Fiscal austerity? English, doc!

D-Liver: Fiscal austerity? English, doc!

No money to fund science projects. I feel a brain drain coming on.

Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it. Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

James Clerk Maxwell's study into electromagnetism was seen as a mere curiosity with no practical purposes.

Anyone who is familiar with James Burke's tv series Connections will know the principle of unpredictability regarding scientific advances. Only the truly great countries can fund science for its own sake. And overall, the return on investment in scientific research is many fold. Small minded bean counters would have you believe otherwise.

/I'm a scientist, so I'm not getting a kick from budget cuts...

mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

You might have a point if most business weren't so short-sighted about investing in research these days. But in reality, you don't. "Science to satisfy curiosity" is what moves humanity forward.

It's also really cheap compared to all kinds of other things that we spend money on. It's just an easy target because it doesn't produce immediate benefits all the time, and it doesn't have a massive lobby to defend its funding.

EvilEgg: /The stuff that is going to pay off immediately is called engineering.

...or Phase III clinical trials.

EvilEgg: The problem with science it is almost impossible to tell the pointless naval gazing from the stuff that is going to pay off at some point in the future.

That's not a "problem" really given that the reason we can't tell those things apart is that we don't necessarily know the importance of any given discovery up front. No research, at least properly conducted, is "pointless", as it all contributes to the sum total of humanity's knowledge. Not everything has to have an immediate "payoff" in order to be worthwhile. And besides, it's just not that expensive compared to numerous other government spending priorities.

mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

Virtually all science is "science to satisfy curiosity" at its earliest stages. That's one of the problems.

If Ronald Reagan were president of Europe, this wouldn't be a problem.

Given they shamelessly lied about man made global warming, I'm more than happy to see their funding reduced.

/those "independent" investigations were either run by the schools whose reputation was about to be ruined or left wing parties with an active stake in perpetuating the false hood
//it would be like saying Enron was innocent because the US Chamber of Commerce and RNC "independent" commissions exonerated them

mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

jack21221:
James Clerk Maxwell's study into electromagnetism was seen as a mere curiosity with no practical purposes.

Very well said... Such is the case with most of physics (from Newton to CERN). Nobody just woke up one day and said "let me engineer a computer so that I can trade pictures of cats on the internet".

The stuff happening at CERN is at the century-millenial scale of science. You won't see any practical payoffs for dozens, if not hundreds of years. The ONLY way that kind of research is going to happen is if we (collectively) as a society view it as important, despite the short-term costs.

// Thinks the *real* reason they are shutting accelerators down is as a precaution to mayan prophecy

EvilEgg:
It is a problem if you are the scientist looking for someone to give you money.

Well, yeah, but it's not a problem with science. It's a problem with the way government and business decides on priorities.

This is where it would pay to have a large sum of money liquid...

I'd buy a few scientists (HIRE, okay?), build a lab, and then rockets for powersats in Earth orbit....

>.>

/Has been trying to play Earth Orbit Stations for too long.

mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

Everyone else is tap dancing around it, so I'm just gonna come out and say it.

YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM

Investing in Science has a huge "future discount". That is to say, you can't predict the practical benefits of pure research, and whatever practical benefits it might have are often decades away^*

This means that corporations will rarely invest in pure research, and if they do, it's fairly limited. Most of the time, they're still reliant on government grants to get the research funded. Why? Because companies need to show returns on a narrow timeline- they operate in terms of quarters and fiscal years, and- at the longest- a five year plan. This may have been different in the past, but today, that's how things work.

Ideally, a government has guaranteed continuity, and can afford to invest in things that have a high future discount because the government is far more likely to still be around to benefit from the rewards. Unfortunately, a republic runs counter to this. While the government has continuity, the individuals in that government do not. Woe be to the Democrat that funds a project that comes to fruition during a Republican administration.

While living in a republic has other advantages, this is one huge problem, not just for pure research, but for social programs or reforms.

^*Mind you, knowing a little bit more about the world we live in is its own reward, even if we don't get a new gadget out of it.

EvilEgg: It is a problem if you are the scientist looking for someone to give you money

Which is why we need an organization with a large amount of money organized around continuity, that gives money to scientists. I propose we call this organization, "the government".

EvilEgg: Maybe not a problem with science, but it is a problem for science.

Unfortunately, this very "problem" is one of the main reasons science is so powerful. Pursuing crazy ideas when we don't know whether they will pay off or not is how we make massive leaps in our understanding, and hence in our society. Not everything will work out, but every now and then, something does.

The problem that scientists have to combat is the fact that humans are so short-sighted. Most people simply don't have the mentality to think much beyond 5 years in the future. They occasionally do in a few cases, such as when planning for their children's college education or their own retirement. But beyond 100 years or so? The vast majority of people don't think about it, or care. They expect future advances to magically occur out of nowhere, but they don't want to fund all the blind alleys that have to be searched before we get there.

Mnemia: No research, at least properly conducted, is "pointless", as it all contributes to the sum total of humanity's knowledge.

t3knomanser: *Mind you, knowing a little bit more about the world we live in is its own reward, even if we don't get a new gadget out of it.

I wonder how many people who say that they believe this would also mock sociological/literary/any liberal-arts type research. There are just as many conventions, rules, and procedures to follow in those fields, but I don't find a ton of people supporting my research into Victorian poetry and the cult of the woman.

Nor am I saying that everyone should be waiting on tenterhooks to see what I write about Christina Rossetti--they shouldn't. Most of you would find it boring and unrelated to real life. My point is just that there are apparent limits to how much we should and do value knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Pshaw, what have scientists ever done for us?

apart from antibiotics

Mnemia: mycatisposter: Well, the rest of us must earn what we spend. Why not scientists? If the science is worth something to some entity, then they will pay for it.
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

You might have a point if most business weren't so short-sighted about investing in research these days. But in reality, you don't. "Science to satisfy curiosity" is what moves humanity forward.

It's also really cheap compared to all kinds of other things that we spend money on. It's just an easy target because it doesn't produce immediate benefits all the time, and it doesn't have a massive lobby to defend its funding.

Then get your own lab. It's cheap, right?

and electricity

Our society just has too many overpaid, under worked office and boardroom-dwelling paper-shuffling (or info-shuffling) denizens who are sucking the rest of us dry with their exorbitant compensation.

The enemy of our society? It wears a three-piece suit, a tie, has a precision haircut and drives a benz or a beemer. Sure, we need people to run things, but we could probably prosper with one-tenth the bureaucrats we have today.

Mnemia: No research, at least properly conducted, is "pointless", as it all contributes to the sum total of humanity's knowledge

and winners of the 2009 ig noble prizes are:

* Biology: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.

* Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M. Castano of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, for creating diamond film from tequila.[50]

* Economics: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks - Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland - for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa (and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy).

* Literature: Ireland's police service for writing and presenting more than 50 traffic tickets to a Polish individual, by the name of Prawo Jazdy. Mr Jazdy was widely thought to be the most frequent driving offender in Ireland, until an investigation uncovered the fact that Prawo Jazdy is the polish term for "Driving License". [51]

* Mathematics: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers by having his bank print notes with denominations ranging from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars.

* Medicine: Donald L. Unger of Thousand Oaks, California, US, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand but not his right hand every day for 50 years.[52]

* Peace: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining whether it is better to be hit on the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.[53]

* Physics: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E Lieberman of Harvard University and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, all in the US, for analytically determining why pregnant women do not tip over.[54]

* Public Health: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, US, for inventing a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks - one for the wearer and one to be given to a needy bystander.[55]

* Veterinary medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, UK, for showing that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless.[56]

and describing our place in the universe

and decoding DNA

farquette: I wonder how many people who say that they believe this would also mock sociological/literary/any liberal-arts type research.

Well, I'm certainly not one of them. I'm a big fan of funding culture as well, and that's another thing that a government is well placed to support. Of course, there's absolutely no reason that cultural research needs the kinds of money that scientific research often does. You don't need a particle accelerator to discuss the impact of the cultural zeitgeist on Emily Dickinson's poetry as a gynocentric, post-modern deconstruction. Although that would make poetry about a billion times more awesome.

farquette: My point is just that there are apparent limits to how much we should and do value knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Obviously. Resources are finite, and we need to prioritize. In an ideal world, academics would be given an infinitely deep money bucket to pull from. But we don't live in that world.

but really, apart from that, what?

I don't want to talk to a scientist, y'all mother farkers lyin, and gettin me pissed.

farquette:
I wonder how many people who say that they believe this would also mock sociological/literary/any liberal-arts type research. There are just as many conventions, rules, and procedures to follow in those fields, but I don't find a ton of people supporting my research into Victorian poetry and the cult of the woman.

Nor am I saying that everyone should be waiting on tenterhooks to see what I write about Christina Rossetti--they shouldn't. Most of you would find it boring and unrelated to real life. My point is just that there are apparent limits to how much we should and do value knowledge for knowledge's sake.

I don't oppose funding sociological or other humanities research, but I also don't believe that most of it is science. Some of it is, but most of it is not. So it's something fundamentally different in that it doesn't use the scientific method and doesn't produce compounding gains over time.

It may well be worthwhile somehow in helping us to better understand humanity and our past, and in that regard I support funding for it. But it's not a scientific field, and it's not likely to ever produce the kinds of tangible benefits that scientific fields often do.

Science's main problem is the time horizon of humanity being too short. Humanities research's main problem is that it's not likely to EVER have an impact on society, a lot of the time (discounting, of course, the revolutionary movements and such that were fueled by academic writing and philosophy).

EvilEgg: The problem with science it is almost impossible to tell the pointless naval gazing from the stuff that is going to pay off at some point in the future.

/The stuff that is going to pay off immediately is called engineering.

THIS

The reality is though you are in a battle for resources with every other competing constituency from defense contractors to single mothers to schools and churches. Home ever can push the votes is who gets the money right, wrong or indifferent. It also leads to some rather unholy temporary alliances too.

Mad Scientist: EvilEgg: /The stuff that is going to pay off immediately is called engineering.

...or Phase III clinical trials.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5603506

Has been in phase III not-so-clinical trials in my backyard for several decades.

Yummy.

/yes, is self funded.
//Seriously, get off my lawn...it's dancing for me and doesn't appreciate your advances.

I didn't save the thread, but at least the quote and poster:

Micky-P: And if we'd spent even half of what we spent finding new ways to kill each other over the last 40 years instead on space travel, we'd probably have probes going to some of those potentially habital planets by now...

And a permanent moon base, with mining...and vacationing for those not talented enough to be astronauts like me...

As a species our priorities are farked up...

t3knomanser 2010-09-07 08:50:49 AM

EvilEgg: It is a problem if you are the scientist looking for someone to give you money

Which is why we need an organization with a large amount of money organized around continuity, that gives money to scientists. I propose we call this organization, "the government".

Well, government is subject to such things as overspending and austerity measures, as well as political interference. A much better way to fund pure science is for a non-profit organization be formed by government, one time, given a bunch of money, one time. Put the money into investments then fund research through those investments. As well as ongoing contributions from universities and other NGO's .

HempHead: and winners of the 2009 ig noble prizes are:


Many of those are not even scientists. Some of the others may well be worthwhile science. There's no way to judge whether it's decent work based on a one-sentence blurb about how it sounds so "silly".

Sorry, gotta fund welfare and social programs for large numbers of people who provide nothing to society, the community, employers, or even their own families or selves. Scientists, get to the back of the line.

mycatisposter:
Science to satisfy curiosity is a different matter, entirely.

Science. You don't get it.

YouFarkingIdiot: Sorry, gotta fund welfare and social programs for large numbers of people who provide nothing to society, the community, employers, or even their own families or selves. Scientists, get to the back of the line.

The moron above fails to realize that we did exactly this, quite well, mind you, for 50 farking years before the NEO-Liberal Cons stoll our country from us.

Seriously, Fark Off and DIAF already asswipe.

+1 for the troll

ladyfortuna: Micky-P: And if we'd spent even half of what we spent finding new ways to kill each other over the last 40 years instead on space travel, we'd probably have probes going to some of those potentially habital planets by now...

And a permanent moon base, with mining...and vacationing for those not talented enough to be astronauts like me...

As a species our priorities are farked up...

Maybe if scientists figured out how to kill off evil, we wouldn't have to spend so much money on killing each other. So it's the scientists' fault!

We need a Monarchy.

With a hereditary king.

That'll give perspective!

Impudent Domain: Well, government is subject to such things as overspending and austerity measures, as well as political interference. A much better way to fund pure science is for a non-profit organization be formed by government, one time, given a bunch of money, one time. Put the money into investments then fund research through those investments. As well as ongoing contributions from universities and other NGO's .

What makes you think that a private entity would also not be subject to such things as overspending and austerity measures? If a private organization runs out of money, the funding for research stops (which could be catastrophic for some long-term research work). Government, on the other hand, can spend on deficit or raise taxes in order to ensure continuity of funding in times of crisis. If they don't, it's purely because the "bad" forces within government have the upper hand.

t3knomanser: EvilEgg: It is a problem if you are the scientist looking for someone to give you money

Which is why we need an organization with a large amount of money organized around continuity, that gives money to scientists. I propose we call this organization, "the government".

True, though the problem with government is competing constituencies. He who can get the votes, gets the money. Its that brutally simple for good or ill.

Science like any other project is going to have to justify itself. The old argument Knowledge for Knowledge's sake doesn't fly with someone without a job and we are all going to suffer for it I'm afraid.

X-boxershorts: The moron above fails to realize that we did exactly this, quite well, mind you, for 50 farking years before the NEO-Liberal Cons stoll our country from us.

Seriously, Fark Off and DIAF already asswipe.

+1 for the troll

Wow, did you just shiat yourself? Wipe it off your face, it's pretty disgusting.

Unless you're from a few select countries (many of them with massive natural resources), then you've been funding your social and welfare programs with massive debt.

And I'm sorry I offended you. My comment won't prevent you from picking up your next welfare check.

crazytrpr: He who can get the votes, gets the money. Its that brutally simple for good or ill.

As I said- it's one of the tragic drawbacks of a republic. The governmental time horizon is usually measured in 4-year increments. If it can be completed in 4 years, great- I'll use that in my re-election speech. If it isn't completed, my successor could use it in his re-election speeches, and that's not good for "my side".

Mnemia: a lot of the time (discounting, of course, the revolutionary movements and such that were fueled by academic writing and philosophy).

That's a rather silly thing to say. "Science isn't likely to ever have an impact on society, except for the occasional discovery."