no funding, no cures bumper sticker

Question: How many research proposals the government receives from university faculty -- what percent -- do you think get funded? All of them? Three-quarters? Probably at least half, no? Guess again. The funding rate is hovering around 10%. One in ten research proposals gets funded. Or, to put it another way, nine out of ten proposals DON'T get funded. Sure, not all of them should be funded. Academics have ideas that are half-baked, submitted under deadline pressure, or just plain bad. But it feels like we should be able to do better than one in ten. These are ideas from some of the smartest people on the planet, who have dedicated their lives to learning their craft. It's not possible 90% of them are bozos. And they're not. The reason they don't get funding isn't because they have bad ideas, it's because there's no money. Research funding comes from taxes, and a large swath of the country has been hoodwinked into thinking taxes are at best unnecessary and at worst equivalent to robbery. Let me translate this into the language of self-interest. Somewhere in the stack of research proposals the government received is an idea that might have helped you one day. Solved your problem, righted your wrong. A problem like the cancer or heart disease or diabetes or Alzheimers that's going to try to kill you someday. Or if not you, then your family or a friend. Or maybe your child. That problem could have been a non-issue when it came knocking. We could have fixed it. But we're not gonna. The research proposal that would have generated better treatment or a cure didn't get funded. Not because it was a bad idea, because there wasn't any money. Because when your Congressman stood up and cut funding to the NIH, and the NSF, and what all else, you stood up and cheered. And now you're dead. Sucks to be you, doesn't it?