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Sure but do you want scientist to go around looking for money all the time or doing research? Like I said it's not perfect but doing a kickstarter type experime

by nkassis 13y ago

Sure but do you want scientist to go around looking for money all the time or doing research? Like I said it's not perfect but doing a kickstarter type experiment to fund science research (a worthy idea) will probably not have a better success rate than grant review boards will have. And yes I've had some experience with grant review boards and funding agencies through my past work and I've seen and yes they have many issues including cronyism (but that would occur with even private industry funding) but I still think they provide value and eliminating them in favor of a completely decentralized system would not be a good idea. This is my opinion and I haven't done the research or the experiments to vet it so I understand if you don't agree with it.

dnautics 13y ago
"do you want scientist to go around looking for money all the time" That's what they do anyways in a granting regime. cronyism isn't a problem when it's their own money (yes, I'm sidestepping the fact that there are corporations that have very, very ill-gotten gains) they're putting up. When it's our money, taken without our consent, filtered through a barely-accountable bureaucracy... That's a problem. I wrote it above, and I'll write it here, too - the fundamental problem is that "good basic science" really requires a certain level of budgetary and intellectual freedom and no accountability besides "don't lie". "good governance" demands for its projects an accounting of how money is going to be spent beforehand, and accountability if the project goes south - these are a little bit incompatible with how generally science projects should be run (but perfectly fine for, say, building a road, operating a judiciary, or, yes a limited subset of science projects like going to the moon). I think this is one reason why science has been derailed of late, with record levels of fraud and misconduct.

by nkassis 13y ago

dnautics 13y ago

"do you want scientist to go around looking for money all the time" That's what they do anyways in a granting regime. cronyism isn't a problem when it's their own money (yes, I'm sidestepping the fact that there are corporations that have very, very ill-gotten gains) they're putting up. When it's our money, taken without our consent, filtered through a barely-accountable bureaucracy... That's a problem. I wrote it above, and I'll write it here, too - the fundamental problem is that "good basic science" really requires a certain level of budgetary and intellectual freedom and no accountability besides "don't lie". "good governance" demands for its projects an accounting of how money is going to be spent beforehand, and accountability if the project goes south - these are a little bit incompatible with how generally science projects should be run (but perfectly fine for, say, building a road, operating a judiciary, or, yes a limited subset of science projects like going to the moon). I think this is one reason why science has been derailed of late, with record levels of fraud and misconduct.