OPINION

Rethinking Scientific Funding — The Need To Economically Empower Scientists

Gregory Scott Muhs
The Quantastic Journal
11 min readSep 8, 2024

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Not long ago, I saw an interview between Joe Rogan and a paleontologist discussing off-the-wall anti-science conspiracy theories. While it can be frustrating for actual scientists to have to refute pseudoscience on the Internet, the part of this interview that has stayed with me the most was a comment to the effect that most practicing professional paleontologists are only able to do their work part-time.

This really bothers me. On the one hand, scientists in the biotech and bioinformatics industries, along with clinical scientists and even geologists, have the potential to make a lot of money. This is due to various market forces. There are a lot of parties out there with a vested interest in finding new medical treatments, and there is a lot of financial interest in finding new sources of coal, natural gas, crude oil, and any number of minerals.

While many of us would love to see an ideal Utopian world where scientists are free to explore and report their findings without any fear of reprisal, and without any strings attached, the cold-hard reality is that we live in a world where the scientist, like the artist, is a flesh-and-blood human being who has bills to pay. The cost of living is expensive, and the cost of research is often even more expensive.

Rethinking Scientific Funding — The Need To Economically Empower Scientists
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When discussions like this come up, the answer I typically hear is that we need more government funding for science. This might be part of the answer, but what if there were an alternative? What if scientists did not have to be beholden to the politician or the mega-corporation to secure their funding? What if the scientist, like the doctor, lawyer, or engineer, could make all areas of science, paleontology included, so profitable that scientists could easily move from one scientific institution to another, and name their price? In a world like this, concerns about funding would become a thing of the past.

Joe Rogan Experience #862 — Trevor Valle, PowerfulJRE

What I am describing might sound like fantasy to some, but when looking at the history of economics, and looking at the trajectory of current technology, I think that within a few decades, scientists could streamline their research to become so immensely profitable that investors would be competing for scientists rather than the other way around.

Rather than detracting from academia toward private industry, I think that scientists in all funding sectors would be empowered. As Ashworth points out in regard to geoscientists, the median salary is “approximately $92,000 per year,” and the demand is growing for a number of reasons (Ashworth).

Why do so many people want to fund geologists? Because geologists make them money. How do geologists make money for them? Geologists provide a service towards producing a product. When filling my gas tank, I have never thought about how a portion of that money is being used to fund geologists, but that is the reality of the situation. Ditto when I purchase salt, pay my gas and electric bill, purchase a cellphone, car, computer, anything plastic or metal, etc. I am putting money into the science of geology.

Consider also how much research and development in general, and in the geoscience industry in-particular, must be involved in these companies.

As for the CEO of the oil company, he does not care what your opinion is on any controversy going on in geology. He does not care about your politics. He cares that you can find oil and make money for him so that he can buy a big house on a lake somewhere and go to a rodeo with his wife on the weekend. The guy pumping his gas is not thinking about you at all.

So this raises the question: What product can the paleontologist produce that can be purchased downstream? Could a paleontologist have a unique skill set to find coal that might complement the skill set of the traditional mineralogist?

The answer is yes!

According to ChatGPT, this is already being done in the petroleum industry.

“In the petroleum industry, paleontologists often work closely with geologists and geophysicists to develop models of subsurface geology. Their input can lead to the discovery of new oil fields or the more efficient extraction of resources from existing ones, directly contributing to a company’s profitability.”
(OpenAI, 2024)

This was new for me to learn, but it makes sense. A major part of why I did not pursue a career in paleontology was that I did not see it as a profitable career move. Yet according to 4 Corner Resources, “The average U.S. salary for a Paleontologist is: $97,800” (4 Corner Resources, 2023)

Why the paleontologist being interviewed by Joe Rogan was moonlighting as a bartender, I have no idea, but life happens, and much respect to the man for making money.

In any case, if you want other people to give you money, the natural question they are going to ask is what you are going to do for them. In the case of the geologist, the software engineer, the bioinformaticist, or any number of professions, the money comes from the downstream product that provides upstream funding.

Biomaterials are one type of product that comes to mind. Imagine a future where airplanes and space elevators are made from graphene produced by bacteria. Imagine skyscrapers produced as a result of studying benthic crustaceans. Now imagine how much money investors will pay for products like these. Imagine the army of scientists they would be willing to hire.

This leads to the next question of how science can be made even more profitable to increase the return on investment.

Enter Automation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked at Quest Diagnostics. It was amazing to see clinical testing streamlined and automated by giant robots and an efficient workflow. While at Quest, I was involved in several projects to streamline the workflow further and made a number of suggestions to increase automation and efficiency. This also included writing a macro in Excel that streamlined part of our process and saved the department about 2 hours per shift per day (around 6 hours per day total).

While in an academic lab, I suggested performing our experiments on two samples at once instead of one at a time. The result was to double the efficiency, and slightly reduce the product waste. Between walking to the ice machine, walking to the liquid nitrogen room, preparing the master mixes, running the centrifuge, etc., performing experiments on two samples actually took slightly less time than only one. (Running two samples meant that there were always two test tubes that exactly balanced one another in the centrifuge.)

Analyzing data from flow cytometry was also streamlined, because compensation controls only had to be performed once for two samples, and gating was likewise streamlined.

Consider also the advances in recent decades in genome sequencing. A commercial test for a complete human genome costs a few hundred dollars, while the original Human Genome Project cost around $2.7 billion.

The original project cost $2.7 billion, with most of the genome being mapped over a two-year span. Nowadays, the current speed record for sequencing a genome is around five hours (more often, though, it takes weeks), and this past fall, the company Illumina unveiled a machine that it claims will cost as little as $200 per sequence, down from the recently typical $600 cost. (Siegel, 2023)

One might ask: Yes, of course, technology is increasing rapidly in the last few decades, so what’s your point?

My point is that if the cost of a research project can be cut in half, then it means that the results (i.e., the profit) can be produced for half the price. This “profit” might be financial, but it might also be in the charitable sector, where the “profit” is a new open-source treatment for pancreatic cancer.

If the cost of the final product is less, then more people might be willing to fund (i.e., invest in) the research, regardless of their motive.

If a meal at a diner costs half as much, I’m eating out three times as often. If a consumer product such as a clinical test, a new pharmaceutical, or a gallon of gasoline, costs half the price, then more people will be able to buy it, especially on the world stage. Likewise, if R&D results cost half the price, more investors will want to invest in the R&D.

The charitable sector might not be able to afford a billion-dollar research project, but a 100-million-dollar project might be doable. A combination of semi-automated laboratory processes, running multiple samples in parallel, and streamlined data analysis, could very easily make it possible to deliver more results at a lower cost. The incredible advances in areas such as genomics are a case study for streamlining scientific progress.

An analogy would be the invention of the printing press. The book that costs $15-$20 on Amazon today would have easily cost me $30,000 without the printing press. When the printing press first came out, people feared that this would take jobs away from monks who spent all day copying books by hand. Yet the publishing industry is booming! No doubt, the world is a much better place, especially in terms of scientific and academic progress because of the semi-automation of the printing press.

What we need is the equivalent of more “printing press” revolutions in science.

Of course, clinical trials are immensely expensive! The one thing that I could think of to reduce costs would be to streamline and semi-automate the coordination system. Having a system where people can electronically sign consent forms, and electronically sign up for visits, might help to reduce the burden on coordinators. This might also help individuals to sign up for multiple non-overlapping studies. With the right design, this might also improve the rates of subjects attending follow-up visits.

Integrated databases to consistently track subjects and samples between studies would also do a lot to maintain data integrity and cut down on confusion. Just as medical testing within an institution is connected to a unique Patient ID, so clinical research should be connected to a unique Subject ID that is consistent across studies within an institution.

In other words, the equivalent of a hospital patient chart database, but for research subjects instead of patients.

More automation for sample processing would also be very helpful. I’ve worked in several labs where a huge time cost was isolating PBMCs and serum from blood samples. If a cost-effective bench-top instrument could be used to isolate the PBMCs, this would be amazingly helpful! Both when isolating PBMCs from blood, and later when isolating PBMCs from the 96-well plates.

Even something as simple as centrifuge tubes with a gel filter in place of Ficoll or Lymphoprep might be a huge improvement in time, cost, and quality. This might even be an improvement over SepMate.

If the whole process of isolating PBMCs from blood, and dispensing them onto a pre-treated 96-well plate could be automated (or semi-automated), then this would be a game-changer in immunology research.

More in-lab automation would also mean that more subjects could be scheduled each day. With automation, it might be possible to process ten samples per day in a research lab, instead of one or two. This could result in more research, more data, and more products for the same research cost.

The bottom line is that we need more lucrative downstream products, and we need to find ways to produce those products efficiently and cost-effectively. Because at the end of the day, the guy pumping his gas is paying the bills, and he is not thinking of you or your scientific research.

Why do we need this? Why not just have massive military-level government funding for science?

Besides not wanting to be beholden to politicians who believe that the moon is made of cheese, I don’t think the government-funding model for research is a sustainable long-term model for the future of science. Also, I don’t want to be viciously competing with my colleagues for thin government grants. I would rather work in an environment of collaboration and partnership than some dystopian nightmare with “winners” and “losers.”

Science should not look like Game of Thrones or The Hunger Games, but in order to attract funds, we must produce value, and this value must be very very clear to everyone.

The key here is supply and demand. When scientists are high in demand, they have more financial options. By having more options, we can command a higher price for our services. Personally, I would rather get paid $200,000 than $50,000 and have more respect for the same work. Instead of having three scientists applying for one position, I would rather have ten suitors vying for the expertise of each scientist. (And employers, like suitors, tend to treat you better when they know you have options.)

Do I want science to be an expensive, yet noble hobby in academia, or do I want a high demand in private industry and private charity, attracting thousands of students to enter into university STEM programs?

Do I want scientists to have to be beholden to university politics, or do I want them to be able to command respect (and pay) with the known option that they can always take their skills elsewhere?

One thing I’ve noticed in the clinical industry is that clinical technicians and technologists are treated very well. Like nurses, “techs” are high in demand and produce a lucrative service. I want the same for all STEM professionals, whatever their specialty.

As a final note, I think that it is important to expand the use of small private donations. A lot of researchers spend a lot of time in the “Ivory Tower” and far too often, the results of their research are hidden behind a paywall. To establish more of a trust in science and in scientists, I think that more researchers need to start talking with the public.

How can we expect the public to trust us if we never talk with them? By making more of an appeal to our neighbors (the people who fund much of this research through their taxes), more people would probably be willing to donate their hard-earned money on a voluntary rather than a tax-based basis. Many people are pro-science as a concept, but on a financial level, they may be hesitant to want to give you their $20 that they could use for other things. I suggest that if more people liked scientists, we would get a lot more funding. People typically do not want to donate money unless they see real value in what they are being asked to donate to.

Perception here is key. I often hear people in science make classist jokes about blue-collar workers: The same blue-collar workers who pay their taxes. Then we wonder why so many in the public don’t trust scientists. It’s a real head-scratcher, isn’t it?

We wonder why the public does not blindly trust science and medicine in the decades following the eugenics movement and forced sterilizations performed by medical “doctors.” We also so easily turn a blind eye to the numerous human rights violations committed in the name of science ever since the events of 2020. How many mom-and-pop businesses were destroyed while mega-corporations like Walmart were allowed to remain open?

Instead of mocking the public (the people who pay our bills), let’s go and talk with them. Let’s go to a bar, or a diner, or maybe even a small-town church once in a while and talk to some people outside of science about what we actually do.

This is how we move science forward, and how we obtain funding. By increasing the products that we produce, and by streamlining our processes, investors will want to pour more money into the sciences, and scientists will obtain better employment options. This will help those in private industry, but it will also uplift and empower those with careers in academia. Besides leveraging our research with economic outputs, we also need to improve our relationship with people outside of STEM. This is how we empower a culture that will then want to turn around and empower us back.

References (ordered by citation in article)

Ashworth, A. (9AD). What does the future demand look like for applied geoscientists?. Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists. https://www.aegweb.org/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&category=students&id=10%3Awhat-does-the-future-demand-look-like-for-applied-geoscientists-#:~:text=Most%20geoscientists%20earn%20a%20very,generally%20command%20the%20highest%20salaries.

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com/c/35775d90-0274-4d3b-b7b1-ab0528fdd5dd

4 Corner Resources. (2023, June 15). Paleontologist job descriptions for hiring managers and HR. https://www.4cornerresources.com/job-descriptions/paleontologist/#:~:text=ABC%20Company%20paleontologists%20assist%20with,paleontologic%2C%20lithologic%20and%20stratigraphic%20data.

Siegel, V. (2023, April 14). The Human Genome Project Turns 20: Here’s how it altered the world. MIT Department of Biology. https://biology.mit.edu/the-human-genome-project-turns-20-heres-how-it-altered-the-world/#:~:text=The%20original%20project%20cost%20%242.7,over%20a%20two%2Dyear%20span.

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