On the management of funding of research in science and engineering.

Abstract

Recent government initiatives aimed at reducing the size and structure of the US National Institutes of Health have the potential for seriously affecting the way that biomedical research is conducted in the US. The driving paradigm has it that new science leads to products that make nations economically rich. So, produce the science and the riches will accrue. It is not as simple as that. Science, or knowledge, has to be translated into something that can be sold. This generally requires a variety of operations such as the inception of a concept of a putative product and the design, prototype manufacture and testing of that widget. This is followed by test marketing and then the development of a full production plant compliant with all the rules and regulations for operator safety, environmental protection and the well-being of the public who are the customers. Many of the intermediary operations require new knowledge and the overall process is driven by the engineer. They say that “necessity is the mother of invention” [Sometimes attributed to Richard Frank : Northern Memoirs, (1658)]. So the concept stage for the invention of a new product is a perceived need. Clearly unrequited needs present themselves at each twitch of the eye: foods, cures of infectious and non-infectious disease, peace, companionship, entertainment, travel, sport and so on. People who serve the markets in goods that satisfy such needs scour the opportunity horizon for the potential of a gap that could be filled with a product that could generate profits. Those who are bent on providing services study the ways in which others in society act and seek to supplant those efforts with more efficient systems, with cheaper or more convenient alternatives or with autonomic robots that can replace humans by machines that work round the clock and do not have attitudes toward management that lead to strikes and workplace disharmony. The manufacture of products, the provision of commercial instruments or the devising of labour/time/money saving services happens in liberal democratic societies via the application of private financial means (capital) to generate saleable products from which profits can be made and new investments considered. But this is not all.