Scientific Funding Quotes

Billions of dollars have been put into genetic research.

For it goes without saying that this great recognition at this time will aid tremendously our efforts to find the necessarily large funds for the next voyage of exploration farther into the depths of the atom.

There are too few people working in the area of viral pathogenesis and immunity, too little funding, too many problems, and too little time.

I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mould falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mould.'

If I had a weak ego, and doubts about this, the first genome would not yet have been completed with US and UK government funding.

Twice I have testified in congress that unbiased funding on the subject of the causes of warming would be much closer to a reality if 50% of that money was devoted to finding natural reasons for climate change.

Who does science determines what science gets done.

What props up biological research, at least in the vaunted U.S. of A., involves a situation so deeply imbued with entitlement mentality that it has sunk into institutional corruption.

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more do you want?" We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.

Today most funding for science comes through government. That means that you have to be known to be sympathetic to conclusions that are acceptable to the political classes.

Scientific discovery requires sustained funding for decades, and politicians can destroy it in a single budget cycle.

How did scientists get money in the past? They were either lucky and independently wealthy, like Darwin, or they had patrons, like Galileo. Universities or governments have become patrons only in the last few generations. Many of the great scientists of the past were in debt to their patrons in the same sense that modern scientists are influenced by what their granting agencies want.

From a scientific point of view, it's hard for me to understand why someone in the Texas Panhandle should not have access to the same research funds that someone in the Oklahoma Panhandle can have.

Since coming to Congress, I have been advocating for increased resources for research in the physical sciences and for the Department of Energy Office of Science in particular.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say "Russia!" to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, "How much?" We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

The government needs good science, and I’m not willing to abdicate the role of advising the Administration and Congress on [science] policy.

So now, if we don't fund the physical sciences, where will the Next Big Thing come from?

I feel like I'm the same scientist I was back when I couldn't get a grant. Now I'm that same person thinking that same way getting grants. That system of external rewards in science has always mystified me. It's fickle. And I also don't think it was constructed with people like me in mind.

Britain has still got rather fewer astronomers than many other countries - the French and the Italians, for example. Why is that? I don't think those countries have better brains.

Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security.

we need to work harder if we're going to continue what Carl Sagan saw as a new Renaissance of discovery. One way is by explaining to the Congress and the public why it is in our national interest to get this work funded. We can win this – and do what is right by the American people – if we can get the public to understand what's at stake.

If I could change the science system, my prescription for changing the whole thing would be organising it around big goals and building teams to do it.

Millions are spend annually on the cultivation and dissemination of science by the public authorities who will not give a penny for the advancement of astrology or sorcery. In other words, our society is deeply committed to beliefs about the nature of things, beliefs which are different from those to which the early Egyptian or Aztec civilizations were committed.

We must give scientists the opportunity through funding and time to pursue curiosity-based, long-term, basic-science research.

All basic scientists who look to the NCI for funding should know that I will tolerate no retreat on the study of model systems and the pursuit of fundamental biological principles.