Don't Kill What You Don't Understand

Scientists are supposed to be smarter than us. True fact.

Research can be a counter-intuitive thing. Universities conduct a lot of research with for-profit underwriting, but much of the really expensive and rewarding research involves large government investments from agencies like the DOD, DOE, NASA, or NIH.

What rarely gets acknowledged is that the federal government is providing a research infrastructure that no private company could afford on its own. The win/win scenario means that any discoveries and patented technologies that may emerge are funneled back to the for-profit companies, who (hopefully) pay taxes and give the U.S. a huge advantage in intellectual property for global trade.

A few years ago, a study revealed that theoretical research yielded more profitable results than applied, or goal-driven, research. For example, the Department of Energy could give a bunch of eggheads the means to study subatomic particles with no specified goal beyond knowledge, and in the process of building a machine to shoot atoms at each other, they unlock an unrelated engineering breakthrough. The quest for military solutions like radar may end up spurring a generation of seemingly unrelated consumer goods. Our life expectancy gained 30 years in the last century by giving curious experts the time and money to make often accidental discoveries.

Sometimes knowledge for knowledge's sake is a celebration of our incessant curiosity. And sometimes the less curious would love to punish this as expensive indulgence among the egghead community. But it's also a driver of free-market capitalism and what used to be called American exceptionalism. Those who take glee in slashing research funding are cutting their own throats as well as mine. I can't abide the latter.