Upvoting because I'm interested in the discussion of the ethics surrounding 'leaking' scientific papers out into the Web, not so much in this particular case itself but as a general sort of act.
HN, what is your opinion on all this?
HN, what is your opinion on all this?
I have my reservations about leaking political or classified information in some cases, because as Wikileaks has demonstrated, leaks can be used to push a political agenda, rather than serve the cause of unbiased truth.
But scientific knowledge benefits the progress of humanity as a whole - the truth doesn't have a political agenda, although it certainly can discredit political axioms. Trying to keep it contained, controlled or limit its access to a select few should be considered a crime against humanity.
Beating the competition to make more money is the primary goal behind corporate R&D expenditures. It's essentially a form of investment, which means that it has to eventually make the company some kind of return.
The great thing is that we get the results of breakthroughs in the form of publications, patents, and eventually we see them in products. Sometimes the company decides to just release the results royalty-free: a great example of this is Volvo and the modern seatbelt.
Maybe not, but I think even for-profit research should alwats be made freely available at some point, regardless of its value. The financial incentive may be necessary but to me it's a perverse incentive.
And if the results don't generate money, how will you continue to support research projects in the future?
Modern scientific research is a very expensive endeavor. You could probably get scientists to do this "for free" back when a field was still in its infancy. Now you need a whole team of researchers and an entire support system to make even the smallest of scientific breakthroughs.
And by the way, universities also aim to generate a profit (usually fed back into the institution). For example, most universities take a 50% cut of whatever external funding a professor manages to get. They do provide things in return, but the key point is that they're making money off of research.
I'm speaking from an idealistic and naive point of view, but I don't want capitalism or politics to determine the limits of human self-awareness for future.
Then again, when it costs millions or billions of dollars to make breakthroughs, it does seem untenable to ask scientists to starve for the sake of the common good, and just expect the money to come from "somewhere" without strings attached.
Even scientific research on how to build a functional nuclear bomb?
But what would the alternative be? That only the governments which discover how to build a nuclear bomb understand how it works and what its effects are, and get to threaten the rest of the world with impunity?
I'm not certain that would be better than the world where everyone at least understands the underlying science, even if not everyone can build one.
Everyone does understand the underlying science (or can find it pretty quickly on the internet), but very few understand the engineering specifics.