[repos]

Regardless of whether the amount is enough to fund scientific research endeavors (which range at > 250k/ year), Breakout Labs is a reflection of the current nature of scientific research.

The NIH or other foundations tend only to fund "safe" research proposals. Someone with a more radical idea with no funding resources is effectively shut down. 50k may not be enough to research something for a year, but it may be enough to prototype an idea. Win for creativity, win for science.

[hugh3]

Are you speaking from experience, or from what you've heard?

I don't know much about NIH funding, but if you're looking for funding from (say) NSF, DOE or DARPA it doesn't have to be that "safe" except in the sense that they really want you to produce something publishable... not necessarily particularly useful. I figure that any worthwhile research project ought to be able to be massaged into a form where you're producing something worth publishing regardless of what happens.

NIH might be different, due to the larger and more expensive scale of these sorts of projects.