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Comment by mygo | Hacker News Reader

how do you figure that? there are many researchers whose innovative and practical solutions do not get funded. why would people keep quiet about under-funded research?

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Because it's a valuable idea that I know about and you don't? BTW feel free to send me actual money, I'm sitting on plenty and I can only work on one at a time.

that’s your mentality.

it’s not everybody’s.

I’m not interested in sending you money for your ideas, thanks. There’s all kinds of people. If there is a big enough problem to be addressed then there exists not only information hoarders/squatters like yourself, but also others who would be willing to elaborate to just move something forward and try to get their problem solved.

If it was academia we were discussing, then yes share all the things. But OP is asking about things which can be commercialized.

Sadly science funding in the US is an absolute shitshow and science costs money so...

I think you should consider this from the position of a researcher with no funding sitting on valuable ideas. Commercializing that idea can fund other research they want to do. So even from the perspective of wanting science to be free and the common heritage of mankind, a researcher can do more science by capitalizing on a valuable idea.

It's kinda shitty, but science doesn't take place in a vacuum, researchers have to eat.

I get where you're coming at, but I just don't think it's realistic. You can't just ignore incentives.

You think I’m ignoring incentives yet my entire argument was based on incentives. People are experiencing problems in their daily lives. They know of under-funded research that can solve their problems. They don’t have to be the researchers. Besides, university researchers are not in a vacuum. They will get patents for their innovations, paid for by the uni, even if it’s not ever commercialized. And universities are notoriously bad at just shelving innovations instead of commercializing them. Most schools just simply do not have the right people in-house to do it successfully. There even exists offices of commercialization in the larger universities whose sole purpose is to find for-profit buyers / licensors for their under-funded research. And even they still fail at finding buyers for many practical innovations. The more people that know about their innovations the more likely it is to get the right funding and market access behind it and become commercialized. These are the facts in the real world.

I'm having a hard time following your argument... what are you proposing?

There are a lot of reasons, some of which are cultural. With the concept of failure being shameful, those people bury that experience and try completely different ones to find success they can feel comfortable with sharing.

Not all societies view a shortcoming or failure as a learning opportunity and stepping stone to success.

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