Scientists need money to pursue research. But taking money is not without risk.
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Why should I believe a scientist?
While the pandemic exacerbated mistrust in scientists, confidence in research has been slowly eroding for decades. This series of stories peels back the curtain to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the people and processes behind scientific research, with the hope that understanding how science works will help you decide when to be a skeptic (and how to become a better one).
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Scientists need money to pursue research. But taking money is not without risk.
A basic guide to reading and vetting scientific articles
Scientific research and innovation have contributed to the creation of new technology, medical cures and job opportunities, but doing research is not cheap. Without money, science doesn’t happen.
Finding money is a challenge for scientists, and accepting it comes with risks. Will the people giving the grant try to influence the results of the research? And even if they don’t, will having their name attached to a study lessen its credibility? For decades, tobacco companies paid scientists to challenge the consensus that cigarettes cause cancer. Oil company-sponsored research helped turn what had been a consensus on climate change into a political debate.
Before World War II, private donors and businesses predominantly funded academic research for science and technology.
Today the majority of academic scientists, including those at North Carolina universities, rely heavily on government funding to keep their labs up and running.
Allocating money to researchers and their work can be complex and span multiple institutions, necessitating careful oversight to ensure the funds are used for the public good.
Today’s science funding
When researchers acquire financing from large federal agencies or small, usually nonprofit organizations, they use the money for many things such as lab equipment and supplies, experiment labor and study publication costs.
Kate Scholberg, a particle physicist at Duke University, has received funding primarily from the federal government, where her grant applications are evaluated and ranked against competing candidates by a committee of researchers with relevant expertise.
Grant proposals describe what the scientists are going to do and how they intend to do it, including specific plans and any preliminary data supporting the project.
But there are almost always more ideas than available money, Scholberg said. Not all research proposals receive support.
“(The funding agencies) would almost never give us everything that we asked for,” Scholberg said.
The National Science Foundation, which supports all fields of science, receives 40,000 to 50,000 grant applications a year and funds roughly a quarter of them. In recent years, the National Institutes of Health, which focuses on medical research, has received more than 50,000 grant applications a year, funding perhaps 20% of them.
Other federal funding sources have approval rates of around 15%, including the Department of Energy which funds energy research, and the Department of Defense, which supports a surprising range of research, both classified and unclassified.
“The higher your level of success in your career, the greater your chance of receiving a grant,” Scholberg said.
Scholberg frequently works with DOE on financing her particle physics research. Her scientific expertise and credentials also qualify her to review many physics-related funding proposals.
Researchers perform grant evaluations as a professional obligation — they are not paid for it — and there are rules in place to oversee the process and eliminate bias.
Scholberg avoids conflicts of interest by declining to participate in an evaluation if she is competing for the same grant.
“There are usually very specific rules when you are not allowed to review the proposals — if you are at the same university as the applicant, a close research collaborator, a mentor or a previous student,” she said.
According to Geeta Swamy, an OB-GYN and Duke’s vice dean for scientific integrity, researchers may face scenarios in which their ability to perform or report research could be ethically compromised for greater financial gain.
Swamy studies the use of vaccines to prevent diseases in women and babies, and she often advises vaccine producers that are interested in her scientific research and clinical practice.
“You could argue that I shouldn’t do research because I’m talking to the industry, but they only want to talk to me because I have the expertise,” she said.
Swamy said the real concern is whether conflicts of interest influence the final study conclusion. In her example, a manufacturer may profit if the study shows that its vaccine is effective. A researcher funded by the manufacturer may be tempted to view the data in a favorable light.
An important step in reducing bias, Scholberg and Swamy said, is transparency — to always report the researcher’s professional and social connections to the universities or their public funding organizations. Researchers must also declare their funding sources, whether federal or private, when publishing their findings.
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Scientists need money to pursue research. But taking money is not without risk.."
