[HN Gopher] Who Funds Misfit Research?
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Who Funds Misfit Research?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-09-24 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.spec.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.spec.tech)
| searine wrote:
| Most 'misfit research' is funded by the government through broad
| training grants or broad departmental level support. Parts of
| those grants get used to fund early career researchers and
| students. Most often it is funding mainstream science but
| sometimes it is used just to keep these people on board. So it
| isn't about funding any one weird thing, but instead giving
| people the freedom to explore ideas and develop skills. Even when
| supported by specific grants, PI will use that money to let
| students / fellows explore more broadly.
|
| The idea that VCs or DAOs would give a penny for R&D is a sick
| joke.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| definitionally, no:
|
| > work that is a poor fit for academia
| searine wrote:
| Academia is already a sandbox. What kind of research would
| fit poorly?
|
| In the article most of the examples of funding sources give
| their funding to academic labs already.
|
| Discussion about non-governmental sources of funding is fine,
| but they still almost always funnel back into a lab at a
| university.
| btrettel wrote:
| Here's an example of research that I found to be hard to do
| in academia with details about why:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31154799
|
| Note that I don't think VCs or DAOs would care about this
| research either as it's not flashy enough.
| growingkittens wrote:
| I have found that many areas of human knowledge are
| _massively_ disorganized. Everything is also siloed;
| knowledge that could easily apply to other domains is
| hidden by things like specialized terminology.
|
| I think it is because science is systematic, or step-by-
| step, and not systemic - lacking a "whole system" point
| of view. Both perspectives are needed to understand a
| reality made of systems.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| anything that is unlikely to produce papers. anything that
| is unpalatable to the science status quo (so you could
| produce papers but you'll get extremely critical reviewers
| or be relegated to low tier journals). research in any
| field in which you yourself are not established but you
| have good reason to believe you can make a mark
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I've worked more than 15 years as a full-time researcher in a
| philosophy research institute. At least in my area, I highly
| doubt that any noteworthy amount of "misfit research" should get
| funding and is worth pursuing. Research is embedded into and
| needs to be part of the international research culture where many
| people and many different institutions work on the same topic. In
| philosophy, this is and has always been mostly within academia.
| "misfits" are unfortunately often close to "crackpots." There is
| a myriad of funding opportunities, some of them rather obscure
| and based on personal projects with a wide range of application
| conditions and requirements. For example, I know a colleague who
| once did research in philosophy for the Volkswagen Stiftung, and
| another one obtained funding from NATO.
|
| Of course, there is research outside of academia in many more
| practical disciplines like STEM and medical research. But I doubt
| the situation is very different there. If you're too much of a
| "misfit" chances are high that your research proposals just
| aren't good enough. If you have many publications in top
| journals, you _will_ get funding.
|
| What's more concerning is that for lack of career prospects and
| job security, mostly those postdocs seem to prevail who are very
| adapted to the system and those who are extremely persistent and
| willing to relocate indefinitely. There is too much talent wasted
| in the second category. I've seen too many good and talented
| people drop out of the "publish or perish rat race" because they
| got children or wanted to settle down. These were the opposite of
| misfits, though.
| lemonwaterlime wrote:
| This is the exact mindset that when used at the level of the
| grant awarding body causes incremental research to prevail
| while pushing out outsider thoughts.
|
| Things requiring unorthodox (but not incorrect) combinations of
| knowledge are met with the kind of skepticism that forgets to
| be skeptical of its own skepticism.
|
| Things on longer horizons than the short term, corporatized ROI
| of our research institutions--who are themselves supposed to be
| less beholden to quick wins at the expense of knowledge
| generation--leads to a chilling effect on trying anything
| revolutionary at all.
|
| The outcome is echo chambers, local maxima/minima in research,
| and promising avenues of research that are underfunded simply
| because they aren't popular. Inevitably it also leads to the
| kind of institutional stagnation that results in p-hacking, and
| so on.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Philosophy doesn't have any ROI. It lives off critical
| examination of ideas, which is why research on it has to be
| done in a vibrant community. In a nutshell, it needs a
| research topic to be popular enough to stir up some
| criticisms of it and have enough experts who can evaluate it.
| Otherwise, that research program is doomed. Without critical
| evaluation you cannot have research. That requires enough of
| a critical threshold of people working on the topic and a
| community.
|
| Generally, science lives off skepticism. Skepticism requires
| a decent number of skeptics who try to show that you're
| wrong. That requires your research to be sufficiently popular
| for others. Without that control, it becomes crackpotery very
| fast. You've got it the wrong way 'round.
| andyjsong wrote:
| For those who want a live example:
|
| MakeSunsets has raised ~$1.8M from angels + VCs and another
| ~$133K in Cooling Credit sales over the past 12 months from
| individuals [1]. These purchases directly fund stratospheric
| aerosol injection -- bringing awareness and cooling the Earth.
|
| We've applied to SBIRs, explored DAOs, crowdfunding platforms,
| and are in conversations with family offices and UHNWI.
|
| Most of our closed deals? They've come from Twitter and Substack.
| The key: talking directly to decision-makers -- not committees.
|
| [1] Climate dads:
| https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0685/0042/2976/files/Make_...
| jfengel wrote:
| Uh... I feel like pumping more pollution into the atmosphere
| isn't really the best solution here. I could see funding
| research into it, to prove its safety and efficacy, but jumping
| ahead to doing it sounds reckless. It would likely be illegal
| if the amount weren't so small as to be useless.
| godelski wrote:
| Not all particulates are the same. Their site says they're
| injecting materials that are biodegradable and seed clouds.
| Such a thing should be fine, but also needs more physical
| testing. > I could see funding research into
| it
|
| If they're on SBIR then it should be pretty small scale.
|
| SBIR == Small Business Innovation Research. Phase I is up to
| ~$314k and pretty short term. Phase 2 is up to ~2M and a bit
| longer. I've worked on and won some NASA, DoD, and DARPA and
| these were usually around $150k and 6mo for Phase I and $750k
| for 2 years on Phase II (those were STTRs)[0]. So those
| maximums aren't always being handed out. (The first few Phase
| I awards I saw for 2025 were $140k and the first Phase II was
| <$650k)
|
| So yeah, it's not much and they're not going to have a huge
| impact. > It would likely be illegal if the
| amount weren't so small as to be useless.
|
| ... What? ... => @andyjsong <=
|
| do you have a link to your proposals? I can't seem to find
| them by searching "make sunsets" or "makesunsets" on the SBIR
| award site[1]. Even "sunsets" isn't showing up and "sunset"
| is only showing Sunset Laboratory, Inc. That you?
|
| Or are you just saying you applied and have no award? Good
| luck, these can be tricky to write but once you get the hang
| of it it isn't too bad.
|
| [0] They've since bumped the numbers, but not a ton. You can
| go look at awards on [1] to see actual numbers.
|
| [1] https://www.sbir.gov/awards
| munchlax wrote:
| I actually thought MSFT was pronouned "misfit" and they just
| spelled it out. Oops.
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