All too often important scientific work is shut down due to lack of funding and often that information is not made available to the scientific community because it is not fully proven yet and those working on the project want to hold onto the discoveries up to that point until future funds can be secured. If that time of new monies for funding of that particular research never come, often those working on the project will have moved onto other research and eventually the data is forgotten and the money already spent has been wasted or covered up or never available to future researchers. This is a shame and it is too bad that people cannot get partial credit for the work done up until that point and someone cannot pick up the research and take it from there. We could accelerate research in many fields if we made sure this sort of thing did not happen in our sciences. It is a real problem and an unfortunate circumstance indeed. Some one or some entrepreneurial company needs to act as a clearing-house for partially completed work and keep track of all the data, information and people involved for later. This would do many things. First it could act as a resume enhancer for those who worked on failed projects due to funding not due to premise or concept. It could provide a return on investment for partial work and thus help other companies working in R and D to take more risks. It would benefit future researchers with a base of knowledge so they did not have to start at the beginning, or repeat certain known experimentation. Consider all this in 2006. |
