Comment by shevy-java
4 days ago
We need open publishing. This is why Elsevier etc... use an outdated business model.
That Elsevier now also runs more into fake-articles and fake-research, all fueled by the money-addiction, just adds to the problem (and also invalidates Elsevier's model, by the way - why do we now have to deal with fake science that is costly? That is Elsevier's business model). I fail to see why taxpayers money has to go into private companies for research already financed by the taxpayers. We are paying twice here, Elsevier.
Spot on, and beyond the 'double-dipping' business model of "academic publishers" like Elsevier and Springer, there’s a massive systemic issue: taxpayers fund >90% of foundational research, only for private pharma/bio/tech firms to add a thin layer of additional research (or design) on top and then lock it behind patents for decades. Another example of how private interests are offloading the risk and costs to taxpayers while privatizing all the rewards.
"only for private pharma/bio/tech firms to add a thin layer of additional research (or design) on top"
Citation needed.
Go to market cost billions and takes a decade. Doesn't sound like a thin layer. I'm not disputing fundamental research in academia is an essential fuel to keep innovation engines running. But the contributions of biotech is not "thin".
It can be. See glp1. Yes, whoever first came up with that approach is brilliant. But then the lemmings followed now a half dozen or so companies are peddling more or less the same product. And it comes at the cost of what isn’t getting investment at scale instead.
Academic Parma research is mostly billions of dollars, years of effort, a high chance of failure and very specific domain knowledge from the market. If it were so easy to get money this way more people would try
> Another example of how private interests are offloading the risk and costs to taxpayers while privatizing all the rewards.
Another example of government leaders choosing to not spend taxpayer money to pay for the expensive trials to get medicine approved for use.
Another example of voters voting for government leaders that campaign on privatizing the rewards in exchange for the promise of lower taxes.
Pharma is famous for being bad investment unfortunately.
Any taxpayer subsidized industry or subject is a massive magnet for this sort of "complex business that you can't dumb down or eli5 without making it look like a racket because it's fundamentally a racket with responsibility diffused to obfuscate it" stuff because taxpayer money has the most distant of principal agent problem and the government optimizes for "cog in the machine with blinders" employees and silo'd organizations who only care about their own ass so nobody ever takes a step back and says "hey the taxpayer is getting ripped off" until the ripoff is so obvious the taxpayers leann on the politicians.
Academia is basically outdated, or needs incredible reform.
Industry and youtubers are making significant scientific progress. (I'm mostly joking about youtubers, but it does happen)
I think Academia is where B/C-list performers pretend they are A-list.
Who in Industry is making meaningful progress in the field of maths? How about astronomy? Particle Physics? Psychology? Sociology?
I'd wager that I could name basically any field which does not have immediately obvious and proven ways to make money with through research.
Two of these are not like the others.
One of the things that is so deceptive is the way so many people think that ways to make money need to be both obvious and proven.
Of course you have to be very good at math or natural science to be able to figure out how to support your own research so you can get way more accomplished than you could at a unversity.
All others need not apply.
Most universities wouldn't act on your application anyway, if you got very far without being on the academic track, that could make lots of people look bad who would prefer to keep the status-quo more restrictive.
Edit: The threat to the status-quo must have gotten bigger than I thought, defensive reactions are popping up quicker than ever.
4 replies →
This was getting obvious even before the 1970's when university attendance went wild.
>Academia is where B/C-list performers pretend they are A-list.
The ones having top credentials and little more have gotten more & more outnumbered by more capable thinkers every decade, it's been nothing but circling the wagons which ends up creating more of an insular environment for those who love eminence and an exclusive status more than anything else.
Industry doesn’t really care about research that doesn’t advance the portfolio or function essentially as a demonstration of something in their portfolio. Academia is where research actually happens.
OpenAI has done more for society than all academia over the same timespan.
You could probably say the same about various medical devices/medicines. The internet. Chemistry/plastics.
Sociology/psychology is historically unfalsifiable, and mostly useless, those are truly detriments.
quantum physics might be useful, but I think even there, industry will do it better.
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