Prizes in science

cavedave

What do you think of the idea of offering prizes for scientific advances?

For example
* The "X" Prize - US $5M to 10M for the first private launch of two people to 100 km twice in a two-week period. In the tradition of the Spirit of St.Louis
* Feynman Grand Prize - $.25M for the design and construction of a Functional Nano-scale Robotic Arm and Functional Nano-scale Computing Device.
* Clay Math Inst. Millennium Prizes - $1M each for solving each of seven famous math problems.

What are the benefits/problems with prize rewards for science? What prize would you most like to see?

GuanYin

In all honesty, these awards are just about prestiege not about the money (at least that much).

Anyone who is good enough to be competing in research for those prizes, would easily be making that level of money in industry or private think-thanks (and I mean easily).

In most of these cases, the money won goes back into research, either through salary for the researchers or investment in further research, so its not like anyone is selling out. Its merely a token. If anything, the actual title of "winning the prize" is worth more in terms of career advancement, either through grant applications or paper publication.

Not a big deal imo.

cavedave

Anyone who is good enough to be competing in research for those prizes, would easily be making that level of money in industry or private think-thanks (and I mean easily).

and if the prizes were raised to provide a better incentive?

In fairness some scientists seem uninterested in prizes. The Poincaire million is still sitting in a bank account waiting to be collected.

GuanYin

cavedave wrote: »

and if the prizes were raised to provide a better incentive?

In fairness some scientists seem uninterested in prizes. The Poincaire million is still sitting in a bank account waiting to be collected.

I don't know that raising them would make any difference. I think turning these things into Pop Idol type contests would be a bad idea. The best minds in the world are already competing for the prizes, so what difference does it make.

Also, people don't go into academic research for money. If I went into industry tomorrow, or even private practice/consultancy, I could command a salary in the ballpark of 250K pa. if not more. But I want to be in academia.

Should academic researchers be paid more? Certainly, but noone gets into public research for money.

cavedave

Should academic researchers be paid more? Certainly, but noone gets into public research for money.

well would prizes be more efficient then grants? Having a bunch of the most intelligent people on earth spending their time filling out forms for bureaucrats to read does not seem overly efficient to me.

The best minds in the world are already competing for the prizes, so what difference does it make.

The prizes could be for things that are costly to develop and do not have much chance of making large profits. For example vaccine for Rotavirus. There is not enough money in it for big pharmacological companies and it seems too costly for individual researchers to work on.

GuanYin

cavedave wrote: »

well would prizes be more efficient then grants? Having a bunch of the most intelligent people on earth spending their time filling out forms for bureaucrats to read does not seem overly efficient to me.

Well thats why you have research teams. What the media report as the advances of one investigator is, in reality, usually the work of a team of several trainees and the investigator.

The red-tape is annoying, but everyone has to sing for their supper, I seriously doubt I'll ever have a job I enjoy this much *AND* don't have to go through the red tape for it

The prizes could be for things that are costly to develop and do not have much chance of making large profits. For example vaccine for Rotavirus. There is not enough money in it for big pharmacological companies and it seems too costly for individual researchers to work on.

There isn't enough known about Rotavirus for a start. You have to remember, we're really in our infancy in terms of understanding our own body. What we have been doing is uncovering layers of complexity. There are bigger fish to fry too. There is only a limited amount of money out there and it's going to be prioritised on need, pr perceived need at any rate. I was actually just discussing over dinner last night, a colleague who has lost all funding, merely because the medical condition he interested in isn't very life threathening. Ignore the fact the actual research would uncover physiologies that would improve our understanding of other conditions, funding agencies just don't see his work as a priority.

What we really need is governments to stop spending the money there is for science badly. Or, other governments to stop spending money on, say for instance, illegal wars, are start spending it on medicine