Medical Research Funding - Government vs. Private
Most research funding comes from two major sources: corporations and government. Some small amounts of scientific research are carried out by charitable foundations, especially in relation to developing cures for chronic diseases.
Government funding for medical research amounts to approximately 36% in the U.S. The government funding proportion in certain industries is higher, and it dominates research in social science and humanities. Similarly, with some exceptions government provides the bulk of the funds for basic scientific research. In commercial research and development, all but the most research-oriented corporations focus more heavily on near-term commercialization possibilities rather than ideas or technologies.
Government-funded research can either be carried out by the government itself, or through grants to academic and other researchers otside the government. Critics of basic research are concerned that research funding for the sake of knowledge itself does not contribute to a great return. However, scientific innovations often foreshadow or inspire further ideas unintentionally. For example, NASA's quest to put a man on the moon inspired them to develop better sound recording and reading technologies. NASA's research was furthered by the music industry, who used...
Audio cassettes, being smaller and able to store more music, quickly dominated the music industry and increased the availability of music.
An additional advantage to government sponsored research is that the results are publicly shared, whereas with privately funded research the ideas are controlled by a single group. Consequently, government sponsored research can result in mass collaborative projects that are beyond the scope of isolated private researchers.
Funding of research by private companies is mainly motivated by profit, and is much less likely than governments to fund research projects solely for the sake of knowledge. The profit incentive causes researchers to concentrate their energies on projects which are perceived as likely to generate profits.
An often-quoted case study is the first sequencing of the human genome, which was carried out in two competing projects, the United States government-managed Human Genome Project (HGP) and the private venture capital funded Celera Genomics. Celera Genomics used a newer, albeit riskier technique, which some HGP researchers claimed would not work, although that project eventually adopted some of the same methods. However, it has been argued by some genomics researchers that a simple efficiency comparison for such programs is not…
