Kendall Terhaar
Research positions are generally considered in the highest echelon of scientific advancement. You are no longer considered an auxiliary when you’ve reached that point: you aren’t interning, or TAing. You are taking steps to study and research a medicine, or a process, or a theory. The importance of these jobs can’t possibly be overstated, which begs the question: who pays for this research?
The short answer is that all of us pay for scientific research. All of us have heard of scientific grants - whether it be from a TV drama about a character on the cusp of getting his or her funding cut is besides the point - so the answer here seems simple. Grants are given by a company almost as a commission, to which the scientific firm or lab will conduct research into. Sometimes, instead of companies asking for research, the government will, in which case the funding comes from public taxes. So, yes, just by going out and buying a Snickers bar, you may be contributing to a wide variety of causes. A lot of people buy Snickers, which results in a pretty hefty amount of cash rolling in for research.
There has been a trend downwards in overall scientific funding, with the federal government spending on science apexing in 2010 at about $160 billion and reducing to $140 billion a year on average since then, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. However, there have been significant trends upwards in spending on biomedical sciences, and more slight increases in spending on engineering projects and computer science, as the graph to the left represents. In fact, non-defense research spending has actually decreased at a slower rate than defense research spending.
Funding wasn’t always this way. In fact, for most of history, funding was a hurdle solved by connections: if you knew a rich guy who was willing to give you money, then voila, you had money. However, not every scientist knows a Bill Gates willing to support them with hundreds of thousands of dollars to research. This more publicized funding system we have nowadays surely helps out the small guy, but it does introduce some bias. Don’t get this wrong: asking a rich friend for money essentially because they like you is the definition of using bias. But in a system meant to reach everyone, what we have today is close, but not perfect. Companies can still pick and choose, and while having specific people they return to is just a system where they function as the client (eg. the free market), the detriment comes as they know how certain experiments can be conducted to give certain results. Trusting every single scientific research project results in falling into this bias yourself, which should be watch out for.
Scientific funding is half the battle for a large population of professionals out there. They cannot conduct research without it, yet getting it approved is difficult, to say the least. The systems in place aim to help all, and while it’s never necessarily perfect, no system is. Thus, this is an overview of scientific funding, and I hope it demystified the process, if only slightly.
Works Cited
Who Pays for Science?, undsci.berkeley.edu/article/who_pays.
Wetzler, Lee, et al. “The History and Future of Funding for Scientific Research: The Brink.” Boston University, 6 Apr. 2015, www.bu.edu/articles/2015/funding-for-scientific-research/.
Interesting... so you're saying that we all contribute to scientific research with the daily items we purchase? I didn't know that I was contributing to that! Until now, I thought that everything worked on private/individual donations. It's unfortunate how all this money is going towards research, but there is still not enough money to conduct the research to the extent that is needed. I mean we always hear about how certain causes don't have that much money to conduct research so it makes me question where the money, that's supposed to go to research, actually goes...
ReplyDeleteThis was a really intriguing topic to read about. I wonder how the government decides how much money each of the disciplines get, and how much they should spend on research in general each year. I was surprised by the fact that hundreds of billions of tax dollars go towards this funding, because I always assumed there was only a small amount of grants from the government and that most researchers have to find investors themselves. Thanks for sharing this with us!
ReplyDeleteAgastya Asthana,
ReplyDeleteI really had no idea that scientific research is paid from taxpayer dollars because to me it made sense that private organizations are funding the research or individuals conducting research are paying for it from their own money. Scientific research helps people here and around the world so I don't mind paying for it. I agree when you mentioned that if you had a rich friend then you would have all the money you would need to get the funding for the product/research.