5 ms·

The National Cancer Institute's average yearly budget for cancer research is around $4.9 billion. NFL football revenue? $9 billion. Priorities.

maratd 15y ago
What's the point of living if you can't have a little fun? Living merely for the sake of living is pointless.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  Its odd. I was quite curious to float this opinion in this crowd. It is of course, wildly unpopular among the non-geeks in my "regular" life. I wondered if it would also be so here. Affirmative. It always seemed to me that we should "take care of our business" first, and then play later. To see these numbers backwards (IMHO) struck me as a childish "play first" attitude. I wouldn't go so far as to say "cancel sports until we get our health problems sorted out" but a shift in priorities would be refreshing. Football is fun, finally cracking our genome to make disease obsolete (and I think nothing less than 100% of this cures cancer)... now that would be something to cheer about.
  - maratd 15y ago
    > It always seemed to me that we should "take care of our business" first, and then play later. This sentiment only works when the "business" is a low hanging fruit. In other words, very doable with reasonable effort with results in the short-term. Anything else, and you hunker down for the long haul. And that means plenty of playing in the interim. For "business" that can take a lifetime or several lifetimes, no, you should definitely make sure you play and play vigorously. Nobody should be asked to sacrifice the quality of their life for the sake of hypothetical benefits for future generations.
  - goblin89 15y ago
    > a shift in priorities would be refreshing. Agree, but as tptacek pointed out, there's a lot of commerce happening in football. If majority will shift their concerns to health problems, then the commerce will be happening there. Not sure if it would be necessarily a good thing, and it likely would require strict regulation.
  - possibilistic 15y ago
    For what it's worth, I'm a scientist and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Many of my colleagues do as well. (Full-disclosure: I'm still an 'undergrad', but most of my courses are independent research.) I don't cut out fun entirely, but I do tend to overwork. I'll be dead soon and have no recollection of 'fun', so I tend to prioritize/maximize my traversal time spent doing academic 'activities' (which are rewarding in their own right). I still require a basal level of fun to stay sane, though; it would be interesting to quantify it...
- mistercow 15y ago
  Who said that you can't have a little fun? It's just pretty weird to spend more on football than on cancer research.
theorique 15y ago
Cancer research is a lot quieter and less entertaining than a football game.
- viraptor 15y ago
  Maybe there are some ways to make it more entertaining? http://eterna.cmu.edu/ http://eterna.cmu.edu/ , google image labelling and other "gamified work" projects come to mind. Or a slightly more weird way to put it... we make a big show of music auditions where millions of people get super-excited and spend money to vote on a person they will most likely never see again in their lives. How do we get people that excited about science?
- luriel 15y ago
  I for one find cancer research much more fascinating, there are always new surprises and twists to learn and discover. With a football game, we already know the rules, the outcomes are not all that diverse, and people have been playing the same kind of game for ages, I get bored really fast.
radikalus 15y ago
Random "fact" 1. Random "fact" 2. Priorities.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  What I really wanted to say was that its quite likely that society spends more (much more) on sports entertainment than medical research. Perhaps not wrong. Interesting though.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    When you factor advertising out of the NFL, NBA, and MLB, I'm not convinced that all three together outstrip medical research. Pfizer alone has an R&D budget higher than the NCI. I really don't think this is a valid comparison you're making.
    - mistercow 15y ago
      I agree that it's unlikely that medical research is less well funded than sports. I do think it's plausible that "critical" medical research (excluding ailments like small-penis and spring allergies) is less well funded than sports, for some reasonable definition of "critical", but I'd be unwilling to put any money one way or the other without doing a bit more research. I will say, however, that pharmaceutical companies put a tremendous amount of money into researching and marketing treatments for common minor ailments.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        When you say "better funded than sports", you're implicating advertising. But advertising revenue is in part of function of the broader economy. F-500s don't buy Super Bowl ads because they love football.
        mistercow 15y ago
        Well, let's not get excited here. I don't think anybody is saying that they think there's some capitalist in a top hat allocating funds, saying "We will put $4B into cancer research to keep the eggheads quiet, and $9B into football to distract and pacify the proles." At least, I hope nobody thinks that. But the point is that when we, as a society, allocate resources this way, it is an indication of pathological economic behavior, and we need to find solutions for that.
tptacek 15y ago
A minority of NFL revenues come from ticket sales & merchandising combined. Much of it comes from advertising. If you're an effective channel for mass attention, it stands to reason that you're going to be poised to capture huge amounts of money, simply because there's huge amounts of commerce happening. The NFL's revenue is not really a reflection on our priorities. A better comparison would be to other discretionary expenditures in the federal government. Strong agree that we underspend on this problem.
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  > The NFL's revenue is not really a reflection on our priorities. Isn't it reasonable to assume that, if costumers had different priorities and seek for science research news more often. Then advertisers would, maybe, consider investing in science research instead of football? If we could, somehow, teach and get people interested in science. Then having your brand name associated with the cure of cancer could be more valuable than having your brand associated with football. It just seems to me that it's a matter of whose priorities are we talking about. You're not wrong, but I have the impression you and noonespecial are talking about different things.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    People aren't buying football advertising to associate their brand with football. They're buying advertising because during football games, millions of people are paying attention to a specific TV or radio station.
rpearl 15y ago
Google's revenue just by being an ad broker? $36 billion in 2011. As it turns out, people's priorities are making money. https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
aqme28 15y ago
Funding for Malaria: ~$1.5 billion[1] Priorities. [1]: http://www.rbm.who.int/gmap/1-4.html http://www.rbm.who.int/gmap/1-4.html edit: That's worldwide funding for Malaria. The US gives only a small fraction of that.
trafficlight 15y ago
Because the National Cancer Institute is a federally funded program and isn't?
tokenadult 15y ago
As radu_floricica astutely wrote above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818395 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818395 Cancer research... but you need to also factor in cancer treatment costs.
underdown 15y ago
apples and oranges comparison. PRIVATE investment is much higher than public funding - just as PBS can't outspend NBC
hexagonc 15y ago
Although I understand your point, there is a limit to the rate in which you can even spend cancer research money, even if you wanted to dramatically increase it. For one thing, you are limited to funding the research that you think will lead to a cure. It may turn out that the level of funding for direct cancer research is fine but what is needed is increased funding for nano-robotics or strong AI, or supercomputers that can simulate tumor growth and evolution. The linked article was very sobering indeed; finding a cure for cancer almost seems like trying to find a grand unified theory for physics. It may turn out that you basically have to figure out how to cure all diseases in order to cure cancer.

maratd 15y ago

What's the point of living if you can't have a little fun? Living merely for the sake of living is pointless.

noonespecial 15y ago
Its odd. I was quite curious to float this opinion in this crowd. It is of course, wildly unpopular among the non-geeks in my "regular" life. I wondered if it would also be so here. Affirmative. It always seemed to me that we should "take care of our business" first, and then play later. To see these numbers backwards (IMHO) struck me as a childish "play first" attitude. I wouldn't go so far as to say "cancel sports until we get our health problems sorted out" but a shift in priorities would be refreshing. Football is fun, finally cracking our genome to make disease obsolete (and I think nothing less than 100% of this cures cancer)... now that would be something to cheer about.
- maratd 15y ago
  > It always seemed to me that we should "take care of our business" first, and then play later. This sentiment only works when the "business" is a low hanging fruit. In other words, very doable with reasonable effort with results in the short-term. Anything else, and you hunker down for the long haul. And that means plenty of playing in the interim. For "business" that can take a lifetime or several lifetimes, no, you should definitely make sure you play and play vigorously. Nobody should be asked to sacrifice the quality of their life for the sake of hypothetical benefits for future generations.
- goblin89 15y ago
  > a shift in priorities would be refreshing. Agree, but as tptacek pointed out, there's a lot of commerce happening in football. If majority will shift their concerns to health problems, then the commerce will be happening there. Not sure if it would be necessarily a good thing, and it likely would require strict regulation.
- possibilistic 15y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm a scientist and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Many of my colleagues do as well. (Full-disclosure: I'm still an 'undergrad', but most of my courses are independent research.) I don't cut out fun entirely, but I do tend to overwork. I'll be dead soon and have no recollection of 'fun', so I tend to prioritize/maximize my traversal time spent doing academic 'activities' (which are rewarding in their own right). I still require a basal level of fun to stay sane, though; it would be interesting to quantify it...
mistercow 15y ago
Who said that you can't have a little fun? It's just pretty weird to spend more on football than on cancer research.

theorique 15y ago

Cancer research is a lot quieter and less entertaining than a football game.

viraptor 15y ago
Maybe there are some ways to make it more entertaining? http://eterna.cmu.edu/ http://eterna.cmu.edu/ , google image labelling and other "gamified work" projects come to mind. Or a slightly more weird way to put it... we make a big show of music auditions where millions of people get super-excited and spend money to vote on a person they will most likely never see again in their lives. How do we get people that excited about science?
luriel 15y ago
I for one find cancer research much more fascinating, there are always new surprises and twists to learn and discover. With a football game, we already know the rules, the outcomes are not all that diverse, and people have been playing the same kind of game for ages, I get bored really fast.

radikalus 15y ago

Random "fact" 1. Random "fact" 2. Priorities.

noonespecial 15y ago
What I really wanted to say was that its quite likely that society spends more (much more) on sports entertainment than medical research. Perhaps not wrong. Interesting though.
- tptacek 15y ago
  When you factor advertising out of the NFL, NBA, and MLB, I'm not convinced that all three together outstrip medical research. Pfizer alone has an R&D budget higher than the NCI. I really don't think this is a valid comparison you're making.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    I agree that it's unlikely that medical research is less well funded than sports. I do think it's plausible that "critical" medical research (excluding ailments like small-penis and spring allergies) is less well funded than sports, for some reasonable definition of "critical", but I'd be unwilling to put any money one way or the other without doing a bit more research. I will say, however, that pharmaceutical companies put a tremendous amount of money into researching and marketing treatments for common minor ailments.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      When you say "better funded than sports", you're implicating advertising. But advertising revenue is in part of function of the broader economy. F-500s don't buy Super Bowl ads because they love football.
      - mistercow 15y ago
        Well, let's not get excited here. I don't think anybody is saying that they think there's some capitalist in a top hat allocating funds, saying "We will put $4B into cancer research to keep the eggheads quiet, and $9B into football to distract and pacify the proles." At least, I hope nobody thinks that. But the point is that when we, as a society, allocate resources this way, it is an indication of pathological economic behavior, and we need to find solutions for that.

tptacek 15y ago

A minority of NFL revenues come from ticket sales & merchandising combined. Much of it comes from advertising. If you're an effective channel for mass attention, it stands to reason that you're going to be poised to capture huge amounts of money, simply because there's huge amounts of commerce happening. The NFL's revenue is not really a reflection on our priorities. A better comparison would be to other discretionary expenditures in the federal government. Strong agree that we underspend on this problem.

vibrunazo 15y ago
> The NFL's revenue is not really a reflection on our priorities. Isn't it reasonable to assume that, if costumers had different priorities and seek for science research news more often. Then advertisers would, maybe, consider investing in science research instead of football? If we could, somehow, teach and get people interested in science. Then having your brand name associated with the cure of cancer could be more valuable than having your brand associated with football. It just seems to me that it's a matter of whose priorities are we talking about. You're not wrong, but I have the impression you and noonespecial are talking about different things.
- tptacek 15y ago
  People aren't buying football advertising to associate their brand with football. They're buying advertising because during football games, millions of people are paying attention to a specific TV or radio station.

rpearl 15y ago

Google's revenue just by being an ad broker? $36 billion in 2011. As it turns out, people's priorities are making money. https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

aqme28 15y ago

Funding for Malaria: ~$1.5 billion[1] Priorities. [1]: http://www.rbm.who.int/gmap/1-4.html http://www.rbm.who.int/gmap/1-4.html edit: That's worldwide funding for Malaria. The US gives only a small fraction of that.

trafficlight 15y ago

Because the National Cancer Institute is a federally funded program and isn't?

tokenadult 15y ago

As radu_floricica astutely wrote above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818395 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818395 Cancer research... but you need to also factor in cancer treatment costs.

underdown 15y ago

apples and oranges comparison. PRIVATE investment is much higher than public funding - just as PBS can't outspend NBC

hexagonc 15y ago

Although I understand your point, there is a limit to the rate in which you can even spend cancer research money, even if you wanted to dramatically increase it. For one thing, you are limited to funding the research that you think will lead to a cure. It may turn out that the level of funding for direct cancer research is fine but what is needed is increased funding for nano-robotics or strong AI, or supercomputers that can simulate tumor growth and evolution. The linked article was very sobering indeed; finding a cure for cancer almost seems like trying to find a grand unified theory for physics. It may turn out that you basically have to figure out how to cure all diseases in order to cure cancer.