Why Isn't the US Government Funding Research?

thesandbender writes "The recent post about GM opening its own battery research facility led me to wonder why the US government is pouring billions into buying companies instead of heavily funding useful research. You can give $10 billion to a company to squander or you can invest $10 billion into a battery research and just give the findings to the whole of the US industry for free. From a historical standpoint, the US government has little experience with commercial enterprise ... but has an amazing record for driving innovation. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo moon missions are two of the pinnacles of 20th century scientific achievement, yet it seems to me that this drive died in the '70s and that's when the US started its slow decline. To be true to the 'Ask Slashdot' theme, what practical research do you think the US government should embark upon to get the most return for its citizens and the world?"

Comments

it is...

[Goldsmith]

The US government is funding research. A lot of it. So much that a giant company like GM opening a *single* research lab is big news. Either directly (through grants and contracts) or indirectly (through tax incentives) the government is funding much of the industrial research that is done anyway.

Why has science stalled since the 70s? That's when the number of physicists being trained exceeded the demand. The job market for physicists tanked and has never recovered (due to an excess of government funding for training). Physics became very competitive (rather than collaborative), and focused on making very small incremental changes in niche areas so that you could keep your job (big risks are bad, now). We've make tremendous scientific progress, but the system isn't designed for rock-star leaders and breakthroughs any more. More industrial labs will only change that until growth saturates again.

We need to either stop training too many physicists (and make sure we're not doing the same with other fields), or live with what we have (which does work well, for anyone who is not a physicist). To encourage risk (and thus greater... or at least flashier scientific rewards), we need more long term grants and contracts (long term being >10 years). If I know a several year project can fail, but I'll still be able to pay the rent, I'm more likely to try something new. To actually answer the question, I would put those grants in solar fuel research.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

You're full of shit.

[copponex]

From the Brookings Institution.

That Canadian banks are more closely, or carefully, regulated is fairly well-known. The specifics, however, deserve more attention.

The Canadian regulatory edifice is more centralized. There is no provincial equivalent to America's state-chartered banks. All of Canada's banks are federally chartered and overseen by federal agencies. One government-owned entity -- the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) -- plays a dominant role in shaping mortgage default-insurance policy. It and five other government bureaus in Ottawa -- the Department of Finance, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Bank of Canada, the Financial Consumer Agency, and importantly, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institution -- set standards, coordinate the overall regulatory structure, and enforce it with sanctions. The Superintendent, for instance, has the power to remove miscreant bank directors and senior officers.

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0423_canada_nivola.aspx

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 basically overturned Glass Steagall. Take a look at any housing bubble chart you'd like. When did the spike start? About the same time the deregulation fantasy took effect, and corporations knowingly created bad mortgages and passed off the bad debt as good debt because no one had their eye on them. In summary, they knowingly created huge leveraged risks in order to pocket huge comissions and leave someone else holding the assets. If you can come up with a more plausible explanation, please go ahead.

It was 80%

[copponex]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States

The highest tax bracket was 80% in 1939. Today it's 35%.

I pray to God that you get what you just wished for.

Re:That's Obvious

[TheRaven64]

the war between the US and Britain was a stalemate

It always amuses me to hear Americans talk about the war of 1812, as if there was only one of any import. And there was; the French invasion of Russia, which was the beginning of the end of Napoleon's empire and changed the political landscape for Europe and the colonies. By 1812, Britain had been at war with France for 9 years, and would continue to be for another 3 years. 1812 came right in the middle of the Peninsula War, where the Spanish, Portuguese, and British, were repelling the French invasion.

With this background, it's hardly surprising that the British navy didn't devote much by way of resources to a sideshow. The point of the war - to stop the Americans supporting an aggressive empire-building regime in Europe - became irrelevant with Waterloo, and the war ended.

Re:What research we should do

[crmarvin42]

This effect is why you see so many exciting scientific reports, like "Scientists cure 10 kinds of cancer in mice with white blood cell treatment!" or whatever, that never even go into human studies or trials, much less make it to the drugstore.

you could not be more wrong. The reason that you have these kinds of reports is that the scientists doing the research are not the ones writing the press releases, never mind the actual articles that get published. Most employees in the press and in corporate/university press offices are not scientists. They are Humanities majors, and don't know shit about how science actually works. Terms like Goodness of Fit, Extrapolation, and the difference between conclusions and implications are lost on these people. Their job is to make headlines, not report the facts accurately.

2) Potential medicines or treatments that may be extremely useful but cannot be patented and so never get funding for research, because the company who spent 15 million to do the research would immediately get outcompeted by other companies who wouldn't have to recoup the research investment. Hundreds of these exist. For example, scientists discovered decades ago that the hormone progesterone dramatically increases the speed of wound healing (first noticed when it was observed that pregnant mice heal faster than other mice). It has never been studied as a potential treatment for wounds, however, because progesterone can't be patented.

Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties. The reason that it aids in wound healing is that it suppresses certain components of the immune system. Fine if there is no contamination of the wound because it prevents inflamation from causing the wound to get worse before it gets better. However, if there is bacteria already present then this is a bad idea, becase the infection will do even more damage that the attenuated immune response will take longer to control. There is no need to look at progesterone within the scope you describe because we already understand how it does this, why, and why we shouldn't use it in most cases. In cases where we do want to suppress an overactive immune response, there are other drugs (many not under patent) that physicians prefer to use.

I'm not knocking the idea of government funded health research, but I can assure you that they already do that. Most biomedical research in this country is funded directly by federal agencies to the tune of several hundred billion (if it's not now up into the trillions collectively) dollars a year.