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> US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. There's an assumption here that deserves

> US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. There's an assumption here that deserves some closer examination. If we are taking this as a justification for federal science spending, we would have to also support a policy of awarding research grants on the basis of expected long term return on investment, which is not the criteria applied now. Furthermore, we would have to justify this spending in competition with whatever economic investments the government could make elsewhere, or that the American taxpayers would make if we let them keep their money in the first place. From the standpoint of scientific research I don't think this is necessarily what we want, but even if it was we would have some hard questions about the last few decades of federal research funding.

jasonhong 2y ago
First, it's highly unclear a priori which scientific discoveries will pay off. The discoverer of Green Fluorescent Protein was denied funding, with others eventually winning the Nobel Prize for it. Same for mRNA vaccines, most recently featured in COVID-19 vaccine, which also recently won a Nobel Prize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 Second, while there are always improvements to be made, the system as is (or was) worked pretty well in practice without knowing what the expected ROI was. The PageRank algorithm which led to Google was funded in part by an NSF grant on Digital Libraries. The ROI on that single invention just from taxes, jobs, and increased productivity likely exceeds NSF's annual budget. DataBricks and Duolingo are also based in part on NSF research. Yeah, the system is imperfect, as all human-oriented systems are, but for the most part it works pretty well in practice and has been a linchpin in the US economic growth and national security.
- philwelch 2y ago
  If we're going to count the COVID-19 vaccine as a benefit of federal research funding, surely we need to also count COVID-19 itself as a cost, given the strong evidence that the virus was a product of US-funded gain of function research.
  - HeyImAlex 2y ago
    Consensus is that the evidence supporting that is not strong.
    - philwelch 2y ago
      It’s not conclusive, but it’s strong enough that President Biden (or rather, someone with control of President Biden’s autopen) issued Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon backdated to 2014.
      - _t9ow 2y ago
        > President Biden (or rather, someone with control of President Biden’s autopen) issued Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon backdated to 2014. This merely proved that President Biden believed that President Trump will prosecute and imprison Dr Fauci if given the opportunity.
        roenxi 2y ago
        To believe that, they would have to believe he had done something that a prosecutor would object to and that was serious enough to get Fauci imprisoned. Which is to say, that he had committed a crime. If we're expecting it to be an arbitrary act of legal harassment, Trump's team could concoct something based on Fauci's work in 2013. Corruption isn't limited to a 2014-2025 window; unless they are basing it on facts.
        ripe 2y ago
        As we have seen, Trump can hire prosecutors who will prosecute anybody he points his little finger at. He always hires lackeys, so it was easy to predict he would harass Fauci.
        roenxi 2y ago
        So how will the pardon help? If the assumption is that the prosecutors are going to fabricate crimes, the pardon will only help if they fabricate a crime that happened under certain conditions (see: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/ https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/). If they're just making something up they can make something up and claim it happened in 2013. The pardon doesn't protect him from harassment, it only protects him if he specifically committed crimes from 2014-2025 or in several official capacities. If the Trump team is just going to pretend they can say he did something 25 years ago in a private capacity and the pardon does nothing. The pardon only helps if he did something plausibly criminal recently (in which case there is a real question of why he got a pardon - they aren't supposed to be preemptive method of putting people above the law without even knowing what they did). A charitable interpretation for Fauci is it is there to distract people from the numerous Biden-family pardons the same day and to stop people asking what they did (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-joseph-biden-2021-present https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos... if anyone wants to look - C-f "Biden" & I count 4 that day + Hunter). But there are probably other things going on.
kergonath 2y ago
I don’t think that is the point. The argument is usually that we cannot predict what will be “high impact” 20 years from now but the current system works well enough that it is a net benefit despite a lot of research not being directly applicable in the end.
hedora 2y ago
So, the current system generates net income for the government, but you’re claiming it needs to be changed in order to do so?
- philwelch 2y ago
  I would actually question the assumption that it still does. It's not obvious whether it does or doesn't, because the payoff horizon is in the very long term.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Well, last year it generated more than the sum of all the money speant since what, WWII? Research funding is really cheap compared to everything else the government does.
rsfern 2y ago
NSF has actually been experimenting with this sort of funding model for a couple years through its new (as of 2019) convergence accelerator program, which I think is awesome. It’s explicitly a multi-sector program where academics partner with companies to do some proof of concept research in a phase 1 award and translate that into a viable commercial product or innovation in a phase 2 award. Potential for long term return on investment is explicitly part of the review criteria, which target this sort of historically underfunded middle ground between basic research and technology development https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-accelerator https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-accelera...

jasonhong 2y ago

First, it's highly unclear a priori which scientific discoveries will pay off. The discoverer of Green Fluorescent Protein was denied funding, with others eventually winning the Nobel Prize for it. Same for mRNA vaccines, most recently featured in COVID-19 vaccine, which also recently won a Nobel Prize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 Second, while there are always improvements to be made, the system as is (or was) worked pretty well in practice without knowing what the expected ROI was. The PageRank algorithm which led to Google was funded in part by an NSF grant on Digital Libraries. The ROI on that single invention just from taxes, jobs, and increased productivity likely exceeds NSF's annual budget. DataBricks and Duolingo are also based in part on NSF research. Yeah, the system is imperfect, as all human-oriented systems are, but for the most part it works pretty well in practice and has been a linchpin in the US economic growth and national security.

philwelch 2y ago
If we're going to count the COVID-19 vaccine as a benefit of federal research funding, surely we need to also count COVID-19 itself as a cost, given the strong evidence that the virus was a product of US-funded gain of function research.
- HeyImAlex 2y ago
  Consensus is that the evidence supporting that is not strong.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    It’s not conclusive, but it’s strong enough that President Biden (or rather, someone with control of President Biden’s autopen) issued Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon backdated to 2014.
    - _t9ow 2y ago
      > President Biden (or rather, someone with control of President Biden’s autopen) issued Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon backdated to 2014. This merely proved that President Biden believed that President Trump will prosecute and imprison Dr Fauci if given the opportunity.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        To believe that, they would have to believe he had done something that a prosecutor would object to and that was serious enough to get Fauci imprisoned. Which is to say, that he had committed a crime. If we're expecting it to be an arbitrary act of legal harassment, Trump's team could concoct something based on Fauci's work in 2013. Corruption isn't limited to a 2014-2025 window; unless they are basing it on facts.
        ripe 2y ago
        As we have seen, Trump can hire prosecutors who will prosecute anybody he points his little finger at. He always hires lackeys, so it was easy to predict he would harass Fauci.
        roenxi 2y ago
        So how will the pardon help? If the assumption is that the prosecutors are going to fabricate crimes, the pardon will only help if they fabricate a crime that happened under certain conditions (see: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/ https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/). If they're just making something up they can make something up and claim it happened in 2013. The pardon doesn't protect him from harassment, it only protects him if he specifically committed crimes from 2014-2025 or in several official capacities. If the Trump team is just going to pretend they can say he did something 25 years ago in a private capacity and the pardon does nothing. The pardon only helps if he did something plausibly criminal recently (in which case there is a real question of why he got a pardon - they aren't supposed to be preemptive method of putting people above the law without even knowing what they did). A charitable interpretation for Fauci is it is there to distract people from the numerous Biden-family pardons the same day and to stop people asking what they did (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-joseph-biden-2021-present https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos... if anyone wants to look - C-f "Biden" & I count 4 that day + Hunter). But there are probably other things going on.

kergonath 2y ago

I don’t think that is the point. The argument is usually that we cannot predict what will be “high impact” 20 years from now but the current system works well enough that it is a net benefit despite a lot of research not being directly applicable in the end.

hedora 2y ago

So, the current system generates net income for the government, but you’re claiming it needs to be changed in order to do so?

philwelch 2y ago
I would actually question the assumption that it still does. It's not obvious whether it does or doesn't, because the payoff horizon is in the very long term.
- hedora 2y ago
  Well, last year it generated more than the sum of all the money speant since what, WWII? Research funding is really cheap compared to everything else the government does.

rsfern 2y ago

NSF has actually been experimenting with this sort of funding model for a couple years through its new (as of 2019) convergence accelerator program, which I think is awesome. It’s explicitly a multi-sector program where academics partner with companies to do some proof of concept research in a phase 1 award and translate that into a viable commercial product or innovation in a phase 2 award. Potential for long term return on investment is explicitly part of the review criteria, which target this sort of historically underfunded middle ground between basic research and technology development https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-accelerator https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-accelera...