tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post2666901197258694928..comments2024-03-25T09:11:17.877-07:00Comments on The Curious Wavefunction: Let's embrace this new era of private science fundingWavefunctionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-62843962277559691152016-09-23T01:29:06.732-07:002016-09-23T01:29:06.732-07:00While I share your opinion that any money, no matt...While I share your opinion that any money, no matter the source, that gets funneled into science in a good thing, I think that one important point remains that neither you nor Derek in his post on the matter have touched upon. I fear that increased private funding in important fields of science might lead to a further decline in public funding, by producing a reliance on philantropic initiatives and privately funded science. Those responsible for the recent decline in public funding are always looking for new arguments to reduce it even further, and initiatives like this could serve that role very well.<br />Your post gives the impression that public funding, because of being the younger model of financing science, will also be the shorter lived. But all ideas that form the structure of society were new at some point, and the good ones (and arguably some of the bad ones) survived to form our society today. I absolutely hope that publicly funded science proves to be one of the better and longer-lived of those ideas.<br />So while I'm not at all opposed to the idea of large private research initiatives, I think we shouldn't lose the awareness that we, as a society, still need to ensure, by voting or campaigning or whatever, that there will be as much public funding for sciance as possible. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com