I totally agree that basic research is underfunded. In terms of constructive criticism, the issue of defense spending is isomorphic to your war-on-terror point, but is much less controversial. I might edit the post to remove this just to avoid a controversy different than your main point.
You missed the boat completely. Not modding down because this is an easy cognitive error to make, and I just hit you with a wall of text that does need better editing.
I just said that the model of “basic research” is WRONG. You can’t throw billions at individual groups, each eating away a tiny piece of the puzzle doing basic research and expect to get a working device that fixes the real problems.
You’ll get rafts of “papers” that each try to inform the world about some tiny element about how things work, but fail miserably in their mission for a bunch of reasons.
Instead you need targeted, GOAL oriented research, and a game plan to win. When groups learn things, they need to update a wiki or some other information management tool with what they have found out and how certain they are correct—not hide their actual discovery in a huge jargon laden paper with 50 references at the end.
Fair enough—you don’t believe in research that isn’t directed at a particular problem (aka basic research). That’s totally independent of your criticism of “cheap trick” biomedical research—which is a structural function of the fact that companies who make their money providing “cheap tricks” are the ones doing most of the funding. And I stand by my assertion that your references to other irrational funding priorities is a massive distraction from your point.
In general, I think we are a lot farther from solving the problem than you seem to acknowledge. It isn’t that someone knows how to cure/fix cancer but isn’t being funded. It’s that Science as a whole has no idea what might work.
The method I described WILL work. The laws of physics say it will. Small scale experiments show it working. It isn’t that complicated to understand. Bad mRNA present = cell dies. All tumors, no matter what, have bad mRNAs, wherever they happen to be found in the body.
But it has to be developed and refined, with huge resources put into each element of the problem.
Here, specifically, is the difference between my proposed method and the current ‘state of the art’. Ok, so the NIH holds a big meeting. They draw a massive flow chart. Team 1,2,3 - your expertise is in immunology. Find a coating that will evade the immune system and can encapsulate a large enough device. Million dollar prize to the first team that succeeds. Here are the specific criteria for success.
Team 4 - for some reason, health cells are dying when too many copies of the prototype device are injected. Million dollars if you can find a solution to this problem within 6 months.
Team 5 - we need alternate chemotherapy agents to attach to this device.
Team 6 - we need a manufacturing method.
Once a goal is identified and a team is assigned, they are allocated resources within a week. Rather than awarding and penny pinching funds, the overall effort has a huge budget and equipment is purchased or loaned between groups as needed. The teams would be working in massive integrated laboratories located across the country, with multiple teams in each laboratory for cross trading of skills and ideas.
And so on and so forth. The current model is “ok, so you want to research if near infrared lasers and tumor cells will work. You have this lengthy list of paper credentials, and lasers and cancer sound like buzzwords we like to hear. Also your buddies all rubber stamped your idea during review. Here’s your funds, hope to see a paper in 2 years”...
No one ever considers “how likely are actually going to be better than using high frequency radiation we already have? How much time is this really going to buy a patient even if this is a better method?”.
The fact is, I’ve looked at the list of all ongoing research at several major institutions, and they are usually nearly all projects of similarly questionable long term utility. Sure, maybe a miracle will happen and someone will discover and easy and cheap method that works incredibly well that no one ever thought would work.
But a molecular machine, composed of mostly organic protein based parts, that detects bad mRNAs and kills the cell is an idea that WILL work. It DOES work in rats. More importantly, it is a method that can potentially hunt down tumor cells of any type, no matter where they are hiding, no matter how many metastases are present.
Anyone using rational thought would realize that this is an idea that actually is nearly certain to work (well, in the long run, not saying a big research project might not hit a few showstoppers along the way).
And there is money going to this idea—but it’s having to compete with 1000 other methods that don’t have the potential to actually kill every tumor cell in a patient and cure them.
No one ever considers “how likely are actually going to be better than using high frequency radiation we already have? How much time is this really going to buy a patient even if this is a better method?”.
You can’t know such things beforehand. That’s why they call it research.
Look at a central technique of molecular biology like the usage of monoclonal antibodies.
The funding to develop the technique came from cancer research. People hoped it would be a way good way to kill cancer cells. They didn’t had the success with cancers cells that they hoped for. On the other hand molecular biology would be a lot less productive if we didn’t have monoclonal antibodies.
Doing basic research with near infrared lasers and cancer is similar.
And there is money going to this idea—but it’s having to compete with 1000 other methods that don’t have the potential to actually kill every tumor cell in a patient and cure them.
That’s false. Even today some cancer patients get cured from their cancer by taking big pharma drugs.
But a molecular machine, composed of mostly organic protein based parts, that detects bad mRNAs and kills the cell is an idea that WILL work. It DOES work in rats.
If there’s enough funding for such an idea to make it work in rats in the current system, doesn’t that negate your central point?
If people in academia make it works in rats, taking it from working in rats to working in humans is the job of biotech or bigpharma.
If bigpharma thinks that such an idea is really promising they could invest billions into the idea and attack the problem systematically.
I totally agree that basic research is underfunded. In terms of constructive criticism, the issue of defense spending is isomorphic to your war-on-terror point, but is much less controversial. I might edit the post to remove this just to avoid a controversy different than your main point.
You missed the boat completely. Not modding down because this is an easy cognitive error to make, and I just hit you with a wall of text that does need better editing.
I just said that the model of “basic research” is WRONG. You can’t throw billions at individual groups, each eating away a tiny piece of the puzzle doing basic research and expect to get a working device that fixes the real problems.
You’ll get rafts of “papers” that each try to inform the world about some tiny element about how things work, but fail miserably in their mission for a bunch of reasons.
Instead you need targeted, GOAL oriented research, and a game plan to win. When groups learn things, they need to update a wiki or some other information management tool with what they have found out and how certain they are correct—not hide their actual discovery in a huge jargon laden paper with 50 references at the end.
Fair enough—you don’t believe in research that isn’t directed at a particular problem (aka basic research). That’s totally independent of your criticism of “cheap trick” biomedical research—which is a structural function of the fact that companies who make their money providing “cheap tricks” are the ones doing most of the funding. And I stand by my assertion that your references to other irrational funding priorities is a massive distraction from your point.
In general, I think we are a lot farther from solving the problem than you seem to acknowledge. It isn’t that someone knows how to cure/fix cancer but isn’t being funded. It’s that Science as a whole has no idea what might work.
The method I described WILL work. The laws of physics say it will. Small scale experiments show it working. It isn’t that complicated to understand. Bad mRNA present = cell dies. All tumors, no matter what, have bad mRNAs, wherever they happen to be found in the body.
But it has to be developed and refined, with huge resources put into each element of the problem.
Here, specifically, is the difference between my proposed method and the current ‘state of the art’. Ok, so the NIH holds a big meeting. They draw a massive flow chart. Team 1,2,3 - your expertise is in immunology. Find a coating that will evade the immune system and can encapsulate a large enough device. Million dollar prize to the first team that succeeds. Here are the specific criteria for success.
Team 4 - for some reason, health cells are dying when too many copies of the prototype device are injected. Million dollars if you can find a solution to this problem within 6 months.
Team 5 - we need alternate chemotherapy agents to attach to this device.
Team 6 - we need a manufacturing method.
Once a goal is identified and a team is assigned, they are allocated resources within a week. Rather than awarding and penny pinching funds, the overall effort has a huge budget and equipment is purchased or loaned between groups as needed. The teams would be working in massive integrated laboratories located across the country, with multiple teams in each laboratory for cross trading of skills and ideas.
And so on and so forth. The current model is “ok, so you want to research if near infrared lasers and tumor cells will work. You have this lengthy list of paper credentials, and lasers and cancer sound like buzzwords we like to hear. Also your buddies all rubber stamped your idea during review. Here’s your funds, hope to see a paper in 2 years”...
No one ever considers “how likely are actually going to be better than using high frequency radiation we already have? How much time is this really going to buy a patient even if this is a better method?”.
The fact is, I’ve looked at the list of all ongoing research at several major institutions, and they are usually nearly all projects of similarly questionable long term utility. Sure, maybe a miracle will happen and someone will discover and easy and cheap method that works incredibly well that no one ever thought would work.
But a molecular machine, composed of mostly organic protein based parts, that detects bad mRNAs and kills the cell is an idea that WILL work. It DOES work in rats. More importantly, it is a method that can potentially hunt down tumor cells of any type, no matter where they are hiding, no matter how many metastases are present.
Anyone using rational thought would realize that this is an idea that actually is nearly certain to work (well, in the long run, not saying a big research project might not hit a few showstoppers along the way).
And there is money going to this idea—but it’s having to compete with 1000 other methods that don’t have the potential to actually kill every tumor cell in a patient and cure them.
You can’t know such things beforehand. That’s why they call it research. Look at a central technique of molecular biology like the usage of monoclonal antibodies.
The funding to develop the technique came from cancer research. People hoped it would be a way good way to kill cancer cells. They didn’t had the success with cancers cells that they hoped for. On the other hand molecular biology would be a lot less productive if we didn’t have monoclonal antibodies.
Doing basic research with near infrared lasers and cancer is similar.
That’s false. Even today some cancer patients get cured from their cancer by taking big pharma drugs.
If there’s enough funding for such an idea to make it work in rats in the current system, doesn’t that negate your central point? If people in academia make it works in rats, taking it from working in rats to working in humans is the job of biotech or bigpharma. If bigpharma thinks that such an idea is really promising they could invest billions into the idea and attack the problem systematically.