The Karikó problem: Lessons for funding basic research
The things that would help most with the Karikó Problem are:<p>1. Open access to research.  Wikipedia, Sci-Hub, PLoS, Library Genesis, GitLab, MDPI, arXiv, PubMed, GitHub, BitTorrent, medRxiv, bioRxiv, and Tor.  It&#x27;s unconscionable that today professional societies like ACM and IEEE are using copyright to impede access to knowledge as if they were for-profit corporations.<p>2. Universal basic income, so today&#x27;s Karikós don&#x27;t have to choose between research and food.  Conceivably some kind of reform is needed to prevent landlords from skimming off the UBI and returning us to zero, as the Georgists claim.<p>3. Reducing the cost of apparatus through initiatives like Foldscope and Paperfuge.  We need not just one Manu Prakash but ten thousand Manu Prakashes, because Edmund Scientific is just never going to fulfill the needs of shoestring labs in Ghana.<p>4. Freedom from persecution for researchers.  For example, where I live, buying acetone gets you Put On A List, and the hardware stores now label their lye simply as &quot;drain opener&quot; to evade the same regulations.  California recently prohibited the sale of basic supplies like xylene under an extremely far-fetched interpretation of anti-air-pollution laws.  Only recently did Texas repeal its prohibition on sales of lab glassware to unlicensed individuals.  Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus by isolating it from a massive amount of his own urine; in South Carolina today you can get arrested for possessing a bottle of urine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avvo.com&#x2F;legal-answers&#x2F;a-friend-was-charged-with-having-a-bottle-of-urine-5082892.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avvo.com&#x2F;legal-answers&#x2F;a-friend-was-charged-with...</a>.  Critical Art Ensemble founder Steve Kurtz was famously arrested for &quot;bioterrorism,&quot; then indicted for wire fraud and mail fraud, because he and his wife were culturing non-pathogenic bacteria in Petri dishes.  This sort of thing should be unthinkable.<p>This will probably require ending drug prohibition; I don&#x27;t see a reasonable way to protect researchers&#x27; freedom to synthesize arbitrary materials while prohibiting the possession of a large and constantly growing list of materials.  But I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s reasonable to prioritize the needs of drug addicts, drug traffickers, and empire-builders in law enforcement over the needs of innovators.<p>5. Going beyond freedom from active persecution, it&#x27;s important to cultivate a social attitude that basic research is not only not harmful, but an important and worthwhile activity.  This is the opposite of the attitude cultivated by Hollywood, which considers anything scientific to be inherently scary and antihuman.