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For more than a half century, it has been an article of faith that science would not get funded if government did not do it, and economic growth would not happen if science did not get funded by the taxpayer. Now Matt Ridley writes in The Wall Street Journal that when you examine the history of innovation, you find, again and again, that scientific breakthroughs are the effect, not the cause, of technological change. "It is no accident that astronomy blossomed in the wake of the age of exploration," says Ridley. "The steam engine owed almost nothing to the science of thermodynamics, but the science of thermodynamics owed almost everything to the steam engine. The discovery of the structure of DNA depended heavily on X-ray crystallography of biological molecules, a technique developed in the wool industry to try to improve textiles." According to Ridley technological advances are driven by practical men who tinkered until they had better machines; abstract scientific rumination is the last thing they do.
It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics. After all, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. and Britain made huge contributions to science with negligible public funding, while Germany and France, with hefty public funding, achieved no greater results either in science or in economics. To most people, the argument for public funding of science rests on a list of the discoveries made with public funds, from the Internet (defense science in the U.S.) to the Higgs boson (particle physics at CERN in Switzerland). But that is highly misleading. Given that government has funded science munificently from its huge tax take, it would be odd if it had not found out something. This tells us nothing about what would have been discovered by alternative funding arrangements. "Governments cannot dictate either discovery or invention," concludes Ridley. "They can only make sure that they don't hinder it. Innovation emerges unbidden from the way that human beings freely interact if allowed. Deep scientific insights are the fruits that fall from the tree of technological change."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2015, @05:19AM
The trouble is science has value only in the long term.
Exclusively long term thinking can be just as bad as exclusively short term thinking. The trouble here is that science has value in both short term and long term. But we have no way to value the long term thinking nor is it a good idea to do so.
When James Clerk Maxwell first formulated his equations in the 1860s no one had any idea that they would be useful for developing stuff like radio communications and so much else besides.
But they did know that better math equations meant more understanding of the EM phenomena. That increased the value of all present EM research, not just EM research 30 years later.
Is there some sort of private enterprise that would fund something that may or not make a profit half a century or more later?
At that time, you would have had a number of private universities and a little later, Edison's Menlo Park lab.
There have been research laboratories like Bell Labs and such but they are a minority.
And the majority has been university labs which are commonly private.
No private enterprise would have paid Maxwell for such research in the 1860's.
For the last eight years of his life (1871-1879), he was funded privately by an endowment from a relative of Henry Cavendish. So yes, private enterprise would have done so because they did so in the next decade of his life.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Saturday October 31 2015, @06:42AM
Such private endowments and private funding from universities aren't meant to produce a profit. I don't think William Cavendish was too concerned about the kind of return on investment he would get from the endowment he gave Maxwell, and the people funding university laboratories likewise aren't so concerned about the profits they would get from doing so. At most, they are concerned about the tax breaks such philanthropy would get them, and so such funding probably ought to be properly counted as public spending on science, as this is tax money that the government would have otherwise gotten. If the government didn't offer such tax breaks would philanthropists still do it?
Seriously, read the GP poster I was replying to. Seems to be some kind of libertarian who thinks that any government expenditure on science is cutting into the possible profits private spending on science might make.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:09AM
Such private endowments and private funding from universities aren't meant to produce a profit.
Depends what you mean by "profit". The original article only used the word, "profits" once and that was with regard to intellectual property (patents). I think it's clear that no one has been advocating strict monetary profits as the only criteria for determining the value of scientific research. That includes the person you replied to who never mentions profits.
Seriously, read the GP poster I was replying to. Seems to be some kind of libertarian who thinks that any government expenditure on science is cutting into the possible profits private spending on science might make.
Maybe you should read that post again. I think a good example of the actual competition principle is stuff like fusion research. A private entity might be able to offer a few tens of millions of dollars for development of a fusion power reactor. A government can throw billions at it, and you never have to show productive results. Why work for the smaller project, even if it is more productive in the end, when you can work for the big, high status project (and incidentally have guaranteed employment for ten years? This is the sort of competition that happens here. Private enterprise can come up with better, more productive ideas even in basic science, but they don't have the combination of money, status, and job security that a government project has. They can't attract the manpower.