I think the part I disagree with is not that academia has been important and useful for some advances, e.g. CRISPR.
It's that a much better system can exist that is hard for us to currently imagine because we are so invested in the status quo.
I don't think it's hard to imagine a big pharma company spending a few billion a year on fundamental research. They already spend so much.
Nor is it difficult to imagine philanthropists stepping in to fund the most important basic research. E.g. the Gates foundation.
But I think that's just the starting line of science without public funding. Similar to how we've invented specific structures for startups and an ecosystem that includes VC's and angels, why wouldn't further structures evolve for science?
If many parties benefit over time from fundamental research, then isn't it just a coordination problem that we can solve with mutually beneficial contracts? This is after all, the motivation behind patents: incentivize someone to publish their innovation in exchange for monopoly rights for a number of years.
But even obvious for-profit structures will solve for advances like CRISPR. Think: research labs that spin-off a series of startups. VC's can invest in the labs which then invest in the spinoff companies.
Then, you say, what about the sleeper hits in academia, the basic science that takes a very long time and eventually makes a big impact.
Well, the decision of whether this is worth funding is literally a profit-maximizing calculation: do we get better returns to capital by investing in this basic research which eventually pays off in 50 years or by investing in the next-best alternative. Academia never does any such calculation and frequently wastes everyone's time.
And that's my next point: Academia sucks up all the energy and prestige for science and prevents better alternatives. Ambitious researchers join and then are way less impactful than they would be, because they actually don't get the opportunity to do the curiosity-focused research that they want. They have to grind out insignificant papers that adhere to current trends. Risky, innovative ideas are shut down or not funded because committees and established scientists with a reputation to preserve are not acting with the right incentives.
I think this is a really interesting debate. I am still very bullish that removing public funding for science would make it so much healthier, innovative, and cost-efficient. It would also save us from the negative externalities of bad ideas produced by a lot of public funding.
> Ambitious researchers join and then are way less impactful than they would be, because they actually don't get the opportunity to do the curiosity-focused research that they want. They have to grind out insignificant papers that adhere to current trends
My preferred method is increasing diversity in ways of funding science (FROs, academia, stuff like ARIA etc). I am writing a post on this and the sort of broader, theoretical considerations around this that is going to come out tomorrow or early next week and addresses exactly your point around conformism.
>Well, the decision of whether this is worth funding is literally a profit-maximizing calculation: do we get better returns to capital by investing in this basic research which eventually pays off in 50 years or by investing in the next-best alternative. Academia never does any such calculation and frequently wastes everyone's time.
I understand the consideration around this. The problem is, biotech is itself an enormously inefficient industry. I think the problem is that long time to product (and consequently feedback from the market) means that human incentives for career promotion are not very aligned to producing something that actually works. Biotech has a lot of dumb market failures. You should check this out this post I wrote about Roivant that goes into this a bit:
As an additional example, we do not have good animal models for a lot of diseases, because it's basically in no one's interest to produce them. I think the solution to this is an FRO (I hope to write about this too in the future)
hmm what I will add though is that this stuff might be different in Life Sciences vs other industries. There is this new paper by Arora et al that I need to review in a future post that claims the opposite of the paper I reviewed here (that academic research is bad etc in a manner similar to what you describe). Notably., they say this is not the case for Life Sciences. So a lot of my intuitions that I draw upon (I never rely purely on results from papers on Econ or Social Science - I always try to match them up to experience) might be somewhat domain specific.
I see, yeah that's a shame. So much high-quality writing is tucked away into various Substacks.
We'll try to not throttle Substack links on our site, at least!
I'm not sure how to market it. Maybe put the link in your Twitter Bio and post screenshots of posts? Or get other Substacks to link to you (perhaps in exchange for you linking to them?) Submit your articles to hacker news??
This was a good read, thanks!
I think the part I disagree with is not that academia has been important and useful for some advances, e.g. CRISPR.
It's that a much better system can exist that is hard for us to currently imagine because we are so invested in the status quo.
I don't think it's hard to imagine a big pharma company spending a few billion a year on fundamental research. They already spend so much.
Nor is it difficult to imagine philanthropists stepping in to fund the most important basic research. E.g. the Gates foundation.
But I think that's just the starting line of science without public funding. Similar to how we've invented specific structures for startups and an ecosystem that includes VC's and angels, why wouldn't further structures evolve for science?
If many parties benefit over time from fundamental research, then isn't it just a coordination problem that we can solve with mutually beneficial contracts? This is after all, the motivation behind patents: incentivize someone to publish their innovation in exchange for monopoly rights for a number of years.
But even obvious for-profit structures will solve for advances like CRISPR. Think: research labs that spin-off a series of startups. VC's can invest in the labs which then invest in the spinoff companies.
Then, you say, what about the sleeper hits in academia, the basic science that takes a very long time and eventually makes a big impact.
Well, the decision of whether this is worth funding is literally a profit-maximizing calculation: do we get better returns to capital by investing in this basic research which eventually pays off in 50 years or by investing in the next-best alternative. Academia never does any such calculation and frequently wastes everyone's time.
And that's my next point: Academia sucks up all the energy and prestige for science and prevents better alternatives. Ambitious researchers join and then are way less impactful than they would be, because they actually don't get the opportunity to do the curiosity-focused research that they want. They have to grind out insignificant papers that adhere to current trends. Risky, innovative ideas are shut down or not funded because committees and established scientists with a reputation to preserve are not acting with the right incentives.
You can read more discussion in my market on whether Michael Nielsen will agree by 2030 that private-only funding for science is better than the status quo: https://manifold.markets/JamesGrugett/will-michael-nielsen-agree-by-2030
I think this is a really interesting debate. I am still very bullish that removing public funding for science would make it so much healthier, innovative, and cost-efficient. It would also save us from the negative externalities of bad ideas produced by a lot of public funding.
Thank you.
> Ambitious researchers join and then are way less impactful than they would be, because they actually don't get the opportunity to do the curiosity-focused research that they want. They have to grind out insignificant papers that adhere to current trends
My preferred method is increasing diversity in ways of funding science (FROs, academia, stuff like ARIA etc). I am writing a post on this and the sort of broader, theoretical considerations around this that is going to come out tomorrow or early next week and addresses exactly your point around conformism.
>Well, the decision of whether this is worth funding is literally a profit-maximizing calculation: do we get better returns to capital by investing in this basic research which eventually pays off in 50 years or by investing in the next-best alternative. Academia never does any such calculation and frequently wastes everyone's time.
I understand the consideration around this. The problem is, biotech is itself an enormously inefficient industry. I think the problem is that long time to product (and consequently feedback from the market) means that human incentives for career promotion are not very aligned to producing something that actually works. Biotech has a lot of dumb market failures. You should check this out this post I wrote about Roivant that goes into this a bit:
https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/what-does-ramaswamys-roivant-do
Also the work of Jack Scannell: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36195754/ and some others analysing bias in pharma R&D: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-022-00157-4
As an additional example, we do not have good animal models for a lot of diseases, because it's basically in no one's interest to produce them. I think the solution to this is an FRO (I hope to write about this too in the future)
hmm what I will add though is that this stuff might be different in Life Sciences vs other industries. There is this new paper by Arora et al that I need to review in a future post that claims the opposite of the paper I reviewed here (that academic research is bad etc in a manner similar to what you describe). Notably., they say this is not the case for Life Sciences. So a lot of my intuitions that I draw upon (I never rely purely on results from papers on Econ or Social Science - I always try to match them up to experience) might be somewhat domain specific.
Btw, how did you find this post?
My cofounder posted it in my market as a comment! https://manifold.markets/JamesGrugett/will-michael-nielsen-agree-by-2030#avfh81lxn46
I'm not sure how he found this post. Sounds like he was reading through your Substack.
aw, nice! I am curious how to market my substack (X is now throttling links)
Oh my, have you seen this 😂: https://manifold.markets/stochasticcockatoo/will-ruxandra-teslo-and-jose-luis-r
😂😂😂😂
I see, yeah that's a shame. So much high-quality writing is tucked away into various Substacks.
We'll try to not throttle Substack links on our site, at least!
I'm not sure how to market it. Maybe put the link in your Twitter Bio and post screenshots of posts? Or get other Substacks to link to you (perhaps in exchange for you linking to them?) Submit your articles to hacker news??
I don't have any great ideas unfortunately.
Thanks! am doing various of the things you mentioned. I was just explaining why I asked you where you found the post! (Doing my market research)