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Down here in the states, half a mil pre-tax personal pay (from salary, benefits and personal cuts in grants) is actually quite common among professors who can routinely get grants. The grants themselves run into much higher numbers, and the grad students are paid peanuts.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with "design by test" . . . ultimately all designs have to be tested by reality. That's what keeps the free market place grounded in reality. The problem with government funding in intellectual activities is that the eventual tendency is to avoid contact with reality; i.e. avoiding that crucial reality test, and build the whole edifice on the say-so of the top guy in the hierarchy. That was the case in Western Europe before 1500, and in the middleast and far east before 1900. The soviet union reverted back to that mode in many of their academic fields after government take-over. The masses of students going into Global Warming studies in recent years is an early sign of the perverting of scientific research by non-testable nonsense. When theories can be put to the reality test, the half-million a year professors run the risk of losing next round of funding if the younger entrants in the field come up with a better theory/approach. When theories are not testable at all, the existing hierarchy is preserved and the top guys continue to get their funding until they pass from this world. That's why if the funding of research is dependent on the government, it's inevitable that research will become non-disruptive activity: i.e. nothing new will be discovered that is not "predicted by the wise words" of an elder. LOL. i.e. theocracy.
I have been saying all along that intellectual curiosity itself would provide the drive for fundamental research (BTW, outfits like IBM and Bell Labs have/did many fundamental research). However, pursuits along those curiosities require two conditions:
(1) the curious minds have to be already trained in the relevant fields of study. Government funding tilts the relative incentives of entering different fields when the guys/gals are young and have to take on huge debts to prepare themselves. That's the stage when money is extremely important, not necessarily because of greed, but due to opportunity cost and debts that they have to take on.
(2) There can not be a hierarchy that forecloses upon new ideas that are disruptive to the existing hierarchy. Scientific research is about discovering errors/incompleteness in past thinking. Having a government/church funded intellectual hierarchy that has built its credibility on earth being the center of the universe is of course highly detrimental to any curious minds that might want to explore helio-centric theories. Researching how many angels can dance on the tip of the pin and anthropogenic/earth-centric global warming would be much safer careers in that environment.
posted by 24.91.39...
, Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:20:06
, Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:33:51
, Sat, 9 Jul 2011 13:06:57
, Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:40:16, Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:27:51, Fri, 8 Jul 2011 14:20:12
, Fri, 8 Jul 2011 09:26:41
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