I hear calls for privatisation of organisations like NASA all the time, and I definitely understand (even support) the motivation for it. However, you need to understand the way these things work first, to understand the down-side of privatisation.

It's all about RISK. Many of the good programs that organisations like NASA are running are risky, in a financial sense. The idea of public funding in these cases (not the only reason for public funding, btw) is to spread the risk. When people claim that private industry can achieve the same things as NASA, they will often be wrong by default. This is because private industry will not accept the high risk of failure and conjectural returns of many blue-sky ideas, so they won't even consider investing in them. Industry is good at slow incremental progress (like iPhone 4 to iPhone 4s), but not so good at revolutionary progress. While many advances can be made incrementally, albeit more slowly, there are plenty of examples of non-incremental advances (like... the advent of microbiology, which wouldn't have followed in any incremental way from miasma theory without the input from optics).

So, you might ask: what are the benefits? I'm going to assume that you don't see scientific knowledge as an end in itself, and I assume that the one-off consumer products that we hear about don't excite you, so I'll restrict myself to a very specific, generic industrial method: Finite Element Analysis. FEA is something that was developed in universities alongside the earliest computers. Early FEA codes were specialised, sometimes buggy, and treated with scepticism by industry. Within NASA, these early codes began to be applied to certain problems, but NASA groups recognised the need for a more centralised, methodological approach. So, they threw some hard-earned-taxpayer-money at the problem (yes, YOUR money!) and NASTRAN was born: the first "industrial-strength", validated, quality FEA code set. Fast forward, and these days, FEA is considered both essential and central to a huge range of Engineering work: the design of everything from bridges to cars involves FEA in a key role. However, the vast majority of people who understand the history of FEA will acknowledge that we'd be far behind our current position without NASTRAN and the early NASA support. This is what public funding gets you: an acceptance of early risk and willingness to take on "blue sky" projects that may become central to industry within only a few decades. You just won't get that from private enterprise, even a "Kickstarter-driven" kind of private enterprise.

You really have no idea how 'publish or perish' is involved?

Here's a clue: when was the last time you delayed publication (of eminently publishable results) to run some extra tests, or perform alternative forms of verification? I've never had a supervisor allow such things in my entire career. It's always a case of publishing as soon as possible (i.e. as soon as a study has the remotest chance of getting past reviewers).

I tend to be very cautious in my approach to things, and I've often wanted to do additional verification work. Not to target a better journal or a second publication, but just for the sake of more solid conclusions. I'm never allowed to do this, and I even recognise that it's not part of my job to cause any problems over it, for the very economic reasons that you mention. This bothers me deeply, but it doesn't seem to bother the kind of people who care more about their careers than about the veracity of their results. I've even been told on a few occasions that my reticence to publish some of my own simulation work that "should already be out there" is bad for my career.

In my perception, those who are more career-driven have an advantage in gaming the system. They are rewarded for publishing multiple papers of shallow scope and relatively minor significance; spreading what should be presented once as thin as possible across multiple publications. We all know it's a game to be played; that those evaluating our early-career performance really have no clue whether a publication is important or not. By the time they find out, those who've gamed the system well will already have tenure.

Yeah... I remember a game called Cowboys and Indians. Mass slaughter every lunchtime. And we were Australian kids, so we had little idea what Cowboys or Indians actually were, beyond some vague notion of conflict, horses and rolling plains.

Psychologists don't need to have PhDs. A PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy; a research higher degree held by many Engineers, Physicists, Mathematicians, Biologists, etc., and, as it happens, both Psychologists and Psychiatrists.

Huh? So are you saying that humans fight each other NEITHER for socio-political reasons NOR religious reasons, but simply because they come from different groups?

If so, your argument that religion is not responsible makes little sense to me. Religion is a purely human construct. It's part of what defines "the group", as you point out. Therefore, by definition, in your argument, if the difference in groups causes conflict, then those differences in the purely human constructs---such as religion---are EXACTLY the factors which DO cause wars! What am I missing here?

I would add that the claims of religion, particularly infallibility and post-mortem benefits, would make it a greater contributing factor than many others.

I didn't get the impression that the OP in this discussion was trying to censor anyone. I think he was emphasising the lack of mathematical rigour ("red tape") in Feynman's presentation; particularly his reliance upon intuition rather than derivation. If you've ever heard undergraduates trying to reason about things like general relativity using poor metaphors like the bowling-ball-on-a-trampoline model, you rapidly realise how important the mathematical framework is. You HAVE heard undergraduates do things like this, right? :-)

PS: I teach Finite Element Analysis and Continuum Mechanics. Some of it is physics, but with an Engineering bent... :-)

I'm not the OP, but Google for "Leonard Susskind: Theoretical Minimum" for a great set of courses (they're on YouTube, iTunesU, etc.). You can also find guides for the more advanced areas---General Relativity, for example---on sites like arXiv (although they're not connected in any way with Susskind's lectures, they make a great adjunct).

Yes! The Feynman lectures are interesting, but I think that Leonard Susskind's lectures are much more clear. Susskind also addresses General Relativity in a more conventional way, without predicating the whole exercise in electrodynamics. Susskind's approach places more emphasis on the underlying geometry, centred around the metric tensor, and is appropriate across multiple applications of continuum mechanics. I think that the Feynman approach is better for those who already have a decent grasp of GR.

So, with science-literacy declining in the USA, you would like even greater emphasis placed on non-science courses, focusing on human relationships, empathy, etc.?

I'm not opposed to those kinds of courses. We're all human and need the things you're advocating. However, there's only so far that a positive outlook, a friendly smile and an open personality will get humanity before some poor, lonely, anti-social schmuck, who wasn't invited to The Party, has to sit down and actually get The Work done. Ultimately, The Work often involves math (or logical thinking, which is just math) at some level, no matter how many layers of Human Resources, Sales, Management, Legal, Advertising and Accounting might be plastered haphazardly on top of it.

Yes... do the math. Training for a marathon (running ~50km per week) only burns around 3400 Cal / week. This is equivalent to about 1.5 days of average total energy requirement. So, even fairly hard-core training could only increase the amount of food you could eat and remain energy-neutral by around 20%.

So, you could ask yourself which might be easier: cutting back your food by 20% or training for a marathon? I personally do a bit of both, and enjoy running a lot, but staying slightly hungry is probably an easier proposition.

This is why some primary school kids are familiar with Faraday's work, but Maxwell's Equations are not covered until Uni. Maxwell formalised many of Faraday's experimental results in electromagnetism (as described in the Wikipedia article).

Faraday observed phenomena, but lacked the mathematical background to describe them properly. If you have a new field, with readily-observable phenomena (as electromagnetism was), then this approach clearly works well. I can't think of any similar situations in modern science though; the easy stuff has typically been done. Can you name any modern scientists making meaningful contributions in this way? (By "modern", I mean roughly post-1970.)

I don't quite understand your point here. You started by complaining about the test, so why not stick to the point and tell us what problem you have WITH THE TEST?

They offer a prize for demonstrating a supernatural power. That's it, as far as I can tell. Demonstrate it, and you get the money. Of course it's a scam, because nobody can ever claim the prize, but the point is to highlight the people who CLAIM these abilities.

For comparison, consider the Ansari X Prize. You didn't get time with their committee just because you could build a paper aeroplane. The prize was for launching a reusable manned spacecraft. If you could do this, then you could claim the prize. How is the JREF prize any different? How does the number of "preliminary tests" affect the fairness? Are you claiming that people with ACTUAL supernatural abilities are somehow denied access to the money because of this lack of preliminary tests? If so, how do the suggestions above (media attention and/or participation in other skeptic groups) NOT address this concern?

Everyone should visit the site with the threatening message. It's time to put the Slashdot effect to good use! :-)

You can do what you like on private property, but you can't control public roads. If the unexpected happens, the best possible outcome is ensured by travelling at slower speeds and maintaining maximum vehicle control, regardless of your baseline skill.

What happens if you're busy hooning around on your "empty" road and the "unexpected happens"? You'll be just as likely to have an accident as all the other "sheep", because you're closer to your own limits. I've lived in areas with lots of "empty" roads (think driving 10km without seeing another car), and most of the bad drivers in that area weren't honing their skills; they just drove badly. There were plenty of accidents; a surprisingly large number given the local population. You think they were caused by people travelling at the speed limit and taking the turns like a snail? Me neither...