As a Former Molecular Biologist (Score 5, Insightful)

I have had to witness the rapid, (indeed reckless) transition of the field from a public forum into a private industry. The majority of bench geneticists now, sadly, work for private firms making money off of techniques that were developed with public money. No money ( and precious little data) flows back from the private to the open public sector. As a result, Public, open Science dies. At the major Universities where I have worked, many of the scientists have had to shut down research due to lack of funding, and are not being replaced. Now there are long open stretches of hallway, consisting of empty labs and labs converted into storage rooms or ad-hoc conference rooms. Yet few of the biotech firms responsible for the diminishment of academic science realize that they are sawing off the branch on which they sit. A corporation simply can't openly perform Peer review, for fear of giving away corporate secrets. And without Peer review, Scientific endeavor ceases to be science at all, but becomes R+D as you would find in any corporation. the nearest analogy i can find is that of Alchemy. In the beginning of the renaissance, philosphers began to realize that on could manipulate the porties of substances. Rather than sharing their data with each other, and focus on the understanding of matter, they instead chose to individually pursue research dedicated to pure commercial value (i.e. the synthesis of gold). 600 years of tinkering with mercury and sulfur proved fruitless. It took only 150 years of peer reviewed work, aimed at nothing but pure scientific understanding, to understand the true principles of chemistry (and the fact that gold cant be made by chemical processes).