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A new article reveals that large corporations are investing less in science. From 1980 to 2006, publications by company scientists have declined in a range of industries. The result holds across a range of industries.
Investigators also found that the value attributed to scientific research has dropped, whereas the value attributed to technical knowledge (as measured by patents) has remained stable. Companies appear to be focusing more on developing existing knowledge and commercializing it, rather than on creating new knowledge through basic research.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127124929.htm
[Abstract]: The decline of science in corporate R&D
Remembering AT&T Bell Labs, IBM Labs, Xerox PARC, HP Labs, TI, etc. In the current political and economic situation, do you think companies in USA have the will and means to reverse this decline?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:09AM (4 children)
A cool CEO costs, what $25M a year? Compare to basic R&D that costs 100x that. Cut that shit!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:27AM (3 children)
I've said this before. Being in the dirty dating scene. The women can stand stinky North Africans, they can stand Whites who have a bare minimum of bathing standard. But one thing they can't stand are those stinky, pushy, Indians. Indians are the most obnoxious of assholes. Nobody in the U.S. likes Indians except for the assholes who hire them.
Good luck, you stinky, pushy, fucks. Enjoy not being liked by women who prefer Northern African Blacks in preference to you.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:48AM
ARRRRRRRGH! I AM WOUNDED! THE HEAT! IT BURNS! I WILL HATE YOU UNTIL MY DYING BREATH!
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:13AM
you beautiful lady, EF. Show bobs and vagene.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:59AM
Perhaps it has nothing to do with being pushy or stinky, Eth. Maybe this is the reason why [bbc.co.uk]:
And you're an asshole.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:12AM (5 children)
It may not be the best choice economically, but they get a sure-thing tax deduction and first dibs on research group work and students. Conversely, running your own research outfit can make the shareholders cranky because that big new breakthrough may not have immediate commercial applicability.
(Score: 5, Informative) by http on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:20AM (4 children)
...except that the new taxs rules count grad student tuition easement as earned income, increasing their tax burden by anywhere from 30% to 400%. The number of PhDs the USA is going to create is going to drop to... well, close to zero, and the only people who'll be grad students are going to be the obedient children of the stupidly rich.
Goodbye innovation.
Canadian educational institutions are chortling with glee.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:34AM
Isn't that already the case? That many PhDs are just in the program because of family tradition? Why else put up with seven years of grad school, followed by five years of postdoc programs for a further 10 years of slavery to get tenure?
And is there any compelling reason why the "salary" part of stipends should be free from federal tax (and it is already taxed by several states)? If this goes through, I would expect stipends to rise to allow students to live. Postdocs get paid a shitty salary, but they have to make taxes out of what little they get.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:11AM (2 children)
A number near zero (or as in my case, multiple times, was zero) isn't going to grow much.
Won't happen. Taxes just aren't a big problem. I grant we might see a small decline in enrollment, but given the current massive oversupply of PhDs in most fields, I'm not seeing what is supposed to be negative about this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by http on Thursday November 30 2017, @09:36AM (1 child)
The fact that you can't follow the basic math [washingtonpost.com] makes me doubt your suggestion that you went to university.
Or maybe you can, but you don'twant to follow it, maybe it threatens your livelyhood? I'm just guessing at your excuses, I don't know you aside from the shit you post on SN.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:26PM
But it's not the end of the world here even should this particular proposal end up in law. This grad student, for example, can move to a region with lower tuition and living costs. The school can drop the amount of tuition it charges or pay the extra $12k or so to keep him (~40k tuition). Or the grad student author can move out of a way over-saturated field and get a real job. We need to remember that there is a huge oversupply of PhD graduate students in most subjects, including history [princeton.edu]. Or he can pay the extra $10k or so out of his salary (which is already $30k).
His situation isn't most graduate students' situations who have far lower wages and tuition to deal with. I know when I was in grad school at UC Davis last decade, I had a salary of roughly $20k and tuition costs around $12k. Taxes would have been around $2-3k (depending on at what point I hit the 25% tax bracket). It wouldn't have been pleasant, but I could afford the tax payment.
Personally, I don't see the point of cutting taxes when one isn't cutting entitlement benefits, subsidies, or military spending which make up about three quarters of what the US currently spends.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:15AM (5 children)
Those outfits all had lock-down monopoly or sizable market power and reaped abnormal level of profit. But yeah, today's monopolies pour their money into lobbying instead.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:32AM (3 children)
Anyone know what the tax rules were on R&D, "back then"?
I suspect the tax incentives for R&D were quite favourable. Also, with on-shore manufacturing, prototype to production could be done in-house, without too much IP leakage.
Now, by the time the CAD files have been emailed to China, a rival company has started knocking off copies.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:38AM
When IBM was drawing letters with individual atoms, that's not the kind of stuff that gets knocked off, but it is the kind of stuff that leads to innovations like their when their magnetic hard drive storage capacity leapfrogged the standard (Moore's law) increases by a factor of 5 one year...
They have more means, and less will than ever. The fact that they (we?) have such ample means seems to be eroding the will.
If "we" put on an Apollo mission today, like the Kennedy speech kicked off in 1961 - not only could we be there in less than 5 years, we could also do it for a much smaller fraction of GDP. It hasn't gotten easier to put men on the surface of the moon and return them safely, we're just that much more capable now. But, since we have the means, the will to do it is now missing. When noone had done anything like it before, it was thrilling, impressive, and carried all kinds of weight in the world. After we had done it a few times, in the public's mind it became an expensive waste of time. (Not to mention: we got damned lucky not killing an Apollo astronaut while high above LEO and even though we could do it safer today, that's far from a guarantee...) Mars? Meh. Four letters, starts with M, easily confused and the mission is way too long to hold the spotlight spot in the news cycle.
When Bell Labs was reducing vacuum tubes to transistors and then chips, reducing buildings full of telephone switchgear into tiny boxes, that was thrilling and impressive - at least to anyone who had a slight idea of the implications. The biggest thrill we've gotten lately is replacing pimply teenagers with a self-serve kiosk in fast food restaurants, not much different from the self-checkout lines at WalMart and Lowes, if you ask me.
Self driving cars, digital cameras, and all the rest continue to be disruptive to the status quo, but they're less revolutionary breakthroughs and more evolution of long existing technology. Researchers are proving out the basis for solid state Magnesium based batteries, but people are more excited by Elon's giant factory producing decade old Lithium Ion tech, and when Magnesium finally does come to market, it won't be the revolution that replacing tubes with transistors was.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:45AM (1 child)
When Bell Labs and company were formed, taxes in the US were still 5 percent for all income brackets, excluding some asset specific levies that were put into place (like the hemp/marijuana tax stamps and a variety of other things.)
Back in those days you innovated, or died. Or in some cases exclusively innovated if you had contacts who could turn around and monetize those inventions.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:37PM
Bell Labs was founded in 1925. [wikipedia.org]
The tax rate in 1925 was well above 5% [insidegov.com]
Your good-old-days revisionist history is trivially disprovable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:32AM
They also got to look at the longer term picture when deciding how to spend their money. Any research, even the most trivial stuff, isn't going to see any fruits until at least a quarter or two down the line. For major stuff it might be years.
Part of the problem here is that the absurdly low tax rates on the richest provide a disincentive to companies investing in things like this because it gets in the way of the short-term goal of hoarding large sums of money.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:19AM (8 children)
Another reason research should be open and shared rather than hidden and duplicated just because...patents.
The world doesn't need more patents and lobbying to support them: it needs good, open, shared research LIKE IT USED TO BE!
Fucking corporations.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:58AM (7 children)
How much corporate research was shared? Bell Labs and Unix seems to be an exception to the rule. No, I don't have any citations to offer, but patents and corporate secrets have been a thing for a almost a century. Corporate espionage didn't spring into existence just in the last quarter century. Everything we have today, like trademarks and trade secrets, has always been there. You might make a case that abuse is more flagrant today, but there are limits to that as well.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:18AM (2 children)
Go for a job interview, with all those pushy unanaimated insectoid morons. It is no wonder that America is losing the battle, because the big boys are all Pajeet poodoos and Nguet Nguen idiots who don't understand a goddamn thing about English,
Go ahead, save your few bucks. You will lose to Apple!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:48AM (1 child)
Apple also hires Pajeet and Nguen, thank you very much. Jobs is dead, long live the turtleneck.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:14PM
I do not believe there is any danger to longevity. It's turtlenecks all the way down.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:43AM (3 children)
My first US patent started with the number 5, back around 1992 or 3, I think. I'm pretty sure there are at least twice that many now. So, from the patent act in 1790 until 1990, there were ~5 million patents issued, and in the following 27 years, there were ~5 million MORE patents issued.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:49AM (1 child)
And how many of those were bullshit software patents or patents for existing things that just added on a computer or on the internet?
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:22AM
Has anyone invented cyberpatents yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:32PM
Yes, there may be 5 million MORE patents, but of those half are junk like patenting "swipe to lock/unlock". That's no patent, its just IP protectionism games.
USA companies are investing in R&D - OOgle, aceBook .. the WRONG companies, pouring millions into researching how to strengthen themselves as the Data Barons and oppress the masses in the Land of the "Free", and the rest of the world as a bonus.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:24AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:41AM (3 children)
Spending NASA money and doing (private) research may be two different things.
Just sayin'
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:48AM (2 children)
Why spend your own money for research, when you can spend, say NASA's money (or any of the many other agencies in the US and elsewhere that engage in basic research funding), for your research? Privatize the profits, socialize the risks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday November 30 2017, @09:58AM (1 child)
Why do research at all when you can spend NASA's money for nothing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:16PM
Congrats. That's the winning business plan of the day sir!
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:43AM (2 children)
Google seems to fund a good amount of basic research on neural networks and quantum computing. How many times can you invent the transistor?
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:43AM
Let's see:
BJT, FET, MOSFET, IGBT... quite a number of times, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:23PM
On the surface semiconductors seem simple.
But after {con | in}sulting YouTube videos, I see that there are a surprising variety of semiconductor devices. All with different applications. We could just talk about variations on a diode [sparkfun.com]. How many and what they are for. Zeners. Light Emitting. Tunneling. Gunn. Schottky. Photo. Avalanche.
Similarly, SCRs, Triacs [wikipedia.org], and on and on.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:11PM
This is has blatantly obvious for a long time now; it's certainly not news in almost-2018, and has been talked about and written about for many years now.
In the current political and economic situation, do you think companies in USA have the will and means to reverse this decline?
No.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:29PM
Before we talk to badly about corporations*, it's not as they aren't investing in innovation. Modern corporations are trying all sorts of unheard of innovations at litigation in the courtroom. Making software patentable. Yes, that actually is a thing now that once was not. Rounded corner rectangles. Slide to unlock. Similarly Hollywood with the DMCA and their dream of third party liability. Or Oracle's copyrighted APIs and assertion that ALL APIs are the subject of copyright protection. Up is down. Black is white.
*corporations are people too. Don't hurt their feewings. They need safe spaces.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @03:08PM
Real men make their mark in sales and marketing.