Should Government Fund Science? A Soho Forum Debate
AEI's Tony Mills and British biochemist Terence Kealey debate whether science needs government funding.
HD DownloadM. Anthony (Tony) Mills of the American Enterprise Institute and Terence Kealey of The Cato Institute debate the resolution, "Government must play a role in fostering scientific and technological progress by funding basic research."
Defending the resolution is Mills, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Technology, Science, and Energy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a senior fellow at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and a scholar associate of the Society of Catholic Scientists. Dr. Mills was previously a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute and an editor for numerous publications. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Atlantis, National Affairs, Issues in Science and Technology, and various peer-reviewed journals. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.
Taking the negative is Kealey, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Originally trained in medicine and biochemistry, he is a former lecturer in clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Between 2001 and 2014 he was the vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. He is known for his 1996 book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research.
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That lineup ranges from right-wing to farther right.
Not surprisingly.
Carry on, clingers.
Hey, that gain of function funding worked out real well.
It’s still paying dividends!
Multiple trillion dollar global success story!
What government absolutely should not be doing is deciding what research gets funded.
The party paying for the research gets the result they desire.
Trump delegated his scientific authority to the newly created White House Office of American Innovation, directed by his singularly unsciency son in law, Jared Kushner, who floated the president's Alt.Sci. ideas on crushing covid not with vaccines, but by combining liberal doses of the new wonder drug ,Chlorox with vigorous laser irradiation.
YOU are far more anti-science than those you accuse. I KNOW that based on the comment to which I am replying.
I don't know. The Department of Defense absolutely has the right and arguably the obligation to decide what research it wants in order to develop capabilities central to its war function.
And while I question whether NASA is currently necessary for space exploration, I had no such questions in its post-Kennedy heyday.
That said, I agree that today the vast majority of research funding is wasteful and counterproductive. Everyone remembers Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex. Almost no one remembers that in the same speech, he warned about the dangers of government-research funding capture.
And the DoD can damn well do the research itself.
Using military personnel, not contractors.
You get what you pay for, and the best and brightest tend to avoid joining the military. Something to do with taking orders from small minded morons.
If you left the Manhattan Project to the military on their own, the end result would be a couple of M-80's duct taped together.
Not saying that's good or bad necessarily, just that it would be predictable in it's results.
If you left the Manhattan Project to the military on their own, the end result would be a couple of M-80’s duct taped together.
Bit of a nose to spite your face. The military doesn't need the funding, if the need for wartime innovation is existential, it will be met and, once met, dissolved.
I was thinking more pure science stuff. Obviously when R&D is needed for military or other legit government programs they get to decide.
"today the vast majority of research funding is wasteful "
That's not just today. It's always been the case. Regardless of whether or not the government is footing the bill. Look at all the dead end leads that privately funded inventors like Edison or Tesla were compelled to follow in their work. You want research with guaranteed useful results. That's not research.
I do not get why libertarians seem blind to the reality that the government, once giving money to any entity, will control it pretty heavily.
What makes you think that libertarians are blind to that? Or are you under the impression that everyone who posts on the Reason blog is a libertarian?
No.
Often times it leads industry in the wrong direction. See lynsenko. Other times it justifies authoritarian tendencies of the state. See covid. Most often it funds needless science for no reason. See shrimp on treadmills.
Climate change is settled "the science" so please quit funding it already.
It does seem settled .
Washington's old January heat record swooned away last Friday as the temperature broke 80.
And those massive cold spells --- well, THOSE are just weather.
Isn't that how it works?
The Fed Govt funded space research and the moon landing.
The profitable spinoffs helped enable
our current science based economy.
Geez, bullshit and a half.
Mercury-Gemini-Apollo worked surprisingly well, but at tremendous cost for no gain. The Space Shuttle was a waste, costing more than the expendables it was supposed to replace, killing two crew. The space station has done nothing useful.
Did you know that official NASA policy for a time was to de-orbit the space station as soon as it was complete, because they had no use for it and neither did industry? There was some tourism, but NASA hated it, too crass and profitable. If they had instead backed tourism, it might have actually paid for itself.
No one sensible has ever said that nothing good ever comes from government funded scientific research. The downside is that government funded research tends to produce the results paid for by government; that government funding tends to displace other sources of funding until it becomes almost impossible to get funding from anyone else; and that the funding comes from tax revenues siphoned off from more productive enterprises into less productive activities.
No, because subsidies increase supply from the more marginal "scientists" and their marginal fields, since they are not good enough for the natural free market. Universities suck in marginal students to the marginal fields taught by marginal teachers.
The end result is the woke crap we have today. DEI, CRT, it is all meaningless pablum whose only purpose is sucking up tax dollars.
Would it be possible to have debates with anyone who doesn't make their living from Gov-'Guns' these days? There's a reason far too many keep covering for the government. It's there employer.
Yes and no. I mean my issue is that there are conflicts from both sides. I mean of the money is allocated with no expected results then yeah…maybe. However the companies doing the work are conflicted by profits more often than not and the politicians doling out the money typically have a political agenda…often also due to receiving money from big pharma for re-election campaigns. No good answer here really. If the money goes to like a St Jude research hospital...totally okay with thah...beyond that...not sure.
Could it be feasible to have banters with any individual who doesn't make their living from Gov-'Firearms' nowadays? There's an explanation extremely many continue to cover for the public authority. It's there boss.
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