that is was obvious that those who succeed in developing superior products and services attract more customers, do more business, and thus acquire more value to reinvest and grow than those who do not. Am I missing something?
  - jononor 9y ago
    Can also succeed by effectively targeting vulnerable consumers, deploying deceptive marketing tactics, lobbying for favorable laws for your company, or purposefully ignoring the law successfully. Or monopolize and milk a basic need like medicine for common disease. Or run sweatshops to minimize cost at expense of everything else. Sell weapons to regimes known for their human rights abuses. Secure a license to take up finite resources without regard for sustainability or at underprice. Manage to externalize costs for necessary environmental protection. I would claim it is easier to make money the more of such bad things you are willing to do. Also, a bunch of people have good access to capital just because who luck chose as their parents.
  - eecc 9y ago
    Well I’d argue that the purpose of capital is to produce more of itself, not to develop superior products/services. Capital is a quantification of power, and if your sole purpose is to accumulate more of it, human history is a string of examples of how this comes with significant misery for the most.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. Private corporations knowingly caused the opioid epidemic to make money. Tell me how mass murder "meets real human needs."
- alexryan 9y ago
  Fair. It meets the human need to relieve pain. I did not mean to imply that it always does so in a moral way. Clearly it does not.
jmcqk6 9y ago
>This seems entirely rational to me. A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. My experience in private corporations tells me that they tend to be incredibly inefficient as well. So I see the logic behind what you're saying, but I think you're describing something other than reality. The evidence I see points to efficiency not being correlated between public and private, but more between people who give a fuck and people who don't.

iskander 9y ago

Have you ever worked in a research capacity at either an academic or for-profit institution? My experience has been that private for-profit entities are good at scale and terrible at discovering new ideas.

alexryan 9y ago
Small sample size? I believe there are a few private for-profit companies which have discovered a new idea or two.
- iskander 9y ago
  In biomedicine, at least, I'd really need some examples. Every break-through I can think of came from publicly funded research, which then gets turned into a product.
- speedplane 9y ago
  I'd bet that the vast majority of industry innovations can be linked to corresponding work in academia. That's not to say that industry doesn't innovate, but they clearly feed off each other in a mutually beneficial way.

jamesrcole 9y ago

Do you think they're better for basic research? Where would society be without the basic research that was done over the last century?

thanatropism 9y ago
What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? AT&T has 8 Nobel prizes under its belt. At least three are fundamental science: 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. 1998: Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? I'm not sure what you mean by limit, could you elaborate? Re AT&T - I don't see how that indicates private companies are good for getting basic research done in general.
  - alexryan 9y ago
    > Re AT&T - I don't see how that indicates private companies are good for getting basic research done in general. True. But it is evidence against the proposition that basic research can only be done in public institutions. Which organizational form is better at doing it seems to be an open question. If the basic research in question has applications that potentially meet real human needs and thus is of value, I would presume that private corporations would step forward to meet those needs if public institutions were not doing so.
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      > it is evidence against the proposition that basic research can only be done in public institutions. I never made that claim. > If the basic research in question has applications that potentially meet real human needs and thus is of value, I would presume that private corporations would step forward to meet those needs if public institutions were not doing so That is nonsense. The whole thing about basic research is that it's generally very difficult to predict whether any particular kind of basic research is going to bear fruit and what sorts of applications it will have. You can't predict well, in advance. History shows this pretty clearly. You have to make a lot of diversified bets. There will be rare but massively profitable (long term) payoffs. Discovering Quantum Mechanics has had huge benefits for society but no one could have predicted them in advance. And think of how much accumulated research was required over the years to lead to it, where it couldn't have been predicted that they'd lead to QM and its applications.

Cyph0n 9y ago

The evidence is this: try to name one private corporation that either internally or externally funds basic research that is guaranteed to have no application in the next 10 years at the very least. You most probably can't. The reason is that private corporations have a very short-term outlook and are (understandably) looking for short-term returns.

replicatorblog 9y ago
Depends on how you define basic research. I don't think there is a tremendous amount of difference in the type of research being conducted at many departments at MIT and Google or SpaceX. I recently had dinner with a Harvard Medical School professor who said he often encouraged bright academically-minded students to go to work at Google rather than pursue the tenure track because Google offered more freedom and a simpler path to resources.
- speedplane 9y ago
  The incentives are totally different. Industry will fund research if it may potentially provide an ROI. Google and SpaceX may be willing to take bigger and longer term risks, but ROI is unquestionably their goal. Academics aren't incentivized by ROI. Instead, they want intellectual distinction and recognition, and pursue problems if they are perceived to be intellectually curious or may have a large impact on society. Sometimes the actual work that is being done can overlap, but underneath the motivations are completely different, and each have their own pros and cons. We need both.
  - replicatorblog 9y ago
    Yes and no. I'm not sure Google's research into glucose-sensing contact lenses is motivated by R&D in any sense a Wall Street analyst would recognize. Likewise with their research into life extension science. These are decade long bets that do not slot into any commercial structure at the company. Sure, if they cure death, it'll be huge, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of urgency, or ability, to commercialize that research. More important than ROI are these two factors (IMO): + The founders retain a lot of control via the company stock structure, are nerds, and seemingly want to recreate a Bell Labs style culture. + Doing crazy science keeps up their brand as a tech thought leader current, even though 95% of their revenue comes from a pretty simple set of products that about 20 years old. This helps them recruit the best and brightest. Doing this kind of research also gives them a plausible potential growth story to sell to the Street. So it's not that commerce doesn't cross their mind, but it's not in the short-term sense that a lot of people think of it as. I'm not opposed to university research, I just think people underweight the corporate side's contributions.

eecc 9y ago

“Capital tends to flow towards those who are best able to convert it into happiness for other human beings.” Hmm, that’s a pretty strong statement, can you provide evidence it’s an observable phenomenon - a natural law - rather than an initial hypothesis, a postulate?

alexryan 9y ago
Fair. I kind of assumed that is was obvious that those who succeed in developing superior products and services attract more customers, do more business, and thus acquire more value to reinvest and grow than those who do not. Am I missing something?
- jononor 9y ago
  Can also succeed by effectively targeting vulnerable consumers, deploying deceptive marketing tactics, lobbying for favorable laws for your company, or purposefully ignoring the law successfully. Or monopolize and milk a basic need like medicine for common disease. Or run sweatshops to minimize cost at expense of everything else. Sell weapons to regimes known for their human rights abuses. Secure a license to take up finite resources without regard for sustainability or at underprice. Manage to externalize costs for necessary environmental protection. I would claim it is easier to make money the more of such bad things you are willing to do. Also, a bunch of people have good access to capital just because who luck chose as their parents.
- eecc 9y ago
  Well I’d argue that the purpose of capital is to produce more of itself, not to develop superior products/services. Capital is a quantification of power, and if your sole purpose is to accumulate more of it, human history is a string of examples of how this comes with significant misery for the most.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. Private corporations knowingly caused the opioid epidemic to make money. Tell me how mass murder "meets real human needs."

alexryan 9y ago
Fair. It meets the human need to relieve pain. I did not mean to imply that it always does so in a moral way. Clearly it does not.

jmcqk6 9y ago

>This seems entirely rational to me. A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. My experience in private corporations tells me that they tend to be incredibly inefficient as well. So I see the logic behind what you're saying, but I think you're describing something other than reality. The evidence I see points to efficiency not being correlated between public and private, but more between people who give a fuck and people who don't.