Comment by nathan_compton

It is pretty simple - if the rewards are great enough and the objective difficult enough, at some point it becomes more efficient to kneecap your competitors rather than to try to outrun them.

I genuinely thing science would be better served if scientist got paid modest salaries to pursue their own research interests and all results became public domain. So many Universities now fancy themselves startup factories, and startups are great for some things, no doubt, but I don't think pure research is always served by this strategy.