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.)
-
-
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.
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
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.
4 replies 0 retweets 9 likes -
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 $.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Yeah, a gargantuan effort towards fusion could be a huge deal. Or new vaccine approaches.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
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 …
2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes -
Yeah it's not bad! I predict more vaccine spending in the years to come (bold, I know).
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @Noahpinion @patrickc and
Gargantuan efforts can have drawbacks: The brainpower behind ITER and NIF is not behind other stuff. Sure there are spillovers; but if something else ends up working it will retrospectively have seemed a subpar use of resources. (e.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-015-0053-y … )
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes -
I don't believe brainpower is in particularly limited supply. Look at the number of smart people working in finance who could be working in science if it paid more.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Noahpinion @patrickc and
I've made that argument in the past and thought about writing about it (There's that Weyl paper on taxation and allocation of talent as a starting point), but idk how optimistic the conclusion will be.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
I wonder about this and related questions a lot -- both nature of supply itself and characteristics of its allocation.
-
-
Replying to @patrickc @Noahpinion and
Fortunately I may soon have lots of more time to synthesise this stuff :-)
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Payoff from figuring out fusion is much bigger than all other things combined
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.