University|11-01-2025

Better Funding for Basic Research

In a recent Nature editorial (Oct. 29th, 2025), the authors emphasize how essential basic research is for scientific and technological progress. Many of the most important innovations of recent decades — from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to drugs like Ozempic — emerged from projects that initially had no practical application in mind.

However, the authors warn that this kind of research is increasingly under pressure: funding today tends to favor short-term, application-oriented projects, while exploratory approaches are often seen as too risky. Yet it is precisely these seemingly purposeless experiments that often lead to entirely new insights — the foundations upon which entire industries are later built.

Nature therefore calls on policymakers, research organizations, and the public to reaffirm curiosity as the driving force of science and to support it more intentionally. Those who only fund the obvious limit the potential for true breakthroughs.

Investments in basic research are investments in the future. They lay the groundwork for the technologies, therapies, and ideas that will shape our world in the decades to come — even if we cannot yet know what they will be.

Reference

Nature (2025). From MRI to Ozempic: Breakthroughs that show why fundamental research must be protected. Nature, 646, 1026.  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03470-1