We Need a New Science Funding Playbook (opinion)

We are social and behavioral scientists who generate and apply science to improve lives—or, said another way, we aim to produce science as a public good. You may have already encountered our work without realizing it. If you took part in the NPR “Stress Less” series during the contentious 2024 presidential election, you were using evidence-based skills our team developed to help people manage stress. If you visited a pediatrician in Colorado, Illinois or Michigan and discussed secure firearm storage, you experienced a safety program we helped implement to reduce firearm injuries in children. And if your primary care team has asked you about your alcohol use as routinely as they check your blood pressure, you have experienced our work to make alcohol screening a simple, standardized vital sign that opens the door to brief, supportive conversations and better overall health.

Eighteen months of disruption at the National Institutes of Health, marked by thousands of terminated or frozen grants, sharp declines in new awards, and mounting delays, have made research funding unstable and much less predictable. On top of these disruptions, a proposed new rule would shift funding decisions away from independent peer review by requiring political appointees to approve grants and allow agencies to cancel awards based on changing government priorities—thus completing the politicization of the scientific process.

We find ourselves at a crossroads. How do we continue to produce our science as a public good, while finding new ways to support and finance it? As researchers, we are used to looking at problems from multiple angles, so we decided to put our skills to the test with this new problem.

We convened a group of entrepreneurs, investors, educators and nonprofit and health-care leaders from a range of industries and perspectives to help us rethink the current model. To be sure, there is no easy substitute for federal research funding: The sums involved are so large that no single alternative source can realistically replace them, particularly for basic research without a clear path to commercialization. However, there may be a collection of solutions that, harnessed together, could start to fill the gap. We share those ideas below, organized along a continuum of least to most disruptive, in the hope of stimulating discussion and action on potential new funding models for science as a public good.

• Traditional diversification approaches. The least disruptive approach is to spread funding across more sources instead of relying on just one (i.e., NIH). For example, scientists might seek support from foundations, donors who care deeply about a particular issue or contracts to evaluate programs for state and local governments. These approaches maintain academic norms and are consistent with traditional development initiatives, but will likely only result in incremental impact.
• Selective commercialization of interventions. This approach focuses on supporting scientists who are developing programs or tools with clear potential to be responsibly brought to market, such as proven behavioral interventions, practical ways to deliver care or well-tested measurement tools, with a portion of the revenue they generate going back to support researchers and their departments. To make this work, universities would need to expand how they think about commercialization, look beyond drugs and medical devices to also value programs and services, and make it easier to protect and share these ideas. This approach could help scale effective, evidence-based interventions with clear social impact while generating funds to reinvest, but it will require careful safeguards to ensure opportunities are shared fairly and remain focused on work that benefits the public.

• Public subscription and platform models. Imagine “Netflix for Science” or “Costco membership” models in which funders, institutions and potentially individuals purchase subscription access to social and behavioral science tools, content and expertise. Through a shared platform, subscribers can engage with curated evidence‑based interventions, measurement tools, implementation resources and translational products developed by investigators. Funding could be structured not only as flat subscriptions, but also linked to milestones, usage or demonstrated outcomes, allowing support to scale with impact rather than volume alone.

To remain consistent with science as a public good, such a platform would need to ensure that subscription revenue underwrites infrastructure and development, not exclusive access to findings. These kinds of approaches are adjacent to platform approaches that fund community-engaged or policy-implementation work, which have been piloted previously.

• Hybrid partnerships with industry. This model would connect evidence-based science with industry to help solve real-world problems, like reducing burnout in high-stress jobs or helping insurers lower long-term health costs. It could also give companies an edge by helping them move faster from idea to impact: For example, a wearable-device company could stand out by pairing its products with proven, timely health interventions. For applied social and behavioral scientists, the strongest opportunities for these kinds of partnerships are likely with digital health start-ups and pharmaceutical companies.

The upside of this approach is high revenue potential; the downside includes high potential for conflicts of interest and reputational risk. Independent governance will be needed, such as third-party ethics boards. Additionally, robust firewalls, standardized contracts, disclosure requirements and clear limits on influence over study design, data ownership and publication rights will be essential to ensure that revenue generation does not compromise scientific integrity or equity.

• Incubators for entrepreneurs. Academic units can open their doors and invite engagement from start-ups and entrepreneurs to partner with their faculty as scientific experts, and they could follow multiple models including free, fee for access or equity. This allows for a synergistic and mutually beneficial relationship between founders and scientists, although expectations around different timelines in science and start-ups will likely need to be addressed. Incubators are attractive for applied social and behavioral work, as they can protect public-good goals while enabling technology transfer. However, many incubators are optimized for intellectual property–heavy technology ventures; this variant centers on social impact, not only valuation. A recent initiative from the Thrive Center at Georgetown University illustrates the potential of such an approach.
• Parallel institution or new university model for science in higher education. Right now, most research is funded through federal agencies like the NIH, which give money to universities. Universities then pass that funding along to scientists and their teams to do the work. Because universities are nonprofits, there are strict rules about working with industry, including limits meant to prevent conflicts of interest. While these rules serve an important purpose, they can also make it harder to partner in flexible, innovative ways.

One alternative would be to create independent centers or institutes with different funding and governance structures. These groups wouldn’t be bound by the same constraints but could still focus on producing knowledge that benefits many people. They could take on big, real-world questions in social and behavioral science, like how advances in artificial intelligence will interact with human behavior, creativity and empathy. This kind of model could make it easier for researchers to keep up with fast-changing demands, though it would require careful planning and new ways of organizing and funding the work.

The most ambitious option would be to rethink the system from the ground up. Instead of trying to adapt the current model, we could build something new that removes the barriers that currently limit bold, transformative solutions. This could mean creating a new approach to higher education that fully centers science and education as a public good. While this path offers the greatest freedom and alignment with mission, it also comes with significant risk, cost and uncertainty.

We are not naïve about the risks. We are writing this in the middle of what feels like a perfect storm: Public trust in science is fraying, artificial intelligence is reshaping how research is done and traditional funding mechanisms are under political and economic pressure. Yet clinging to the current model, hoping for a return to “normal,” is its own kind of risk.

We believe universities, funders and investigators need to look across the full continuum from familiar diversification to bold new structures and deliberately choose where to experiment. For presidents, provosts and deans, this likely means three things: naming experimentation with funding models as a strategic priority, creating space and incentives for faculty to test new approaches, and building the legal and ethical infrastructure to keep public trust as those experiments unfold.

Science as a public good is too important to leave at the mercy of a single, fragile pipeline. If we want to survive and shore up the system to withstand future disruptions, we must start thinking at least a little more like entrepreneurs, without losing sight of the public we are here to serve.

The ideas shared here were generated collaboratively at the aforementioned convening, and the authors thank the attendees of that event for their generosity of spirit and collaborative mindset.