Hacker News Reader

Comment by nerdchum | Hacker News Reader

Science is not advancing much now!

What is it produced in the past decade?? Past 30 years??

I've been on this earth for many decades and (other than the internet developed by the military)...the TRILLIONS of tax dollars that have gone into science have yielded nothing to minimal application to my life.

I completely understand your idealistic version of blue sky science needing disinterested non-results-based funding.... but that just turns to corruption and using our tax dollars wastefully with no results with the perpetual excuse of: "it's blue sky research I don't have to prove anything to you just give me more money"

and I've worked in labs and universities and I can 100% tell you scientific corruption with tax dollars is more the rule than the exception.

View on HN

If you missed the progress of the last 30 years, it shows only how much are you uninterested in this topic.

There happened A LOT practically in every field. Several major mathematical problems were solved, big progress in theoretical and applied physics, astronomy, biology, medicine etc etc. All modern electronics, electric cars, medical treatments are based on recent research. AI, solar energy, green tech… shall I continue or you just subscribe to phys.org?

The problems with corruption are direct consequence of applying capitalist model with the wrong incentives. It is pretty dumb for modern scientists to value published papers over verified results and to pursue medieval titles.

> modern electronics, electric cars, medical treatments are based on recent research. AI, solar energy, green tech

Every single thing you mentioned is a result of private industry.

I've read phys.org....cold fusion has been righttttt around the corner for a century now according to them. So has all of the promising miraculous cancer cures that never materialize.

Even if some research comes from academia, I bet you that private industry would make the same breakthroughs and for far far far less money.

So you are just demonstrating your ignorance. All of these are based on years of government funded research, private funding really only got involved once things looked promising.

electric cars: invented by private industry, refined by private industry

lithium ion batteries: invented at Exxon and Asahi Kasai corp

AI: refined at IBM culminating in deep blue, refined by Google with BERT, recently refined by Open AI

solar panel: invented by bell labs private industry

modern electronics, medical technology, and green tech??

all so vague, but probably all invented by private industry.

It's actually the reverse with you showing your ignorance.

Solar panels were invented even before Alexander Bell was born, by Edmond Becquerel. His work was funded by France.

Lithium ion batteries of Whittingham were based on decades of research in academia, including his own work at Standford and work of other scientists in many other institutions. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-ion_bat... how many research institutions are mentioned in the article.

Profit-oriented research rarely produces interesting fundamental results.

Electricity, radio waves, flight, antibiotics.. it seems to me that private industry and individuals produce the MOST interesting fundamental results.

It might be good to check your confidence in your knowledge.

> His work was funded by France. Citation needed.

Everything I've read he was a private citizen experimenting in his father's laboratory and not part of any academic institution or receiving any government funding.

Electricity - not a single result, but a big topic, to which contributed Faraday, Galvani, Volta, Thomson among others. You can check where they worked. Ben Franklin funded research himself, but his contribution to modern theory of electricity is not the biggest.

Radio waves - Maxwell, of course. Radio receiver/transmitter invented both by Popov and Marconi independently of each other, so it’s 50/50 academic vs commercial research.

Flight - impossible to attribute to a single person or team of inventors. There are balloons, gliders, airplanes, space flight etc. Wright brothers built a machine, but there was prior research in academia. Theory of flight was developed with heavy influence of military (i.e. state funding) and I can name a number of state-funded institutions in different countries which advanced the science significantly. Commercialization did help, but not as the only driver and probably not the main one.

Antibiotics - what fundamental result do you mean exactly? It’s a broad term with a rich history, a lot of initial research done in non-commercial institutions.

I will stop here. I have an impression that your views have something to do with your personal grievances. If you want to construct some unorthodox theory of how science works, good luck with that.

So much rationalization. Anytime someone has to rationalize to this great of an extent... I know they have an agenda.

It's extremely simple.

The wright brothers discovered/ invented flight.

Ben Franklin discovered/ invented electricity.

Marconi: radio waves

Flemming: antibiotics

This is settled history agreed upon worldwide, this is not controversial or complicated.

why do you have to rationalize so much!?

His father was a professor at the French National Museum of Natural History, that's presumably where the lab was.

What is produced in the past 30 years? Lots of stuff. For example the LIGO project produced sufficient evidence to conclude that gravity waves exist and we can measure them, as well as identifying sources of such waves. No real application is anticipated- but it's damned nice to know that the prediction was borne out by reality.

CRISPR- an extraordinary tool for genetic manipulation. Could potentially have a huge impact in medical treatments; has already revolutionized experimental research.

AlphaFold demonstrated that protein structure prediction with experimental-level accuracy is possible. This could also have huge implications in medical research and treatments.

Probably, we don't see advancements occurring in real time because we learn about things that happened over decades or centuries, but collapse them to short intervals.

> What is it produced in the past decade?? Past 30 years??

MRNA vaccines?

Thats an entirely different discussion as to whether those are legitimate or not.

Aaaand there we have it.

And now you have completely disqualified yourself.

just to people who thought masks were a good idea but when the waiter brings the breadsticks it's okay to remove the mask to eat at a crowded public restaurant for some reason

Reply on news.ycombinator.com