Laura Bernardi is Vice-President of the Research Council of the SNSF. | Photo: Université de Lausanne

Given today’s social and geopolitical pressures, many wonder whether scarce resources should be used to support curiosity-driven science or redirected mostly to goal-oriented research. The question is legitimate, and prompts us to recall once more why, precisely in times of rapid change, publicly funded basic research is irreplaceable:

1. The nature of discovery itself demands basic research. Scientific breakthroughs are rarely linear or predictable. They emerge from a complex web of questions, many of which may appear useless at the time. The laser was once a “solution in search of a problem” and now underpins modern telecommunications and medicine. We must fund science steadily, confident that there is a high probability that breakthroughs will eventually emerge.
2. Societal prosperity requires basic research. Countries that invest heavily in research and development and that employ more scientists per capita also innovate more and grow more robustly. Data show this correlation consistently. They also show that, so far, stable funding has yielded more than it has cost.
3. The skills needed by the next generation to face unpredictable circumstances are cultivated through basic research. It is not only where knowledge is created but also where reliable methods are developed and transmitted. Young scientists involved in curiosity-driven projects learn creativity and rigorous reasoning. The return on investment goes well beyond academia, into other sectors like industry or administration.
4. The benefits of basic research do not accrue primarily to private investors but to society at large, even when usefulness may only become apparent decades later, often in entirely different fields of application. This long-time horizon hinders private firms from investing significantly in blue-sky projects. Of course, the role of these companies lies further downstream, in development. Yet without the upstream pipeline of fundamental discoveries, a source of their own development also dries up. The internet, GPS and mRNA vaccines all began as curiosity-driven inquiries supported by public funds. Society as a whole has been repaid thousands of times over.

Budget cuts on public spending for basic research can disrupt laboratories, disperse talent, and waste years of accumulated progress. The mission of institutions such as the Swiss National Science Foundation is to ensure that excellent basic research is funded through competitive and rigorous evaluation and to show that the money – far from being wasted – advances knowledge and prosperity for all.