5 ms·
Or you could stop relying on the government -- who is broke, mind you -- to fund your livelihood.
by hvs 13y ago
Or you could stop relying on the government -- who is broke, mind you -- to fund your livelihood.
- robmclarty 13y agoUse your PhD to figure out a way to advance science at a profit. Bootstrap that shit ;)
- dnautics 13y agonot everything has to be "for profit", even!
- scott_karana 13y agoYes, but there need to be at least as much incoming cash as outgoing, or there's a net deficit.
- dnautics 13y agoso, government science spending?
- jofer 13y agoThe problem is that corporations simply aren't going to fund pure research. Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century. Corporations do indeed do a large amount of R&D, but it's much more focused, and needs to impact the bottom line on a much shorter timeframe (say ~5 years). Because of this, there's a large amount of very important research that will never be funded by anything other than a quasi-governmental organization.
- NovemberWest 13y agoHmmm. Wondering what else we can do here that would be viable.
- dnautics 13y ago> corporations simply aren't going to fund pure research. Not all corporations are for-profit. > Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century. What? Can you point to me where it says that?
- jofer 13y agoTo be fair, I guess that's partly my political leanings showing through. Who else will fund it, though? As far as the non-profit angle, that's what I was implying by quasi in "quasi-governmental". I definitely could have worded that better, though.
- dnautics 13y agothere are plenty of non-profit, non-governmental scientific efforts. SETI (yes, it piggybacked on some government instruments) is the best well-known one. Peter Mitchell came up with the pure "basic-science" chemiosmotic theory, founded a nonprofit research institute (Glyn Research Ltd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell) to prove and validate it. He subsequently won the nobel prize for his efforts. HHMI also does this at its in-house Janelia Farms campus. Not basic science, but Salk and Sabin developed the polio vaccines without much federal help (via march of dimes, a nonprofit) - and didn't even patent their vaccines. Much basic science in the pre-1940 era was funded internally by the research institutes they were at. And there are basic science foundations that get the patronage of industry, just because, they're so gosh derned nice, and some that do limited basic science on the side while doing applied that passes patents onto the for-profit (lucent/bell labs, Xerox PARC).
- akgerber 13y agoBell Labs and PARC both are from a long-gone era where high tax rates meant the government would tax away high dividends or executive pay, which made empire building more appealing: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/24/xerox_parc_and_bell_labs_brought_to_you_by_high_taxes.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/24/xerox_parc_an...
- seehafer 13y agoThese guys are acting on that premise and ought to be supported: https://www.microryza.com/ https://www.microryza.com/