One serious problem with this sort of “Kariko argument” is that it fails to consider a counter factual. Imagine that Kariko actually dropped out of academia af

One serious problem with this sort of “Kariko argument” is that it fails to consider a counter factual. Imagine that Kariko actually dropped out of academia after unsuccessful postdoc, as most postdocs do. Does that mean we would never have mRNA vaccines? I don’t think so, I think that, at best, one could argue that we would have them later. How much later? The figure here most likely does not count in multiple decades. It is very typical for discoveries to be independently done by multiple researchers at roughly the same time. This is because many discoveries and inventions are made when “the time is ripe”, so to speak — when other discoveries and technologies set up the stage for the final leap. I do not mean to diminish the achievement of Kariko here in anyway — she was, after all, the first to actually do it in the real, non counter factual world. But, had it not been her, it would probably be someone else, somewhat later. Now, one can argue that getting discoveries earlier is of crucial value. After all, we did hugely benefit from mRNA vaccine technology being available just in time for 2020. I course, I fully agree here, but again, it is necessary to consider counter factual. With some alternative modes of funding, we might be able to get Kariko to invent mRNA vaccines earlier, sure. However, in this counterfactual, we would also probably get a bunch of other discoveries later than we actually did. Which ones would those be? Are these more or less important than mRNA vaccines? It is, of course, impossible to know, and impossible to figure out before you actually decide to change your funding processes, because the process of discovery is fundamentally highly unpredictable. Point here is that it really is not instructive to focus on a single anecdote when discussing making fundamental changes to the system, because the counterfactual world is way bigger and more complex than a single anecdote.