Game over for British science?
According to the panel, cuts would cause many top-flight researchers who currently work in the UK to leave, attracted by increased science funding abroad, while overseas researchers would no longer be attracted to work in UK institutions. The quality of university teaching would suffer, and children would be put off pursuing careers in science. “What kind of signal does it send if they see other countries increasing their expenditure while there are cuts here?” asks Lord Rees.
Science funding already tends to be less than 1% of GDP in many countries (0.5% of GDP in the UK), and yet it affects innovation and future economic development. And if you let programs wither and die, it’s very, very hard to re-establish them owing to diffusion of knowledge and people.
its about profit
a plastic dinosaur for instance will generate instant revenue
but fusion research will generate nothing until it works(no pun intended)
and is more coast efficient than other energy souses
while a plastic dinosaur is basically useless
while fusion would be a huge breakthrough the plastic dinosaur will make money now and that is all anybody seems to care about nowadays
My plastic dinosaurs are not useless!!!!!! They’re cute.
Seriously, I think the problem is simpler than that. While we have created the best form of government in history (Democracy in it’s many forms) the system has a very big flaw.
Representatives are limited as to the time span they can think on. Generally this is 3 to 4 years. Research needs to be funded on a timespan of decades, not years.
For example. If a radio message was recieved from 20 Leonis Minoris which is a star similar to our own and about 48 LY away. The question of whether or not to reply is based on the political perception of how it will effect the next election and not on what the world will be like in 96 years when the answer arrives.
Our political system is incapable of thinking and planning more than 5 years ahead on most things and this effects the funding of things that should be funded on a longer term basis.