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Government funding of science

Obviously the main problem with scientific research across the world today is the fact that it is funded primarily with tax money. The main problem with scientific research, according to most scientists, is that not enough tax money is given to scientists.

Bruce Alberts, lead author of one of the most famous science textbooks and current editor-in-chief of the journal Science, is one of the most fanatical statolatrists I’ve ever encountered in the scientific world. Or maybe he’s just more outspoken given his position as editor of a premier journal and author of weekly editorial columns about various aspects of science and society.

In the latest issue of Science, his editorial column is about basic research vs. “translational” research, the new fad in university departments that attempts to focus on research that is directly applicable to human disease (i.e., designing the research to be translatable directly from the research lab to the medical world). He makes some good points, mainly that basic research can, has, and will contribute to progress in treating disease even when its goal is not the understanding of human disease.

In his column, Alberts says:

The private sector energetically pursues translational biomedical research in many areas. But only governments (and a select group of foundations such as the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) provide the resources needed for pioneering work on fundamental biological mechanisms.

Um, maybe that’s because the State takes billions of dollars from people who earned it and gives it to people who didn’t. The NIH’s 2008 budget is $28 billion. NASA’s 2008 budget is $14 billion. Over $40 billion is taken from taxpayers and given to those two institutions alone to further scientific research. Who can calculate the opportunity cost of those expenses? What better use could the money be put to? What would citizens do with that money if it weren’t taken from them by force and spent on things they don’t want it spent on? (If they do want it spent on scientific research, why does it have to be taken from them in the form of taxes?)

The government is the main funder of scientific research because it has arrogated that role to itself, seized and redistributed money for that purpose, and forcibly limited the number of private companies that can contribute substantially to scientific and medical research (via patent law and court settlements). I know that is just fine with Dr. Alberts.