I'm completely fine with academic success not being linked to any sort of outcome or result or increase in value to society.
I just don't want them use my tax dollars to do it.
I just don't want them use my tax dollars to do it.
Why should the result of the scientists work be given to you for free, when you have contributed nothing as important in exchange? I don't understand why some people think tax money is some kind of favor that they are doing: are they so full of themselves to think they can profit from modern life for free like a parasite?
The choice is there and was always there: you don't like paying taxes, you can always go live on your own somewhere in the wild. But as soon as you profit from the modern life that is 100% built upon the work of the scientists, you have to pay them to live here.
Everyone who receives money from public coffers owes that public a service mindset. The arrogant self-importance in academic science is inexcusable and reason IN ITSELF for de-funding the entire enterprise.
> are they so full of themselves to think they can profit from modern life for free like a parasite?
How ironic.
You are somehow inventing that being grateful to someone means that the other person is not being grateful to you.
Nothing in my text implies anything on how the person who receive the money should act. I do not think that scientists are one bit more important than other members of the society, and I think they should act with the upmost care and respect for the trust the society has given them. Why would I think differently than that? I'm criticizing people who thinks everything is own to them. These people can be tax-payers that don't even think one second that their taxes are not some kind of generous gift, AND these people can also be scientists who thinks the society owns them money automatically for their work without any conditions.
What a strange view of the world, where everything is a competition where if someone is not considering themselves as the "owner", it means the other person is. What about no one acts like the other owns them something, what if everyone recognizes that that we are in a win-win situation?
It is really telling about our society that when someone reads my text, they are so shaped by their competitive "money = power" vision of the world that they are totally oblivious that considering that A being grateful to A does not imply that B is be arrogant and full of self-importance.
You can argue about spending mentality though. Some institutions consciously ignore important signals from the research community to keep departments going. And in the field of IT especially, there's a trend to push novelty in publications alone, producing results that aren't even interesting outside the research community.
I'm happy paying taxes to fund research, but I want that research to be accessible all the way through - that includes access to collected data. Which isn't the status quo.
Academic research should be funded because it's an important aspect of the human experience. The fact that it also leads to material benefits should be a knock on effect that's encouraged but not the core goal.
It's a perfect example of Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
IMHO, accountability is great. It just requires difficult work at the top leadership to do so well. Just boiling it down to a single number like "economic value of research" doesn't work.
Taq polymerase is about my favorite thing discovered through basic research. Just some scientists looking at interesting stuff in a Yellowstone geyser, who happened to discover the molecule that enabled DNA replication in a lab and essentially exploded the field.
No corporation these days is going to pay somebody to do that. I think it's worth the risks to get something like that.