Science
Related: About this forumCorporate America Is Turning its Back on Science
The rumored merger between chemical giants Dow DOW -3.62% and DuPont DD 0.08% has raised many questions about the state of Corporate America and its relationship to Wall Street, and none more pressing than what it will mean for firms that invest heavily in basic research.
As Fortune Editor Alan Murray argued its hard to feel good about the dealwhich will reportedly split the combined company into three new units that focus on agriculture, materials science and specialty products, respectivelyunless youre an investment banker. He wrote:
Indeed, disagreements over DuPonts spending on basic research were a point of conflict during the struggle between former DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman and activist investor Nelson Peltz to control the company, which Fortune documented in May. Peltz has criticized the firm for its bloated spending, while Kullman defended her vision of the company as one of the few in the world that was large enough to solve the worlds big problems through science.
But Kullman stepped down in October, and reports of the merger are another piece of anecdotal evidence that U.S. companies are abandoning the scientific ambitions that Kullman articulated so eloquently.
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http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/dow-dupont-merger/
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)Some fear the truth, I love science because it evolves and grows and nature because it will always find a way to exist and that is something I honestly think the human life form lacks.
Maybe one day when we realize our ego in the universe is perhaps our weakest link we might be able to to fix whatever it was that brought us our unrecognized failure...
MisterP
(23,730 posts)LongTomH
(8,636 posts)......by both government and industry, including the Apollo project.
The first transistors AND the first photovoltaic cells came out of Bell Labs.
Edited to add: This current trend is just another horrible example of a business model that focuses on near term profits over long-term investment. That's why we have an infrastructure - built in the 1950s and 60s - that is falling apart today.