Thomas Nuhfer | April 24, 2025

Content note: The last paragraph contains a brief mention of research related to pregnancy loss.

If you’ve been following the news, you may have heard about reductions in public science funding at the federal level.  Federal research funding is responsible for innovations including GPS, MRI technology, antiretrovirals that treat HIV, and lactose-free milk [1]. Despite how important public science funding is to our health, food systems, economy, and infrastructure, it can be a bit of a mystery. How does it work? Where does all this money come from, and where does it end up? Here, I’ll try to lay out the process of funding public science in relatively simple terms.

Public federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institute of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture receive money from Congress via the federal budget (Fig. 1). Those agencies then distribute some of that money to various research efforts. One way that they do this is by awarding grants. 

Figure 1 – Logos of federal partners of the U.S. Group of Earth Observations, some of the agencies which fund and conduct public research. (Source: Public domain)

First, funding organizations identify priority research topics. Public agencies prioritize funding research that supports the public good. This may be through applied research (research with a specific, practical objective), basic research (which builds a foundation of knowledge about how the world works), or experimental development (developing new products or processes – inventing!). In 2022, 39% of federally funded research was for experimental development, 32% for basic research, and 29% for applied research [2]. Grants may also allow for or require some budget for outreach activities related to the research, like creating a public website or visiting school groups. 

Funding agencies then invite researchers to submit proposals. Researchers (who work at universities, hospitals, or other non-governmental organizations) write about the research they intend to do and outline a budget. Next, the public agencies organize panels to review the proposals against the priority criteria, which vary by organization and funding opportunity. For example, they may consider how scientifically legitimate and novel the research is, how experienced the researchers are, and what the broader impact of the research is to society. Based on these criteria, they decide which proposals to fund. 

Research has direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include equipment (petri dishes, GPS units, chemicals) and researcher wages. Indirect costs support the more general operations of research –  renting space, paying for utilities, paying staff who perform maintenance and hazardous waste disposal, and paying administrators who help coordinate accounting, publishing, and compliance. Some grants will only pay for direct costs, while some pay for indirect costs as well. For the latter, the percentage of the grant that can be spent on indirect costs depends on the grant and project. Grants can be large, funding entire organizations for years on a regular cycle, or small, to pay for a single piece of equipment. Researchers are expected to report back about their research progress at regular intervals to ensure that they are on track to fulfil the grant expectations. Many agencies maintain online databases where the general public can easily see grant details, such as the NIH RePORTER (Fig. 2).

Figure 2 – The NIH RePORTER funding visualization tool. (Source – Screenshot from NIH RePORTER).

Research conducted by federal employees is always required to be freely available to the public due to the Freedom of Information Act. Many agencies proactively share their research on their agency websites. The percent of scientific research locked behind journal paywalls is estimated to be somewhere between 50% to 95% [3, 4].  However, federally-conducted research is freely available for anyone to learn from, share, and implement. In 2022, the Biden administration issued a memorandum which required public funding agencies to require data sharing for the research they supported [5]. This memorandum, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.”, has since been removed from the White House website, but is still available in public archives.

Unlike public funding, which is oriented to the common good, business funding has a profit motive. This can introduce bias into the research process. For example, industry pressures on privately-funded research have led to cover-ups of findings that impact the public but could negatively affect business/funders (such as the harms of tobacco and fossil fuels) [6]. Private research also relies on knowledge that comes from public research.

Federal funding makes a difference in our day-to-day lives. It is responsible for two thirds of agricultural research and development (Fig. 3), and every $1 spent on public agriculture research generates $20 of economic benefits [7]. In Western Massachusetts in the last year, public funding has supported research into earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia and research examining the connection between environmental pollution and infertility and pregnancy loss [8,9]. 

Figure 3- Funders and performers of U.S. public agricultural research in 2019. (Source: USDA, Economic Research Service based on data from USDA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and National Science Foundation)

So as confusing as the public research funding process can be, it’s important to understand it. It’s easy for news headlines about caps on indirect costs at the NIH, for example, to pass by without much attention. But indirect costs are an important part of a large and complex system which moves money from the federal government to the general public. This same system develops medicines, technologies, and knowledge that we all rely on. Now that you know the basics of how public research money is spent, you can watch out for how funding cuts are impacting yourself, your family, and your community.

References:

[1] Singer, PL. “Federally Supported Innovations: 22 Examples of Major Technology Advances That Stem From Federal Research Support. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, (2014).

[2] Pece CV, Anderson GW; National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). “Analysis of Federal Funding for Research and Development in 2022: Basic Research.” NSF (2024): 24-332. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf24332. 

[3] Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V.,  Alperin, JP., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., and Haustein, S. “The State of OA: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Prevalence and Impact of Open Access Articles.” PeerJ 6 (2018):e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375.

[4] Boudry, C., Alvarez-Muñoz, P., Arencibia-Jorge, R., Ayena, D., Brouwer, NJ., Chaudhuri, Z., Chawner, B., et al. “Worldwide Inequality in Access to Full Text Scientific Articles: The Example of Ophthalmology.” PeerJ 7 (2019):e7850. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7850.

[5] Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, “MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES – Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research”, (2022). Available at https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf 

[6] Holman, B., and Elliott, KC. “The Promise and Perils of Industry-Funded Science.” Philosophy Compass 13, no. 11 (2018): e12544. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12544.

[7] Nelson, KP. and Fuglie, L. “Investment in U.S. Public Agricultural Research and Development Has Fallen by a Third Over Past Two Decades, Lags Major Trade Competitors”. Amber Waves, USDA ERS (2022).

[8] Modernized NIH RePORTER. “Super-Resolved Multimodal Imaging Biomarkers for Frontotemporal Dementia” 1R21AG087392-01 (2025).

[9] Modernized NIH RePORTER. “Impacts of Acute Ambient Air Pollution Exposure on Women’s Reproductive Health: Identifying Mechanisms and Susceptible Reproductive Processes Across the Menstrual Cycle and Early Pregnancy. 1R21ES035138-01” (2025).