If science were the only thing involved in finding an answer to the riddle of NET we would, perhaps, already have found the answers we are looking for.

But there is more to the quest for knowledge than people in white lab coats working in laboratories. Those people have to be trained in particular disciplines, have to develop certain habits of mind. The labs they work in have to be equipped not just with glassware and optical microscopes, but with computers, electrophoresis machines, centrifuges, and a thousand other arcane pieces of equipment. Those rooms have to be heated and cooled in buildings designed to facilitate collegiality and communication.

And all of those things cost money–large amounts of it. In the absence of that money the people who would like to do the science have to also become fundraisers. They have to write proposals and then sell the ideas in those proposals through presentations and dinners and baseball games to those who have access to the money the research depends on. The dog-and-pony show has become as much a part of science as DNA sequencing or rocket motor testing protocols.

Every minute a researcher spends on glad-handing potential donors is a minute that cannot be used for thinking or doing experiments or analyzing data. It is a minute stolen from research and from learning.

If that were the worst of it, it would be bad enough. But big money often comes with its own set of science-corrupting problems. Much of the big money in medical research comes from pharmaceutical companies. That is not an entirely bad thing–their profit motive can provide a powerful stimulus to developing new therapies and getting them adopted. But their focus on developing a drug for a particular market can get in the way of the pure research that may lead to new and better treatments. Basic science is not always immediately profitable–for all that it is supremely necessary.

Gregor Mendel did not become wealthy because of his research on pea plants. But a whole world of seed-based wealth grew out of his experiments. Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity made him a household name and fueled much of the modern world, but it did not generate much wealth for him personally. And Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA brought them no great wealth for all that it has opened medical doors for the rest of us.

In our current circumstances, however, there is too little money going into basic research and development. That has always

been the place of government in the US–to encourage R&D. It is where the Internet came from. It is where the Worldwide Web came from. It is where the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb and nuclear power came from. It is where the moon landing and the space station came from.

But the politicians are focused on cutting the budget and on applied science. They want science they can point to the way they can point to a bridge or a courthouse. And they want basic research done on the cheap–if at all.

And that, my friends, brings us to politics–but that is a story for another day.