I've been geeking about bio-char for some time, and about Terra Preta for even longer. I've wondered why it seemed to be ignored by researchers, and pursued diffidently at best. It was on the crackpot fringe, too good to be true, or so it seemed when official neglect was taken into consideration. But officials are frequently wrong.

[A]cademia is no more about making useful intellectual progress than advertising is about informing consumers. Professors seek prestigious careers, while funders and students seek prestige by association. Academics talk and write primarily to signal their impressive mental abilities, such as their mastery of words, math, machines, or vast detail. Yes, contributing to useful intellectual progress can sometimes appear impressive, but the correlation is weak, and it is often hard to see who really contributed how much. Progress happens, but largely as a side effect.

For example:

[Smolin's] points on groupthink, and the systematic bias which discourages innovation and risk taking by young researchers hits painfully home - it is all too true, and yet it self-perpetuates because the mechanisms which reinforce conservatism in science are there for reasons. The system is flawed, and possibly broken, but the fix is not as simple as Smolin suggests - funding agencies are terrified of funding bad science, since there is so much pretty good science it is safe to fund, and as a community scientists are very harsh when bad science is mistakenly given precious resources.

It is the same market flaw that gives us beautiful flawless large red apples in supermarkets - with no taste.

To get the old intense flavour varieties that everyone loves when they taste, we would have to choose small bruised discoloured apples when we shop, and leave the flawless big red apples with no taste in the bins. But collectively we do not, and the market responds. All for the fear of being the one department head comsumer to go home with an occasional rotten apple.

The real shame is that the big red shiny tasteless apples are rotten just as often, they just look so good sitting there, waxed and sprayed, in the bin.

This seems to have been at least part of the reason for foot dragging about terra preta [via Transect Points]

My name is Janice Thies. I am a soil microbial ecologist. I have been working with Johannes Lehmann at Cornell University for the past 6 years on various aspects of terra preta (microbial ecology in its natural state) and agrichar (how microbial populations respond to adding biochar to soil). It took us three years to convince the National Science Foundation that we were on to something here and to obtain funding for some of the basic research that is necessary for us to provide the data needed to answer your questions with confidence. Hence, we are several years behind where we could have been if funding had been available earlier. Even now, we continue to seek support for doing the types of tests many of you are most interested in. The results of our NSF funded research are just now being published or written up, but we are still a long way from being able to answer everything.

Currently, there are 10 research laboratories around the world that are testing char made from bamboo that was prepared at 5 different temperatures in the range we believe is likely to provide char that will be most beneficial for both plant production and C sequestration purposes. Rob Flannigan prepared the char in China and has engaged us all to do a wide range of testing on it. So, we should have some news about what temperature range might be best reasonably soon, but it is still early days.

Janice posted a lot of relevant detail as well, but that's another discussion. The point here is about impediments to intellectual progress resulting from too great a concentration of power in funding and credentialing bodies that are themselves constrained by information cascades in markets that have insufficient independence and diversity.

Here's work for the new breed of philanthropists - Gates, Buffet, Brin, Page et. al. - those who owe their wealth and power to creativity, productivity and a canny knack for playing the system rather than working within, and being played by, the system. The potential benefits to our society and humanity as a whole from superior understanding of soil science and microbial ecology exceed many other efforts that are far better funded.

Stewart Brand asks: “Where are the green biotech hackers?”. He seems to have been thinking mainly about genetic engineering, but I see lots of hack room here. BTW, the Theis post came from the Hypography Science Forum via transect points, both of which seem disposed to hack and network with other hackers.