{"id":13601,"date":"2013-05-14T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T08:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=13601"},"modified":"2013-05-14T03:00:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T08:00:31","slug":"canada-what-were-you-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/13601","title":{"rendered":"Canada, What Were You Thinking?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/bad_astronomy\/2013\/05\/13\/canada_and_science_nrc_will_now_only_do_science_that_promotes_economic_gain.html\">Canada Sells Out Science<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[T]he National Research Council\u2014the Canadian scientific research and development agency\u2014has now said that they will only perform research that has \u201csocial or economic gain\u201d.<br \/>\n\u2026<br \/>\nJohn MacDougal, President of the NRC, literally said, \u201cScientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m incredibly sad to read this. I worked at TRIUMF in Vancouver for about 2.5 years as a postdoc, and I did witness some bureaucratic beancounter nonsense, but nothing like this.<\/p>\n<p>Phil&#8217;s take on this is spot-on. But beyond saying that research pays off, making this policy short-sighted, is the fact that in basic research, you don&#8217;t truly know what you&#8217;re going to find! That&#8217;s what this research is \u2014 an attempt at discovering the unknown. There is no way to guarantee some kind of specific commercial benefit from the undiscovered, but the point of funding discovery is that someone will eventually think of ways to exploit newly-found knowledge! Overall, there will be economic gain as a result \u2014 that&#8217;s the way it has been for a long time. There&#8217;s no reason to think this has suddenly stopped. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada Sells Out Science [T]he National Research Council\u2014the Canadian scientific research and development agency\u2014has now said that they will only perform research that has \u201csocial or economic gain\u201d. \u2026 John MacDougal, President of the NRC, literally said, \u201cScientific discovery is &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/13601\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}