Overcoming a usual narrative is takes tremendous work. There are many arguments against doing so: the received view is true; working against best practices can create liability or distrust; challenging the status quo can hurt one’s career; refusing to accept the obvious is foolish or spiteful or stupid or unhelpful. Trying to develop any other view is seen as unhelpful, if not clueless or idealistic. Even if there are alternatives, so the argument goes, they are impractical and there’s no point in diverting any resources to them.
Stewart Kauffman discusses the problem of “local maxima” in a number of his books, including Investigations. Imagine any world of phenomena, where a given method or tool achieves some benefit. As we develop the method or tool, we work our way up a gradient toward the maximum benefit for that tool. Our knowledge becomes detailed and sophisticated. We strive to improve. But as we focus on our advantage, we also tend to ignore the possibility that there are other methods and tools with even greater advantage–other maxima that we haven’t tried and may not even have imagined. How do we get to these other peaks, once we are already some good way up the one we are on? Ah, we would have to go down, find a valley–find a deep valley in the solution space that might be at the base of other maxima–and try climbing again.
Thomas Kuhn described “revolutions” in science as involving a change in paradigm, an incommensurable change in the fundamentals of a “received view,” or as I call it, less formally, a usual narrative. Alfred Korzybski in Science and Sanity argued (more like quipped seriously) that there wouldn’t be so much need for revolutions in science if the scientists were less fixated on being right about their use of language and were regularly moving to new ideas as observations were made. “Consensus” science has a long history of being on the wrong side of scientific history–from laughing off hand washing as a prevention for infections in pregnancy (and the resulting deaths) to hahaha-ing that past time might be more than 6,000 years or that continents could drift.
Richard Feynman argued (more like jested seriously) that science is “the belief in the ignorance of experts.” But in another sense, he was quite serious about the claim. In his first Danz lecture, Feynman argues that a key motivator in scientific discovery is doubt:
If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas. There would be nothing worth checking, because we would know what is true. So what we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. Some of them are most unsure; some of them are nearly sure; but none is absolutely certain.
Feynman then proposes that we must have “freedom to doubt,” not just in science but “in other fields” as well.
I feel a responsibility as a scientist who knows the great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and the progress made possible by such a philosophy, progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought.
Another way to put this: explanation can be the enemy of curiosity.
We also have Tsvetan Todorov’s observation (in The Poetics of Prose) that there is no such thing as a primitive narrative. There does not appear to be any single narrative that, if all “facts” could be established, would become the only possible true narrative of any event. First off, we never have all the “facts”–and “facts” themselves become suspects of other narratives, themselves failing on inspection to admit all “facts.” But even were it possible to have all facts (meaning stories about parts of a story, including both evidence that remains as well as evidence that has been destroyed or lost or made to appear different from what it was), Todorov argues we still would not find a single narrative.
The failure of primitive narratives is at the heart of what one experienced federal arbitrator presented in a discussion of negotiation. Many people assume that others can be persuaded in argument if only they are provided with more facts. The premise is that disagreement comes about because the other side is “ignorant.” And if they persist in their “ignorance” despite the facts, then they are “stupid” and “stubborn” too. “You wouldn’t want to be stupid or stubborn. So you will agree with me.” Except it is not that way in practice. People with plenty of good facts, and with lots of smarts, may well persist in disagreeing because the narrative that frames their behavior and hope for future advantage simply is not that of the party they are negotiating with. There won’t be a primitive narrative that is true–but there might be a narrative that forms regarding how an exchange might advance the interests of both parties–perhaps a compromise, or disengagement, or a change in the controlling paradigms for both sides.
We come, then, to the arguments around how innovation happens, and in particular, how university research supports innovation, and the role of patents in such support, and who should own such patents (other than the inventors), and who should decide how those patents get used, and who should make money, and who should be excluded from use while those people try to make money, and how the money from this arrangement (if it ever works out, which is rare), ought to be divided up. There’s a predominant received view among university administrators, their patent brokering allies, and among a host of academic commentators. That usual narrative goes:
Before Bayh-Dole, university research sat on the shelves, inventions weren’t used, and innovation stagnated. Then Bayh-Dole happened, universities began patenting stuff, and commercial products zipped out of labs into the hands of companies that invested wads of private money to make new, beneficial products. In this manner, the public interest is served through private enterprise mediated by university administrators and patent brokers. The concept is inspired; the execution consistent; the outcomes success everywhere.
The defenses of Bayh-Dole are so adamant that they often come off as shrill–there is no room to question the law, to investigate the history before the law, or even to examine any metrics that might call into question the law. It’s clear that the usual view of Bayh-Dole forms a framing narrative, a received view, a consensus. Those advocating for Bayh-Dole made it have the standing of prophecy–that it would bring about a future prosperity, and the advocates justify any of the actions they take (taking ownership of all faculty inventions, licensing exclusively even as assignment, trolling industry with claims of infringement, licensing to speculators, excluding all research and local uses in the hope of better royalties if ever they do license) on the argument that the benefits to be gained far exceed the damage or problems or lost opportunities caused by their choices.
This much to say, there’s not likely to be a rational resolution to the problem of Bayh-Dole and federally supported research patents. That’s because the entrenched folks and their usual narrative won’t go away by showing more facts that run against their story. If anything, as a prophetic story, adverse facts will just deepen the commitment to the story, and motivate changes in the future account to create new possibilities for future goals. If not licensing to companies, then startups, and if not startups funded with private money, then startups funded with state money, and if not licensing, then sue industry when it adopts those inventions anyway. If commercialization can’t be the goal, then at least teaching industry a lesson about obedience and payment can be.