The Economic Laws Of Scientific Research

by Terence Kealy ISBN 0312173067

Posits that governments should not fund basic research. Gives logical, well-thought-out and well-presented arguments (though the author has a chip on his shoulder that occasionally shows through). It is hard to agree fully with the author, but it is easy to learn something from reading this book.

Some interesting ideas from this book (please excuse paraphrasing errors)

1. Governments are perhaps effective helping a country's science catch up with that of a more advanced country, but not in pushing the science of an advanced country further.

2. Even though using others' scientific results is more economical than doing the research yourself, original research will get done by private industry. This is because to be really good at using others' results, you must be doing original research yourself. Thus original advances are a byproduct of preparing yourself to use others' ideas.

3. Science does not usually come before the engineering advances that make a country wealthy. Science follows engineering advances in an attempt to explain them.

I haven't read the book. But these ideas seem obviously false to me. US government spending on research has definitely helped push US science further. I know the most about CS research, and perhaps other areas are not like that. However, the internet, timesharing (i.e. operating systems research), computer graphics, vision, distributed programming; there is a long list of areas where government funded university researchers have had a big impact. Other areas, like VLSI CPU design, have been done mostly by industry. And some of the areas with a lot of research have not had much commercial success yet. But there are a lot of success stories.

Point 2 is that industry needs to do basic research to keep up with what others are doing. That is true. But so what? This does not mean that they will do enough basic research. They will probably do just enough to keep contact with others. And what companies consider basic research is often quite different from real basic research.

Point 3 is sort of true, but not entirely. There was a lot of work on computers before they became an important part of the economy. Certainly good theory needs facts, and so science will be driven by engineering, but some science comes just from curiosity.

-RalphJohnson

I can see the sense in the argument that private companies produce basic research results in the process of producing advanced research results.

However, there are several reasons why this doesn't work out:

How do you define basic research ? Isn't all research the basics for the next step of research ?

Why should the knowledge produced become publicly available ? What if it gets patented ? Patents last a long time - and there is no provision to force a company to license the use of its technology to other companies at all. And you cannot exempt "basic" research because there is no definition for it.

-PeterSchaefer

Who funds things like particle accelerators? I'm pretty sure it isn't private companies (but I could easily be wrong). I don't think there are any economic benefits to discovering the Higgs particle unless government funds the research. -- RobHarwood

Good points all. It is hard to argue about the success of the internet, or the fact that it was US government funded.

But regardless of whether the book is right or wrong, I learned a lot from reading it. Specifically the point about original research helping one learn from others.

Since reading the book, it has been my opinion that [having your own opinion plus an open mind] about a topic is more helpful than just [having an open mind] about a topic.

It gives you a starting point to build on or adjust. -- StanSilver

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