Tedd Roberts, sometimes known as Speaker to Lab Animals has a lenthgy, but cogent, rebuttal to Dr. Paul Hsieh’s article about research and government funding on his blog Teddy’s Lab Rat today.
In attempting to research actual funding policies and proportions, I started with a Wikipedia article, which appears to indicate that about 30% of US research funding is by the government, and just over 60% by the private sector. When I went to check the references for myself, I found a circular reference which points back to the information in the table, thus indicating that Wiki is referencing itself for its own justification of these numbers. Therefore, I looked at the NIH website where I found that for 2011, the NIH budget was around $30 billion, of which more than $25 billion directly supported biomedical scientific research. From there, the I looked at the second major government source of research funding, the NSF. In 2011, the NSF budget was almost $7 billion, of which $5.5 billion was directly applied to research. The entire DOD medical research budget for 2011 was $1.2 billion, leading to a sum of just under $32 billion for U.S. federal government funding of research. There are, of course, smaller research budgets buried in agency funding, such as crop research by the USDA and toxicology studies by the EPA. However, even discounting those sources, the Wikipedia claim of government only providing around 30% of research funds implies over $70 billion in funding per year by nongovernmental sources!
While I don’t completely agree with Tedd’s position, I don’t 100 percent disagree either. While I would prefer to see the government out of most forms of research and all of it funded by private dollars, from a practical standpoint, if all those federal monies disappeared tomorrow what would replace them? Moreover, private companies have little incentive — indeed a positive disincentive – to fund pure science. So who then would fund the sort of high-risk, high-reward research DARPA undertakes?
These are questions conservatives need to answer prior to simply saying “we must eliminate government-funded research.”
Read the whole thing here.
Remember “Bell Labs”? A lot of Heinlein fiction referenced private companies which provided cool stuff (Have Space Suit, Will Travel used a GOODYEAR spacesuit. The flashlight used to survive the night by the boys in Red Planet was a GE MIDNIGHT SUN.) Sounded real.
Y’know, looking through good ol’ Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution, and I’m not seeing basic research anywhere.
In fact, as defined at the link (“The U.S. Government is the largest supporter of “basic science” research – i.e. research simply for the sake of advancing knowledge within the field.”), it couldn’t even be argued that the research was “necessary and proper” to carry out an enumerated power.
There are no end of good causes in the world, and our founding fathers knew this well — but the Constitution puts bounds on those that are to be accomplished by the force of the Federal government. We ignore this at our peril.
I’m not saying it *is* Constitutional. I’m just asking *who* will fund it when the government stops? If we end government research support tomorrow – who will pay for the research for the next medical breakthrough? The next microchip for your smartphone/table/PC? Self-cleaning clothing? Self-driving cars?
Special interests can be expected to fund… pretty much only what they are interested in. Electronics companies will research electronics. Pharmaceutical companies will fund what they can sell to the medical community. But what happens if the cure for PTSD is hidden in drug abuse research? Who funds the research that will discover it?
If we want to get government out of funding research (particularly in a political climate in which science is becoming politicized) then we need to ask these questions *now* and start making plans: What are the research priorities? Where do the funds come from? Who are the watchdogs?
Universities, that’s who. It’s part of their marketing budget to fund research because research makes them attractive, which brings in good faculty and good students, which in turn brings in the private sector research grants.
Who funded it before the Feds? Who funded Edison, Bell, Tesla, Westinghouse, Farnsworth?
Brookhaven has only existed since 1947, Lawrence Livermore since 1952, Los Alamos 1942, and Oak Ridge in 1943. The CDC dates back to 1943. Somehow, we managed to become the greatest nation on earth in the 165 years between 1776 and 1941 without national labs for pure science.
And note well that Wickard was decided in 1942. Once the government slipped the bonds of the Constitution, everything was on the table.
I would say leave the nat’l labs in place. I worked for one for 22 yrs. The private sector will not build a 750 million dollar accelerator to do good material science, and pharme, and nano research. This, like NASA, helps keep the US on the cutting edge. I realize it is a bit of a money pit (like the post office), but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Get rid of child care-headstart, and the fed lunch program etc…
Government funding for R&D can be quite effective if applied properly. But the structure we have now under DARPA, DOE, NASA, etc. has historically produced little commercial value for the massive dollars spent.
There are lots of reasons for this dismal track record. Some of it has to do with politics, some it is due to lack of accountability for results, and some of it is due to poor decisions made by the agency personnel distributing the funds.
While some R&D funding for things like defense may result in technology with no commercial value, there is no excuse for any other federal R&D funding that does not have potential commercial benefits.
One area where federal funding can be very effective is bridging the funding gap small tech companies face when transitioning their technology from the lab to a marketable product. This type of funding is much less risky and has a higher payoff than pure research projects. This is what ARPA-E’s original mandate was supposed to be, bridging the so-called funding “valley-of-death” all tech start-ups face.
The US needs to quit pouring hundreds of billions down sinkholes like NASA’s manned space program that provide no real commercial benefits.
Government funded research is bureaucrats spending other people’s money on other people – the most inefficient funding mechanism know to man. If the ideas are interesting enough, wealthy tech lords will fund expensive, exciting projects. Don’t forget NASA spawned James Hansen.
I think DARPA’s use of X prizes is a legitimate use of taxpayer’s money to fund research for DOD.