Who should fund science?
by Jack Stilgoe
A lapse in concentration took my eye to the Times on Monday. In the "Science Notebook," Terence Kealey keenly argued that there is no need for the state to fund science. The economy would chug along nicely with just corporate science. IBM would still produce computers and Pfizer would still produce drugs.
Science policy fans will remember a version of this argument, before it was refrozen, in the pages of New Scientist ten years ago. Keith Pavitt from the Science Policy Research Unit presented the counter-argument.
Kealey's view is pretty marginal, and doesn't deserve a huge amount of attention. But it's an interesting reminder of how some people view science as a homogenous factor of production. For Kealey, it's about making sure that "science" gets done, rather than wondering about what science should get done and how. It reminds me how much we need to find new ways of talking about the value of science.
Incidentally, Kealey runs the UK's only private university.