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I 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 eff

I 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 ago
  The 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.
  - secstate 13y ago
    First off, I'm pretty sure he was trying to make a point about the inefficacy of name-calling in such an argument, not literally calling you stupid. Second, Intel advances very specific, safe-bet science like shrinking the semiconductor. As plenty of other people have noted, the semiconductor was a public-funded invention and farmed off to Japan before it could be made "profitable" by American corporations. Heck, early American business laughed transistors off the continent before the value proposition was discovered. Also, as long as I'm commenting here, I'll note that science is not dead, but I believe that our ability to consume information has tainted our ability to understand true science. To me, the quintessential American scientist of the 20th century was Richard Feynman. His Cargo Cult Science [1] essay, which pops up on HN from time to time explains what's happening best: people who claim to follow science, are actually practicing some sort of modern-day witch doctor magic. They wave their hands and claim the data supports their wild discovery and someone bites. Suddenly it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something "on average." 1: http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
    - 13y ago
- dnautics 13y ago
  >The private sector doesn't advance science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell He and his former research colleague, Jennifer Moyle founded a charitable company, known as Glynn Research Ltd., to promote fundamental biological research at Glynn House and they embarked on a programme of research on chemiosmotic reactions and reaction systems. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory." So, yes, the private sector does advance science, even basic science with no profit value. To claim otherwise is first-class stupid and also ignorance of history. Josiah Gibbs, Irving Langmuir, and Robert Millikan were all American scientists who ran their research off of largely private (some for-profit as in the case of Langmuir, who did both basic and applied science under the auspices of GE; the others at predominantly non-profit educational institutes) These people are not insignificant - Gibbs rewrote the book on thermodynamics; Langmuir figured out that argon should fill lightbulbs -applied- but in basic science also invented the concept of plasma voltage, made observations describing ocean circulation, and conceived of molecular monolayers; Millikan discovered the charge of an electron). I am sure I am missing other American scientists who did their research with little or no help from public sources. If you want another, more contemporary example, oh hey there's an entire research institute that doesn't take much (if any) in the way of federal funds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelia_Farm_Research_Campus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelia_Farm_Research_Campus http://www.janelia.org/professional-opportunities/research-positions http://www.janelia.org/professional-opportunities/research-p... "All laboratories are internally funded without extramural grants."
- shas3 13y ago
  Totally disagree. Carnegie Institutions, Wellcome Trust, etc. are all 'private sector' and dispense millions of dollars of grants for fundamental research. You probably mean, 'for-profit private sector'. But then, you disregard the several Nobel prizes that Bell Labs received, the intangible impact of IBM's Deep Blue and other programs on computing, etc. If solving a basic-science problem can result in several million dollars of revenue, you can be sure that a company will throw money and man-power at it. There are several examples even among the non-Bell Labs, non-IBM, non-Xerox companies: Google's search algorithms, pharma companies' Lipitor, Viagra, etc., Intel and AMD's industry-defining minuaturizations, 3M's optical films, etc. etc.
anaccountonhn 13y ago
>> 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. Please reveal your source for this belief. >>every other product on the planet - do those mean nothing? Breakthroughs are expensive and do not conform to our short term business cycles, as they rarely result in products, as opposed to breakthroughs. Trivial and immaterial incrementalism perfectly conform to our business cycle.
flumbaps 13y ago
This discussion is devolving into pointless bickering about where you draw the line between science and technology. If we stop being fussy about the definitions, it's pretty clear that some research/engineering is profitable in the short term and some is not. A lot of the work that is not profitable in the short term has potential long term benefits that are very important.
Ma8ee 13y ago
Of course science is profitable and corporations spend a lot of money on and make a lot of money from research. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of current technology would probably not exist if it hadn't been funded by governments in the first place. From the top of my head: GPS, the Internet.
- notdrunkatall 13y ago
  Technology is a progression of ideas. GPS and the internet were very low-hanging fruit on the tree. The government was just the entity which was the first to reach up and grab it. If they had not, someone else almost surely would have invented GPS and the ideas that underlie the internet.
  - Ma8ee 13y ago
    The point is that the initial investments were so big that no one would have dared. Other examples: space flight and nuclear power.

_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 ago
The 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.
- secstate 13y ago
  First off, I'm pretty sure he was trying to make a point about the inefficacy of name-calling in such an argument, not literally calling you stupid. Second, Intel advances very specific, safe-bet science like shrinking the semiconductor. As plenty of other people have noted, the semiconductor was a public-funded invention and farmed off to Japan before it could be made "profitable" by American corporations. Heck, early American business laughed transistors off the continent before the value proposition was discovered. Also, as long as I'm commenting here, I'll note that science is not dead, but I believe that our ability to consume information has tainted our ability to understand true science. To me, the quintessential American scientist of the 20th century was Richard Feynman. His Cargo Cult Science [1] essay, which pops up on HN from time to time explains what's happening best: people who claim to follow science, are actually practicing some sort of modern-day witch doctor magic. They wave their hands and claim the data supports their wild discovery and someone bites. Suddenly it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something "on average." 1: http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
  - 13y ago
dnautics 13y ago
>The private sector doesn't advance science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell He and his former research colleague, Jennifer Moyle founded a charitable company, known as Glynn Research Ltd., to promote fundamental biological research at Glynn House and they embarked on a programme of research on chemiosmotic reactions and reaction systems. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory." So, yes, the private sector does advance science, even basic science with no profit value. To claim otherwise is first-class stupid and also ignorance of history. Josiah Gibbs, Irving Langmuir, and Robert Millikan were all American scientists who ran their research off of largely private (some for-profit as in the case of Langmuir, who did both basic and applied science under the auspices of GE; the others at predominantly non-profit educational institutes) These people are not insignificant - Gibbs rewrote the book on thermodynamics; Langmuir figured out that argon should fill lightbulbs -applied- but in basic science also invented the concept of plasma voltage, made observations describing ocean circulation, and conceived of molecular monolayers; Millikan discovered the charge of an electron). I am sure I am missing other American scientists who did their research with little or no help from public sources. If you want another, more contemporary example, oh hey there's an entire research institute that doesn't take much (if any) in the way of federal funds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelia_Farm_Research_Campus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelia_Farm_Research_Campus http://www.janelia.org/professional-opportunities/research-positions http://www.janelia.org/professional-opportunities/research-p... "All laboratories are internally funded without extramural grants."
shas3 13y ago
Totally disagree. Carnegie Institutions, Wellcome Trust, etc. are all 'private sector' and dispense millions of dollars of grants for fundamental research. You probably mean, 'for-profit private sector'. But then, you disregard the several Nobel prizes that Bell Labs received, the intangible impact of IBM's Deep Blue and other programs on computing, etc. If solving a basic-science problem can result in several million dollars of revenue, you can be sure that a company will throw money and man-power at it. There are several examples even among the non-Bell Labs, non-IBM, non-Xerox companies: Google's search algorithms, pharma companies' Lipitor, Viagra, etc., Intel and AMD's industry-defining minuaturizations, 3M's optical films, etc. etc.

anaccountonhn 13y ago

>> 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. Please reveal your source for this belief. >>every other product on the planet - do those mean nothing? Breakthroughs are expensive and do not conform to our short term business cycles, as they rarely result in products, as opposed to breakthroughs. Trivial and immaterial incrementalism perfectly conform to our business cycle.

flumbaps 13y ago

This discussion is devolving into pointless bickering about where you draw the line between science and technology. If we stop being fussy about the definitions, it's pretty clear that some research/engineering is profitable in the short term and some is not. A lot of the work that is not profitable in the short term has potential long term benefits that are very important.

Ma8ee 13y ago

Of course science is profitable and corporations spend a lot of money on and make a lot of money from research. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of current technology would probably not exist if it hadn't been funded by governments in the first place. From the top of my head: GPS, the Internet.

notdrunkatall 13y ago
Technology is a progression of ideas. GPS and the internet were very low-hanging fruit on the tree. The government was just the entity which was the first to reach up and grab it. If they had not, someone else almost surely would have invented GPS and the ideas that underlie the internet.
- Ma8ee 13y ago
  The point is that the initial investments were so big that no one would have dared. Other examples: space flight and nuclear power.