I received a comment from a reader that they didn’t necessarily agree with the premise that information sharing is a big problem. I still believe lack of information is a problem, but I would have been best to explain the premise in a little more depth. I admit that there was some oversimplification in my last post.
The reason I believe information sharing to be a problem is not because of things like tips for saving energy, how to recycle more effectively, hypermiling, or what I would lump into the category of what people can do every day. Resources for this type of information are everywhere. What we are really lacking in is openness of in depth scientific research and data. A great deal of data and groundbreaking research are not exposed to the general public because it either is locked up in paid subscription academic publications before fully passing peer review, patented, or never sees the light of day because the researchers original hypothesis was wrong.
One part of the problem is the information that is intentionally locked up, and another is the information that is just never exposed. Even bad data and failed experiments can be useful to the scientific community as a whole. I do believe that there is value in repeating previously failed experiments, but only to a point. Hypothetically speaking, if an experiment failed a few times, it’s worth someone else trying again. However, if it failed a thousand times, but people kept repeating it because they didn’t know about previous experiments, then it would be a waste of time.
I will intentionally avoid going in depth on patent issues with pharmaceuticals, but they are one of the most prominent examples of how locked up information could benefit society when opened. (WARNING: Upcoming Oversimplification) The motivation behind locking up the data is different than the problem GreenXchange is trying to solve, but the net effect is the same.
Society benefits when drugs fall out of patent and generic drugs are created. Information on a drug’s effects are available before patents expire, but other manufacturers are prevented from acting upon it, having the same net effect of nothing being shared. Locking up information, or preventing others from acting upon it because of patents, does more harm than good. Not only is this a problem with the products of research like drugs, it is a problem with the data itself.
Patents on gene sequences that were *discovered* rather than created, are patented, and commercial medical tests for these sequences require payments to the people that discovered them first. A specific example that I won’t fully explain myself, is that patents on the human genome are making tests for breast cancer increasingly more expensive. How much harder would it be to move to clean energy if manufacturers were prevented from producing wind turbines or photovoltaic solar panels?
Fortunately, these technologies are not locked up, but a big part of the Science Commons initiative is allowing discoveries and data both to remain open and accessible to the world. The openness and data sharing is relevant to my Biodiesel Series posts because without the previous work of the US DOE Aquatic Species Program, I wouldn’t have been able to go nearly as deep. Had their work been intentionally locked up with patents, or just not published because there was no platform, many of the existing biotech companies working on algae based biodiesel would not be as close to a marketable solution as they are today.
Update: Additional reason it’s relevant to Green Tech, Oil Companies buying up battery patents.
