Assume that there is a fixed amount of money available worldwide for any type of academic scientific research. Also, there are no borders and customs regulations or country-specific firewalls, and everyone theoretically has access to the same equipment and information. In this situation, outfitting a lab is only a matter of money. Finally, assume that any local economy benefits from well-funded academic scientific research.
WOULD YOU RATHER….
a. Spend the money on research that is carried out in institutions that are already at the very front of scientific discovery, to keep up the pace and get the newest information the fastest, but neglecting underfunded countries and institutions.
OR
b. Spend the money on supporting research and science education in second- and third world countries, to give them a chance to catch up, but risking slowing down the top labs, so effectively slowing down the stream of new information (which everyone has access to)
(NB: I am just curious, not actually responsible for the entire world’s science funding. I’d only spend it in coffee shops and bookstores, effectively supporting a whole industry of increasingly wealthy coffee bean farmers and twitchy readers and writers – but we’d soon run out of good science books.)
Couldn’t we do both and require that schools/labs in the developed world work with and help out those in the developing world?
Fund the big labs, but only on the condition that they take on and train scientists from the developing countries, who will then return home and spread the knowledge they’ve acquired.
In an ideal world, obviously ;)