Science has a short-term memory problem
Back in 2016, Vox asked 270 scientists to name the biggest problems facing science. Many of them agreed that the constant search for funding, brought on by the increasingly competitive grant system, serves as one of the biggest barriers to scientific progress.
Even though we have more scientists throwing more time and resources at projects, we seem to be blocked on big questions — like how to help people live healthier for longer — and that has major real-world impacts.
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Grants are funds given to researchers by the government or private organizations, ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for a specific project. Most grant applications are very competitive. Only about 20 percent of applications for research project grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds the vast majority of biomedical research in the US, are successful.
If you do get a grant, they usually expire after a few years — far less time than it normally takes to make groundbreaking discoveries. And most grants, even the most prestigious ones, don’t provide enough money to keep a lab running on their own.
