I'd even argue that the declining rate of scientific advancement is due to the academic track moving towards the same short-term thinking that plagues parts of the private sector. When the incentive structure is towards pumping out publications, there is way less breathing room for the patient development of good science and novel research. Plus, null results coming from excellent research are treated as useless, so the incentive is towards finding obvious, positive results, especially for early-career scientists.<p>The total result of the current academic incentive structure is towards the frequent publication of safe, boring positive results, especially pre-tenure. Academic research needs to become LESS like the quarterly return driven private sphere, not MORE like it.
Almost all legitimate scientific research can be accurately described either in a way that sounds weird, possibly useless, or in a way that sounds important and useful.<p>The former is usually characterized by describing the details of the experiment, which are meaningless to the untrained audience, the latter is characterized by describing its ultimate goal.<p>This could sound like a blind defense of “trust the experts“, which can be a problematic attitude. The point is that someone you can’t answer the latter question, then any critique should be suspect. If the researcher can’t answer the latter question concisely, then a closer look is definitely warranted.
Isn't the elephant in the room the social sciences though?<p>Like a vast quantity of their research output is badly designed studies that don't replicate, and serve only to launder the authors ideology through a veneer of science. It honestly think that certain social sciences might have negative RoI, e.g., the famous one about Alpha Wolves (wolves don't form Alpha beta Beta hierarchies in the wild, they actually have family unit packs).
I'd expect any discussion of science in American universities that distinguishes between basic and applied research to put the Bayh-Dole legal framework covering taxpayer-financed intellectual property front and center, in particular the nature of 'exclusive licenses' of university-sourced IP to private corporations.<p>Historically, prior to Bayh-Dole in the early 1980s, basic research was done at universities and was mainly financed by federal grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation, and applied research was done at industrial research centers like Bell Labs. Generating profitable intellectual property was the goal of the private research sector, but it relied heavily on the basic research at universities - eg development of semiconductor transistors follows this pathway, with a lot of basic scientific research in the first half of the 20th century followed by focused applied research efforts aimed at replacing vacuum tubes at Bell Labs.<p>This whole system has gone off the rails in the USA, because under Bayh-Dole, corporations realized they could essentially cut their own R & D divisions, outsourcing their applied research to universities with funding supplied by taxpayers and cutting their own R & D division spending. This decimated a lot of basic research at the university level, and destroyed institutions like Bell Labs as well. Now, threatened cuts to federal funding for research are likely to do even more damage to scientific progress in the USA, conducted by people who don't even seem to understand the system created since the 1980s, flawed as it is.<p>The solution is obvious: delete Bayh-Dole and make all taxpayer-funded research available to any US citizen or business under free non-exclusive licenses. Corporations will then be forced to reinvest in their own applied R & D divisions if they want that lucrative IP to be solely in their own hands.<p>If this doesn't happen, the USA will become a second-rate follower of others work, and it's already happened to some extent, with Chinese universities now widely regarded as superior to American ones, by several metrics.
The article makes many good points: basic science research is immensely valuable, and society gets enormous (outsized) returns on this investment.<p>However, I feel the implied argument: DOGE investigating science funding and talking about cuts is bad seems flimsy. The system of funding and incentives is pretty broken, and not only broken, but actively decaying, you can't increase your return by increasing the funding and a lot of the money is spent on actively harming science (e.g., funding bureaucracy, or unmeritoricatic ideology rather than science).
There is also something to be said for the fact that good researchers tend to enjoy weird research and we can attract talent by encouraging weird research
What value is there in "research" that doesn't do anything weird?<p>How can it even justify the name on the previous sentence without the quotes?
good article on the general defense of public funding of science, but does not address the current policy changes that well. It avoids questions like:<p>- should we borrow money (from future tax payers) to fund basic research now? Given the $2T deficit, it's not clear this optimal strategy for our grandchildren. Especially given how close we are to monetary collapse if we continue to borrow from the future at the rate we have the last 5 years.<p>- who controls the priorities and agenda of the public funding? In a constitutional republic, the will of the people should be reflected in the agenda of the science funding. We just had a presidential election, and this is democracy in action. It's not clear that science funding is even going down, the executive branch is simply steering research funding away from topics it doesn't think is a priority for the American people.
To be a conservative is to have great difficulty with change and “weird” things you have never seen before. It’s a core personality trait, and takes years of education/travel/meditation to loosen.
meanwhile, the in-person NIH study section I was going to serve on was just turned virtual, but the SRO hinted that full cancellation is on the table.<p>I am sickened at furious at the actions of this administration on science.
There's something (maybe innate) about belief in advancement vs a cycle.<p>Historian Will Durant noted that the ancient Greeks thought of history as a vicious circle that repeated again and again. E.g. there was no mention of progress in the works of Xenophon, Plato, or Aristotle.<p>Related, ancient Greek historian Polybius pushed a theory called anacyclosis, with six repeating stages of history, a concept explored by others as well. Polybius’ stages were monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and ochlocracy (mob-rule).<p>Support for this theory came from the historical evidence that the ancient Greeks had, looking around at their 1500 city states. Notably, the six stages come in pairs that proceeded through a good-bad sequence (for example monarchy as the good form and tyranny as the bad form). Those city state examples tended to proceed in the order listed and not the reverse. Thus, the cycle.<p>So the weird research concept (whether good or bad) can be seen as a symptom of our times?
To be pedantic, no one is against weird research.<p>They're against taxing people to do weird research.<p>By their nature, taxes are compulsory, and the bar for compelled action is high.
The first two paragraphs are FUD and can be safely skipped. The second paragraph sets up a straw-man.<p>After that, however, the rest of the article seems to be a good-faith attempt at defending general public funding of science. It does use the straw-man as a crutch a few times, and it neatly avoids the real problems like the slew of reworded papers on known junk science, or the ideologically targeted wolf-in-science-clothing research that clogs "the pipeline."<p>It doesn't change my opinion that the pipeline appears to need a hard reset.