Slashdot Mirror
How Important is Research Funding?
slowtonejoe75 asks: "I have friends and family working as physicists for the government at national laboratories funded by your tax dollars. Since Bush has been in office, funding meetings for these labs with the DOE (Dept. of Energy) in Washington have turned up dry. The Bush administration is clearly not interested in hardcore research unless it has to do with missles, bio-chemistry, and security. I understand that there are some priorities in life but I see this whole focus shift with respect to funding to be a real step backwards as far as the advancement of science. I want to know where the Slashdot community would place funding if they had their way?"
Yes, Celera did do a genome. But the public consortium also did one which is equivalent or better in most scientific terms and vastly superior in one important respect: it is public domain.
While non-profit researchers can obtain free access to Celera's genome data, it is a pain in the ass to deal with their legal department, and the data is viewable in a sub-optimal interface. The public genome is easily and readily available to anyone and everyone with a web browser.
I had nothing to do with the public human genome project, but I use their data every day in my research as do thousands of other researchers. To suggest that the government pissed away money on that project is simply wrong.
It seems clear to me that everyone benefits from the public genome project in particular, and public science in general. Why should we enrich a private company for basic scientific information which is needed by all researchers (both for-profit and non-profit)?