While it isn't the sexiest topic for a blog post, this year's FQXi conference did include a panel discussion on science funding that raised a number of salient points worth discussing. I will slightly abuse this space and pontificate a bit.
The panel included physicist Andrew Briggs (who, at one point, mistook me for Çaslav Brikner) representing the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Ashley Zauderer from the John Templeton Foundation, Sarah Hreha from the Gruber Foundation, and Federico Faggin from the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation. Whatever one may think of these organizations--and they are not free from criticism--they have nevertheless funded a good deal of excellent pure scientific research that would not otherwise have been funded.
And there's the rub: there is precious little funding for foundational research these days. As governments continue to cut back on non-military discretionary spending, researchers have no choice but to turn to private funding that, due to its very nature as private, will never be completely free from criticism concerning its motivation. The fact is, government funding for fundamental research has traditionally been blind to the philosophical motivations of research--good research stands on its own and should be relatively self-evident via its methodologies. Somewhat ironically, many of those who do criticize government as pushing a particular agenda with its funding have actually driven it to do just that by increasing the emphasis on and importance of practical research, i.e. research that leads to applications, particularly those with short-term economic impact. In other words, meddlesome politicians have increasingly been attempting to ensure that government research funding does push an agenda--theirs (the politicians').
This, of course, is terrible for fundamental science. I won't spend time explaining the importance of fundamental science here as I will assume that most readers understand this importance (nevertheless, see here and here for example). What I will say is that the increasing reliance on private funding is leading to more fractured research. What do I mean by that?
Critics of Templeton and similar organizations assume that these groups pressure researchers to fit their findings into the pre-existing ideologies espoused by the organizations. So, for example, they could assume that the Templeton organizations might try to prevent the publication of Templeton-funded research results that directly contradict what the critics might see as Templeton-supported philosophies such as religion and free enterprise. Within the larger Templeton umbrella, there seems to be little evidence that this takes place. Of course, the same can't be said of all such organizations. Indeed, there are plenty that do push various agendas and that routinely attempt to silence dissenting opinions. But for every one of these types of foundations there is one that puts no pressure on its researchers.
The greater problem, in my mind, is the increasing specialization of funding areas. So while many (perhaps most) such private funding organizations may not try to directly influence the outcomes of the research they sponsor, they do influence what type of research gets funded in the first place by focusing on particular areas. This is what I mean by "more fractured research." Under the traditional model, government funding would broadly cover the basic sciences and foundational researchers could often fairly easily justify their research within such a broad call.
This post-World War II model of government agencies as quasi-independent and free from political pressures is a kind of "live-and-let-live" ideal in which the freedom of the researcher to explore (which is the essence of science) is fostered by not limiting the ideas that seed the research in the first place. But with an increasing reliance on private funding, there comes an increasing focus on the interests of the funders themselves. I want to emphasize that there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Foundations are free to spend their money as they wish and, as I mentioned above, they have funded some very important work. The problem is that it creates gaps in funding.
If history has taught us anything it's that we are terrible at predicting how discoveries in one area may lead to advancements in a seemingly unrelated area. Who, a century ago, would have--indeed could have--predicted that a theory as esoteric as relativity would become an indispensable foundation of modern life (via the ubiquity of GPS-driven technologies)? Luckily unlikely connections between fundamental research and later technological advances were at least understood to exist, even by private corporations, many of which used to have phenomenal support for foundational research. Westinghouse, GE, Bell Labs and IBM come immediately to mind as examples. But an increasing emphasis on short-term profit margins has all but killed off fundamental corporate research.
Of course, there's another problem that is increasingly exacerbated by this new funding paradigm. Private foundations such as the Templeton organizations, the Gruber Foundation, and the Faggin Foundation simply do not have the resources of governments or large corporations. As such, they are limited in their ability to support anything other than bold new ideas. Scientific results must be reproducible but, as Matt Leifer pointed out in the Q&A session after the initial panel discussion, there is very little funding for projects aimed at reproducing existing research results, particularly in physics. Independent verifiability is a cornerstone of science. As an example, consider Joe Weber's claim in 1968 that he had detected gravitational waves in his lab at the University of Maryland. None of his results could ever be reproduced despite several attempts. While this lead to an eventual consensus that Weber had not, in fact, observed gravitational waves, it also helped spur the development of LIGO which recently did detect gravitational waves (and, at the press conference announcing the results, Kip Thorne was quick to credit Weber with really starting the field). What if no one had ever really questioned Weber's results or been able to adequately test them? What if everyone simply moved on? It's difficult to say if the world would have been a different place, but it is certainly not clear that LIGO would have ever been built and the broader applications of the technologies developed for it have yet to be fully realized. Certainly, verification of existing results is not sexy work. But it is important work that gets at the heart of what science is: the embodiment of skepticism.
Where does all of that leave us? Eric Weinstein (also during the Q&A session), in what may have been the most impassioned argument of the conference, entreated scientists to stop "asking for money" and instead demand some kind of royalty payment for creating the backbone upon which modern society itself is founded. Stop for a moment and think about the ubiquity of the worldwide web. Think about how it has so radically changed society and particularly commerce. Think about the trillions of dollars in wealth it produces. Now think about Tim Berners-Lee who created it as a collaboration tool for physicists working at CERN. Tim doesn't get a penny of that wealth and neither does CERN. Certainly, they may receive some indirect benefits, but there is little appreciation (let alone knowledge) among the general populace of the origins of the web and even less desire to, perhaps, repay some of that.
Of course, Eric's entreaty, though passionate, would be extremely hard (if not impossible) to implement on a practical level and I'm sure Eric knows this. The broader point that he was making is that the dialogue needs to change. Science needs to stand up for itself, not just on social media and in the press, but also in how it deals with those who control the vast majority of the money that lubricates the economy.
Through his foundation, Federico Faggin funds research in areas that he is passionate about. This is a good thing and we need more funders with Federico's passion. But we also need to recognize the bigger picture regarding science's place in the world. This includes not losing site of two of science's greatest traits: its inherent skepticism and its gestation in the free exchange of creative ideas. I don't have easy solutions to any of the issues raised here and neither did any of the panelists. Sometimes it is necessary to simply frame the question. I don't know if that was the intent behind the creation of this panel and I hesitate to say that they were successful in that regard. But they did get the dialogue started. It's our job to keep it going.