America Needs a New Scientific Revolution
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
It's not like there has been a shortage of covid related research in the last ~2 years. Machine learning, quantum computing, all have piles of money pouring in from industry. And somewhere, some long-suffering career researcher is toiling in some area the rest of us ignore, that will be super important somehow in 10 years.
There's definitely room for streamlining processes, and making them apolitical, even if bureaucratic. But institutional inertia has an upside too. Fundamental research is a very long game.
Chesterton's fence and all that
It's interesting how as soon as he spoke out against Affirmative Action and DEI he was immediately accused of some transgression. All that without proof, of course, or an actual trial (hint: it wouldn't pass the stricter bar of a court of law) but rather judged by an opaque "tribunal" of ethicists.
Note that he had tenure, so making up these accusations was probably the only way to get rid of the squeaky wheel...
Reminds me of RMS getting cancelled by... an anonymous blog post!
That is basically the story of Katalin Karikó, the Hungarian scientist behind mRNA technology. She started tinkering with mRNA in 1978 and she was actually snubbed by Pennsylvania U. for doing "unpromising" research at some later point. All around, it took her almost 40 years of toil to arrive at a human-usable mRNA form.
One of the weaknesses of the current approach is the "publish or perish" curse. It incentivizes people to work on problems that yield (even mediocre) papers within a short timeframe. Most scientific breakthroughs didn't happen that way.
And yet there has been. Where is the definitive research on aerosols? What is long covid? Why do vaccinated people get long covid? Why does COVID-19 arrive in fairly regular waves? Is Zinc helpful if you catch COVID-19? How does superspreading happen? It seems like a lot of research was abandoned when the pandemic seemed to be ending after the vaccine distribution started which turned out to be the exactly wrong thing to do when Delta showed up.
https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/air/publications
This example was pretty easy to find.
For viral infections generally, little is known about the dose-response relationship between the inhaled number of virions and infection risk and the relationship between the site of deposition within the respiratory tract and the clinical phenotype and severity of illness.
The gaps in addressing the 4 critical questions highlight the necessity of an organized interdisciplinary research agenda. The pandemic quickly launched such research, resulting in the new but still incomplete findings presented at the NASEM workshop. These findings document the critical role of aerosols in transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Further studies are needed to refine understanding of the relative contributions of the modes of transmission in distinct settings. Strong and immediate precautionary actions should be taken based on the demonstrated significance of this transmission mode, particularly as the pandemic surges. Strategies need to be developed that assure sufficient ventilation and that add air cleaning and perhaps ultraviolet light in appropriate settings.
end quotes
Prior to this research scientists spent a long time arguing over what an aerosol was and found there were conflicting definitions. They've studied influenza and colds for a century and until now they didn't know it was spread by aerosols? And they still don't know exactly what the risk of infection by aerosols is.
I’d rather see funding go towards an international science foundation, personally There are so many amazing scientists in other countries that can’t get even living expenses covered.