Innovación: estructuras científicas y transmisión

Hoy, un monográfico sobre innovación:

• Unos resultados que creo yo confirman el beneficio social de instituciones como el IIT, que, como siempre recuerda Michel Rivier, orientan su investigación a una demanda social comprobada. Diego Comín et al nos cuentan los beneficios para las empresas, y la economía en general de colaborar con centros como Fraunhofer, y la recomendación para la política de innovación europea (aquí una entrevista con Comín sobre el mismo tema):

Applied research organisations such as Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are capable of bridging the gap between basic scientific knowledge (falling into the domain of universities) and the development of new commercial applications (falling into the domain of firms). By bridging this gap, companies can have access to state-of-the-art technological knowledge that enables a knowledge-intensive/innovation strategy which leads to faster sales and productivity growth, as well as to more jobs for skilled workers. The establishment of, and investment in, applied research organisations could therefore form a central pillar of national and European innovation policy.

• Interesantísimo (aunque no totalmente realista) experimento este que nos cuenta Alex Tabarrok sobre cómo se transmite el conocimiento a lo largo de las generaciones, incluyendo el papel negativo de los paradigmas dominantes.

• Raghuveer Parthasarathy hace un diagnóstico preciso de los problemas de la ciencia, aunque no propone soluciones (pero Andrew Gelman piensa que esta es una pregunta de investigación que merece ser financiada)

Science has transformed civilization. This statement is so obviously true that it can come as a shock to learn of the gloomy view that many scientists have of the institutions, framework, and organizational structure of contemporary scientific research. Issues of reproducibility plague many fields, fueled in part by structural incentives for eye-catching but fragile results. We train vast numbers of graduate students, in many cases empowering new researchers to expand the frontiers of knowledge or pursue transformative technologies, but also often frustrating their aspirations with preparation for careers that don’t exist or with halfhearted alternative training mashed into an incommensurate educational structure. Funding remains precarious; increased spending on science over the past few decades has been more than matched by an increased number of scientists, leading to a Malthusian competition for resources that wastes time and energy and also hinders long range planning. Relatedly, over 2 million scientific papers are published each year, about one-sixth of which are from the United States, representing both a steady increase in our understanding of the universe and a barrage of noise driven by pressures to generate output. All of these issues together limit the ability of scientists and of science to tackle important questions that humanity faces. A grand challenge for science, therefore, is to restructure the scientific enterprise to make it more sustainable, productive, and capable of driving innovation.

•  Y por último, una nueva plataforma de publicación científica que trata de resolver muchos de los problemas del modelo actual. Aunque, como dice Andrew Gelman, la sostenibilidad de este tipo de iniciativas no está clara nunca.