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I think this is literally the most obvious statement anyone has ever made...
@freemo There really needs to be a panel of randomly selected ordinary citizens that have to grant approval for any studies that take taxpayer dollars. If a group of ordinary people can tell you that the study is going to be stupid and pointless, it should not be conducted with our money.
Now if some rich person wants to fund some stupid study with an obvious outcome, I do not care.
@houseoftolstoy While that may seem reasonable for a study as obvious as this, the truth is, most people are morons and wouldnt know the first thing about what applications a study may or may not have.
@freemo Yeah, I know many people are morons. But even morons can see that some things are just stupid. Some things might still go through, but catching the obvious crap can still happen.
I can safely suggest the idea since it will never happen, so I could easily be wrong in my thinking.
@houseoftolstoy The issue with some people being morons isnt that some stuff will still get through. The issue is that most of the things that should get through wont. They wont recognize how some study will help cancer patients for example and just think its nonsense and block it.
You cant have useful science if the general public is controlling what science happens and what doesnt because they just arent smart enough to know the first thing about how a study might be valuable.
@freemo Good point. Not all of my ideas are winners. I was just looking for a way to get rid of studies that are extremely idiotic, so much so that anyone would recognize that is was pointless.
@houseoftolstoy Yea, its a fair goal.. though keep in mind this study likely wasnt paid for with tax dollars.
But yea anything we can do to improve the quality of the studies that are getting money is a good effort. I just dont think the general public are capable at evaluating. So there would need to be some other approach..
Perhaps the solution is the same as it is with expertise in politics... representative voting. That is the general public votes for scientists from fields that they think are important (like an expert in cancer research), and then those scientists collectively vote on where the funding goes.
@houseoftolstoy yes this is true. I have argued for other approaches before to representative democracy. For example people vote for the the characteristics they care about (for example lowering unemployment) and create a sort of democraticly compiled list of priorities. Then any potential representative who has had the biggest positive impact while being in office on the given priorities is automatically elected (with the ability of the people to block any particular representative from gaining power directly with a 2/3rds vote).
I feel this could work but the devil would be in the details as always.
@freemo If it was not paid by tax dollars, I do not care. I just do not want my money funding bullshit. If someone else wants to fund it with their own money, they can go nuts.
That last solution, I am not sure will work either. People who are too stupid to understand how science works are not going to be smart enough to pick the right people anyways. That is also a flaw of democracy, but what can be done about it?