Goal-oriented research
A nice editorial about science funding. This comes in a time of discussion about the future European Research Council that, if it ever gets of the paper, will someday fund basic research in Europe.
"High-quality science will give rise to more unexpected and therefore valuable
Comments
Justifying research is hard
Very good article, lucky we have a sub to that one.
Here in Australia the current focus is the exact opposite, i.e. "basic" research is ignored and we are all supposed to demonstrate how our work contributes to the "national good" (stopping terrorists, preventing our rivers drying up and so on). It's a very naive view of how science is done. On the other hand, justifying research is hard. I know that if you take talented people, good code and every sequence database there is, interesting things will be found, many of which will be "significant" e.g. biomedically speaking. But you can't write a grant that says "give me some money to play around and I promise something will come out of it". Hence we all end up bullshitting in grant applications about probable outcomes. Someone once said something like "if you knew the results in advance it wouldn't be research"...