Fair enough. I could imagine that if the work were billed by the hour or said research firm hired multiple people it would be easy for costs of the work to run

Fair enough. I could imagine that if the work were billed by the hour or said research firm hired multiple people it would be easy for costs of the work to run up to $75k - it's within O(20k). I'm not qualified to price these though - I certainly would abhor having to pay that cost if I were a small company.