This is an article discussing the trend toward companies funding research in the United States. Over time, there has been a shift from funding by government to funding by corporations (porportionally).
“For the first time in the post–World War II era, the federal government no longer funds a majority of the basic research carried out in the United States. Data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015. The federal share, which topped 70% throughout the 1960s and ’70s, stood at 61% as recently as 2004 before falling below 50% in 2013.”
The motivation that sparked looking for this information was our discussion in our capitalization lecture about getting grants to do work by the government. We said that a big area to get this was in the area of defense or security. Some people also mentioned some of the downsides of getting funding through the government.
At the end of this post are links to pages discussing sides of whether this trend is good or bad. Some of the articles say that people are skeptical of company research. Some of the articles say they should not be. It is an interesting question. I think an interesting question to consider in light of people’s skepticism is what distinguishes government funding from company funding in a material way? I assume the main driver of skepticism is the fact that companies are profit driven and that could affect what research is pursued and how results that are found are handled in relation to the public. A corporation’s purpose is narrower than the government’s on and individual company basis. At the same time, the private sphere is noted for being more efficient at times, and also for having more resources. The article discusses that this new trend in research involves “basic research,” which means it is not tied to a specific purpose but rather to acquire general knowledge. The corporations also account for the other types of research too primarily.
“Basic research comprises only about one-sixth of the country’s spending on all types of R&D, which totaled $499 billion in 2015. Applied makes up another one-sixth, whereas the majority, some $316 billion, is development. Almost all of that is funded by industry and done inhouse, as companies try to convert basic research into new drugs, products, and technologies that they hope will generate profits. (The pharmaceutical and biotech industry, for example, spent a total of $102 billion on research and development in 2015, according to Research!America, an Arlington, Virginia–based advocacy group.)”
Does that fact change the conclusion of or degree of how good or bad this trend is?
Another interesting piece from one of the articles:
“The NSF data capture another notable trend: a slow but steady rise in spending on basic research by universities and private foundations. Their combined $22 billion investment in 2015 represents a 25% share of the U.S. total, up from 21% in 2010 and 17% in 1995.”
There is definitely more investigation warranted for this idea than what I have provided; however, I wanted to provide the articles and the idea at the least.
further reading:
Very interesting article! I was surprised to read that private funding increased more in proportion to government funding and is now responsible for a majority of funding for basic research in the US. Personally, I assume that this at least partially due to the emergence of a general distrust, or at least increased scepticism, regarding the government in general and, as became obvious during the discussion in our last class, in particular regarding governmental abuse of the provided data. While I would argue that we all should become more spectical and careful in the kind of private data we make publicly available and to whom we give this data, I wonder why people seem to be generally more suspicious regarding the misuse of their data when it comes to the government, while the seem to be at the same time very generous with giving their data to private companies such as facebook. However, I wonder whether the currently ongoing data scandal of facebook might be the beginning of a change in this context, which might eventually also affect who researchers want to rely on when disclosing their projects to obtain the necessary funding.