The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is an
attorney. (Read: not a scientist.) One of her many great qualities is that she
asks very good questions, and lots of them. During this particular
conversation, we got to discussing how science is funded. This is something
that apparently most non-scientist Americans have little concept of, despite
the fact that the federal government—meaning taxpayers—funds a good deal of the
basic and applied research that happens in this country. I believe this lack of
knowledge about how research dollars are spent is demonstrated especially
clearly by the (false) charge from so-called climate skeptics that climate
researchers are just lining their pockets. So today I thought I’d offer a short
primer on science funding in the United States, with some stylistic touches
borrowed from xkcd.com.
There are a number of agencies and departments within the
federal government that fund science. For example, the Department of Defense and
the Department of Energy spend billions of dollars on research every year. However,
a good deal of the research performed in academic laboratories is funded by two
agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Currently,
NSF has a budget of about $7 billion per year, and NIH has a budget of about
$30 billion per year—not exactly small potatoes. As a geologist, I don’t work
on problems at all related to health or medicine, so my experience with funding
is through NSF, and the rest of this post will refer to the NSF process of
applying for and receiving grants.
In order to receive any kind of grant money, the principal
investigator (PI, often known as a professor) first needs to write a grant
proposal. Within the grant proposal, the PI details his/her research ideas, why
they are important, what he/she will accomplish, and provides a budget
necessary for completing the work. Other scientists in the field then review
the proposal, and their input helps to determine whether the proposal is
funded. Applying for grant money is highly competitive, and the majority of
grant proposals are rejected for funding. Let’s assume that our PI has written
an absolutely stellar proposal and has gotten funding. Typically for my field,
I have seen budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range for a three-year
project. Perhaps our plucky PI receives $500,000 to be spent over a three-year
period.
First, the university takes a cut of the grant money to fund
overhead costs such as keeping the lights on in the buildings. Typically, this
is close to 50%. Our PI’s university takes 43% of the grant money, leaving
him/her with $285,000 for three years, or $95,000 per year to spend.
Salaries
for graduate students, postdocs, undergraduates, and laboratory managers or
technicians must be paid, and perhaps even part of the PI’s salary as well.
The
grant money may also pay for consumable supplies such as chemical reagents,
centrifuge tubes, and pipettes; field work; travel to conferences; and
publication costs. Last but not least, the cost of laboratory analyses must be
paid, which can run into the thousands of dollars. Every instrument costs money
to run and maintain, and some, like the ICP-MS, consume expensive supplies like
argon gas. At the end of the day, our PI has no money left for his/her trip to
Bermuda. TANSTAAFL—There
Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Besides, the PI must regularly report on
his or her progress to NSF, and there are rules governing how grant money may
be spent. Many academic departments at research-intensive universities have a
grants manager whose sole job is to administer faculty grants.
Although as a
geologist, it is always a bonus when your research simply must take you to
beautiful far-off lands!
That so many professors manage to fund and run their own
research labs is remarkable. Most professors spend inordinate amounts of time
writing grant proposals, many of which will not even be funded. So for anyone
thinking of using science as a get-rich-quick-scheme, they will be sorely
disappointed. Play the lottery instead.
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