Quick Tech Billionaire Grants Aim to Speed Research – Not All Scientists Approve

A little surprised that there's no mention of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which has been doing basically what the people described in the article have been doing for a much longer time and on a larger scale: funding smart people working on biological/medical problems.

See this Reuters article from 2012 with a similar premise: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-nih-innovation/co...

Just a hunch but the scientists who don't approve are the ones who aren't getting grants? I am all for private funding of basic science research, and if there are billionaires putting cash bounties on problems they would like to be solved then tough cookies for the scientists who want to work on other things. The idea of governments funding science is new; wealthy patrons funding all manner of science inquiry (and doing the research themselves as well) was the norm for centuries. Personally I would rather see someone who has made something of themselves in business decide who gets scientific grants rather than a bureaucrat and history has many examples of a scientist obtaining patronage to perform research in areas that weren't originally of interest to the donor. Perhaps scientific advocacy and PR is an under-staffed field in science?