💰🧪 Funding outside the box: A Quick Q&A with … philanthropy expert Stuart Buck
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Golden Fleece Award
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Linked in the article (7 min read)
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Francis Peyton Rous
1 min read
The article uses Rous as a key example of how seemingly frivolous research can lead to Nobel Prize-winning breakthroughs. His discovery of the first oncovirus through chicken tumor experiments is central to Buck's argument about unconventional research funding.
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DARPA
15 min read
The article discusses government funding of risky research and contrasts NIH/NSF with private philanthropy. DARPA represents a successful model of government-funded high-risk research that has produced transformative technologies like the internet, GPS, and voice recognition—directly relevant to the funding debate.
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in the USA and around the world:
Research funding is inherently risky. There are no guarantees that funds, be they public or private, will generate valuable insights, but now and again, obscure research bears surprising fruit.
Take LiDAR, the remote sensing method that utilizes laser technology: Originally dreamed up in 1930 — before the invention of the laser — for studying meteorology, it’s now enabling the use of self-driving vehicles. Then there’s CRISPR gene editing tech, which started as a basic research project and has gone on to do everything from treating genetic disorders like sickle cell to increasing crop yields. The list goes on.
As I’ve written about in the past, the current administration has seen federal agencies like the NSF and NIH undergo steep funding cuts, alongside harsh reductions in personnel. It’s impossible to measure the possible ramifications of these cuts — the accidental discoveries that will never be made and the unexpected returns society will never see. But private philanthropists can pick up some of the slack.
In his essay in Palladium magazine, The Case for Crazy Philanthropy, Stuart Buck makes the argument that, in order for donors to truly make an impact, they need to take a chance on some unconventional recipients. Formulaic, tried-and-true giving to major research universities might feel like the safest bet, but taking a chance on unlikely candidates is likely the path to truly groundbreaking advancements.
Buck is the executive director of the Good Science Project. He is also a senior advisor to the Social Science Research Council. Buck has previously served as vice president of research at Arnold Ventures and as vice president of research integrity at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.
. . . we know for a fact that many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs had their origins in research that at one point might have seemed frivolous or irrelevant.
1/ Why is it so difficult for government institutions to justify supporting risky, unconventional research — even when the potential payoffs are enormous?
Government agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the National Science Foundation (NSF) are inherently political, to state the obvious. That means a couple of things: They feel a responsibility to the taxpayer to be legible and accountable about what they fund and do; and they want to avoid political scandals or even
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