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posted by martyb on Friday March 10 2017, @04:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the still-paid-for-by-the-taxpayer/consumer dept.

For the first time in the post–World War II era, the federal government no longer funds a majority of the basic research carried out in the United States. Data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015. The federal share, which topped 70% throughout the 1960s and '70s, stood at 61% as recently as 2004 before falling below 50% in 2013.

The sharp drop in recent years is the result of two contrasting trends—a flattening of federal spending on basic research over the past decade and a significant rise in corporate funding of fundamental science since 2012.

[...] The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is the major driver behind the recent jump in corporate basic research [...] investment in basic research soared from $3 billion in 2008 to $8.1 billion in 2014, according to the most recent NSF data by business sector. Spending on basic research by all U.S. businesses nearly doubled over that same period, from $13.9 billion to $24.5 billion.

Basic research comprises only about one-sixth of the country's spending on all types of R&D, which totaled $499 billion in 2015. Applied makes up another one-sixth, whereas the majority, some $316 billion, is development. Almost all of that is funded by industry and done inhouse, as companies try to convert basic research into new drugs, products, and technologies that they hope will generate profits.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @06:45AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @06:45AM (#477280)

    I definitely wouldn't mind seeing these organizations, which are increasingly political, get wiped out so long as their budget was redirected to a good purpose. For instance towards science that clearly has no profit motive or apparent path to monetization. Corporations tend to only pay for science that can make them a buck. Peter Higgs himself stated he likely would have been able to survive in today's "scientific culture." He helped monumentally advance our understanding of the universe, but nobody's making a buck off it.

    There'd still be the problem of who's allowed to work on such research since now a days we have far more phds than we do research positions, public or private, available but it'd at least provide some clear avenue for science to progress in a less bastardized fashion.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10 2017, @02:55PM (12 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 10 2017, @02:55PM (#477360) Journal

    For instance towards science that clearly has no profit motive or apparent path to monetization.

    Let us also keep in mind that applied science is a strong driver for pure science progress here. You will get considerable pure science progress, merely because it is necessary in order to develop the applied science venues. I believe Higg's theoretical work, for example, would fall in that category. In addition, prior to the takeover by public funding, there were considerable non profit donations to pure science, such as in the US for about half a century prior to the Second World War. If you have science that isn't covered by these two avenues, then it's probably not worth doing with public funds either.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @03:25PM (11 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @03:25PM (#477371)

      I think that's putting the cart before the horse. If a purely theoretic science was seen as a viable precursor to an application then it would be considered purely theoretic!

      And lots of theoretic work seems to have absolutely no relationship to what it ultimately ends up being used for. For instance imaginary numbers were developed around 1500-1700 and seem like mathematicians just having some fun thinking about the implications of the square root of negative 1. Of course now days they're of critical importance in everything from electrical engineering to rotational mechanics.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday March 10 2017, @04:09PM (10 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 10 2017, @04:09PM (#477397) Journal

        I think that's putting the cart before the horse. If a purely theoretic science was seen as a viable precursor to an application then it would be considered purely theoretic!

        I assume you mean "it wouldn't be". I'll just note here that I've played a game off and on over the years, where someone takes some historical research that they think is purely theoretic and I show how it had near future application (electricity -> lightning rods, quantum field theory -> X Ray imaging of the human body, cosmic microwave background -> understanding important sources of noise in microwave communications, general relativity -> explaining better why light/EM waves appear to have constant speed -> radio communications, etc). Science doesn't happen in a vacuum, not even supposedly pure theoretical science.

        For instance imaginary numbers were developed around 1500-1700 and seem like mathematicians just having some fun thinking about the implications of the square root of negative 1.

        And yet it had near future application to the understanding of polynomials, key mathematically constructs used everywhere, even then.

        And lots of theoretic work seems to have absolutely no relationship to what it ultimately ends up being used for.

        Which is irrelevant. No one researched electricity because it would result in computers. No one researched special relativity or quantum mechanics because it would yield nuclear power. Sure, everyone is quite aware that science can and routinely does result in unforeseen added value. But it doesn't get funded because the current research might result in an epic breakthrough three centuries hence.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday March 10 2017, @06:22PM (9 children)

          by butthurt (6141) on Friday March 10 2017, @06:22PM (#477450) Journal

          general relativity -> explaining better why light/EM waves appear to have constant speed -> radio communications

          Communication by radio was in use before relativity was understood. It can be traced to Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and Hertz's experiments with a spark gap transmitter, which he deemed "of no use whatsoever."

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz#Electromagnetic_waves [wikipedia.org]

          Your post reminds me of the television series Connections and The Day the Universe Changed (which are also available as books).

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29 [wikipedia.org]
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed [wikipedia.org]

          • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 10 2017, @08:14PM (1 child)

            by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 10 2017, @08:14PM (#477502) Homepage
            I've not read 4 generations of your post's parents, but I suspect from your quoted segment that khallow wanted to draw the connection between c being c and Special Relativity, rather than General Relativity. However, none of that was necessary to create RF comms, any more than Maxwell's equations were necessary for creating compasses from lodestones, or creating the Baghdad batteries. It's simply a case of knowing that certain things (stones, metals, circuits) have certain properties, and have them reliably.
            --
            Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10 2017, @09:31PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 10 2017, @09:31PM (#477546) Journal

              but I suspect from your quoted segment that khallow wanted to draw the connection between c being c and Special Relativity, rather than General Relativity.

              The thing is, general relativity explains why special relativity works. Special relativity is an approximation where space is nearly flat (with objected in it moving at speeds close enough to the speed of light to be significant).

              It's simply a case of knowing that certain things (stones, metals, circuits) have certain properties, and have them reliably.

              There's a lot of materials. How can we determine what properties the materials will have without going through a very costly amount of testing? That's where model building comes into play.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10 2017, @09:33PM (6 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 10 2017, @09:33PM (#477549) Journal

            Communication by radio was in use before relativity was understood.

            And communication by radio was in use after relativity was understood too.

            • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday March 11 2017, @12:03AM (5 children)

              by butthurt (6141) on Saturday March 11 2017, @12:03AM (#477601) Journal

              And you think that knowledge of relativity is somehow used for that purpose? Do tell.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 11 2017, @05:43AM (4 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 11 2017, @05:43AM (#477674) Journal

                And you think that knowledge of relativity is somehow used for that purpose?

                How can you understand how general relativity affects or doesn't affect important things like radio communication till you have a model of it?

                • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:15AM (3 children)

                  by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:15AM (#478798) Journal

                  Near the Earth, the effects described by general relativity are minuscule and, for most purposes, can simply be ignored. An often-mentioned exception is satellite navigation. The caesium atomic clock in a navigational satellite ran faster than clocks on the Earth by 442.5 parts in 1012.

                  http://www.phys.lsu.edu/mog/mog9/node9.html [lsu.edu]

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:55AM (2 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:55AM (#478812) Journal

                    Near the Earth, the effects described by general relativity are minuscule and, for most purposes, can simply be ignored. An often-mentioned exception is satellite navigation. The caesium atomic clock in a navigational satellite ran faster than clocks on the Earth by 442.5 parts in 1012.

                    And you would know this ahead of time how? For example, this eliminates a fair number of anti-gravity schemes.

                    • (Score: 1) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:11AM (1 child)

                      by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:11AM (#479227) Journal

                      > And you would know this ahead of time how?

                      As I was trying to communicate, it was predicted by general relativity.

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:45AM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:45AM (#479295) Journal

                        And you would know this ahead of time how?

                        As I was trying to communicate, it was predicted by general relativity.

                        So you would have to know general relativity first in order to know about this prediction of general relativity. It's not sexy, but theories that show certain near future avenues of research are fruitless to pursue, are useful too.