A Stitch in Haste

Yet another data point reinforcing my thesis that "science" is simply not a public good:

Of the 186 Nobel winners in Medicine since 1901, 99 did their prize-winning research with the support of U.S. research institutions. Of those, only five did their work at NIH and fewer than one-third did their work while affiliated with public institutions.

The other two-thirds were affiliated with private institutions and were primarily supported through private funds. While only a cursory analysis, the evidence seems clear that private investors, whether entrepreneurial or philanthropic, are much better at identifying truly innovative research than government institutions are.

And remember also that government is simply incapable of keeping "public science" even close to apolitical or nonpartisan:

For years, advocates spent millions of dollars trying to convince Congress to support in vitro fertilization research. They claimed that without funding the U.S. would suffer a brain drain and infertile Americans would have to seek treatment abroad. While a divisive debate over the ethical merits of test-tube babies raged, some scientists quietly pursued their research privately. Even after decades of lobbying, the federal government never funded any IVF research, and today the U.S. has the largest IVF industry in the world.

Other "government science is never unbiased" data points include "stem cell research" and, of course, "Reagan and AIDS" (see also this article on homosexuality: "there is very little research money, and almost no glory, to be gained in the hunt for gayness"). And don't forget the related examples of "Medicare and Viagra" or the (hardly "apolitical and nonpartisan") network of taxpayer-subsidized arts funding.

Note also the additional, and important, point made in the commentary: A private dollar spent on "lobbying for science" is not a dollar spent on "science." A taxpayer dollar spent establishing, administering or overseeing a governmental science bureaucracy is likewise not a dollar spent on "science." There's a significant deadweight loss in trying to convince politicians that your scientific agenda is the "correct" scientific agenda. A scientist cannot simultaneously be in a lab and in a committee meeting. Neither can her patron's checkbook.

Just as government cannot "create jobs," but only redistribute them (net of bureaucratic and political overhead), and just as government cannot "create wealth," but only redistribute it (again, net of bureaucratic and political overhead), so too can government not "create research," but only redistribute it to politically favored areas from disfavored ones.

(Via Hit & Run.)