One can look at funding for science and break it up into Big and Small Science. Funders of Big Science would be large corporations, foundations, and the government, whereas Small Science relies on VC, startup funds, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Big Science comprises those big projects like the sequencing of the human genome and the war on cancer. But are such big projects yielding results that justify the massive spending?
Submitted by Theral Timpson on Mon, 10/22/2012 - 10:13
Guest:
Bill Frezza, Columnist, Bio-IT World, General Partner at Adams Capital Management Bio and Contact Info
Chapters: (Advance the marker)
0:37 Will you rate the presidential candidates on science?
7:07 Let's just fund the top rate researchers
12:46 How do you measure success in the War on Cancer
15:48 Nothing has brought us more progress than the free market
17:57 What about the Manhattan Project?
22:14 How do we keep our edge in the world without strong science funding?
27:40 Who is going to fund life science start-ups?
31:55 BioLeap - designing drugs "de novo"
Bill Frezza is a venture capitalist and columnist at Forbes and Bio-IT World. As one can see from the name of his column, "The Skeptical Outsider," Bill is not shy about questioning the status quo. Today we get him to weigh in on the two presidential candidates and how the outcome of the election will affect science funding. Frezza is a free market advocate and feels that we are funding second and third rate research and creating a surplus of science PhD's. We talk about the War on Cancer and compare it to The Manhattan Project. At the end, Bill discusses the venture capital world and his own new venture, BioLeap.
Many people are aware of the work of John Ioannidis regarding the analysis of research findings and the conclusions drawn from those analyses. In particular, these concepts were described by him in a paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2005 is apparently the most downloaded article from that journal.
