@hhorstall @mjd Thanks for sharing this. It's really brilliant and thought-provoking!
@waltman @hhorstall By the way, this is the same guy who wrote this article complaining about the NIH's “Cancer Moonshot”, which you hated. Maybe give it another look.
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/whos-got-the-guts-to-go-to-the-moon
@mjd @hhorstall Oh right, the dude who wrote “Maybe curing cancer in the 2020s is way harder than going to the moon in the 1960s. I have no idea.” If you think about it, that’s obviously true, because we went to the moon.in the 1960s, but we haven’t cured cancer in the 2020s. Actually there are some cancers that have effectively been cured, but most still haven’t. And actually cancer isn’t one disease but 100s of them. Some, like pancreatic cancer, generally don’t present any symptoms until it’s too late to treat them.
I had a hard time reading beyond that line, but I tried, and it’s honestly not clear to me whether his gripe is with the word “moonshot” or the entire way research is funded. Given his thoughts on cancer research I can’t really trust his judgement on the other research projects he mentions in his essay.
@waltman @hhorstall The main thesis of his blog is that scientific research in the US is managed and conducted in ways that squelch innovation rather than encouraging it. That is his main running theme.