I’m generally supportive of more funding for science in principle but I *would* say that lack of money is not the primary problem today and that the marginal returns to additional funding would be (have been!) slight.
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What would you say is the #1 action our society should take? (Or does that require more study before we know?)
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Break up NIH and NSF into 10+ bodies with fully independent approaches. Every 5-10 years, reassess their budgets. Hegemonic monoculture today very pernicious.
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Like. Though we already have DOE, DOD, and other sources of funding so that experiment is already partially afoot? I like idea of a wide diversity of sources. Some light, fast, and private (yours!). Some gargantuan. Everything in between.
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DOE/DOD not that relevant for most scientists. And DOE budget dwarfed by NIH. Certainly better than nothing, yes. I think gargantuan funding institutions are bad because they force ecosystem to adapt to their preferences. (Not doing so is an irrational career strategy.)
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Relevance to most scientists I think less important than the scientific value of the efforts? (And hard to compare full-time government scientists at National Labs to university profs?) No gargantuan funding means no space program, no LHC, etc.? Hard to see how we avoid a mix.
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LHC some of the lowest-ROI science ever done! I’m not *against* funding it but it sure isn’t an example of a healthy funding ecosystem IMO.
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And do you agree that gargantuan efforts are sometimes necessary? LHC may be a bad example but of course even big bets are still bets and there seem to be many other good ones. I am for more heterogeneity and more $.
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Yeah, a gargantuan effort towards fusion could be a huge deal. Or new vaccine approaches.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER is surely gargantuan? DOE estimates cost at $65B[1]. On vaccines, NIAID budget is about $6B/year[2]... $60B over ten years also seems somewhat gargantuan. [1] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20180416a/full/ … [2]https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/budget-appropriation-fiscal-year-2020 …
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Point being: we spend *enormous* amounts of money today. But efficacy with which we do so seems quite poor. (We've discovered *one* broad-spectrum antiviral drug since Fauci took over NIAID 36(!!) years ago[1]. Is the problem really insufficient funding?) https://www.elsevier.es/es-revista-medicina-universitaria-304-articulo-history-progress-antiviral-drugs-from-S166557961500037X …
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Increasing funding is good. But the point is (usually) not to throw more money at the things we currently throw a lot of money at. It's to broaden the set of things we throw money at, and increase the number of people coming up with new and different approaches.
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End of conversation
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