4 ms·
Science funding is aggravatingly hard to bootstrap. You usually need preliminary data to get a grant, but you need a grant (or at least money) to collect that
by mattkrause 6y ago
Science funding is aggravatingly hard to bootstrap.
You usually need preliminary data to get a grant, but you need a grant (or at least money) to collect that preliminary data. This is especially true for NIH funding, where the competition is cut-throat (~10% of grants funded) and the experiments are relatively expensive.
At an early stage, a million dollars of foundation money (or even a lot less) can launch a research program that would otherwise not get off the ground. In a more established program, this would still open up “riskier” directions that would not be feasible otherwise.
You might be thinking of actual drug development and clinical trials. There, a
million bucks still wouldn’t be anything to sneeze at, but isn’t enough to run a complete Phase III trial, which usually cost in the tens of millions.
- reaperducer 6y agoMaybe he's being downvoted because he comes off sounding like like a jerk, and perhaps the world — and the internet in particular — could use a little less cynicism? She gave a million dollars of her own money to help start a university's research into curing a global pandemic.
- mattkrause 6y agoMy point, in case that wasn't crystal clear, is that $1M to a university lab absolutely moves the needle, often in a huge way. It's a fair question though, since a lot of the conversation around new drugs focuses on (very expensive) clinical trials vs basic research. Even some people in research get confused by this! As for me, personally? I'm a research scientist at a hospital and once I finish my tea, I'm getting back to work. Due to the...salary differential between this and ad-tech, I think it counts, at least a little bit.
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