Entry 667, on 2008-01-07 at 21:18:45 (Rating 3, Science)
I recently heard a news article where it was claimed that corporate labs were becoming more rare as private companies entered into partnerships with universities to do research for them instead. In some ways this seems to be a good idea because universities need the money these collaborations generate and the private sector gets the use of some of the best academic researchers.
But after thinking about it a bit more I wondered whether it really was that good an idea. The type of research done in private corporate labs and universities has been quite different in the past. Universities have tended to concentrate on pure research, often without any obvious immediate pay-off. Private labs have concentrated more on developments which could be commercially exploited by the company. I know there are exceptions but this is the general rule.
So does that mean that pure research won't be done because universities will be too involved with more practical work? It might mean that to some extent but hopefully there will always be a place for research without any specific immediate purpose. There's no such thing as useless research (as long as it is carried out to a certain standard) because history shows us that useful stuff comes from the most unlikely places.
I would prefer a world where universities only engage in work of the highest academic standards, and only work on projects which are free from commercial bias, but realistically that isn't likely to happen so we will just have to put up with things the way they are in this imperfect world we have now.
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