America funds public research largely via two federal agencies: the NIH and the NSF. Together, those agencies cost us just 1/10th the Defense budget, or 1/20th of social security spending. Yet if we end up curing cancer before the Germans, or making quantum computers before the Danes, the seeds will likely come from NIH and NSF projects. In this post, I add my two cents to the discussion of how to improve the two agencies, and where it’s time to start fresh without them.
My perspective comes from working in science philanthropy, which lives partly in reaction to gaps left open by the NIH and NSF. Many of the scientists we support at Open Philanthropy are employed at American universities: their careers are mostly funded by those universities, and by the NIH. We intentionally try only to fund projects the NIH and NSF haven’t, or can’t, or wouldn’t – meaning I have a poacher’s respect for their lush forests and a poacher’s obsession with their blindspots. Some of my own blindspots in this post come from being an outsider to both institutions: I have not had to navigate the tradeoffs they face from the inside. It is always easier to criticise, and I hope my missteps will be forgiven as lack of knowledge, not lack of empathy.