Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value

Interesting CBC interview with Nobel Lariat John Polyani about the NRC and its role in Canadian science research. No word on whether Mr. Goodyear continues to be a creationist.

Someday, I will learn to spell both Polanyi and laureate, I promise.

Instead of throwing out fundamental scientific discovery, or making such a strong line of demarcation between "fundamental" science and "commercializable" science, why not improve connections between scientists and industry? Why not work to improve the dissemination of interesting fundamental findings? Why not work to match potentially interested companies and organizations with the research labs? Seems like there are less drastic ways of getting more research commercialized than going this route.

Of course, as someone who worked in an industrial research lab for a while in an organization that had research labs and R&D departments, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to get the two sides to talk to each other, much less agree on tech transfer or what discoveries are "important". So granted, this is not an easy problem, but I don't think it's completely unsolvable.

As it happens, we just read John Polanyi's father's essay on why it was important for scientists to choose their own problems. ("The Republic of Science.") This is just an awful, stupid, counterproductive move. There are US legislators trying the same thing. What's odd about it even from a totally pro-business stance is that basic science is too expensive for businesses to do (how many have starved or scrapped their R&D units?), but is absolutely essential for the applied science they do.

Thanks for this post. Scary stuff.

I don't know, GregH. I like the idea of a "Nobel Lariat"!

As a Canadian who works in basic research with potential (but years from applicable) impacts in both healthcare and agriculture, I'm extremely disappointed in our current government's attitudes toward science.

I have dealt with both the American FDA and Canadian, I can say that the american policies are a fair bit more lax than those of their Canadian equivalent. As a consumer be cautious even if a product is approved by the FDA its not saying a whole lot... Money > Innovation. A sad world we live in.

As an American I'm reluctant to comment on Canadian domestic affairs, but this one really takes the cake and has global relevance in terms of precedent. With that disclaimer in mind:

Hoo-boy!, obscurantism comes in more flavors than ice cream!

Yes, commercial R&D is important. And in the United States we systematically destroyed the pinnacle of corporate-funded science when we broke up the Bell System and thereby destroyed Bell Labs. Tragic loss of enormous proportions, and "but now we have iPhone and Android!" is no excuse.

McDougall is as bad as a creationist, and IMHO the people of Canada should go to war on that guy and do whatever it takes within the boundaries of the law plus peaceful civil disobedience, to get him removed.

No pure science? Does that mean no more CA gov funded astronomy? After all, gazing at stars doesn't produce consumer baubles, right? And if some karma-motivated deity out there hurls a large space rock at a Canadian city, will that change a few minds? Better, just ask the Russians whether they think astronomy is pointless because it doesn't produce baubles. Better, ask Elon Musk, and then ask the terribly crass but necessary question of whether Canada has some kind of national inferiority complex to the effect that it will never be able to produce its own SpaceX. Clue: fund the astronomy & astrophysics, and end up with another SpaceX at the end of an unpredictable string of causality.

As for our very own obscurantists, our war in the US starts with the Senate, and there is a mid-term election next year. So we have a chance to vote out some of the worst of our own, which we should do with ferocious dedication. What we need is to start challenging candidates for public office to participate in public science quizzes where they get grilled about well-known facts of nature. And if that backfires in some places, with the proudly ignorant reaping a majority of votes, the places that vote for such people should be quarantined and boycotted until they feel enough economic pain to fix their attitudes.

Scientists and the science-minded tend to avoid political power struggles because, quite frankly, politics is often seen as a cesspool where petty minds compete for petty power using petty tactics. Compare & contrast: the video from the Higgs conference, to any video from the US Congress. The comparison puts Congress to shame. But the blunt fact is, we have got to get fully involved, because if we don't, we effectively abandon humanity to the Machiavellian machinations of the petty power-minded, and thereby thwart our very potential as a species to understand the greater whole.

We rightly view with contempt, empires that amused themselves to death or otherwise spiraled down in decadence and petty tyranny.

Question is, can we do any better?, and what are we willing to do, in order to do better?

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