The bias of science, part the next

Before I get to the subject of this post I should ask, if you don ' t think government-funded research should be conducted by university-based scientists, and you don ' t think it should be done by government itself, who do you think should do it? Maybe award research grants at random? This is  generally applied, not basic research. Although at one time some corporations supported basic research enterprises -- notably Bell Labs -- that ' s largely a thing of the past. You can ' t patent basic knowledge so you can ' t really profit from it, and profit is all that matters nowadays. In most industries, that ' s okay as far as it goes. There aren ' t any incentives to fake your results because if it doesn ' t work, it doesn ' t work, and you can ' t sell it. I say as far as it goes because they aren ' t investing in a better planet, they ' re investing in higher profits, and we all know that saleable and profitable technologies don ' t necessarily end up being net positive social goods, to say the least. But that ' s another discussion.One industry that does have an incentive fake it, however, is the pharmaceutical industry. The effects of pharmaceuticals are not obvious, go or no/go. The silicon chip either processes the data properly or it doesn ' t. The jet engine either makes the plane fly or it blows up. But medications aren ' t like that at all.The way you get a drug approved by the FDA, meaning a patent, exclusive marketing rights, and maybe billions of dollars, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs