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>> ...companies are increasingly concerned with quarterly results at the expense of long term research... And why should it be otherwise? Science has never paye
by temuze 13y ago
>> ...companies are increasingly concerned with quarterly results at the expense of long term research... And why should it be otherwise? Science has never payed off as a logical financial investment.
The problem is that this article generalizes "science" to the life sciences. Biology and medical experiments take a long time, are very expensive and reproducing results can be very difficult. Of course there's more pressure for scientists to produce results and you'll see fishier papers to justify their big grants.
Research can be incredibly profitable. What about Bell Labs? 3M? The technology from your iPhone wouldn't have been possible without Apple's big R&D department. There are many examples of successful (and profitable) R&D departments. Heck, Exxon's R&D arm comes out with many innovations a year to make pumping oil out of the ground easier. It just isn't as visible (or linkbait-y) as that new gene they found.
>> "[science] has never made economic sense in the present"
Life sciences don't. It takes decades for new drugs to come out sometimes. So yes, there are a limited number of people who do this. But electronics? Tech? Mechanical/Aerospace engineering? SpaceX, Intel and others are constantly improving.
>> "Increasingly, it has become clear that our society does not reflect one designed with its own best interests at heart. Why this is, how it happened, and how we can change it, will be the greatest challenge of our lifetimes."
Bullshit. There's financial incentive to go with the fold and do conventional things, but there's also a lot of financial incentive to innovate. However, innovation is hard when there's a higher barrier of entry. Information is the industry that has seen the most innovation in the last decade because anyone and their mother can make software.
The real problem is making the barrier of entry lower for other industries. To make manufacturing, biomedical research and others easier. And guess what? There's economic incentive to do that, too! People who make software development easier are getting tons of money and 3D printing, which will completely change the way manufacturing is done, will probably create some billionaires in the next decade.
The system is fine! In the last decade, we got portable access to all of human information, the ability to always know where we are, advancements in electronics, cars and all sorts of myriad incredible things. Give us another couple decades and we'll make things that will blow anyone from the present's mind.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoI hate to say this, but I regret that I have but one upvote to give. I can't believe the old "science isn't profitable" canard is being trotted out to full effect on HN. The fact of the matter is that science is imminently profitable, and this is so obviously true that it takes nothing short of a true believer in the benevolence of the government as the superior investment entity and the free market as bogeyman to believe otherwise. I mean this isn't /r/politics, is it? The desire for profit is the single largest driver of scientific and technological innovation, period. Yes, NASA and DARPA have created some amazing things, but what about the hundreds of billions which are spent by privately held entities' R&D departments every year? Does all of that research yield nothing of value? The pharmaceutical advances? The electronic advances? The advances in automobiles, computers, housing, information access, and, now, space travel, as well as virtually every other product on the planet - do those mean nothing? Of course they do. Private funding for research constitutes the lions share of research funding, and that private research leads to the vast majority of scientific and technological advances around the world. The line that science would not happen absent government funding is so demonstrably false that to even make such a claim is tantamount to shouting to the world that you are a first-class idiot.
- _delirium 13y ago> I mean this isn't /r/politics, is it? This isn't reason.com, is it? > The line that science would not happen absent government funding is so demonstrably false that to even make such a claim is tantamount to shouting to the world that you are a first-class idiot. The private sector doesn't advance science. Also: you are stupid for claiming so. Maybe even first-class stupid. See where that exchange gets us? Now cite your data on the majority of scientific advances being privately funded, since you claim to be able to demonstrate it. In particular, I'm interested in basic-science advances, of the kind that CERN and Stephen Hawking and etc. produce. Who in the private sector is producing those?
- notdrunkatall 13y agoThe private sector doesn't advance science? Intel doesn't advance science? Pfizer doesn't advance science? GE? IBM? ADM? BASF? You don't think that private companies regularly form hypotheses, test those hypothesis, and draw conclusions from their results? Applied science is no less worthy of the title of science than is pure science, and the private sector is applied science writ large. As for pure science and government funding, I'm not against it, and promoting one over the other is not my intention, as they both have their roles to play. I agree that pure science would not occur to the extent that it does now absent government funding. What I disagree with is that science would not happen at all were that the case. That's flatly stupid thing to say, and I'm a little amused that you would make that claim just before calling me stupid. In a world where the rate of technological advance is larger than it has been at any other time in the history of the world (and is still increasing), it seems obvious that both are playing their roles rather well. The system is functioning. Science is not dead. Hell, it's not even sick.
- chalst 13y ago> The technology from your iPhone wouldn't have been possible without Apple's big R&D department. It's interesting that you point to Apple. Compared to companies with a more old-fashioned approach to R&D (Xerox, Bell Labs, IBM, Microsoft), Apple spends relatively little on R&D, and does practically nothing of genuine scientific value. I would hold up Apple as an example of the profitable "focus research on specific products, buy research expertise rather than cultivate it in the firm, forget science" approach to R&D.
- bradwestness 13y agoYeah, Apple doesn't really invent stuff, they generally just come out with the same incremental technology improvements as every other company. They're mostly just good at combining components into aesthetically pleasing products, and then claiming to have invented every feature from scratch. Its like if Mercedes Benz claimed "only we could come up with the idea of a steering wheel, seat belts and a motor" when announcing their new model vehicles every year.
- Ma8ee 13y agoCan you show me one place where they claim to have invented every feature from scratch?
- shas3 13y agoApple is the top spender on R&D, as a percentage of its revenue. Second is Google. 3rd Samsung, 4th Amazon, 5th 3M. [1] Xerox had about 10 years of glorious moon-shot type research. IBM is notoriously fickle about spending on R&D. The only exception is Bell Labs, which succeeded due to a combination of a number of factors [2]. There wasn't any grand vision underlying it, just the interest to grab the best and the brightest, during a time when there was far less silo-ing and over-specialization than today. [1] http://www.booz.com/global/home/what-we-think/global-innovation-1000/top-innovators-spenders/52802974 http://www.booz.com/global/home/what-we-think/global-innovat... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/review/the-idea-factory-by-jon-gertner.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/review/the-idea-fact...