There is an article in the Canadian magazine Macleans that makes the case for curiosity-driven research in laying a foundation for the sort of applied research that some funding agencies now prefer. Thinking that a discussion thread about this topic might be useful, I invite fellow RG members to reply with pointers to essays, or with concrete examples. Let's number them so that others can refer to them.
1. Paul Wells, Aug 10, 2013. "How do you fund great science? Ask a great scientist." Macleans magazine [http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/08/10/how-do-you-fund-great-science-ask-a-great-scientist]
Hi Dan,
I'd like to debate the premise, rather than take it as a given. (BTW, I've checked out a few of your papers, and find them absolutely beautiful. In particular, I find them relevant to ion fluxes in the kidney, although in the kidney concentration gradients drive mixing rather than temperature differences, of course).
I'm all for directed research. I don't think we do enough. This is an old problem in science funding. The "funding for curiosity's sake" proponents won out in the 1960s, when the NIH stopped funding clinical research, leaving it to the drug cos. That's when the NIH began funding only mechanism-based grants. It's still easier to get a grant in mice than in humans.
With genomics, it's finally possible to solve diseases. Why they haven't been solved in the past 30 yrs is an embarrassment which taxpayers haven't yet noticed. I doubt if Baby Boomers will remain as quiet as their parents, though, now that they're starting to die of diseases that should have been solved a few decades ago.
I'm all for using research in one field to cross-fertilize another (like your diffusion staircase). But paying elite scientists to follow their curiosity--which we currently do with 10 year MASTER grants from the NIH--is a horrid waste of taxpayers' time and money.
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