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Are you suggesting that science would advance at a comparable pace with only private funding? Maybe he's not saying that. But I worked in a government-funded r
by maxharris 13y ago
Are you suggesting that science would advance at a comparable pace with only private funding?
Maybe he's not saying that. But I worked in a government-funded research lab for two years, and I have no choice but to say it: science would advance faster if it were privately funded.
- tensor 13y agoGiven the number of papers I've read from industry, I doubt we'd have anything resembling science without public funding. Some private engineering perhaps, but not science.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoThe governments of yore were truly visionary, to provide public funding for science before the concept even existed.
- dnautics 13y agoCounterexamples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://www.janelia.org/ http://www.janelia.org/
- Anon84 13y agoIf the amount of funding somehow remained the same... Which I find highly unlikely. It would definitely cut down on the bureaucracy and make things significantly faster. Maybe a YC for science is in order?
- jbrooksuk 13y agoI don't know much about how the science industry works, only that a lot of medication/drugs are patented, so the suppliers make the money by being the guys who can produce said drug, until the patent expires, then everything becomes cheap. Afterwhich they make a new drug and do the same thing?
- jordan0day 13y ago"YC-backed FizzleBit Labs founder Jonas Salk announces his Polio Vaccine as a Service, currently in closed private beta, has been acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed amount. Insiders are calling this an 'acquihire', and it's likely that Dr. Salk's polio vaccine product will be shut down by the end of the year."
- dnautics 13y agoYou choose a particularly bad example, since Salk's effort was run as a completely private effort, aka "the march of dimes" (although it did enjoy FDR's bully pulpit). It was a nonprofit, too, so would you say the same thing about Watsi?
- Angostura 13y agoScience with short-term commercially exploitable goals might.
- dnautics 13y agoprivate != for profit. Learn some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell