Phil's Rant on Science Funding

Professor Phil Moriarty is a physicist with firm views about how science is funded. Here he's given an opportunity to share them (with occasional questions and challenges from video journalist Brady!)

These are Phil's personal views and we've uploaded them as a discussion point. Anyone wanting to find out more about Research Councils in the UK (and to start exploring other sides of the debate) can visit this website as a good starting point: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/

And we'll be uploading more soon about the funding of science.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science
• funding
• UK
• Philip
• Moriarty

[bobthebuilderonlyhas]

IT'S PROFESSOR MORIARTYY :O WHERES SHERLOCK HOLMES?

[masluxx]

Corporations are pragmatic with the one and only hunger to produce income, While Universities are idealistic with one and only hunger to produce understanding. If you place corporate goals upon universities you no longer have universities. Once the Idealistic balance to pragmatism is gone in a society that societies ethics will vanish with it. For ethics are not pragmatic, but idealistic. Could this be why business is so tainted with the unethical? Think about it and try to understand ah?

[Spart248]

Happy Birthday Dobby!!!!!

[gr8stt]

this is all very true, and i think its fantastic you have talked about this but how do we solve this problem. no ones gonna fight our corner apart from us. multi nations have figured this out...

may be a part 2 of this video could be on how we should best lobby the govt

[hdfailure]

The problem its not funding, the problem is individual need to be noticed.

[martydrooo]

@Moriarty2112 All the best to you and your family as well. For the record, I think I'd support a technocracy. My problem with academia is how hierarchical it is, and if you don't like it, what do you do, start your own university? Because that same hierarchy exists everywhere. I think maybe some pure researchers and applied sciences researchers should start a company that makes profits on the applied sciences, and funds the pure research with them. No more councils to beg for money.

[martydrooo]

@Moriarty2112 the status quote mentality, because what options do academics have? I detested the fact that my old employer sold decades old technology and wouldn't accept my offer to help them modernize, so some colleagues and I left and started our own firm. At Unis, most strive for tenure. I don't blame them, who doesnt want stability? But in our start-up culture they strive for stock options, so they have the option to leave and start their own thing if they don't like how things are going.

[martydrooo]

@Moriarty2112 I will find some brain drain research. I do think it sucks though that the graphene nobel prize winners and their Unis get nothing really, while private industry will get Billions, if not trillions, monetizing this tech. One book I recommend with all my heart is "Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America". Get it used for cheap on Amazon. It's purely anthropological with no ideology. It has brain drain research in it. Academia is def the worst when it comes to...contd 6/7

[martydrooo]

@Moriarty2112 I think people will never want to pay for things they think someone else will pick up the tab for. Science funding is probably the favorite philanthropic category of the super-wealthy. Carnegie's science funding was legendary. And while I agree that most companies want to only make small increments to sell the same tech for as long as possible (Iphone 1,2,3,4,5), there are huge financial incentives for whomever jumps the status quo. Apple monetizing xerox tech is a good example.5/?

[martydrooo]

@Moriarty2112 Regarding healthcare are "non-profit" or a public good is tricky as well. It's not free in any case, since the govt has no money, it takes from taxpayers to fund healthcare for them. So, no one is getting a free lunch, and in effect paying for themselves. Non profit hospitals are also tricky because they can claim to be non-profit on paper, but between the expensive proprietary meds, ortho implants, doctors salaries, etc., everyone is profiting handsomely. 4of?