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Is $100 Million Per Year Too Little For The Brain Map Initiative?
waderoush writes "At a time of sequesters and shrinking R&D spending, critics are attacking President Obama's proposed Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, which would have a $100 million budget starting in 2014. But in fact, the project 'runs the risk of becoming a casualty of small-bore thinking in science business, and politics,' argues Xconomy national life sciences editor Luke Timmerman. The goal of the BRAIN initiative is to develop technologies for exploring the trillions of synapses between neurons in the human brain. If the $3 billion Human Genome Project and its even more productive sequel, the $300-million-per-year Advanced Sequencing Technologies program, are any guide, the initiative could lead to huge advances in our understanding of Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and consciousness itself. Only government can afford to think this big, argues Timmerman. 'Even though $100 million a year is small change by federal government standards,' Timmerman writes, 'it is enough to create a small market that gives for-profit companies assurance that if they build such tools, someone will buy them. We ought to be talking about how we can free up more money to achieve our neuroscience goals faster, rather than talking about whether we can afford this puny appropriation at all.'"
There are many potential projects, so we should spend LESS?
Research like this is needed, and could yield benefits in medicine, business, and simply human curiosity about our nature. We *could* just cut programs until we stagnate, or we could invest in science and try to grow. I vote for the latter.
Throwing money at a problem only works if you known roughly what you want to do. The Manhattan Project had a well defined goal - 1) separate uranium isotopes or make plutonium, and 2) figure out some way to assemble them fast enough to get a fast chain reaction. They knew up front roughly what was needed. The Apollo program was a step up from the previous rocket programs, but it wasn't the first big rocket.
On the other hand, throwing money at controlled fusion has not been very successful. We don't know how to make that work. Throwing money at artificial intelligence didn't accomplish much until recent years. Interestingly, mobile robotics is now far enough along that throwing money at it works. NASA blew about $80 million on the Flight Telerobotic Servicer in the 1980s and got zip. DARPA has spent over $100 million with Boston Dynamics on BigDog, LS3, PETMAN, and ATLAS, and they're getting results.
The trouble with the BRAIN program is that they're talking about developing bigger computers to emulate a brain, but don't really know what problem they have to solve. This could turn into another supercomputer boondoggle. The comment I've made previously (once to Rod Brooks) about emulating a human brain is that you should try to emulate a mouse brain (1/1000th the mass) first. All the mammal brains have roughly the same architecture. Until you can emulate a mouse brain, you're not ready to try for a human brain. Brooks replied that "he didn't want to go down in history as the person who created the world's best robot mouse." So he tried Cog, which was an embarrassing flop, and hasn't been heard of much since.
I think a better question would be to ask how the money is going to be spent, and the main expenses of the project, before saying x amount of money is too much or too little.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I assume the Human Genome Project was a waste too? And nearly all space travel?
"Only government can afford to think this big, argues Timmerman" Then let the government get a job that will earn $120,700,000/yr so they can have $100,000,000 after taxes to spend on such a project.
The US defense budget is 700,000 million. If we reduced the defense budget by .1% (iow, by a factor of .001), we could get another 700 million for this project. If you're concerned about the national security consequences, don't be. We could reduce the defense budget by 50% and still outspend China by more than 2:1.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Of course, spending a relatively small amount to study the causes of diseases that end up costing a LOT more in medical expenses makes more sense, unless you subscribe to the penny-wise, pound-foolish school of thinking - which it sound like you do - along with all the others screaming about "spending money we don't have" - usually on the poor, sick, disabled and/or elderly - you know, those 47% er's Romney mentioned to all those rich people (with great health insurance - if they even *need* insurance).
You want to bring the budget more inline? Start by eliminating most tax deductions and loopholes for individual and corporations, have people - namely rich people - pay taxes at their apportioned tax bracket, remove the salary cap for Medicare withholding, eliminate other corporate and farm welfare programs.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The government should be a major source of funding for research, the government doesn't have to worry about being profitable in any given quarter, so long as the research leads to prosperity that's all well and good.
As the AC asked, the solution to many potential projects is less funding? In what way does that make any sense at all?
What's more you wouldn't be typing that without US government money for things like the internet and laptops would probably not exist either as battery research was primarily driven by space exploration related needs.
When all is said and done this sort of "thinking" is what's threatening the US, get the government out of it and hope your cause is sufficiently sexy to attract philanthropists.
I know you're a troll, but on the chance that people are thinking the same thing.
Private funding tends to be pretty short sighted. If there isn't an immediately obvious application for it, and a way of making a buck on it, chances are it won't be done. Government money doesn't mean that you can research things of no significance, it just means that you don't have to be able to turn it profitable by itself. And a ton of research out there is useless by itself, but when combined with other studies and research projects makes for some very useful things.
Craig Venter's private company was able to do similar work on the Human Genome Project, in a shorter amount of time, and for roughly 1/10 the cost of Francis Collins' gov't project.
In addition to the fact that Venter was able to take advantage of nearly a decade of technology development, you're leaving out a few important details:
1) Celera was able to use the HGP results, but not vice-versa. Which was convenient, since the HGP's more laborious process could cover parts of the genome that weren't well-suited for the shotgun assembly method.
2) The total cost of the HGP covered much more than simply sequencing the human genome - there were many preliminary and side projects covered as well, none of which Celera pursued.
3) The availability of a public, license-free genome meant that it could be used as a reference for future studies without restriction. This eliminates the need to perform de-novo assembly with each individual genome from the same species, which drastically reduces the cost and time required for further sequencing. Without this, the huge advances in comparative genomics and personal genomics over the past decade would have been hideously expensive, because they'd all have needed to pay Celera for a license (and not been able to publish their results).
That's insanely short sighted. The real answer is we can't afford NOT to do it.
Dementia treatment and long term care currently costs a combined $200B (yes two hundred BILLION) dollars a year in the US, and is going to rise DRASTICALLY in coming years with the aging baby boomers. That's literally more than spent on cancer or heart disease. Finding the root cause and an effective treatment for Alzheimer's alone could possibly be the single biggest healthcare accomplishment of the 21st century.
Yes, sometimes more, sometimes less, that's how prioritization works.
Although learning more about how the brain works is a worthy goal, it is not necessarily the *most* worthy goal, and it may actually be better to have the government spend less on it (so more can be spent on other things).
If we solved all the other problems in the world except demystifying the brain (even if it wasn't that important), then we should absolutely spend all our research money on that. This is an example of having less potential projects causing the best option to be to spend more on brain research.
we'll just ignore all the waste and fraud!
Sciencemen don't waste and fraud.
You must be thinking of banksters or politicians.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Protip: They were.
Celera didn't come into existence until an entire decade after the public genome project started, and was able to take advantage of a decade's worth of technology development - as well as the initial results of the HGP, which were immediately deposited in a public database.
A large capital intensive project that yields information that cannot be patented. Why would private investors spend money on it?
The Brain map will discover information, that information cannot be suppressed or even hidden (somebody is bound to leak it for free). Therefore it makes no sense for private investors to pour money into it, since they won't be able to get a return.
On the other hand, the value to society is immense .. therefore government should do it.
Anything the taxpayers money is going to be spent on needs to have quantifiable and measurable goals of success or its just some ideological feelgood bullshit.
Truth. If the next James Clerk Maxwell wants to play around with useless curiosities like magnets he should do it on his own dime. The only science governments should fund are those where the outcome is already known.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
You're an idiot.
I said they don't have to worry about it in any given quarter. Also, it's a lot more complicated than you make it sound. How much money has the US made off of battery technology and such? It's not an easily answered question.
LOL, so we should probably just stop funding research altogether as we aren't going to be funding any actual science.
Then again, I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic with your comment.