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NPR?
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Posted by James [Email] (more from James) on Sat, 4 Dec 2010 15:07:16 Share Post by Email
In Reply to: I was listening to the same NPR segment on Monday, Reality, Thu, 2 Dec 2010 22:42:27
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my problem is I love a good debate!

remember, I'm from Canada, so I had to google NPR (ok, I'd heard of it referred to before)... I had to chuckle a little that you'd be tuning into public radio... I think you may have just proved me right ;-)...

but that aside, the examples you cite are not fundamental research, they are the kinds of developments businesses tend to be pretty good at (plastics, microprocessor advancements, etc). Industry uses the term R&D, but really the emphasis is on the D. The sorts of R done in industry tend to be short term and limited in scope (though a handful of very large, and significantly bureaucratic I might add, corporations have moderately long term R). Let's just say, in most cases, you do not go for an engineering job emphasizing your abilities in R if you want to get the job!

I don't know how funding is done in the US, but in Canada, it is based on peer reviewed grant proposals. It's not perfect, but scientists review the science, not bureaucrats. Very little fundamental research is really about the origins of the universe or global warming. The trouble is, the stuff that really is of interest doesn't always look good on the cover of Scientific American, so the general populace may not understand, and quite frankly, they probably don't need to. Unfortunately, most of it is also of little interest to industry, today, but the results of some of that work will stimulate future industry.

In Canada, we have the NRC labs, which, have their pros + cons, but have (among other things, like providing national measurement standards) spun-off a decent number of high tech companies. It's not perfect. There's probably some so-so stuff, and some bureaucracy for sure, but there are some world class programs there as well. Would you shut down the world class stuff just to cut some bureaucracy? Kill all those spin-offs? like I said, it's early stage "early stage VC"... not every VC project is a win.

One of the downsides here (imho), is that more + more, our government is asking researchers (like NRC + universities) to show "industrial applicability" to obtain funding as a sort of "fiscal accountability" (often by those with biases not unlike your own)... This causes problems, because in many cases it's hard to see the applicability of true fundamental research a priori (hence the "fundamental")... so it introduces overhead + inefficiency on the part of the researchers to mitigate the situation. Imho, an organization like NRC or a university lab is much better suited to fundamental research and industry is much better suited to product development. The 2 can interact without one being forced to pretend to be the other...

So do I like government meddling + bureaucracy... nope. do I think a government can provide some upside that is really hard to get out of private enterprise... yup. to me it's an optimization problem: maximize the good, minimize the bureaucracy. Will never be perfect. Better governments are better. all imho of course!

James...



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