The current research system has serious problems, but we need accurate criticism to build a better future. "YC is all wasteful spending; why doesn't YC just choose to only fund the hits?" is absurd, but somehow we allow this argument when discussing NSF/NIH/DOE/DARPA.
It’s not a business. Its job is clearly outlined in the preamble of the constitution.
That or they would rather simply ignore biology in service of this or that politically-motivated special interest, and put off any problems for the next generation to deal with.
Just to reiterate a few things, while estimates vary, every $1 spent on medical research returns multiple dollars of economic value. One study out of England suggest that for ever pound invested in medical research, the return is .25 pounds every year after, forever. [1] The cost of these cuts, as others have said, is quite large.
In addition, these grants are peer reviewed by expert panels, and only grants that score within certain top N percentiles which are determined each year. For the marquee grants, you have to score in the top ~10th percentile (see [2], for example.) This scoring is done by expert panels, which are composed of leading experts / professors from around the country. While one can adjust funding priorities, part of the price to pay for having cutting edge basic research always available is that there will be certain things one disagrees with.
There is plenty of room for a discussion of how to increase the efficiency of scientific funding, and if the current science-funding institutions are at... 'a near-optimal position in tradeoff space.' However, taking a chainsaw to the agencies to punish them is like blaming doctors for outbreaks of diseases, the latter being sadly predictable.
[1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/health-research-offers-a-big-retu...
[2] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/niaid-paylines
Once again we are proving the US is just "I got mine, the rest of you can suffer" Country.
Examples are research on ALS, Childhood Diabetes and Cancer and many more issues too numerous to list. Already funding has been cut for ALS and Cancer research.
Welcome to depending upon China and Japan for ground breaking treatments. From what I have read Japan has been doing a lot and I think China is ramping up quickly.
Very likely those opinions will be shaped by social media and LLMs steering in turn public health policies, plugging into politics and back to start.
A neat vertically integrated system.
That's very double-edged.
The open question is should humans have the right to take substances individually?
Sure, you get Ivermectin/covid deniers. But you also get homemade Solvaldi (cure for Hepatitis C). I can make it for $300 for the 12 week course, and it retail costs $84000
Of course, even making and taking this drug you manufacture is illegal, even aside patent bullshit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42538903
But why shouldn't I be able to treat myself? Why do we accept really shitty gatekeepers (medical establishment, doctors) gatekeep treatments and cures from us?
And more currently, now that der fuhrer quit the emergency use allocation for Covid shots, now you need a doctors scrip for 'allowing to get a vaccine'. I should be able to get this if I pay for it. But nope, now need to pay for needless doctor payment and more barriers.
So at least in that side, I'm on Qanon's view that I should be able to personally treat myself with whatever substance I deem. Of course, I'll definitely heed a doctor's suggestion as an expert. But fuck.. My body, my choice.
It's also not practical to keep those facts as trade secrets over the several decades over which their applications need to develop. Even if an industry consortium was willing to discover that clouds are made of water droplets, it would certainly leak before the science of meteorology had progressed far enough for that consortium to offer saleable rain forecasts.
Finally, companies are unwilling to train people about basic facts. Academia is the only system where "and then you tell everybody" is a part of the incentive structure. Privately, you have a strong incentive to reveal nothing and punish leakers.
To imply that private companies reap the rewards of basic research without contribute much is ignoring the many other components of translational work.
Second, biotech/pharma actually already do invest quite a lot in R&D. But they tend to focus on translational work rather than speculative exploration, because it is less risky.
Patents last for about 25 years, but important innovations have returns far into the future, hundreds of years. At that rate, you would very often be better off accumulating interest on capital anyways.
Notwithstanding the nature of scientific progress as an accumulation of smaller experiences (each individually harder to justify with a profit motive).
Indeed, even privately funded research is often openly published, such as the now-famous paper "attention is all you need". There's just not that much to gain from keeping every single thing under wraps. More to gain with openness.
Talking about rebuilding after just shifts this problem instead of solving it. When you start to spin things back up, who's at the front of the line looking for new grant money?
Most research is still following a medical model that worked for infectious diseases in the 1950s but does not yield any meaningful information or treatments for chronic, complex disorders that have multiple interrelated factors.
And since doctors are trained primarily in the treatment of acute diseases, even the useful information that’s found by research is largely ignored in practice. The ignorance of the average MD about chronic illnesses is astounding.
I’ve been sick for the last two years and I’ve given up going to doctors. They are a waste of my time. I’ve done much better by doing my own research and treating myself. Much of what’s helped has been stuff that I’ve seen described as pseudoscience, even though it’s empirically based, because there aren’t enough RCTs for it to qualify as “evidence”. This makes me incredibly angry.
The system is utterly broken. I’d like to scrap the whole thing and start over. Hopefully, we’ll find a way to start over when the smoke clears.
1. By way of self-inflicted damage
That was a lie to justify insurance price gouging.
Funding the research privately increases costs to end user as private ensurer is directly accruing more cost. Research stopping increases costs to end user as new/novel cures/treatments aren't found.
Cost for consumer goes up because of lost opportunity cost of 1) learning to diagnose earlier 2) finding new or cheaper cures/treatments.
You can make the argument 'But other countries will pick up the slack!' - but that doesn't necessarily help either, why would they give us the results of their research cheaper? US already jacked up pricing via an executive order on drug pricing just this year to knock that.
Publicly funded medical research is an absolute positive for the US general public health and wallets. We're all losing here on both ends of the spectrum ($$ and actual general public health).