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Applications of scientific research have advanced human life and experience, and governments' financial support has been a vital attribution to the successes of such research. The statement, however, undermines this notion by saying that only research whose consequences are transparent would be granted governments' funding. For that all-embracing sense the statement imposes, I cannot fully agree with it.
Uncertainty is the nature of scientific research and this is a widely recognized fact. Scientists start with several hypotheses that they lend credence on, but with some degree of skepticism or diffidence, and after intensive tests and experiments, they either accept or reject the initial hypotheses. If the outcomes are unfavorable, can we conclude that resources committed to the research were wasted? No, because we learn from the failure and make significant progress on what we learn. Who in the early 20th century would have imagined that human can land on the moon someday? After the Third Pandemic in the late 19th century caused by plague bacterium, who would have dreamed of a vaccine that obliterates this deadly virus? Thanks to the effortless support from the governments, especially in terms of financial means, human can achieve such goals nowadays, despite countless debacles during the course: rockets failed dozen of times to propel the space ship in the case of the moon conquest, or hundred of times different tests in vaccine failed to yield desirable results. That being said, governments must maintain considerable commitment, particularly financing, to scientific research in order to achieve some ends, even though uncertainty exists at the inception.
To expound further on the notion that the role of government's finance is significant in scientific studying, one can ask what would have happened if the governments had not funded scientific research whose outcomes were, though nebulous or even perilous, vital to human well-being. Back to the World War II when there was speculation that Germans were purifying uranium to create atomic bomb, the U.S. government had poured millions of dollars into studying the atomic bomb themselves. The intention was purely good will: to counter that advance of Germans and eschew a possible mass destruction from Nazis. Unfortunately, the U.S. government did not foresee, back then, the dangerous menace posed by Iran and North Korea nowadays when these countries develop atomic weapons based on prior studies of the atomic bomb. Another notable case can refer to the development and trial of ZMapp - a medicine that was believed, now is confirmed, to cure the Ebola disease. Scientists in the U.S. and Canada did not know that the medicine would work, but under strong duress that the disease was going uncontrollable, they had no choice but to skip mandatory procedures and mandates to test it on the human. These two cases suggests that governments' role, especially their financing, is demanded for scientific research that have impact on human beings.
There are, of course, hundreds of issues that require immediate funding from governments to solve than some cryptic scientific experiments, and many proponents of the statement will hinge upon this notion to bolster their standing. Their argument is cogent because scientific research is notorious for being time- and money-consuming processes, and no government will risk these resources for precarious consequences. But perhaps only when a research does not solve an immediate need for people, then this point will hold uncontroversial. For example, we are aiming to bring human to the moon on mass scale, but relevant research should not be funded excessively, and some governments actually do not provide funding at all for these types of research.
The reason is understandable: the research cuts grandly into governments' budgets while the outcomes are too ambiguous because of technology's restraints. Given this reasoning, governments can allocate fund to other needed fields, which then make the fund allocation and usage more effectively. However, no funding, even a modicum, is too extreme because who know what would happen in the next 100 years when the world population grows to a figure that our Earth is no longer spare enough for all. That is to say governments must be well prepared for any possibility, and the preparation will include funding research on the issue.
Applications of scientific research have advanced human life and experience, and governments' financial support has been a vital attribution to the successes of such research. The statement, however, undermines this notion by saying that only research whose consequences are transparent would be granted governments' funding. For that all-embracing sense the statement imposes, I cannot fully agree with it.
Uncertainty is the nature of scientific research and this is a widely recognized fact. Scientists start with several hypotheses that they lend credence on, but with some degree of skepticism or diffidence, and after intensive tests and experiments, they either accept or reject the initial hypotheses. If the outcomes are unfavorable, can we conclude that resources committed to the research were wasted? No, because we learn from the failure and make significant progress on what we learn. Who in the early 20th century would have imagined that human can land on the moon someday? After the Third Pandemic in the late 19th century caused by plague bacterium, who would have dreamed of a vaccine that obliterates this deadly virus? Thanks to the effortless support from the governments, especially in terms of financial means, human can achieve such goals nowadays, despite countless debacles during the course: rockets failed dozen of times to propel the space ship in the case of the moon conquest, or hundred of times different tests in vaccine failed to yield desirable results. That being said, governments must maintain considerable commitment, particularly financing, to scientific research in order to achieve some ends, even though uncertainty exists at the inception.
To expound further on the notion that the role of government's finance is significant in scientific studying, one can ask what would have happened if the governments had not funded scientific research whose outcomes were, though nebulous or even perilous, vital to human well-being. Back to the World War II when there was speculation that Germans were purifying uranium to create atomic bomb, the U.S. government had poured millions of dollars into studying the atomic bomb themselves. The intention was purely good will: to counter that advance of Germans and eschew a possible mass destruction from Nazis. Unfortunately, the U.S. government did not foresee, back then, the dangerous menace posed by Iran and North Korea nowadays when these countries develop atomic weapons based on prior studies of the atomic bomb. Another notable case can refer to the development and trial of ZMapp - a medicine that was believed, now is confirmed, to cure the Ebola disease. Scientists in the U.S. and Canada did not know that the medicine would work, but under strong duress that the disease was going uncontrollable, they had no choice but to skip mandatory procedures and mandates to test it on the human. These two cases suggests that governments' role, especially their financing, is demanded for scientific research that have impact on human beings.
There are, of course, hundreds of issues that require immediate funding from governments to solve than some cryptic scientific experiments, and many proponents of the statement will hinge upon this notion to bolster their standing. Their argument is cogent because scientific research is notorious for being time- and money-consuming processes, and no government will risk these resources for precarious consequences. But perhaps only when a research does not solve an immediate need for people, then this point will hold uncontroversial. For example, we are aiming to bring human to the moon on mass scale, but relevant research should not be funded excessively, and some governments actually do not provide funding at all for these types of research.
The reason is understandable: the research cuts grandly into governments' budgets while the outcomes are too ambiguous because of technology's restraints. Given this reasoning, governments can allocate fund to other needed fields, which then make the fund allocation and usage more effectively. However, no funding, even a modicum, is too extreme because who know what would happen in the next 100 years when the world population grows to a figure that our Earth is no longer spare enough for all. That is to say governments must be well prepared for any possibility, and the preparation will include funding research on the issue.
