ScienceChanges

"In recent years, Mr. Perl said, his father traveled in India and Japan lecturing about creativity and his concern that science education was becoming too rigid. He urged students to keep a journal and write down crazy ideas. But he also urged them and his colleagues not to get too far ahead of the fundamental truth of experiment in science. In a blog post last year he wrote: "The time scale for physics progress is a century not a decade. There are no decade-scale solutions to worries about the rate of progress of fundamental physics knowledge. My advice is (a) study calculus and machine shop in high school and (b) have a long life as advised in the old song by buttoning up your overcoat and eating an apple every day. "On the other hand," he continued, "occasional scanning of the obituaries in The New York Times indicates that financiers live longer than physicists, so perhaps start a hedge fund in high school.""

"Why aren't we demanding more forceful action? One reason may be the frequent incantation of a motley collection of myths, each one rooted in bad economics"

"Not only do patents push higher prices onto consumers, they burden the research world with the increased costs of paying for the intellectual property needed to do further research. Research labs have to pay thousands of dollars for the strains and processes needed to build upon current developments, adding more costs to cutting-edge research. "

"Even expectant fathers experience morning sickness and other symptoms of pregnancy, a phenomenon known as couvade. Studies have found couvade in as little as 11 percent of subjects and as much as 97 percent. We don't know why these numbers vary so wildly, but there have been lots of theories to explain why dads get morning sickness. "

"Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous."

"Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research - the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries - for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration." [One might ask analogously what military funding of science has done over the decades since WW2]