Science: a free lunch?
Every evening the sun sets, and each morning she rises again. You can be certain of that. Science-funding is just like life: nothing is certain and you can’t take it for granted.
How society funds science
How (life) science is funded and how this funding is organised (and in particular cardiovascular research) differs per country - at least in terms of fund-size. In the States the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Foundation are Big Funders investing hundreds of millions per year. Likewise in the UK the Department of Health, Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, and the publicly funded British Heart Foundation are major players in funding science. The BHF’s Big Beat Challenge is most enigmatic: among tens or hundreds(?) of proposal only one will be awarded the £ 30 million. In the Netherlands the Dutch Heart Foundation (de Hartstichting) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) are Big Funders, but small in comparison to the Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Since the Low Countries are part of Europe many (clinical) scientists at Dutch institutes seek funding through large European funds available via the European Research Council (for individual grants) and the Horizon Europe programs (to fund large collaborative research networks, a.k.a. ‘consortia’).
From this you can gather that science funding in the Netherlands is complex and organised through multiple tiers. Tier 1 includes the ‘eerste geldstroom’, research meaning directly funded through the government (for instance through a fixed contract at a University). Tier 2 includes the ‘tweede geldstroom’, project-based research funded through large (national) research organisations (for instance NWO). Tier 3, the the ‘derde geldstroom’, includes research-projects funded through large international programs or funding-bodies such as Horizon Europe. And Tier 4, the ‘vierde geldstroom’, includes funding through direct donations by (wealthy) individuals (a patient), large private foundations (such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative or the Leducq Fondation) or sponsoring/investments by commercial parties, for instance biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies. Check out the website of the Rathenau Institute on how the Netherlands invests in commercial and academic Research & Development.
How my work is funded
So how am I funded? Funny you should ask. It’s simple and complex at the same time. Let’s start with who my employers were (and are). My first contract (0.5FTE) was at the UMC Utrecht in 2010 in combination with a half-time position at a spin-off biotech (CAVADIS) from the lab I was working at. Later I was put under contract at the Netherlands Heart Institute until 2012. Ever since then I have been under contract at the UMC Utrecht. How was the research and my salary supported? It’s complex: it was and is supported or funded through different means. By and large the research is supported through (inter)national funds for research, but now and then industry does sponsor our work on a contract-basis. Does industry determine what I do or what my research focus should be? Nope, we set our own course.
My supervisors obtained funding through the Netherlands CardioVascular Research Initiative of the Netherlands Heart Foundation (CVON 2011/B019 and CVON 2017-20: Generating the best evidence-based pharmaceutical targets for atherosclerosis [GENIUS I&II]), the ERA-CVD program druggable-MI-targets (grant number: 01KL1802), and the Leducq Fondation PlaqOmics, EU H2020 TO_AITION (grant number: 848146). I have obtained funding as lead-investigator in a team of peers: through BBMRI-NL (Genotyping of the AAA–Express Biobank Study, CP2013-63), the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (MetaPlaq), Roche Diagnostics (contract-basis), HealthHolland (Getting the Perfect Image), the Utrecht University Special Interest Groups seed-funds (CONVOCALS, DEEP-ENIGMA, and ELSIE [as in-kind]) and the EWUU alliance (PlaqAI).
All these projects were team efforts and couldn’t have been obtained without the help, input, and hard work into the wee hours of the morning by many others. Honestly, not being ‘woke’ or politically correct here, I completely acknowledge my strengths and embrace my weaknesses that others can cover through collaboration - I might elaborate one day on that.
No such thing as a free lunch
When you’re like me, you probably jumped into the rabbit hole of public and private funding of science in the Netherlands. The governmental funding has steadily increased from €5 billion (NL: ‘miljard’) to €17.7 billion in 2019, a 3.5 fold increase. About one third of science is funded by the government, whereas almost 60% of the funding of science is through commercial parties. You should note that the private funding is mainly (80-85%) focussed on the science (research and development, R&D) of companies and the company-sector. In 2019 the private sector’s share in R&D was 67%, followed by 28% through higher education, and a mere 6% by research institutions. This also, partly, implies that many Dutch academics cannot get around the fact that their work will somehow be partially funded or at the very least by-proxy be ‘touched’ by private-funding - after all, the private-sector is the largest funder. With ‘touched’ I mean: it is likely they or their work is somehow being in contact with another project or colleague that is supported through private-funding - nothing wrong with that.
While the total absolute funding, public or private, has increased steadily, the portion of public funding has not increased as rapidly as the private investments. In point of fact, it has steadily declined as a percentage of the gross domestic product (‘bruto binnenlands product’) compared to the investments through private parties. This is also visible when looking at the people working in the private and public R&D sector: the number of people working in the private R&D has increased much fast then in the public sector.
Is this evidence for a potential imbalance in the dichotomy of public-private science funding? Could be. Does it touch upon and influence certain core values at least academics and probably society too tend to uphold in or associate with science? Very probably I feel. Is money a primordial driver in the way many academics approach their work and view their peers - however unintentional and insidious that may be? Also very probable. I do have my thoughts about these and I may elaborate on that at some point in the future.
For me it also certainly means that the competition for public money will be fierce. It makes me realise, I need to be creative, and pay gratitude to the funds I can obtain and the bonds I can forge with my collaborators. There’s no such thing as a free lunch for the thing I love to do: Science.
Version 1.2 - 2022-11-26.
