• Question: if you had all the money in the world how would you use it to improve upon science

    Asked by sokoao to Andrew, Beth, Bruce, Lindy, Lizzie on 12 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Beth Mortimer

      Beth Mortimer answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      Good question!
      Well I would have to give the money out to a range of different scientists so that they can keep on doing research, as quite often there isn’t enough to go around! Each scientist has their own expertise to be able to answer specific questions in the area that they are interested in. Using the money in this way can improve science as a whole, from the areas of science that may have direct impacts on people, such as developing materials for specific purposes, to the people who just want to know more about how the world works, like animal behaviour studies. Both are important for improving science, but research with direct applications is easier to get funding for at the moment.
      I would also get scientists to make the results of their studies open to everyone, so everyone can learn from what other people are doing. (This happens to a certain extent in science but money is needed to cover the publication costs!)

    • Photo: Lindy Heath

      Lindy Heath answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      Wow, all the money in the world, that’s a lot! I think that research is very important so I’d spend a lot of money funding new and existing projects. It may seem as though we have lots of answers to many scientific questions, however, there is a great deal of new things still to discover. All the money in the world would go a long way in drug discovery and would allow scientists to try lots of different methods to attempt to cure many diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS. It is also important for scientists to find ways to limit the damage that we are currently causing to the environment. Such possibilities include renewable power sources (for example solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity), biodegradable polymers (plastics that break down in the environment) and hydrogen storage materials (to allow cars to be powered using hydrogen instead of petrol or diesel). I also think that space exploration and discovery is fascinating so I would put some of the money into finding out ‘what’s really out there’! Ultimately scientific research is poorly funded, especially in these tough financial times so I think that with all of the money in the world scientific research and understanding would progress extremely quickly.

    • Photo: Bruce Alexander

      Bruce Alexander answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      All the money in the world? I’m not sure that would be such a wise thing to do. Not that I would throw it away, but too much power is a dangerous thing as it would leave everyone else disadvantaged. I would have to make sure that it is fairly and evenly distributed so that as many people benefit as possible. One thing that is clear having worked with people from around the world is that there are plenty of highly skilled, extremely capable scientists that are working in countries around the world that do not have the resources available to them that we do in the UK. The ability to fund them would give everybody access to their skills and can only help scientific advances.

      I originally thought about a long answer that would have told you about all of the nice things I could do to replace the infrastructure we have for transporting and distributing petrol for those that could use hydrogen or electricity to use for electric or hydrogen powered cars. This would massively improve the number of people driving low-carbon emission cars, but this misses the point slightly.

      The bottom line is if you want to improve science, you have to give enough resources to good scientists and trust them to do good things with it – this includes sharing their results and training the next generation of scientists.

    • Photo: Lizzie Eaves

      Lizzie Eaves answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      That’s a tricky one….. but I have to say, an unlimited money pot would probably be one of the best things that could happen to science worldwide!!

      Scientific research is so important – I don’t think that people realise just how much science goes into the everyday little things that people don’t really think about, just one example is the improvements that have been made to smartphones and their battery lives. Science in general is an area that does not recieve much funding at all, and in my humble opinion is just as important as things such as healthcare (which it is of course quite closely linked to) and social schemes. Most of the funding for science is allocated to ‘priority’ areas that have been identified by the government, such as making technologies more environmentally friendly, transport methods and biological and medicinal research. All of these areas are very important, but at the same time there are so many more areas that are so relevant to every person that are missing out on being funded because they don’t fit into one of these priority categories. Because of this these areas are not being developed or advanced as much as they could be, and although the public may not realise it they may be missing out on many innovations.

      So in short…… if I had all the money in the world, I’d use it to carry on the great work that scientists are doing today and make sure that all areas of science get funding, not just those that are deemed to be a priority!

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