Tithe for Science

There’s shockingly little support for scientists by scientists

Scientists understand better than most people how much we stand on the shoulders of giants. This protocol, that piece of equipment, and this core idea were all somebody’s life work. We understand that it’s incredibly hard to capture the value that a discovery unlocks, how so much research is hard to justify to people who have never done research, how we’re well past the “Szlizard point” – far more scientist-time is wasted trying to get funding than the time that funding pays for.

And yet, there’s shockingly little support for scientists by scientists. We primarily expect non-scientists to support our work, whether it’s congresspeople, philanthropists, or company executives. (Scientist program officers rarely have ultimate decision-making authority.)

Some scientists who made it big have paid it back into the scientific community – Gordon Moore, Jim Simons, Ross Brown, to name a few. But many have not. And most scientists are not fabulously wealthy!

Tithing is an old social technology for the not-fabulously-weathy to collectively support worthy causes. Setting aside 10% of their income, ten scientists could support an 11th (fewer than ten if they’re supporting a grad student, but more if there’s a lot of equipment involved).

The broader idea is that the nature of discovery and invention is such that it’s impossible to assure that people can capture the value they create. Failures unlock someone else’s success; one program might get a problem 99% of the way to the finish line but another carries it over the line; individuals who are always in the acknowledgements but not author lists can be instrumental to a project. We can’t do the accounting on who “deserves” what, so we can’t “pay back” discoverers and inventors. Instead, all we can do is pay it forward, so someone in the future can do the work that they, too, don’t necessarily get credit for. This goes beyond scientists, to anybody whose income depends on someone in the past doing research – that includes the majority of the tech sector, chemical engineering, and beyond.

Obviously there are many details to work out – coordination, deciding among infinite possibilities, temptation to demand justification among them. Tithing is, of course, traditionally tied to religion. Science is not, nor should it be, a religion. Is it possible to channel the same sense of higher purpose towards a high variance process instead of a belief system?