Private Funding Quotes
The vast majority of public funding for science is decided upon by peer review by scientists themselves. The government officials do not make most of the decisions. They rely on panels of scientists. The reason some of Venter’s early ideas were not funded was that the majority of scientists did not think Venter’s research was a good bet. Venter however is one of those scientists whose ideas have been very unorthodox and his great strength is that he does attack problems in unusual ways and he has had a number of major scientific breakthroughs. Venter is very persuasive and has found it easier to convince businessmen to fund him than the scientists who sit on the government science panels. However, American government money has funded many of the major breakthrough’s of our society including, manufacturing with interchangeable parts, railroads, the telegraph, computers, atomic energy, and the Internet.
