Nature Neuroscience on philanthropic support for science
The October editorial in Nature Neuroscience (11, 1117; 2008) describes how the contribution of private philanthropy to research has been growing. Although these large infusions of money can galvanize research, private and public funds now increasingly seem to support similar projects. Caution is warranted to prevent funding for specific topics from skewing research to the detriment of other fields.
"University College London (UCL) recently won £140 million ($245 million) of private funding for a new initiative to study neural circuits and behavior, fighting off tough competition from Oxford and Cambridge. With reduced government grants and increasingly expensive technology, funding from private sources is crucial to continuing advancement in science. However, whereas private funding once aimed to fund risky projects and fill in gaps in public funding, public and private sources now increasingly seem to funnel money toward similar projects. It is essential that funding for specific topics does not skew research to the detriment of important areas that might be temporarily less fashionable.
Although foundations have always been a part of the research funding landscape, the contribution of private philanthropy to biomedical research has been steadily increasing. The Germany-based Hertie Foundation has spent more than $122 million on neuroscience since 2000, a threefold increase compared to what it spent in the previous quarter-century. In the UK, funding from the Wellcome Trust is almost comparable to the funds available from the government's Medical Research Council. In the US, philanthropic funding for the biomedical sciences is reported to be about $5 billion a year, roughly one-sixth that of the total amount granted by the National Institutes of Health. Such a trend certainly seems like welcome news to the scientific community."
Read the rest of this Editorial here.
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