The Private Side of Scientific Research

Context in Privatizing Science

The amount of funding going to science research with respect to the federal budget has been reduced greatly over the past few years. This may or not have lead to the increase in private organizations funding, but either way more projects and research institutions have been entirely sponsored by philanthropists and private organizations. With increasing privatization on the horizon, what will happen to all of the scientific research?

Keywords: funding science, privatization, philanthropy, history.

Change in Federal Funding

Over the past years and decades, federal tax plans have shuffled about based on necessity, the culture of the time, and the president’s political agenda for the country. Despite taxes generally increasing, the amount given to scientific research has been decreasing. This is especially the case for research and development that is not geared toward national defense.

Research as a Percent of Federal Budget. Note that non-defense science research is less than 2% of the federal budget. This is enough to do a lot of basic and applied science in general, but many scientists now are scrambling to find funds for their work that they have been doing for years.

The subsequent decline in funding means that the rate of grants provided by National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) has decreased from 23 to 21%. Projects that would have been a clear candidate for funding a few years ago just can’t be afforded in the new tax budget.

Particular areas of research that have decreased funding over the past few decades are space exploration and, surprisingly, energy sources. Some reasons why space and energy in particular have gotten less money might be due to the lack of an immediate applicability to the defense of the nation. Even though these avenues of research are interesting and critical to our understanding of nature, they are very high risk and the government would rather have their money go to a safe option that has more application to day-to-day taxpayer’s life.

This has lead to the rise of private organizations and individuals funding science as opposed to government agencies because individuals and companies are still invested in space exploration, bettering renewable energy resources, and increasing internet coverage.

Historical Perspective

The phenomena of private or corporate funding going to science, however, is not new. Even now, industries provide more resources to research and development.

Industry and government funding. Role of private industry in R&D has increased significantly since the late 1980s.

Even before the 1960’s, private funding was still occurring. The scientific principles that are now found in textbooks were initially discovered by hobby scientists during the scientific revolution who self-funded their experiments and created their own labs. For example, the institution at which the atomic nucleus was discovered by Ernest Rutherford was entirely funded by philanthropist Henry Cavendish who is attributed with the discovery of hydrogen.

Similarly, museums, libraries, and academic institutions have their founding attributed to donations from wealthy businessmen like John Rockefeller the American steel and oil industrialists. Rockefeller donated significant amounts of money into fellowships that would eventually end up sponsor Linus Pauling and Robert Oppenheimer to conduct their physics experiments in the states.

In general, it was not uncommon for companies and corporations to fund research both to test new products and for the development of better technologies. But these examples highlight the fact that rich philanthropists donated their money to foundations that would not directly aid their companies but instead would “promote the wellbeing of humanity throughout the world.”

Government involvement in science was not a large contribution until the world wars. During this time, money was poured into engineering developments and the development physical-chemical weapons. The Manhattan Project alone cost over $2.5 billion dollars and employed thousands of researchers. This set sort of a financial standard as the United States moved into the Cold War and the Space Race.

Contemporary Science Philanthropy

Since then, however, it has not been of great federal interest to continue funding science, especially in the areas of space exploration demonstrated by the lack of missions conducted by NASA. Instead, SpaceX, a private company initially funded by ex Pal-Pal creator Elon Musk, has been sending rockets into space and developing technology to colonize Mars.

Falcon Heavy and Dragon. “Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars” and “Dragon is a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo and people to orbiting destinations.”

Private companies and philanthropists are also giving significant support to environmental, technological, and health issues. Elon Musk again, through his company Tesla, is developing a few energy saving products. Along with the electric car, he has created an alternative to solar panels, instead converting them to more aesthetic solar roofing tiles which work with Tesla’s solar batteries to better store energy collected by the sun.

In the tech sector, Internet.org developed by Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) aims to provide free global internet access. With the invention of unmanned aircraft and laser technology, the company hopes to be able to send data through infrared transmissions from a fleet of aircraft in the atmosphere. Google has a similar venture called Project Link, which uses fiber optic cables to give access to the internet in remote and disconnected parts of the world, starting in Uganda.

Even though the most non-defense based science funded by the government is health related, medicine and disease research is becoming popular in the private funding world. But again, this is due to the desire to better the world and help others. Sometimes corporations can have biased agendas, but that of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative have goals of improving global health, ending world hunger, and curing diseases within our lifetime. I suggest starting the following video announcing the program about 12 minutes in.

Another way that medical and drug development research is being funded is through crowdfunding. An initiative started at MIT at the RIDER Institute is being funded in this way to create a way to eradicate all viral diseases.

Moving Forward with Funding

One of the biggest benefits of private funding is that the funds are not constrained by the limits the federal budget or the time-intensive process of legislation. It also allows for projects that individuals and groups are interested in to be focus on, like space exploration. Having research proposals be crowdfunded too allows the process of development be more community based as well.

In general, there are a lot of pros and cons that come from private funding and things to be taken into consideration if it was to be made the only source of non-national defense research (which we will look at in the next article). However, with the new presidency and the prospective push towards privatization these things will need to be considered. Current events aside, this model might be the best way to not only save the government and taxpayers the money, but make sure that worthwhile research gets done as well as keeping the general public more interested in science.

Sarah is in a graduate program for Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan. She writes for her blog Annotated Science and soon will be published with Michigan Science Writers! You can follow her on Twitter at annotated_sci for more content on science and open access news. Please comment below or click the “contact” page in the header to get in touch with her.

Sarah Gulliford