5 ms·
Science is largely directed by people who give grants. It's these guys fault if things don't advance. They have failed spectacularly at cancer and Alzheimers
by narrator 5y ago
Science is largely directed by people who give grants. It's these guys fault if things don't advance. They have failed spectacularly at cancer and Alzheimers research by only giving to people who follow approved treatment approaches. Now, after many decades we find out that removing Tau proteins does nothing, and big data analytics and gene sequencing has shown us that there is no cancer gene.
There are efforts to break out of the grant writer monopolies and fund, via crowdfunding or just interested groups of philanthropists, different approaches to various long standing problems. For example, MAPS has fought long and hard to get the regulatory approval and raise the money to test psychedelics and MDMA for depression and PTSD respectively.
- xyzzyz 5y agoDunno about Alzheimer’s, but as a result of Nixon’s “war on cancer”, there is a ton of money going into cancer research. It’s not only going into some narrow, conservative research directions: good chunk of cancer research cash (if not the most) is only funding stuff that’s only tangentially cancer research. Talk to biochem researchers, they’ll tell you: if you want to get a grant, you write some bullshit story about how it is relevant to cancer research, and apply for a cancer grant. It doesn’t have to be very convincing, because the grant committees are not stupid and just play along, since cancer gets more money than it should, relative to other research needs.
- leptoniscool 5y agoMaybe this is the reason that cancer hasn't been cured...
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- wrycoder 5y agoThat’s why we have the great Perimeter Institute.
- T-A 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/461477a https://www.nature.com/articles/461477a
- wrycoder 5y agoUpvote for interesting! I'll probably read it. But Nature. And "but Magueijo", who is a bit of a crank in his own right (FTL, VLS), and who seems like a sour dude: per WP: "In [his] book, Magueijo described British culture as the "most rotten societies in the world"." A real hatchet job! Perimeter gives a home to people who would otherwise have difficulty finding funding. Most will fail. But then... Einstein could never have got a grant for his "annus mirabilis". And probably not even one to fund his GR work.
- T-A 5y ago> Perimeter gives a home to people who would otherwise have difficulty finding funding. Gave. Past tense. https://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/this-physics-pioneer-walked-away-from-it-all https://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/this-physics-pioneer-walked... http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-scientist-creates-crisis-anticrisis.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-scientist-creat...
- wrycoder 5y agoFascinating articles. I think Bee analyzes the situation at Perimeter correctly. With Turok gone, maybe the pendulum will swing back a ways. One can hope. Markopoulou, 38, hooked up with Doyne Farmer, 57, and got pregnant while taking a road trip from Santa Fe to San Francisco in a 42 year old Datsun convertible. And they are still together. I've been following Farmer's progress since the '70s, but I hadn't heard that one. Great stuff, thanks very much!! Got me to break out my old copy of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control.