[Frost1x]

As much time as I've also spent time in R&D through industries, over the years it's moved from R&d to R&D to r&D... approaching D. The two, IMO, are converging.

There's awfully skinny budgets for most research these days and so much focus on 'success' (short term ROI) and '[financial] sustainability' (translating research into products/services in business form).

This is growing ever more true even in basic research, which is IMHO absurd. It's growing to the point it might as well just be 'D' with higher risks, less flexibility, and lower rewards which is making entrepreneurship more alluring.

I don't know who is going to fund long term research if the federal government doesn't. I suppose we can rely on the international market to produce research and hope it's useful. Businesses tend to be highly risk averse anymore.

[cossatot]

Yeah I am with you on this. In my current role, I can do R in as much as it links with D. But really I spend a lot of time building that ampersand rather than R or D specifically: constructing a framework to translate research results into a product, testing that product and then being able to guide the research based on the performance of the product.

That is in and of itself interesting, and the work (making earthquake forecasts and seismic hazard/risk models) is generally fun and has a lot more positive human impact than studying earthquakes because they are simply fascinating geophysical phenomena. But there are regularly a lot of great research ideas that go unexplored because we don't have the resources or immediate incentive to investigate them.