NYT: U.S. Research Funds Often Lead to Start-Ups, Study Says

[DeepModem Mom]

U.S. Research Funds Often Lead to Start-Ups, Study Says
By STEVE LOHR
Published: April 10, 2006

A new study of university scientists who received federal financing from the National Cancer Institute found that they generated patents at a rapid pace and started companies in surprisingly high numbers.

The study, the authors say, suggests that the commercial payoff for the government's support for basic research and development in the life sciences is greater than previously thought.

The paper, to be published today, comes at a time when politicians and policy makers in the United States and Europe are questioning the value of government funds invested in fundamental research. In theory, those investments should be a wise use of taxpayers' money, according to many economists, who assert that innovation must be an engine of economic growth and job creation in developed nations.

The new study, by economists at Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Germany, is an attempt to analyze the commercial activity of university scientists in a field where government financing of basic research has been quite generous.

Federal financing of the National Institutes of Health has not grown in the last couple of years, but it increased by two and a half times in the decade before 2005. The National Cancer Institute is the largest of the N.I.H. units, with an annual budget of $4.8 billion, and much of its spending goes to support university research....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/business/10cancer.html

[GeorgeGist]

1. Be nice if NIH got...

part of the royalties to fund more basic research.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Good idea! nt

[Trillo]

3. Let me see if I understand this.

Taxpayer money is used ultimately to create private wealth. Are these commercial patents and the products they protect affordable to all the taxpayers that funded the initial research?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Not familiar with all the rules on this, but, I know the inventors only ..

get a percentage of royalties. Their home institution also gets a cut (usually more than the inventors themselves). Not sure how much, if any, goes back to the funding agency, but I suspect it's significant. Would anyone who has real-world figures please post?

[DeepModem Mom]

5. I just have another question. Is releasing this study aimed at...

preventing cuts in research funding by governments (especially BushCo)? If so, seems like a good thing.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. It sure reads that way. Funny, in decades past people didn't need studies

to prove that supporting basic research was a good idea. It just seemed like obvious common sense. Now with **CronyCorp trying to keep every penny out of anyone else's hands, it's suddenly necessary to PROVE that investment in knowledge pays for itself. Up to this point, it's MORE than paid for itself, incalculably many times over.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Right you are! nt

[cantstandbush]

10. Yes and no. The problem is the government spends very adequate

and substantial amounts on "research" but most don't fully understand what is included in the term "research." It can include anything from boondoggle trips abroad, to misuse of Fed. credit cards, new buildings, renovations of old buildings, and costly renovations of Federal offices for every new prima donna scientist who takes over a directorship. It's really unbelievable what goes on with those "research" dollars. But the scientists are very adept at using language and double talk that few can challenge because of ignorance and the sad situation of giving deference to the medical professionals and some scientists when such deference is unwarranted.

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Thanks so much for your contributions to this thread, cantstandbush. nt

[cantstandbush]

13. i wish I could say more but i value my life. smile n/t

[cantstandbush]

9. Can't post the actual figures but chew on this:

For each grant bring to the institution "indirect costs" (that the public never sees and Congress may not even understand) in ranges anywhere from 10-150% of the original grant (unless these numbers have changed within the last 5 years.

[cantstandbush]

11. Ah, but there are those testy little license fees. AND the investigator

usually becomes the new institution.

[cantstandbush]

8. You seem to be the only one who understands what this all means

I have been trying to clue folks in on what happens with Fed funds going to NIH. It is making individuals wealthy and socking it to the public in at least three ways: 1-It uses public funds to fund medical institutions and yet the costs of medical school keeps rising to outrageous levels. 2- The discoveries by government scientists that once were shared freely among researchers and which gave way to more and less costly research are now kept close to the vest, almost top secret, patented and LICENSED so that the individual PUBLIC servant-scientist does not share, often conducts shoddy research to arrive at preconceived results to get to market fast. 3. The pharmeceutical companies and other research organizations use the public funds to test and run clinical trials with little or no financial risk, take the results, leave the government, set up their own comapnies, and charge the public outrageous prices for the end resluts and carp about the "high cost of research." The only high cost of research is what the public is being soaked for. Cancer drugs and the new genome research area are the greatest culprits at this shit. There is so much more that could be told but I don't have the energy to explain it all. All that is needed is a real journalist who is interested in the subject to do some research on it. Micahel Moore is taking a stab at it with his new project but even he does not know where to look for most of the real information and evidence that would rock the nation's thinking about the "wonderful" system of medicine and healthcare the US (falsely) claims to have.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Maybe it needs to be pointed out more explicitly that this was just NCI...

covered in the study. Of course, the medical/biotech area is the one where there is currently the greatest potential for abuse. There is so much in the way of specifics to be discovered in this field, at the same time that there are available extremely powerful tools to extract that information. The results may be directly applicable to the treatment of diseases, for which the market will pay handsomely. The potential for commercial profit is immense, and abuse is all but invited.

One should be careful, though, not to assume that a similar situation applies in other fields. There are many fields, farther removed from medicine or other "applied science", where funding is grossly inadequate, and the opportunity for abuse virtually nonexistent. How many mathematicians, astronomers, entomologists, or anthropologists are likely to start up private companies at taxpayer expense? It would be a shame to see funding restricted in these areas because of abuses in the bio/medical field.

Perhaps this article should have read something like: "U.S. Medical Research Funding Often Leads to For-Profit Ventures". It's really in bio/medical research that there's a problem. Perhaps the bottom line here is closest to "money is the root of all evil". (Though the lack of money should get its share of the blame.)