Comments on: Science in hard times

By: The Keystone Garter

The Keystone Garter — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:36:13 +0000

There are abstractions that get more bang for buck. “Directions for future research” is often a part of papers. But the scientist keeps his/her own best ideas to achieve future salary. There is something to be gained by focussing on specialty, but a better pyramid could be built if the scientist or research group were given compensation for outputting publicly accessible non-WMD future research paper ideas. Instead of following a path throughout one’s career, another scientist would take the next step. The original scientist would switch to working on the third idea or something tangential that has just emerged. You guys did this for Ideas Factory. Maybe time for some teleconferencing science; surely if holograms.

By: The Keystone Garter

The Keystone Garter — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:15:06 +0000

Indexing public R+D inversely to GDP isn’t bad. Better is median GDP. Better is estimating future debt service costs and subtracting from GDP as debt kills public R+D public support. Because public R+D generally takes longer to recoup products, it needs a longer funding timeline (that can be killed if disappointing early R+D). This also means there is a time penalty and the public R+D funding should be less than private, all else equal (can tax private R+D for more public R+D).
R+D could be indexed inversely to the person-yrs of research, lead researchers have. But is international R+D system now; could buy foreign researchers. Can be indexed inversely to R+D lab equipment depreciation.
Demographics may play a role as want to maximize number of products introduced before retirement; Japan’s demographics would suggest nearer term R+D so can pay for public budget, but not so for China.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:42:01 +0000

Warren – it’s certainly the case that the US government funds a great deal of research in the private sector (usually in defense) and some of that filters back to universities and national labs. UK funding from the Technology Strategy Board – where the TSB funds consortia of companies and universities, generally company-led, has some similarities, though its on a much smaller scale and closer to application than the US situation. Some EU framework projects also look a bit like this.

By: Warren Taylor

Warren Taylor — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:09:42 +0000

What if the government gave funding to private companies, with the agreement that these companies in turn fund what they believe to be economically profitable academic research within universities etc? I don’t know if schemes like these already exist but they could be a compromise between free-market and state controlled ideologies.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:15:42 +0000

Chris, there is quite a lot of that kind of econometric study out there already. There's a good review in this paper from Ben Martin at SPRU The benefits of publically funded research (PDF).

By: Chris Gilgallon

Chris Gilgallon — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:08:42 +0000

Yes, that’s fair enough, to an extent. But politics isn’t a curate’s egg. Perhaps reducing R&D expenditure was the one right thing the governments in question did, and everything else they did wrong. I’m not suggesting that seriously, but proving it one way or another is nigh on impossible with a sample of one and so many variables and time delay effects.

That said, a proper report on research funding and growth could be a real boost for science worldwide. I’m sure there is data from most advanced countries that could be obtained, and its not like you RS guys would have a shortage of international colleagues willing to help out. Get some statisticians on the numbers then go into every meeting on the matter with a giant pile of evidence to back you up. I can already hear the jeers of ‘vested interest’ from the back benches.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:03:45 +0000

Andy, short-termism in one sense is clearly the problem, but I think it’s too simplistic to blame this on having too many accountants or not enough scientists in management – people making investment decisions respond to what’s rational in the circumstances they are in, and it is this broader environment that makes it difficult to justify long-term investments (this really is what I was arguing in my earlier post on good capitalism and bad capitalism).

Chris, I agree that it is difficult to make a direct link between public research spending and GDP, and there’s a disclaimer to this effect in my penultimate paragraph. The point I was making, though, was that the reduction in R&D expenditure in the UK didn’t happen by accident, it was an integral part of a broader ideological approach to economic policy which, the GDP evidence suggests, has failed.

By: Chris Gilgallon

Chris Gilgallon — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:31:01 +0000

I think it’s very difficult to tie GDP into anything convincingly because there’s so many factors that affect it.

Still if there was data from many many countries on public research spending and gdp, perhaps a more convincing case could be put forward?

By: Andy Parnell

Andy Parnell — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:02:05 +0000

Dear Richard,

do you think that research scientists in industrial companies have been involved in the senior management enough or prized by the senior management ? Is it a case that accountants have not fully appreciated these people ?

Shortsightedness has left a lot of companies with lacklustre product pipelines, for instance BIg Pharma is facing a drought of new lucrative drugs. Also the recent crisis at Olympus shows that some companies have been more interested in playing the markets than developing blockbusting technology that will deliver profits and maintain their edge over competitors.

Andy Parnell