Billionaire money and academic freedom
by VanessaVaile
If you haven’t seen this recent New York Times article by William Broad, entitled Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science, then go take a look. It generalizes to all of scientific research my recent post entitled Billionaire Money in Mathematics.
My favorite part of Broad’s article is the caption of the video at the top, which sums it up nicely:
Funding the Future: As government financing of basic science research has plunged, private donors have filled the void, raising questions about the future of research for the public good.
In his article Broad makes a bunch of great points.
First, the fact that rich people generally ask for research into topics they care about (“personal setting of priorities”) to the detriment of basic research. They want flashy stuff, bang for their buck.
Second, academics interested in getting funding from these rich people have to learn to…
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