Does Public Funding Of Science Enhance Scientific Progress?

[Webster]

Cato Institute: Does Public Funding Of Science Enhance Scientific Progress?

Many people believe that science and research are public goods and thus need financial support from the government. Most economists believe that economic growth depends on innovation which in turn arises from science and research. The conventional wisdom concludes that economic growth depends on government largesse, perhaps as much as it does on markets.

Economic growth and innovation are closely linked, but we might doubt that science and research are public goods. Consider the history of public support for science. The United States was effectively laissez faire in science and research until 1940, yet the inauguration of vast federal funding for science and innovation since that date has not altered the nation’s underlying rates of economic growth. The Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla transformed their industries without government grants. Indeed, in 2003 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD found in surveying its members that only privately funded R&D led to economic growth—publicly funded R&D had no beneficial effects at all.

Everybody supports the public funding of scientific research: industry loves corporate welfare, the universities love the grants, the politicians love the reflected glory, and the general public believes the conventional wisdom previously noted. Terence Kealey argues that science and research are most certainly not public goods and that we could—if we wished—leave R&D solely to the market.

(Cato Video Link)

Thoughts?

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Military

Federal Police

Highways

Safe Borders

Treaties

Federal Courts

Thats it! Thats all our federal government should be doing. The rest under the Constitution we now ignore is the states responsibility.

This what we get when our federal government is free and loose with our money when they actually think they are doing good.

Half a million to study why fat girls don't get dates .

The federal government is spending nearly a half a million dollars to find out why obese teenage girls have a hard time getting dates.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $466,642 grant last week for the study, which will examine whether social skills have an impact on why obese girls have fewer dating experiences than their less obese counterparts.
“Mounting evidence demonstrates that weight influences intimate (i.e., dating and sexual) relationship formation and sexual negotiations among adolescent girls,” the grant’s abstract states. “Obese girls consistently report having fewer dating and sexual experiences, but more sexual risk behaviors (i.e., condom nonuse) once they are sexually active.”
“The conceptual framework that has guided this research presumes that differences in the social skills for relating to peers and intimate partners along with differences in the relationship experiences of obese and non-obese girls account for these differences,” it said.
“However, no studies have actually examined whether the interpersonal skills and intimate relationships of obese and non-obese girls differ.”
Professors at the Magee-Womens Research Institute and Foundation in Pittsburgh will try to answer this question over the next four years. The end date for the project is listed as May 2018.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3212136/posts?page=21