Greed Is Good. Can Open Science Do Better?

Joseph Jackson and a new generation want a return to Citizen-Scientists who follow an "open science" philosophy. Can it prove a better model than good old fashioned greed?

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

~ Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (1987)

I was reading about the call for a new "open science" movement which would adopt open source principles to the dissemination and sharing of scientific knowledge. It reminded of something I learned in college. I was a political science major during the height of the Cold War. One of my professors taught us that the inherent problem with Communism is that it failed to account for human nature. It was designed for a society of "atheistic saints". In other words it failed to account for the fundamental human penchant for greed.

The idea of sharing information for the greater good of the whole, thereby accelerating scientific discovery falls victim to the same error. Joseph Jackson yearns for a return to the days of the citizen scientist ala Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Jackson believes that if we can put the information and tools in the hands of more people we will see great rewards.

While generally I am a big believer in the advantages of an open source model, in thinking this one through my own mind (I guess that makes me a citizen scientist too), there are a few things that just make this a bit too "out there" for me.

The first thing is that today's science has become so sophisticated and expensive. Can you imagine gene splicing and other bio-scientific research being done without the expensive lab equipment and technology deployed today. Don't even get started on advanced physics and fundamental questions of cosmology. Hey we can believe that one day Zefram Cochrane will invent the warp drive virtually by himself while listening to Steppenwolf. But, that is the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Our scientific level today is far advanced from Ben Franklin flying a kite in the rain or Edward Teller transferring pus from a milkmaid. Building a large Hadron Collider takes billions of dollars.

Secondly, as I have said is the question of greed. Yes Ben Franklin was a citizen scientist. He invented bifocals and many other useful things. But Ben Franklin made money from it. Thomas Edison invented things and made lots of money.  As the Gekko quote says, greed is what drives us. It is at the heart of American capitalism. Hand in hand with that greed is the desire to make more money, more fame, more, more, more. Unless you can fundamentally change the nature of people to understand that by sharing we all are better off, open science will have a hard time succeeding. If you can change human nature so fundamentally, why stop at science. We could live in a Utopian society of atheistic saints.

The problem is, as Gordon Gekko knew in 1987. You can't beat greed as a motivator. So while I appreciate the spirit of Mr Jackson and the others calling for open science. I don't think it is a practical solution given the current complexity of our technology and science and maybe more importantly, without recognizing that "greed is good".

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