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It's worth noting that scientific progress in the Soviet Union seriously stagnated in the Lysenko era due to the prioritization of ideology and the destruction
by photochemsyn 5y ago
It's worth noting that scientific progress in the Soviet Union seriously stagnated in the Lysenko era due to the prioritization of ideology and the destruction of independent science.
I'd argue we are seeing the same thing in many western countries, especially the USA, under the ideology of corporate control of academic research. Much can be traced back to Bayh-Dole legislation in the 1980s, which allowed universities to exclusively license patents (which had been developed with taxpayer money) to private entities.
This created a new system of control and influence in academics, i.e. the Intellectual Property Office. What it really represented was the offloading of R & D burdens from the private sector to the public sector, while retaining private control of the patents generated in the public sector.
This means academic scientists in the USA today labor under the constraints imposed by large profit-minded corporations, just as academic scientists in the Soviet Union labored under constraints imposed by communist ideologues.
This is clearly seen in the pharmaceutical and medical sectors, where research into treatments for conditions is limited to patentable drugs only, older out-of-patent drugs are seen as unprofitable even if they're show to be effective treatments for off-label conditions.
Another good example is the elimination of R&D programs for renewable energy by the state; as fossil fuel interests infiltrated government and exerted regulatory capture at institituions like the Department of Energy, solar R&D programs in the USA were basically eliminated in the 1980s and 1990s (leading countries like China, Germany and Japan to become the world leaders).
There was also the gutting of environment pollution research that used to be funded by USGS, again due to regulatory capture and threats to deny funding in the 1990s.
Basically, the new ideology in American science institutions seems to be 'only do research into subjects that can generate profits for our corporate sponsors', much as it was in the Soviet Union, where the line was 'only do research whose conclusions support the communist ideology'.
- howmayiannoyyou 5y agoExcellent observation apart from the profit-minded corporations bit. Corporate R&D spending has greatly increased, while USGOV spending has remained mostly flat. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/may/rd-business-spending-up-government-spending-flat https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/may/rd-busine...
- photochemsyn 5y agoEvery major pharmaceutical drug I know of (including mRNA vaccines see Pfizer) is based on publicly-financed (NIH) research done at public univesities and transferred to the private sector under Bayh-Dole exclusive licensing regimes. Now, would a university academic overseer be pleased to find their chemisty professors doing 'open-source drug discovery', or focusing on alternative uses of old drugs that cannot be patented (say, cannabis extracts as pain medications competing with new patented opiate derivatives)? I don't see how anyone can honestly argue that the profit motive isn't seriously skewing (and limiting) the kinds of academic research being done in US universities today.
- caddemon 5y agoThis may be a problem, but it is not a problem at the level of the university IME. Universities are happy with any research that brings in a good amount of grant money. Sure it is gravy when they can make money on something like CRISPR, but the vast majority of labs will never make money on their results, and tenure track decisions don't appear to be made based on potential for those kind of pipe dreams, at least anywhere I've been. Universities want PIs that can regularly rake in money via grant proposals. In the biological sciences the vast majority of grant money is coming from the government. The NIH could very easily push open source drug discovery by changing the way some grants are allocated, without any other change to existing policies. I also think industry influence on research will always be a double edged sword. Yes there are important research topics that would be understudied in a purely profit-driven system. But there is also a big lack of accountability in a purely "academic" system. Industry forces replication in a way academia never can, for the topics it does tackle.
- blt 5y agoHow does this conflict with the original comment's point?