[offa]

Upvoting because I'm interested in the discussion of the ethics surrounding 'leaking' scientific papers out into the Web, not so much in this particular case itself but as a general sort of act.

HN, what is your opinion on all this?

[krapp]

All scientific research should be freely available to the public, without reservation or condition.

I have my reservations about leaking political or classified information in some cases, because as Wikileaks has demonstrated, leaks can be used to push a political agenda, rather than serve the cause of unbiased truth.

But scientific knowledge benefits the progress of humanity as a whole - the truth doesn't have a political agenda, although it certainly can discredit political axioms. Trying to keep it contained, controlled or limit its access to a select few should be considered a crime against humanity.

[Cyph0n]

All publicly funded scientific research...

[krapp]

I don't see why the means of funding would be relevant. The advancement and enlightenment of humanity should be more important than profit or trade secrets.

[Cyph0n]

If for-profit research didn't exist, we probably wouldn't be able to have this discussion. Do you think the likes of Bell Labs and IBM Research would have been making scientific breakthroughs if there were no financial incentive to do so? Let that sink in for a moment.

Beating the competition to make more money is the primary goal behind corporate R&D expenditures. It's essentially a form of investment, which means that it has to eventually make the company some kind of return.

The great thing is that we get the results of breakthroughs in the form of publications, patents, and eventually we see them in products. Sometimes the company decides to just release the results royalty-free: a great example of this is Volvo and the modern seatbelt.

[krapp]

>. Do you think the likes of Bell Labs and IBM Research would have been making scientific breakthroughs if there were no financial incentive to do so?

Maybe not, but I think even for-profit research should alwats be made freely available at some point, regardless of its value. The financial incentive may be necessary but to me it's a perverse incentive.

[Cyph0n]

But without money, how do you propose we perform research? Who will feed and house the researchers? Who will pay for the building(s) the researchers work in? Who will pay for the (usually) expensive equipment needed to perform simulations and analyze the results?

And if the results don't generate money, how will you continue to support research projects in the future?

Modern scientific research is a very expensive endeavor. You could probably get scientists to do this "for free" back when a field was still in its infancy. Now you need a whole team of researchers and an entire support system to make even the smallest of scientific breakthroughs.

And by the way, universities also aim to generate a profit (usually fed back into the institution). For example, most universities take a 50% cut of whatever external funding a professor manages to get. They do provide things in return, but the key point is that they're making money off of research.

[HeavenBanned]

>All scientific research should be freely available to the public, without reservation or condition.

Even scientific research on how to build a functional nuclear bomb?

[krapp]

Yes, I think so. That research is already public or available on the black market anyway, and the US built the first nuclear bomb ~70 years ago, so it's kind of a moot point.

But what would the alternative be? That only the governments which discover how to build a nuclear bomb understand how it works and what its effects are, and get to threaten the rest of the world with impunity?

I'm not certain that would be better than the world where everyone at least understands the underlying science, even if not everyone can build one.

[johncolanduoni]

There's a big difference between the nuclear bombs countries with nascent nuclear programs (like North Korea) can build, and those the US can build. So unless you're talking about just enough knowledge to build the simplest of nuclear weapons, it's far from moot.

Everyone does understand the underlying science (or can find it pretty quickly on the internet), but very few understand the engineering specifics.

[dublinben]

That information is harmless without the resources to do anything with it. Nonproliferation is targeted at resources, not information for this very reason.

[aburan28]

Exactly why the Iranian nuclear deal seeks to prevent access to the materials needed to build a bomb in a breakout period not the information