Spending 10x more on research will likely net you far less than a 10x increase, you would likely be lucky if you got half or a quarter of that.
I’d really like to see published research on this. I did some searching and found that there’s a lot of uncertainty because the problem isn’t well-defined (different research has different values), it’s hard to experiment with (very long lead-times), and there’s no political value in knowing the truth (research spending is politically equivalent to highway repair spending). No one even really knows the value of current research.
Science comes in steps and part of the process that reduces so much waste is peer reviewing and replication of results. Some processes simply cannot be sped up, regardless of funding.
Research isn’t a defined process (there are different ways to get to useful results), and people respond to incentives...it’s possible (though very unlikely) that a 10x increase in research funding would have more than a 10x improvement due to attracting much more productive researchers who currently go to better-paid industries.
I’d really like to see published research on this. I did some searching and found that there’s a lot of uncertainty because the problem isn’t well-defined (different research has different values), it’s hard to experiment with (very long lead-times), and there’s no political value in knowing the truth (research spending is politically equivalent to highway repair spending). No one even really knows the value of current research.
Research isn’t a defined process (there are different ways to get to useful results), and people respond to incentives...it’s possible (though very unlikely) that a 10x increase in research funding would have more than a 10x improvement due to attracting much more productive researchers who currently go to better-paid industries.