[eat_veggies]

From the Wikipedia article about the NSF:

> With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing [...] Since the technology boom of the 1980s, the U.S. Congress has generally embraced the premise that government-funded basic research is essential for the nation's economic health and global competitiveness, and for national defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation

[simonw]

This is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application, but that companies and the economy benefit from enormously because you can use the results of that science to build a great deal of useful commercial things.

[LeCompteSftware]

The more important research is the kind that the economy doesn't especially benefit from, but which needs to happen in order to improve the quality of human life.

I had a job paid by the National Science Foundation, doing genomics research on children with extremely rare (sometimes unique) genetic diseases. We did publish papers, and Big Pharma can glean a little bit about how we handled the biomedical informatics of managing data across different highly specialized labs, maybe a researcher will incrementally improve GWAS across the field. But that research was important because actual human children were suffering and needed help.

[magicalhippo]

> This is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application

Tom over at the Explosions&Fire channel (and Extractions&Ire channel) just published a video[1] about his academic career. In it he noted that in Australia where he's located, the defense companies were an exception to that general rule, and did indeed sponsor a fair bit of basic research, including his PhD. I assume in areas they figured had potential, but still.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbdVkcr-Nw

[FireBeyond]

Even so, Australia still has the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) so there's that funding and research too, which actually has, per capita, about a similar funding (equivalent of US$9B adjusted), though they generally do most of that research 'in house' versus funding it externally.

[ivewonyoung]

.

[simonw]

See sibling comment - NSF also funds science which doesn't have direct or indirect commercial applications (I shouldn't have implied that only commercial applications matter): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906005

What kind of an agenda does studying Gendered impact of COVID-19 in the Arctic carry?