[qCOVET]

I absolutely agree with everything in this post. When I was a post doctoral fellow, my principal investigator would publish at least one paper a month. She was celebrated in the department.

(a) The papers were published in journals like - Journal of Green Donkey Testicles, Journal of differentiation of dying mouse ... Journals that I had never heard of, had no impact and every tiny bit of an experiment that was conducted in the lab, would get published, without a full picture.

(b) Much of the data was turned into data by turning everything into being 'statistically significant' . I would do experiments and I would see no freaking difference between control and experimental, yet, through the magic of statistics, she would find the difference. It was lame and depressing.

(c) Above is an isolated example. There are countless smart, diligent and hard working professors who continue to push the boundaries of science (ex. my amazing PhD prof, whom I dearly love and admire). Unfortunately, their time is plagued by writing grants after grants, fighting inter-departmental politics, dealing with Chair of the department on regular basis ... basically stuff that distracts them from having the time to relax, think and innovate.

(d) Commercialization of innovations in schools and universities are butchered by the IP policies, where by the University would take 1/3, the commercialization office would take 1/3 and the poor researcher is left with the rest. This kills innovation + tech commercialization and the desire of a researcher to be an entrepreneur.

[sciencedangyou]

I have a friend getting her PhD in neuroscience who constantly told me about absurd things matching your (a) and (b) examples. In her lab, (b) was particularly prevalent--she estimated, based on that experience, that ~90 percent of what is published in neuroscience today would be completely unreproducible because of these statistical factors introduced to "massage" data into a more impressive-looking form. Photoshop was also frequently used to make images appear to show a more profound contrast of control v. experiment. All in all, she became disgusted with the entire department and considered giving up becoming a scientist altogether; and yet, according to my googling, she was at one of the top ten programs in the United States...

[aflyax]

tell her to switch to data science

[elliptic]

Regarding d) - how much do you think the researcher, much of whose work was presumably funded by taxpayer dollars, should get?

[qCOVET]

I believe University of Waterloo is one of the few that does full ownership of work by Prof (I could be wrong) .. and year after year, they beat the biggest Universities in Canada for being ranked as the #1 in entrepreneurship, tech commercialization and innovation. I think its the subsequent economic impact that counts, rather than sequestering innovation for the sake of a few bucks in 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 ownership model.

https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-off...

Many of the big giants of tech world have set up offices all around uWaterloo and enjoy a symbiotic relationship w/ the research faculty.

[ISL]

Agreed; I'm a researcher at an institution where the researchers get 1/3rd (split among all the patent authors). That fraction is okay with me. We get a huge boost from having access to the university community and the department's resources.

The only annoyance is that the 1/3rd comes from the University's profits, not revenue. The costs of the patent application, including the tech-transfer office salaries, are subtracted first.

[caseysoftware]

I think the point goes towards the idea that the rewards should be related to the risk.

Commercializing IP - which is not a product yet - is non-trivial, could take years to productize, and then longer to penetrate (or create) a market. In short, it's a long, painful, and often expensive process that often fails anyway. If there was a way to provide a license agreement that was more favorable to product/market validation, that could change the economics.

Unfortunately, I've only participated in licensing once, so I don't have an alternative model to suggest.

[eloff]

Since the income generated is taxed anyway, Some of the proceeds go back to where they came from. An investment of sorts. The university and commercialization office should probably get cuts more commensurate with their contributions, whatever that may be.