DailyDirt: New Models For (Not) Funding Science?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, May 15th 2013 5:00pm — Joyce Hung

In lean times like these, it's getting tougher to get funding for science and technology research, especially for innovative but high-risk ideas. It's no surprise that both the government and the private sector seem to feel more comfortable investing their money in more conservative "sure thing" efforts these days. While the scientific funding system is far from perfect, some of the attempts to "fix" it are making it even worse. Here are just a few (good and bad) examples.

Canada's scientific research and development agency, the National Research Council, has announced that it will now only conduct research that has "social or economic gain." Apparently, the President of the NRC actually said, "Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value." Unfortunately, that's one giant leap backwards for mankind. [url]
U.S. House of Representatives chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) is proposing to replace the National Science Foundation's peer review process with a new set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. Smith's "High Quality Research Act" would require the NSF to judge grants based on three criteria -- that the research will: advance national health, prosperity, welfare, and security; solve problems that are important to society at large; and not duplicate other research projects being funded by the government. [url]
On a more positive note, the Thiel Foundation's Breakout Labs is aiming to change the way early-stage science is funded. Their grants of up to $350,000 over 1-2 years will enable startups to chase some risky ideas with groundbreaking potential, returning a small percentage of any commercial success back to Breakout Labs to help fund the future ventures. [url]

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Filed Under: breakout labs, canada, discovery, funding, grants, innovation, research, science
Companies: nrc, nsf, thiel foundation

12 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2013 @ 5:14pm

Not only are many politicians short sighted in their economic policy, but they also seem to be blind when it comes to the funding of scientific research. Heaven forbid we find out something of importance which upsets their house of cards.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2013 @ 5:38pm

the LHC is useless
Bah. Who cares if the Large Hadron Collider exists? And why study cancer in lab mice? Who cares if mice get cancer?

"If money is all you care about, then money is all you will get." -- Princess Leia
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wallow-T, 15 May 2013 @ 7:36pm

re: the proposed funding criteria for Canada's NRC and the USA NSF:

I begin to suspect that we have passed Peak Civilization.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2013 @ 10:14pm

On the other hand
On the other hand, far too many grants are written where the main outcome is journal articles (journal articles != new knowledge) and the main evidence that the researchers can deliver is that they have written journal articles in the past.

This isn't to say that the first two proposals are problem free, but I think it isn't unreasonable for taxpayer funds to ask that something other than articles locked up behind Elsevier paywalls is the outcome of the research.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2013 @ 11:20pm

Interestingly, if Lamar Smith were a grant being judged he would fail all three criteria.
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Tofof, 16 May 2013 @ 12:14am

Choosing Research
A general study into how extremophilic bacteria function would not be judged by Congress to directly advance welfare, health, prosperity, or security. In fact, in 1965, it was precisely the sort of science-for-science's sake -- funded by the government through the NSF -- that this bill would attempt to eliminate.

And yet the entire field of modern biology - everything from cloning to the promising leukemia cures to the DNA fingerprinting so loved by prosecutors and police departments - stems from the isolation of this organism's ( Thermus aquaticus) dna-copying protein, Taq polymerase.

We hijack this protein and put it to use in PCR, the technique by which even a single strand of dna can be amplified (copied) billionfold or more so that it can be easily sequenced and otherwise manipulated.

This is a choice example, obviously. No, not everything pans out. But one man's study of an obscure bacteria in Yellowstone leads nearly directly - twenty years later - to a fundamental new technique for which the inventors win a Nobel prize. And it wouldn't have been funded if the NSF was forced to operate under the newly proposed rules.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 2:45am

"Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value."

wow, how short sighted !!!, there is no way of telling what will become valuable, the discovery of the humble battery had no application for the first 100 years of it's existence. !!

what about fundamental physics, X-rays were something that at first had no practical applications, but not now.

You could provide an endless list of scientific discoveries that had no "value" at the time, that have become absolutely critical and useful now.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 3:27am

Re: On the other hand
but how do you tell before you do the research what it will reveal?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 5:44am

Re: Choosing Research
I think it is because the likes of Lamar lack what is commonly referred to as vision.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 5:50am

Re:
In order to understand what these politicians are attempting to do, one needs to explore the possible motives. One such motive might be that their benevolent benefactors could see a decline in stock price if some new research were to point out detrimental or otherwise adverse affects of their much heralded product line(s). This must be nipped in the bud in order to sustain their comfy position(s) and not upset the applecart. What they fail to foresee is that delay of the inevitable only makes it worse.
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Richard (profile), 16 May 2013 @ 7:54am

Fermi Lab
I liked the answer given by the director of Fermi Lab to the question:

Q. What does Fermi Lab contribute to the defence of the United States?

A. It makes the United States worth defending!
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 16 May 2013 @ 11:14am

Re: Choosing Research
This is another bill from Lamar Smith. Mr. SOPA himself. Did anyone expect it would actually be useful?
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