Free Market Science Research

Here is an excellent article explaining how government funding inhibits scientific research and advancement.  It covers all of the bases, but I would just add an example....

For the project I am working on, I initially conceived it as much larger to start, but found management and finance lacking...  so I divided it up into what I could handle.  One cannot make such turn-on-a-dime changes based on back-of-an-envelope calculations, since so many other approvals must be gained before even talking about adjustments.

I took a statistics class in my MA program, in which the first session the prof stated it was absurd to expect any of us to learn any statistics in the one quarter required for graduation.  Therefore he would teach us how to be consumers of statistics, not producers of statistics.  After teaching us how to spot good and junk, he sent us out to pick any studies we wanted (within education, since that was the degree) and critique the science (valid and reliable).  Well, I was quite alarmed as my first assignment came due and I could not find any real science. I had tried from obscure but interesting studies to work done by the famous leaders in the field. Flawed all. I sheepishly turned in several reviews, apologetic that this poor student was either too dull to spot good work, or just extremely unlucky, and I said, "I just could not find anything that was not junk."

To which the prof replied with a grieved, twisted grin, "Exactly!"

I am reading a book on the French revolution right now, which I will review when I finish.  One of the basic complaints was since all segments of society had been bought off, there was no innovation from any segment. France was fast becoming poor and backwards. The problem was "patents" at the time meaning monopoly of some sort, in this case on an activity as opposed to "intellectual property."  Scary how closely we are tracking that debacle.

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