Musing on the Value of Science

Scientific research may be considered to be oriented toward the development of knowledge, while technological development to be oriented toward the development of practical products and processes. Scientific research in turn may be divided into that which is intended to provide knowledge for application, and that which is simply intended to provide knowledge and understanding of the world as an end in itself. Applied scientific research might be intended to inform the development of technology or to provide other knowledge for immediate use, such as knowledge about weather or climate, natural resources, possible problems (e.g. diseases, pests), etc.

Scientific knowledge may be and often is used for purposes other than those for which it was intended either by the researchers who uncovered it or by those who supported their research. Thus the distinctions among fundamental and applied scientific research and technology development are distinctions among intentions, and not that useful for the classification of the knowledge and understanding emerging from research and development.

We may alternatively distinguish among knowledge:

• In the public domain;
• In the private domain, which is shared but which may not be used by others without permission (e.g. that which is protected by intellectual property rights such as patents);
• In the private domain, and kept secret (e.g. trade secrets).

In keeping with this division, we may classify research and development as that which is intended for the production of knowledge and understanding to be put immediately in the public domain, and that which is intended to produce knowledge which is intended to be kept at least initially in the private domain.

It is possible, for example to consider two people working side by side involved in methodologically similar projects for the development of an appropriate pharmaceutical for the treatment of similar diseases. One might be funded by a commercial pharmaceutical company which plans to commercialize the product for the profit of its investors; the other might be funded by a foundation which plans to put the product in the public domain to be produced by generic drug manufacturers. In the first case the price would be determined by the willingness of patients to pay while in the latter case the price would be determined by the competition and thus the cost to produce the drug. For example, a foundation might fund research to find new drugs to be used for treatment of diseases of the poor, where the intended users would not have the financial resources to create a market attractive to commercial firms. The research activities would be relatively unaffected by the intentions of the organizations providing funding for their work. But the results emerging from the research might be expected to have very different social applications.

The way knowledge created by research and development scientists may of course not be used in the ways intended by those supporting its creation. Thus, for example, pharmaceutical firms sometimes find that knowledge that they have created with commercial intentions is not commercializable, but would provide substantial health benefits if applied for the benefit of the poor, and put that knowledge in the public domain or produce drugs and make them available at cost for public health programs as a matter of social responsibility. Alternatively, knowledge created in a university with the original intent of being placed in the public domain might, when developed, be judged to be better put to use by patenting and licensing to a commercial firm.

Knowledge produced explicitly to be immediately placed in the public domain is considered a prototypical public good. It is not rivalrous, in that one person’s use of the knowledge does not interfere with the use of the knowledge by another. Since it is placed in the public domain, it is available to all to obtain and utilize without payment, and thus no one is excluded from its use.

Intentionality is something which we attribute to people, and is not an attribute of the information per se. Not only can the information resulting from a research and development project be used for different purposes, the researchers themselves may describe the purposes of the R&D differently for different audiences, and their purposes in doing the project may not only be different than those of the organizations supporting the project, but may never be fully articulated by the researchers themselves nor need they be stable over time. Indeed, one may have to go to court to establish whether information is in the public domain or in the private domain.

The values of knowledge produced for the public domain

I think we often assume that the value of knowledge is determined by the stream of profits that can be generated attributed to its use. This is obvious for technological knowledge. We might extend the concept of “profits” to include values generated by non commercialized applied research. For example, there is a value to epidemiological or climatological data resulting from the social benefit stream that it generates, albeit a stream that would be difficult to quantify. Certainly we can attribute an instrumental value to knowledge in these ways. I would suggest, however, that such instrumental value is only part of the story, and that there are other sources of value which should be considered, especially for knowledge in the public domain.

There is what we might consider a “consumer value” in the creation of knowledge. People like to generate knowledge, and some people like to do so very much. I recall a friend who was a research epidemiologist who told me, probably accurately, that his expected lifetime earnings went down when he got his Masters of Public Health after his MD degree, and went down further after he got his second doctorate. In the distant past, science was a gentleman’s occupation to be conducted without financial reward, and indeed with considerable expense to the scientists involved in the creation of facilities and the purchase of supplies to conduct research. Indeed, there are means to mobilize the volunteer efforts of people who an not professional researchers to help in the conduct of formalized research and development (e.g. scientific tourism, mobilizing bird watchers to do avian population censuses, amateur astronomers contributing to astronomical information bases).

There is also a consumer value for knowledge based on our curiosity. People like to obtain information for the simple pleasure of collecting facts and understanding more of the world. They like to be seen by their friends and associates as knowledgeable. Indeed, people are willing to pay for information to be available which they do not internalize in case they may need it in the future, or simply want to learn it in the future. Think of the families that buy encyclopedias in case someone may wish to look up a fact? Think of how much you are willing to pay for a home computer and Internet access for the privilege of being able to search the web at any future time for information you might want or need.

The willingness to pay for access to information of course depends on the ability to pay. Rich people are not only able to pay more for information that they may want, they are generally willing to pay more of their available resources for information than are the poor. That is, there is a positive elasticity of demand for information.

There are also cultural and individual differences in the willingness to pay for information, and indeed information is not a homogeneous good. As a simple example, different nations allocate their basic research funds differently among the sciences.

There is also a willingness of people to pay for information to be used by others. Thus our charitable feelings lead us to pay for research on tropical agriculture and tropical diseases that we do not expect to benefit from directly, but which will benefit the poor. Indeed, we may see it our responsibility to fund the development of information that it needed if poor people in poor countries are to be granted that which we recognize as their basic human rights to live healthy lives free of hunger.

This kind of analysis suggests that the differences in funding for research and development among different countries are functions of the different abilities to finance the work, the different abilities to utilize the results of R&D for utilitarian purposes, and the different willingness to pay for knowledge and understanding as ends in themselves.

I think it clear that we have not developed the institutions necessary to mobilize all of our willingness to pay for information in the public domain for the enterprise needed to generate and disseminate that information and to prepare people to obtain the information and convert it to knowledge and understanding.

If one accepts that the world is in the process of moving towards a “knowledge society” or an “information society”, then it seems likely that the values assigned to knowledge and information in the future will be different than those of today. If present value is calculated as the sum of discounted future values, it becomes doubly hard to estimate present value, both since so much of value is implicit rather than explicit, and since even those explicit values will change over time.

The institutional systems for appropriating value to pay for research and development are more fully developed in advanced developed nations, and less developed in poor nations (which have less need of them). Those systems are especially poorly developed to fund international scientific and technological collaborations in the public and non-profit sectors.