Sunday, July 14, 2013

Show me the money

Much if not most of modern scientific research requires funding to achieve research goals. Funding can come from almost anywhere. Public sources like the NIH, private sources like Microsoft, self-funding, etc.

Of course, funding can introduce bias into research. But good research attempts to minimize this.

In any case, it'd be quite difficult for many if not most researchers to undertake scientific research and publish without some sort of funding. It's not as if there are a lot of independently wealthy scientists or a lot of scientific research projects which require little else besides, say, a pen and some paper.

Critics of Intelligent Design often point out there's scant research let alone published research conducted by ID researchers. I think this is facile, but be that as it may.

As far as I'm aware, the Discovery Institute (to take perhaps the most prominent ID organization) has never received any funding from the US federal government. Nothing from the NSF or NIH, for example.

Also, they're all but anathema to many if not most other public as well as private sources. Whereas a poor department at a research institution or university can at least apply for a federal grant with some hope that they may be approved.

In any case, I doubt the DI has a whole lot of funding in comparison to many of their critics. I doubt the ID movement as a whole has a lot of funding in comparison to their critics.

Sure, money isn't everything. Research doesn't necessarily go anywhere even with all the money in the world thrown at it.

Nevertheless, the DI has managed to undertake research and publish a fair amount of papers.

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