Terence Kealey makes an interesting claim:

SCIENCE POLICY across the globe is but a series of footnotes to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 book Science: The Endless Frontier.

Before the Second World War the US Government spent little on applied science and nothing on pure science. In 1940 its total research budget was only $74 million, mainly for defence and agriculture, when the private sector was spending $265million, of which $55 million was for pure science. Yet by 1940 America had long been the richest country in the world, and its researchers, including Edison and the Wright brothers, had transformed the world — on private money. Meanwhile, Einstein flourished at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, which had been privately endowed by the Bambergers with $25 million.

But the Second World War thrust America into funding military science, and by 1945 Vannevar Bush, a brilliant scientific manager, was administering a federal research budget of $1.6 billion, supporting the Manhattan and other projects.

Bush believed that the success of federal science in wartime could be extrapolated into peacetime, so he wrote Science: The Endless Frontier to lobby Washington into maintaining its support. This was because, Bush explained, pure science was a public good that the private sector would not support yet which, paradoxically, the private sector needed if it was to create applied science or technology. Bush sketched out a National Science Foundation to distribute federal funds to university scientists by competitive grants. All science funding agencies across the globe have since been modelled on the NSF.

As a semi-geeky netizen you may know Vannevar Bush more for his essay from the Atlantic Monthly in 1945, As We May Think, which some see as the formal beginning of the information age.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

What was the world like in 1945? The description above was beyond the cutting edge. How times have changed. Can it be said of information and communication technologies that they are merely footnotes to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 visions? I think not. No more than Bush's vision can be said to be a footnote to Leibnitz's imagined calculating machine of two centuries earlier. But Kealey's claim that science funding is still mired in a mid-century form does seem apt. What are the consequences?

In 2003 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a comprehensive survey that reviewed all the known factors that could explain the different growth rates of member countries. The report found, unexceptionally, “a significant effect of research and development (R&D) activity on the growth process” (that is, research powers economic growth). But then it found, explosively, that it was only “business-performed R&D . . . that drives the positive association” (only private research powers economic growth).

Even more explosively, the OECD found that the public funding of R&D appeared to damage economic growth because it “crowds out resources that could be alternatively used by the private sector, including private R&D” (ie, the public funding of research does indeed displace the more useful private funding).

This is heresy to most living people, especially in nations that have utterly surrendered to central government control of the intimate details of life. But what of "real science", pure science, following the trail of discovery wherever it might lead with no thought for crass economic exploitation - knowledge for its own sake?

Scientists today find it hard to believe — even though they know that there is no real distinction between pure and applied science — that the private sector would fund pure science. But scientists are casuists. Consider the Human Genome Project. We were told that only governments and medical charities would fund it because it was such pure science. But when Craig Venter, of Celera Inc, started to overtake the publicly funded teams, they responded by greatly multiplying their demands on the taxpayer on the ground that the human genome was too important to be left to the private sector.

Contrary to myth, the private sector does tons of science — because it is so profitable. Consider IBM. The Times Higher Education Supplement’s survey last year showed that Harvard University’s science papers are the most cited globally (20.6 citations per paper on average) but coming in second was IBM (18.9), outranking all other universities and research bodies. And because IBM invests so much in science, it has for the past 12 years been awarded more patents (3,000 annually) than any other institution. And by its patents IBM earns more than $1 billion annually in licence fees.

The scientists will not easily surrender their faith in government funding, but because public money crowds out private money it tells us that science is not the public good of Bush’s book. Science is not a field of endeavour on which taxpayers’ money need be spent.

Perhaps there is no need but the desire is strong. I doubt that displacement happens unless government funding is the great majority of all funding, so it seems harmless to maintain some level of government involvement. The research funded may be pointless pork, politicized crap, or even useful inquiry though that would be a mistake from the POV of government. Mistakes happen with enough regularity that some benefit is assured. But it does seem better to have a wide variety of funding sources rather than a point source. It seems more likely to produce good science as well as useful applications of science.

Update:

Another consideration

Another who spoke out after retirement was Solly Zuckerman, the UK government's longtime chief scientific advisor. He said "ideas for new weapon systems derived in the first place, not from the military, but from scientists and technologists merely doing what they saw to be their job.... the momentum of the arms race is fueled by technicians in governmental laboratories and in the armaments industries".

Anyone in weapons labs whose skills rose above routine competence, or who displayed any originality, added their iota to this menacing trend. In Zuckerman's view the weapons scientists were "the alchemists of our times, working in secret ... , casting spells which embrace us all".

It's not clear that government selection of research direction has been in the interests of humanity, or that it will be so in future. It seems to me that this is an institution we would be wise to limit since its incentives are contrary to the needs of humanity, and it attracts an unstable and flawed character type to its ranks. When we tote up the accomplishments and failures of government we need to be honest and accurate rather than merely selecting that which supports our biases.

Update:

Another reason why we should not expect good science to result from government funding. [via MR]

extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place.

Update

Some scientists are, as Kealey claims, casuists [via Keats' Telescope]

A serious long-term commitment to funding basic research would be wonderful. It would help America's economy, help secure our place of leadership in the world, and help to fuel a positive American philosophy about our future. Unfortunately, President Bush and his Republican Congress have simpler goals: to provide themselves with political cover during the midterm elections as pro-science, while they continue to starve out American research. . .

Not only is the issue of science funding a politically useful tool, but it is also an area where we can expect to make solid gains. There are enough moderates in Congress that we don't need to regain control of either house to see an increase in funding. This is a an area where it is not all-or-none -- this is an area where every seat counts.

American research is not merely the stuff funded by the national government. It is not even primarily funded by government. Fortunately. That would be terribly stupid since it would then be a political tool subject to the whims of politicians.

When you hear such deceitful arguments from scientists with provincial views and strong political biases bear in mind that they are not reasoning from evidence or being intellectually honest. They are dark siders doing politics instead of science.