4 ms·

There's a lot of that, actually. It was trendy for a while for unis to try to monetize their research, and a lot of people became unhappy in various ways - rese

by __jal 8y ago

There's a lot of that, actually. It was trendy for a while for unis to try to monetize their research, and a lot of people became unhappy in various ways - researchers pissed off about the giveaways and being told whom they could talk to, donors who got patent rights for things that were really only useful for trolling, and university admins who were dreaming of riches and didn't get much aside from various people yelling at them.

a-dub 8y ago
I dunno if just cracks me up as it's so brazen- it's like they want to try and hire professors to do their R&D for them and assume that said professors will just hand it all over if anything valuable comes from their life's work.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Professors do this all the time. The pressure to keep the lights on and your grad students funded is not to be underestimated.
- pc86 8y ago
  As an industry employee the IP of your work belongs to your employer, I don't think it's a given that it should necessarily be different in research/academia. It is, obviously, and I think overall that's good, but we shouldn't take it for granted. There's nothing wrong with questioning the status quo.
  - __jal 8y ago
    As you note, there have been different norms in different institutions, and if you're a used to working for for-profit entities, I'm sure the norms you're used to seem, well, normal. But sure, there's no harm in thought experiments. And we have a lot of different behaviors over time to look at from a range of institutions. You might start asking what changes when incentives are restructured to encourage short-term profit over discovery, and how that might change teaching and research universities. For starters, an easy one: if revenue production becomes the primary measure of the value of a field, how does historical research pay its way while avoiding capture by particular interests? Also, if you want to _really_ be daring, ask questions about what might happen if employees weren't forced by default into work-for-hire arrangements. What if corps were a bit more like academia?
  - a-dub 8y ago
    Employer-employee relationships are very different from PI-institution relationships. PIs operate like little businesses within an institution. They write their own grants for their own funding. Sometimes the institution coughs up some corn, but usually it goes the other way. The institution extracts overheads from grant funds to pay for infrastructure. When it comes to matters of research, it's rare in the American system that PIs take orders from the institution.

by __jal 8y ago

a-dub 8y ago

I dunno if just cracks me up as it's so brazen- it's like they want to try and hire professors to do their R&D for them and assume that said professors will just hand it all over if anything valuable comes from their life's work.

Fomite 8y ago
Professors do this all the time. The pressure to keep the lights on and your grad students funded is not to be underestimated.
pc86 8y ago
As an industry employee the IP of your work belongs to your employer, I don't think it's a given that it should necessarily be different in research/academia. It is, obviously, and I think overall that's good, but we shouldn't take it for granted. There's nothing wrong with questioning the status quo.
- __jal 8y ago
  As you note, there have been different norms in different institutions, and if you're a used to working for for-profit entities, I'm sure the norms you're used to seem, well, normal. But sure, there's no harm in thought experiments. And we have a lot of different behaviors over time to look at from a range of institutions. You might start asking what changes when incentives are restructured to encourage short-term profit over discovery, and how that might change teaching and research universities. For starters, an easy one: if revenue production becomes the primary measure of the value of a field, how does historical research pay its way while avoiding capture by particular interests? Also, if you want to _really_ be daring, ask questions about what might happen if employees weren't forced by default into work-for-hire arrangements. What if corps were a bit more like academia?
- a-dub 8y ago
  Employer-employee relationships are very different from PI-institution relationships. PIs operate like little businesses within an institution. They write their own grants for their own funding. Sometimes the institution coughs up some corn, but usually it goes the other way. The institution extracts overheads from grant funds to pay for infrastructure. When it comes to matters of research, it's rare in the American system that PIs take orders from the institution.