Buying and Selling Science

To attract more funding, scientists could give customers what they really want

When a person or organization funds science, what are they buying? When scientists apply for funding, what are they selling?

If you look at grant applications (and we’ve read a lot of them) you’d think that science’s useful applications are the only reason why anyone ever funds it. Did you ever wonder why we’re currently selling science like a restaurant advertising that its food might prevent starvation if the buyer is lucky? We think it’s because talking about the taste of science and all the other reasons to fund it are taboo, sometimes just within the community of scientists and science funders and sometimes across society at large. To attract more science funding, scientists could try to give our customers what they really want even if neither party can talk about it. Here are a few examples, but we’re probably just scratching the surface.

We’ve both recently read Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance in which a recurring theme is the desire of the Renaissance rich, especially the newly rich, to convert money into power, status, and legitimacy. At the grandest scale, funding science is still a way to do that. In 2015 John A. Paulson, who made billions especially quickly by betting against the mortgage market in the 2008 financial crisis, gave $400,000,000 to Harvard University’s engineering school to fund science and science education. Paulson’s few statements on the subject suggest that he made this gift out of genuine gratitude to Harvard and the world at large, but not because of a particular interest in science. Notably, he has also given $100,000,000 to NYU (for a new building) and $100,000,000 to the Central Park Conservancy and one gets the sense that these three checks were fungible. One could easily imagine that, having made his billions quickly and on the back of The Great Recession, Paulson wished to legitimize his riches to himself, the public at large, and to the cohort of elites he had recently joined. Giving to institutions recognized as highly legitimate by all three of these audiences provided a natural path. The fact that one of them wanted to use his funding for science is almost incidental. Science organizations could theoretically compete more actively for this kind of funding by generating more institutional and elite legitimacy per dollar and subtly signaling this fact, effectively de-commoditizing science as a target for philanthropy. Should they try?

Meanwhile, US taxpayers collectively invest orders of magnitude more per year in science than Paulson’s one-time gift. What are they buying? For example, of all the things that our government spends money on, NASA is one of the least controversial. According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of Americans approve of NASA while only 12% disapprove, placing it alongside the National Park Service as one the most loved parts of the US government. The reason for this appreciation can’t be because NASA provides tangible benefits to ordinary Americans like the parks do, because it doesn’t. NASA must somehow be good for the soul in a way that we are willing to pay for¹. What makes people love NASA? Can scientists generate more of whatever that is? Would we be a happier, healthier country if we did?

1. NASA’s budget has been relatively stable in constant dollars since 1973