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"2. State subsidies. We know these kill worker efficiency. If that weren't true the USSR would never have fallen behind the USA in terms of wealth. What the art

by Fomite 4y ago

"2. State subsidies. We know these kill worker efficiency. If that weren't true the USSR would never have fallen behind the USA in terms of wealth. What the article refers to as science is really academia, and academia is dominated by ever increasing amounts of government money. Whilst the article phrases this as science getting "harder" it can also be seen as researchers simply becoming less efficient than they were in the past, which is exactly what we'd expect to happen given that academia is a parallel planned economy. Efficient here means in terms of discovery production not paper production, of course." This isn't actually true. "For the first time in the post–World War II era, the federal government no longer funds a majority of the basic research carried out in the United States. Data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015. The federal share, which topped 70% throughout the 1960s and '70s, stood at 61% as recently as 2004 before falling below 50% in 2013." https://www.science.org/content/article/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50 https://www.science.org/content/article/data-check-us-govern...

mike_hearn 4y ago
But we're not talking about percentage shares, we're talking about relative changes and budgets rose significantly over the past 50 years. The increase in federal spending in the USA stopped between 2005-2015, but "university" and "philanthropy" continued rising (same problems more or less), and of course spending in other countries continued to rise. Also the rise restarted: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-2021-us-spending-bill-leaves-research-advocates-hoping-more https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-2021-us-spen... "Small boost this year completes 4 years of substantial growth despite Trump ... NIH's budget now stands at $42.9 billion, a 33% rise over its 2016 level of $32.3 billion. Similarly, spending by DOE science tops $7 billion, compared with $5.4 billion in 2017, a boost of 30%. NASA science programs rose by 8% and 11% in 2018 and 2019, respectively, before slowing in 2020 and 2021. NSF's budget, now nearly $8.5 billion, has grown the least among the four biggest federal science agencies. But even so, a 14% rise since 2017 compares favorably with an overall increase of only 4% during the second term of former President Barack Obama." So these are massive spending increases, regardless of what industry is doing. There's something else we need to watch out for here. Corporate research isn't famous for its high production of papers, but the evidence that "science" in general is getting harder is based on paper-related metrics. It's possible that science hasn't really been getting harder, but that corporate R&D has been sucking the best science out of the academic realm into a place where fewer papers are published overall, so there's less to cite. The fact that the most cited paper of all time is an obscure biology paper and that pharma spending is such a large component of "basic science", is suggestive of this.
WalterBright 4y ago
Your evidence only is about volume of spending, which has no bearing on efficiency.

by Fomite 4y ago

mike_hearn 4y ago

But we're not talking about percentage shares, we're talking about relative changes and budgets rose significantly over the past 50 years. The increase in federal spending in the USA stopped between 2005-2015, but "university" and "philanthropy" continued rising (same problems more or less), and of course spending in other countries continued to rise. Also the rise restarted: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-2021-us-spending-bill-leaves-research-advocates-hoping-more https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-2021-us-spen... "Small boost this year completes 4 years of substantial growth despite Trump ... NIH's budget now stands at $42.9 billion, a 33% rise over its 2016 level of $32.3 billion. Similarly, spending by DOE science tops $7 billion, compared with $5.4 billion in 2017, a boost of 30%. NASA science programs rose by 8% and 11% in 2018 and 2019, respectively, before slowing in 2020 and 2021. NSF's budget, now nearly $8.5 billion, has grown the least among the four biggest federal science agencies. But even so, a 14% rise since 2017 compares favorably with an overall increase of only 4% during the second term of former President Barack Obama." So these are massive spending increases, regardless of what industry is doing. There's something else we need to watch out for here. Corporate research isn't famous for its high production of papers, but the evidence that "science" in general is getting harder is based on paper-related metrics. It's possible that science hasn't really been getting harder, but that corporate R&D has been sucking the best science out of the academic realm into a place where fewer papers are published overall, so there's less to cite. The fact that the most cited paper of all time is an obscure biology paper and that pharma spending is such a large component of "basic science", is suggestive of this.

WalterBright 4y ago

Your evidence only is about volume of spending, which has no bearing on efficiency.