[jorblumesea]

Why is it expected that private industry the only funder of research? Isn't that something that governments should have a stake in and also fund basic scientific research in?

That's like saying, how expensive does an iphone need to be to fund material science research?

[barry-cotter]

No one expects private industry to fund all research and they don’t. Governments fund a lot of basic and applied research, in pharmaceuticals and many other domains. What they don’t really find is drug development, taking a drug from the “This looks good” stage through animal models, safety testing and efficacy testing.