Rare Hits and Heaps of Misses to Pay For

By NICHOLAS WADE
NYT

Research, in any field of science, is not the risk-free business that might easily be supposed from the confident promises of scientific spokesmen or the daily reports of new advances.

Nature yields her secrets with the greatest unwillingness, and in basic research most experiments contribute little to further progress, as judged by the rarity with which most scientific reports are cited by others.

Basic research, the attempt to understand the fundamental principles of science, is so risky, in fact, that only the federal government is willing to keep pouring money into it. It is a venture that produces far fewer hits than misses.

Even the pharmaceutical industry, a major beneficiary of biomedical research, does not like to invest too heavily in basic science. Rather, it lets private venture capital support the small biotechnology companies that first try to bring new findings to market, and then buys up the few winners of this harsh winnowing process.

(More here.)