RobertBradbury writes "Well on Monday I flew across the country to attend the NIH Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative Project Launch Meeting. It drew quite a crowd — 400+ scientists from all over the country. The goal — to develop 4+ multi-disciplinary nano-bio-tech research centers funded at the level of ~$1.5M each for perhaps 5+ years."
RobertBradbury continues:
The good news… The NIH really seems to understand that to make progress in nanotech one must integrate researchers from various areas of expertise. The bad news… Few if any people attending the conference have read any of the background literature on what nanotechnology or nanomedicine really involve. When I mentioned Nanosystems or Nanomedicine Vol. I or Vol. IIA during the interactive periods they generally were unrecognized. This seems to be consistent with the Drexler v. Smalley debate which suggests that most scientists simply have not done their homework (in terms of learning about nanotechnology).
The interesting thing about this is that I now have a 43 page double-sided list of participants who could be questioned as to whether or not they have read the fundamental nanotechnology literature and if not when do they intend to do so?
