Did you see Gary Marcus’ “We are not yet ready to simulate the brain,” last Thursday’s Financial Times?
Gary writes:
The 10-year €1.19bn project to simulate the entire human brain, announced on Monday by the European Commission is, at about a sixth of the cost of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest neuroscience project undertaken. It is an important, but flawed, step to a better understanding of the organ’s workings.
His analysis is telling but he misses the true goal of the project even as he writes:
Even so, it could foster a great deal of useful science. The crucial question is how the money will be spent. Much of the infrastructure developed will serve a vast number of projects, and the funding will support more than 250 scientists from more than 80 institutions, each with his or her own research agenda. A great many, such as Yadin Dudai (who specialises in memory), Seth Grant (who studies the genetics and evolution of neural function) and Stanislas Dehaene (who works on the brain basis of mathematics and consciousness), are stellar.
Supporting researchers, +1! Building the infrastructure of drones, managers, auditors, meeting coordinators and the like for this project, -1!
Every field of research could benefit from the funding that will now be diverted into “infrastructure” that exists only to be “infrastructure” (read employment).
My counter proposal is to simulate the EU commission using Steven Santy’s online “Magic Eight Ball.”
Put the question: Should project [name] be funded? to the Magic Eight Ball as many times as there are EU votes on projects and sum the answers.
Would avoid some of the “infrastructure” expenses and result in equivalent funding decisions.
If that sounds harsh, recall EU provincialism funds only EU-based research. As though scientific research and discovery depends upon nationality or geographic location. In that regard, the EU is like Alabama, only larger.