Back in the time of Archimedes, and right through Galileo, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Darwin, it was possible for a lone investigator to make important scientific discoveries with easily affordable apparatus, or just by thinking. Scientists were mostly people of means, who had the leisure to pursue science essentially as a hobby, and perhaps spend small sums on experimental gadgetry. We still think of Albert Einstein as the archetypal scientists, a lone genius who developed profound insights while working at a fairly menial job.
The only reward for these intellectual pioneers was fame, and in Einstein's case a professorship. Galileo's reward was prison. While many of their discoveries had economic value almost immediately, and all did in the long run, none of it went into their pockets because nobody owns basic knowledge. Patentable technology is fundamentally different. It seldom consists of or incorporates new scientific discoveries. Rather, it takes advantage of known phenomena in new ways. For example, when Newcomen and Watt developed the first commercially useful steam engines, everybody knew that heated water turned into steam that expanded and could be used to push a cylinder. They just hadn't assembled all the parts successfully.
Scientific discovery makes new technologies possible, but there is seldom incentive to invest in basic scientific research because even if you did end up making some sort of patentable discovery -- which the theory of relativity or the heliocentric solar system or the germ theory of disease are not -- there is no way to predict that will happen or what it might be worth. And with very rare exceptions, important scientific discoveries can no longer be made by solitary tinkerers and dreamers. They require very expensive apparatus and teams of investigators and support staff. The scientific enterprise, as opposed to technological research and development, is therefore largely funded by governments, with a much smaller contribution from foundations.
The National Institutes of Health spends about $42 billion a year on biomedical and public health research. Most of that money -- about 80% -- goes as grants to outside investigators, mostly in universities. The National Science Foundation, with a budget of about $8.5 billion, funds research in other areas such as mathematics and computer science. NASA, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies also fund some scientific research. It is because of scientific discoveries made through this public investment that the technological wonders of today are possible.
In 2000 the Joint Economic Committee of Congress issued a report estimating that the annual return on investment from NIH was 25-40%. Of course, NIH doesn't capture that money, it goes to private corporations who make use of the discoveries and to all of us who ultimately benefit. Federally funded studies contributed to the development of every single one of 210 new drugs approved between 2010 and 2016.
So if you want to call me a socialist or a commie for suggesting that NIH directly fund clinical trials of antibiotics, you have to explain why you think that is bad. I can call you a poopyhead and a dipshit, and I do, but that isn't an argument. Scientific knowledge is the purest example of what even Milton Friedman would call a public good: non-excludable and non-rivalrous.What that means is that nobody can make you pay for using it, and your use of it doesn't stop anybody else from using it too. And even Milton Friedman knew that such goods are underproduced by the market, if they are produced at all. That makes him a commie.
True fact: 100% of NIH grants are fully public information. You can look up the names of the investigators, their institutions, the amount of the awards, and a summary of the research on-line. There are no secret grants at all. Not a single one. There is no corruption in the grantmaking process. Grants are awarded based on peer review by panels of experts, and no contact is allowed between applicants and reviewers. Reviewers who work with the applicants or have other relationships that might create an appearance of bias are required to recuse themselves.
7 comments:
Toilety invective aside, there is so much confusion because of the misuse of words. As Antoine de St.-Exupéry wrote, "Language is a source of misunderstandings." People call themselves "pro-life" in order to champion a bogus cause like anti-abortion; and then when someone calls Shitler a fascist, which he is, or compares his ilk to Nazis, which has some validity, it's considered extreme.
The reaction to communism is an outdated, alarmist bugaboo that haunts us to this day. It's like someone being deathly afraid of syphilis even though penicillin has been available for almost 100 years.
Fear and the misuse of language combine to make people paranoid. I don't know how we get past the bandying about of the labels "socialist" and "commie" ... except for true education ... but the US government just spent $3 billion funding the development of Covid-19 vaccines and all the profit is going to Pfizer and other companies that didn't spend a penny for the research. I'd say that's socialism, which is fine and good ... we're lucky to have the vaccines ... though I will point out that I have a better chance of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine in La Habana, Cuba, at this point in time than I do in Washtenaw County, Michigan, where another socialist entity--the University of Michigan--seems to be sucking up all available doses of vaccine, largely for many of its non-essential workers in departments such as Finance or Athletics, and a K-12 worker like myself can't even get the first dose.
So much for communism vs capitalism.
People need to understand: any "-ism"——from Catholicism and Exoticism, to Rastafarianism and Prismsm——would work if it were practiced by men with hearts of gold.
Let go of labels; seek to understand the meanings behind words and utterances.
Dearest Cervantes,
The argument that it's all transparent to the public is a specious one. Sure, it's on the web, but the public sees what the media shows them. And I can guarantee you that the public didn't see any of the stupid stuff. Here's just a taste.
https://erietigertimes.com/1685/uncategorized/18-ridiculous-things-the-federal-government-has-funded/
The National Science Foundation received $856,000 in funding from the Federal Government to conduct a study to see if it is possible to train Lions to walk on a treadmill. It took the Lions eight months.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health funded a $592,527 study to explain why Chimpanzees throw their feces.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
I published this in order to point out that it's an old chestnut. Sen. Proxmire used to give out Golden Fleece awards for science projects that could be made to sound silly. In fact, most of them were perfectly sound and concerned matters of importance.
Your source is obviously unreliable because, in the first place, it is impossible for the National Science Foundation to receive funding from the federal government. The National Science Foundation is the federal government and it gives grants to universities and other private researchers. I doubt that any of these examples are real, but if they are in some way the descriptions are obviously highly misleading. The behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam, btw, is obviously a very important public health issue.
If you're giving away billions, no doubt there will be a grant or two in there that one might take issue with. But your source is completely full of shit. Note that it provides no documentation or links.
Here you go. It took me 10 seconds to find this. Pumas Trained to Run on Treadmill Help Explain Big Cat’s Ambush Strategy. (This was published in 2014, BTW, which shows how far out of their way these assholes had to go to make up their bullshit.)
"“Never say you can’t train a cat,” is what a researcher said after taking ten months “and a lot of meat” to train “Rascal” and other captive mountain lions to walk on a treadmill. The cooperation of the felines helped scientists understand how wild mountain lions burn energy and explained why the big cats’ use of the ambush method to catch their prey works so well for them.
The puma, the Western Hemisphere’s most widely distributed mammal, is rarely seen. But its stealth may explain how the cat manages the high-energy costs of its carnivore lifestyle, a new study based in part on teaching a puma to run on a treadmill shows. . . .
Among the most basic questions biologists want to answer is how pumas manage the energetic costs of hunting and killing prey at least twice their size. And now, a team of biologists has managed what some thought impossible – training a puma to run on a treadmill – to show how the big cat’s ambush-hunting strategy helps it conserve enough energy to survive.
The group, led by Terrie Williams and Chris Wilmers of the University of California, Santa Cruz, spent years working with engineers to develop a novel wildlife tracking collar to measure the energetics, movements and behaviors of animals in the wild. Energetic expenditure is the lifeblood of an animal, says Wilmers. “If they’re burning more calories than they’re consuming they’ll die. And without enough surplus calories, they’ll never reproduce successfully.”
If you read the whole story, you will also see that the treadmill experiment was only a small part of the overall study. So fuck off.
I understand that biologists are interested in this issue.
But, is this really a burning issue?
It's not what's being studied, it's what's being studied at taxpayers' expense that is the problem for those of us who are paying end and not the receiving end these funds.
Why is it so unreal to the academics and the professional ruling class that taxpayers would ask that government be good stewards of their hard earned tax dollars?
This particular study was reported on in National Geographic, so it's not exactly a secret. Biologists are not the only people who are interested in biology and ecology, and think it's worth understanding how animals live. That's why they subscribe to magazines like National Geographic.
But this post is mostly about the National Institutes of Health, which is an extremely popular enterprise. In fact, Dump's budget proposed draconian cuts every year, and even the Republican controlled congress didn't go along because their constituents wouldn't stand for it. So the people on the paying end want to pay for it. End of discussion.
Alex -
That puma study cost you personally about one cent if you earn close to the median wage, which represents maybe 2 seconds out of your work day. I'm sure it took you far longer to write your comment.
That knowledge may not be worth a penny to you, but I thought it was interesting and worth more than 2 cents to learn about. So I'll take responsibility for your cent. Maybe you'd find a better place to spend your penny, say on one of the many bands that the military branches seem to find essential.
The larger point is that even though the information on the study wasn't wrong, it led to a conclusion that wasn't exactly correct. If the rest of the examples you mentioned turn out to have as much substance behind them as the Puma example, then the person who came up with those 'facts' was straining pretty hard to support his or her argument. That sorta proves the opposite of what it was intended to.
I believe that knowingly making an essentially false claim does more damage to our polity than running off to Cancun during a winter blackout, and it saddens me that there are so few consequences for trying to mislead us.
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