Monday, September 24, 2007

Patronizing Science   [Iain Murray]

Jonathan's contribution to Energy Week on prizes for innovation is typically excellent (as is that by my young colleague William Yeatman).  What he doesn't mention is just why grants and subsidies replaced prizes as the main means for funding science in the first place.  The answer appears to be the power of patronage.  Research by Robin Hanson when he was at UC Berkeley suggests that during the 19th century, scientific societies that had collected money from bequests to distribute as prizes realized that they had much more power over the direction of scientific research if they distributed the money as grants instead.  So they could finance favored scientists and preferred research directions, something that genuine prizes would not allow.  In one case, the Paris Academy of Sciences got royal permission to violate the terms of the will of Baron Montyon, who had endowed two large annual prizes for “making some industrial process less unhealthy” and “improving medical science or surgery."  A few years later, the bequests were being used for non-medical science funding, and for publishing the Academy's journal, no less.  All of which suggests that scientific bureaucrats knew exactly what they were doing when they moved from prizes to grants.

09/24 09:25 AMShare