Golden Goose Awards: why basic research matters

10:46what's so interesting about the fall, which is why we wanted to do a fall season rundown, is >> the Nobel Prizes are not the only award show, >> uh, that really recognizes uh, science. Uh, and the other one that's coming a little bit sooner. I think it'll be probably a few weeks, but a week or few weeks before, uh, the Nobels is going to be the Golden Goose Awards. And what's interesting about the Golden Goose Awards, many of you may not be actually super familiar uh with the Golden Goose Awards, which is uh done by TripleA, the same nonprofit that produces the journal Science. We cover a lot on this

11:27show. And the idea behind the Golden Goose Awards is it celebrates federally funded research that unexpectedly benefits society. Um, we talk a lot about this on the pod where the the the benefit of basic research. You know, sometimes the nobells are areas where people know that there's something. >> Yeah. >> And so they go after the thing where they know >> there's something. >> Yeah. >> And the Golden Goose are sort of like, well, the thing that they discovered actually had this weird other benefit that was not expected based [clears throat] on what they were studying initially. And a perfect example of this, which is a call back to our last episode, episode 56, where we

12:09talked about um combating brain disease, MS, and others through this study of >> evolutionary pharmarmacology. >> Yes, >> that's right. Yeah. >> Right. Evolution. In 2013, the Golden Goose Award was given to Dr. John Ang and he had fedally funded research on drum roll please Gil Gila monster venom which as we talked about in our last episode was the precursor that created GLP1s like Ompic and Wiggoi Wiggoi I think it's pronounced Wiggoi and so this this is the idea that how how do we go from a venomous animal in an extreme

12:51environment to a diabet ibetes and obesity weight loss drug that's >> exceptionally popular and sometimes the through line is not very clear and I think that's the focus >> for the Golden Goose which is which is super interesting and I think we're we're exploring potentially adding it into our coverage as as a part of the show. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean it underscores this idea of fundamental science for science's sake for curiosity's sake. The idea that if there is an interesting question out there, maybe it is worth pursuing an answer, just because it's a question out there that is piqued our curiosity as humanity

13:33about the natural world around us, we don't know what it's going to what it's going to come up with, right? Um there's so many examples of this in the history of science. I mean, crisper came out of us studying the bacterial immune system. If you told someone, "Hey, I'm studying the bacterial immune system." They'd be like, "Why is my taxpayer dollars going to study that?" Well, it gives us all of the genetic technologies that we know and love. Um, GLP1 and the Gila Monster Venom is another one of these. I think as a society, we need to be very proud of the fact that we support this kind of research because it it it shows, you know, just sort of where we stand and

14:14what what we're after. I know many of you uh I'm sure are being bombarded by GLP-1 ads in your Instagram and Tik Tok feeds everywhere and you can thank John who figured out the uh active ingredient in this Gila monster venom and I think what's this is this is an active area of conversation right now because there is an ongoing battle within you know the political architecture around two aspects of grants. Grants being the money that goes into research and development. Research and development is a very wide

14:55surface area of things. R&D and funding for basic research does not just exist within the National Science Foundation. National Science Foundation is 4% of the entire research and development budget that the federal government puts money into. The majority of that actually goes to unsurprisingly the department of defense >> recently rebranded the department of war. The second place is health and human services HHS. So a lot of times when people talk about funding for scientific research, scientific research happens in a lot of these other agencies. Uh this includes NASA, this

15:36includes the Department of Energy and several others. And I I the point I'm just bringing up here is while the NSF is probably the agency where the majority of their funding is purely focused on basic research >> as opposed to applied research. Right? The idea that you have a specific commercial outcome that you're driving towards. We actually have a great tool on the site now that looks at the history of funding by the federal government and by the private sector since the 1950s that shows how the government was the largest funer of this research both

16:17basic and applied. And the private sector is now well outsizing the federal government in terms of research and development funding. Most of the private sector is applied. >> Yeah. >> Versus basic. That's a key difference. And so the current battle that's happening around who gets to decide what ideas get grant funding and there's this move to say we want less basic research and more applied research. I think one of the big things that's missing from that conversation is the private sector is already well is funding applied research well beyond the scope of anything close to the amount of money that's coming from the federal government.

16:57>> Yeah. And so we're not lacking applied >> research and like like we're not lacking funding in that arena. That's a good point. Like the federal government does not need to put more money in that. Yeah. It's like so and again you can see this directly. So there's this argument like oh we want federal government funding more things that become commercial technologies. Why? There's already too much money going into that arena. And these basic research ideas that the Golden Goose Awards identifies that end up having GLP1s, like we talked about last episode, is going to be a driver of GDP growth in America. >> Yeah. >> Period. Because of how successful it is. And if that federal research grant to study Gila Monster Venom was not given,

17:39>> Yeah. none of that would have >> LA would look very different right now. I'm just saying. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> I'm just saying. 100%. >> There's a lot of nuance to the funding conversation and I think it's important to understand the data and one of the things we try to do here at FFP is we have seen a lot of comments as we've talked about funding and part of the thing we did was like okay let's go look at the data and not only look at the data but give you all as the audience the ability to also look at the data and understand what's actually happening here. We'll continue to talk about this. There's an ongoing conversation about where funding goes and why. And one of the interesting

18:20things about basic research in the federal government is the majority of it goes to the hard sciences >> and not the social sciences. And a big talking point as we've seen is people interdigitating the culture war. >> Yeah. without understanding the data of like how much of the funding goes to what they perceive to be social sciences that are not important. They are important, but the majority of the funding is not going to the things that people are complaining about. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And it's a very So again, check out the tracker and those who don't want the funding to go to sciences will use that tiny fringe. >> Correct. to justify

19:01a blanket >> wholesale wholesale like overhaul of the federal funding infrastructure. Look, there's a reason why America is at the forefront of technology and it has been since postwar and it's because we have invested clearly in fundamental science. Right? So before you go on your tirade about how oh you know it's pseudo it's because taxpayer dollars are going into pseudocience the the numbers do not agree with that >> they it's the data does not it that's not and again >> we've provided it so that it can be looked at and this is like it's a it's a valid conversation to have about like

19:41how do we as a democracy choose to spend our money >> science R&D as compared to the rest of the US national budget is a rounding error. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so if you're worried about your taxpayer money >> and the value per dollar >> Yeah. is like well outside other ways we spend our money. Um maybe like all these tax credits and stuff we're giving to record profit corporations. >> Hey, >> maybe that's a great area to start to claw back taxpayer dollars. >> Oh yeah, >> just an idea. Just an idea. So again, the the Golden Goose Awards really tries to identify this connection between curio curiosity based research and these outsized impacts on all of us.

20:23>> And as you can see, uh we're we're just breezing through today, guys. It's been a couple of tough episodes. We did Jacobian conjecture, remon hypothesis, two-part quantum computing. >> Yeah. >> Six hours total over two episodes. >> Yeah. and then a phenomenal deep dive on this like evolutionary pharmarmacology episode. I'm trying to guys I'm trying to give Christian a break here. Okay, >> it's been a lot. It's tough. This is weekly. It's dense. We really try to do our research, provide the information. It's just the two of us. We're doing the best we can. We're going to take a quick break here uh and talk about the shilling we have