Comment Re:What Are They Talking About? (Score 4, Interesting) 304
There are most definitely other problems, many of which are overlooked during all the hand-wringing of "we don't have enough (US) scientists".
A) Over the past 5 years, there are a huge increase in federal funding for basic research. Unfortunately, most of the money went to fund a few large-scale projects run by well-investigators--we're talking about guys who are already at the peak of the funding heap and don't really have to worry about their salary and their entire labs' salary and jobs depending on whether the grant submission scores in the top 9% (probably be funded), or outside of the top 12-15% (probably not funded). What I'm saying, long-windedly, is that much of the recent increase in NIH money made a few large-scale, high-profile projects even larger, at the very same time that young invenstigators were seeing a precipituous drop in the percent of acceptance for the smaller new investigator grants.
b) 6 years of grad school, a doctorate, and then you find out that you really aren't paid any better than losers straight from Party U--and THEY probably get health care. Raise your hand if you're ready to quit yet, since your first grant is going to be rejected anyway.
c) it never fucking ends. You can be president of the school and a nobel prize winner and so important that they've decided to make you the first human cloned, and your grant STILL only has a 10-18% chance of being funded.
So, um, I can't remember how this pertains to the patent thing. The key to remember, however, is that the Pharmas tend not to do the most productive basic research, so many of the potential drugs arise from federally-funded work a universities, where people are pursuing utterly novel stuff. It's good for the rest of us to provide a mechanism for the school to approach a biotech and offer that novel product in exchange for any possible royalties.
The only bad patents are patents on genes or part of the genome. Those are fucking stupid and people should be beaten.
A) Over the past 5 years, there are a huge increase in federal funding for basic research. Unfortunately, most of the money went to fund a few large-scale projects run by well-investigators--we're talking about guys who are already at the peak of the funding heap and don't really have to worry about their salary and their entire labs' salary and jobs depending on whether the grant submission scores in the top 9% (probably be funded), or outside of the top 12-15% (probably not funded). What I'm saying, long-windedly, is that much of the recent increase in NIH money made a few large-scale, high-profile projects even larger, at the very same time that young invenstigators were seeing a precipituous drop in the percent of acceptance for the smaller new investigator grants.
b) 6 years of grad school, a doctorate, and then you find out that you really aren't paid any better than losers straight from Party U--and THEY probably get health care. Raise your hand if you're ready to quit yet, since your first grant is going to be rejected anyway.
c) it never fucking ends. You can be president of the school and a nobel prize winner and so important that they've decided to make you the first human cloned, and your grant STILL only has a 10-18% chance of being funded.
So, um, I can't remember how this pertains to the patent thing. The key to remember, however, is that the Pharmas tend not to do the most productive basic research, so many of the potential drugs arise from federally-funded work a universities, where people are pursuing utterly novel stuff. It's good for the rest of us to provide a mechanism for the school to approach a biotech and offer that novel product in exchange for any possible royalties.
The only bad patents are patents on genes or part of the genome. Those are fucking stupid and people should be beaten.
