[auvrw]

> What distinguishes American science, and why is this distinction important?

this isn't one of the article's complaints, but one distinguishing characteristics of american science funding -- indeed, of the u.s. govt's entire budget -- is disproportionate spending on the military. see the chart at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_St...

anyway, i agree with most of the other comments as i don't see anything seriously wrong with private investment in science. perhaps the fact that these are individuals rather than committees is what the author finds most loathsome, but my perspective is probably biased b/c the first thing that came to mind on reading the title was the allen institute for brain science, that's the first example in the article, and i think it's doing interesting and important research.