Pulling the plug on science?

Christian Science Monitor ^ | April 14, 2005 | Peter N. Spotts

[doc30]

Kind of makes you wonder how much good stuff is hidden in the archives of large corporations.

Our company's IP department recently held training in R&D to explain the patent application process for us scientists. One statistic they cited was that 80% of all scientific and technical knowledge is contained in patents and 70% of that knowledge is exclusive to patnets. Companies have a lot of information they are sitting on and, as you are aware, patents are frequently applied not to produce something, but to prevent the competition from using a key idea. Where I work, our best ideas are never patented. They are kept as trade secrets. At scientific conferences, I've seen people present papers on areas where we work and they are years behind us in certain areas. We've even modified equipment to take measurements that some of the instrument companies believed could not be reliably measured. The sad part of industrial work is not being able to talk about it in any more detail than I've already done.

[Alter Kaker]

My experience is that American science in the post Sputnik era has been fruitless.

Your experience? What would that experience be? I don't think it would be too great a stretch to say (as I heard said by an American Nobel Prize winner) that most of the scientific discoveries that have occured in the history of human civilisation have occured in the United States in the last 50 years. From genetics to geology to cosmology. We live in a golden age of scientific discovery, and it would be a shame for the United States to let it leave its shores.

[Sam Cree]

I hadn't realized until reading this article that American science was just part of Central Planning.

At least the author got his point across in the first couple sentences, so you don't have to read the entire article.

[Alter Kaker]

Well if you actually read some of these EU paper, you would not be so worried. Most of them are part of an emerging EU "paper mill."

Oh?

This is just the sort of "science" that we should curtail.

Why?

Funding Cern or ITER is not in our interest.

Then we'll have no part in subatomic and fusion research. We can either buy a share, get our scientists trained, and have access to all the data, or we can let the Europeans take the reigns. And then what? When ITER produces sustainable fusion reactions we have to lease the technology from some European company?

[Alter Kaker]

The government spend way more on trying to cram their limited value technology down the private sector's throat, than it ever generated in sales of products or services derived from those government technology white elephants. But it never stopped them bragging on how many of those worthless government patents were licensed to industry.

You don't work in biotech, I take it.

[Alter Kaker]

If Jimmah Carter and Yasser got one, getting a Nobel Peace Prize just might be a "dis"...

Different committees award the Peace Prize and the scientific awards.

[Alter Kaker]

I am sick and tired of hearing how the WWW was "invented" at cern. HTML, u subset of the SGML standards is hardly the "web.

But everything that has happened since has been a result of Berners-Lee invention of HTML. HTML is hardly the end of the line.

[CasearianDaoist]

Your ignorance of Computer Science is only equaled by your ignorance of physics (not to mention the political machinations - and attendant agitprop - surrounding the funding international big science.)

I was not even going to respond to your last post because it was so uninformed and altogether rather silly. What are you, some sort of undergraduate?

What idiotic posts. You have not the faintest idea what you are talking about. You are just mouthing someone else's PR. You must spent too much time talking to Europeans. You sound like a troll to me.

[furball4paws]

"You don't work in biotech, I take it."

I did and still do and he's right.

[Alter Kaker]

You must spent too much time talking to Europeans.

Quite possibly.

You sound like a troll to me.

You must be joking.

[af_vet_rr]

My experience is that American science in the post Sputnik era has been fruitless.

I would assume you lump things like the internet under R&D.

In a way, this is the fault of Washington and in a way it's the fault of society.

Politicians don't think about things in the future, they only want the here and now, because that is something they can sell the folks back home who vote for them.

The typical American doesn't care how important math and science are, they are more concerned about what's going to happen on Survivor or what celebrity is sleeping with what celebrity. Meanwhile other nations (China, India), do know how important math and science are.

Look at NASA, which while it still has some world-class science, there has been countless billions and billions of dollars wasted on the Shuttle, which is a glorified satellite launch and space station resupply system. We could have done the same things using Saturn V rockets and it would have been more reliable and a helluva lot cheaper. Other than satellites related to national security, this stuff should have been contracted out to Lockheed or some similar group a long time ago, and all of those billions spent on real science, not simply giving some politicians' constituents a bunch of cushy jobs.

I would like to think Burt Rutan and his group will shake the government up, not just in NASA, but elsewhere. In some ways, one could argue that they are already are, but I have the feeling Congress will find some way to stick NASA with some kind of expensive system that just sucks up more and more funds (but benefits their constituents in some way).

[hosepipe]

[ Different committees award the Peace Prize and the scientific awards. ]

Probably.. but liberal alterkakers have worse "vision" problems than un-liberal ones.. and Nobel alterkakers are all liberal ones..

[Alter Kaker]

Probably.. but liberal alterkakers have worse "vision" problems than un-liberal ones.. and Nobel alterkakers are all liberal ones..

And then there's conservative old me, scratching my head and not understanding your post.

[hosepipe]

[ And then there's conservative old me, scratching my head and not understanding your post. ]

A play on aulte kaker(old man- Yiddish)..

[Alter Kaker]

A play on aulte kaker(old man- Yiddish)..

I understand that... oh well, I must be too doddering to get your joke.

[anymouse]

You are still locked in the people vs. robot argument paradigm. Each have their place in space exploration (and in terrestrial exploration for that matter.)

The issue at hand is that government funded research and development science is inefficient and wasteful regardless of whether people or robots are involved - it is only a matter of magnitude of money wasted.

[Sirc_Valence]

"I was trying to point out how ridiculous it is to claim that government grants have choked off real science, or that we haven't had any advances to sputnik. It can be hard to advance real science through the private sector alone."

I understand that some folks are just convinced by this Marxist view, so much so that it appears no longer Marxist, but moderate (middle of the road) and maybe even correct. In a sense, that's a conservative view, it is orthodox. But the perception is really a forcefit puzzle piece on a jigsaw in which some sections have been deliberately left out of the box presented to the persons being told to put it together. For the most part, this is not done on purpose.

The point that was being made, I believe, in the comment that we've been seeing more development than science is really that as the intellectuals deviate from the values that produced America, the country as a whole continues to buy sell produce innovate, etc. etc. The engineering and mathematics dept.s are more difficult to propagandize in than in the humanities so this has affected the politics and economic system of this country in a negative way, which in turn has lowered America's potential. Although that potential has not been destroyed, and is not close to being so, we have to correct certain erroneous presumptions unless it might and because it's our duty to.

The only sound reason for scientific development to be pushed for by any government of free individuals via public sector funding is for national defense. That is, primarily for weapons systems and support, including and not limited to IT.

Science in and of itself in its proper role must be conducted by private individuals and institutions, such as by Universities and special organizations. Otherwise, you get diminishing returns from the resource and manpower available as a general rule, and diminish individual freedom by using what should be the savings or spendings of others' labor to directed towards the ends of one group of individuals over another. Whether it be for "science" or "art" or "health" or "poverty" this is wrong. In each case, this violation of liberty by some citizens over others, will do some good, but it will do more harm. The benefit does not outweigh the cost. "Welfare" made this painfully clear, but obviously not clear enough, because you don't seem to see that the government spending on the things that I mentioned all are patterened after the same model. They work more on rhetoric than in actuality. Rather than pyramids where large stones support smaller ones and form larger and firm foundations for the next level, the cumulative effect of government usurping the role of the market is to build areas where the pyramids are built upside down which creates stress on the whole structure, creating an unstable and brittle object. I would recommend Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression for a better expression of what I just wanted to illustrate. More of a conclusion than an explanation.

I wonder if it was worth it to the Soviets to be "first" in this or that space objective as the projects supported by their "government's" system of involuntary servitude without question increased the starvation of the people of the "People's" Republic.

It's the same thing, but on a smaller scale here, limited only by our Constitution and Judeo-Christian values, but not by our "liberal" academics.

George Soros and the like, just a fraction of them, who spend tons and tons of money to undo America's economic system, in the name of "the people" (research who is really the party of the rich) can take care of those who are truly helpless in this nation with just a fraction of their money. See, but they want to be man molders more than man supporters. Once you get past the self-flattering lables, Hollyood illusions and unreliable policies, you find that.

[LiveBait]

That is an interesting reply, and I'm not sure I understand your argument fully. Science in American has long been funded in large part by the government, since the private sector cannot fund projects with no obvious commercial output. These same sciences, of course, led to the development of much of modern technology through the private sector. (take, for instance, the internet). I respectfully disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing.

[Sirc_Valence]

If you are alluding to the internet, then the model of production that it was developed by coincided with the purposes of government, in conjunction with Rand Corp. within the context of defense. And therefore it was legitimate. Things that deviate in purpose from that are wrong.

It's that simple. When someone speaks respectfully about taking from another's pocket, "for your own good" then unless you are calling your fellow citizen a madman, and establish the fact, then you are doing a bad thing in treating him like one, especially if you call yourself a "liberal."