Science funding

I’ve been getting a few questions lately asking why isn’t this type of research (insert area of interest here) funded or why isn’t there a cure for (insert common disease here)? Well, in all honesty, these questions actually come up all the time, but recently they have resurfaced. Scientists are funded (fat and happy) and pharmaceuticals are expensive, so why isn’t there a cure for x or why isn’t there more focus on y? In reality, funding for science is far below what the general public perceives. Many interesting topics aren’t researched because scientists don’t have the funds to do so. It isn’t a lack of interest or that scientists are “hiding the cure” to make money, it is that there is less and less funding available.

Science is very expensive. Institutions including colleges, universities, pharmaceutical companies, provide most of the equipment for research, usually in core facilities so that there is general access. These machines are very specialized and very expensive, both to buy and to maintain. A majority of scientists rely on grant money to cover the cost of their staff, the supplies, and to a great extent themselves. As the economy has slipped, funding for science has also dried up. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the major sponsor of biomedical research and isn’t able to fund the same percentage of applicants it has in the past. This is for two main reasons. First, more scientists are applying and second, less money is allocated. Because of this, more scientists have relied on non-profit organizations that grant money for research. This is an excellent source of funding, but also limited. So, as funding has been cut, more people apply to non-profit groups, making that funding also much more competitive. And so on down the line. Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money on research and development. The number of drugs that are investigates far exceeds the slim number that make it to market. The further down the road of testing a drug that the drug fails and has to be removed from consideration, the greater the loss for the pharmaceutical company. If a drug looks promising but fails to do what is intended during phase II clinical trials, billions have been lost. Pharmaceutical companies do have a lot to gain from a profitable drug, but developing drugs is not a trivial venture.

Research takes time. Progress is made every day, but it may not be the type of progress that hits the headlines or astounds the general public. Research is just that - re-search. Experiments have to be repeated and confirmed prior to publishing. It is critical that findings are reproducible so that researchers are lead down the wrong path and bad decisions are made.

In a perfect world, there would be unlimited funds for research and cures for all things would exist. However, scientists are limited by the funding and resources they have. This is why it is important to keep funding research either through the NIH or through non-profit sources.