That's a crude method of measuring success.
It isn't a metric of success. It is an example, one of many in the biological sciences.
The cost of new drugs rises exponentially via Eroom's law.
This is likely due largely to policy issues and legal issues more than it is how the biologists are thinking. Clinical trials have gotten large.
A problem like obesity grows worse over the years instead of progress. Diabetes gets worse.
A systemic problem, but one that has even less to do with biological research than Eroom's law. Obesity is not due to a lack of theoretical underpinnings in biology.
Even if you say that science isn't about solving real world issues but about knowledge, I also think that replication rates of 11% in the case of breakthrough cancer research indicates that the field is not good at finding out what's going on.
The question isn't is the field very good. The question is are the problems which we both agree exist due at all to not enough theory? File drawer effects, cognitive biases, bad experimental design are all issues here, none of which fall into that category.
It isn't a metric of success. It is an example, one of many in the biological sciences.
Then at what grounds do you claim that the field is succesful? How would you know if it weren't succesful?
Obesity is not due to a lack of theoretical underpinnings in biology.
I'm not saying that theory lacks theoretical underpinnings but that the underpinning is of bad quality.
...The question isn't is the field very good. The question is are the problems which we both agree exist due at all to not enough theory? File drawer effects, cognitive biases, bad experimen
For those who haven't heard, NIH and NSF are no longer processing grants, leading to many negative downstream effects.
I've been directing my attention elsewhere lately and don't have anything informative to say about this. However, my uninformed intuition is that people who care about effective altruism (research in general, infrastructure development, X-risk mitigation, life-extension...basically everything, actually) or have transhumanist leanings should be very concerned.
The consequences have already been pretty disastrous. To provide just one, immediate example, the article says that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has shut down. I think that this is almost certain to directly cause a nontrivial number of deaths. Each additional day that this continues could have huge negative impact down the line, perhaps delaying some key future discoveries by years. This event *might* be a small window of opportunity to prevent a lot of harm very cheaply.
So the question is:
1) Can we do anything to remedy the situation?
2) If so, is it worth doing it? (Opportunity costs, etc)