Or, 0.8% of the NIH&#x27;s annual funding for curing heart disease.<p>That&#x27;s nice, but the tech press is doing is pretty poor job conveying the overall role of public vs private funding in basic science research. Same issue came up around YC Research.<p>It&#x27;s true that Google&#x27;s approach is to hand more money to one team instead of spreading it among many investigators. But the overall tone of the article is there are &quot;swings&quot; in funding and private companies are stepping in with &quot;jackpot&quot; grants to save the day. If you didn&#x27;t read closely you might even think public funding is drying up and Silicon Valley private investors are the future of core science research.<p>This fundamentally and completely confuses how core science research happens and in fact how Silicon Valley itself was created and functions today (with respect to core tech research through agencies like DARPA as well as medical science via NIH). Collaboration with the private sector is an important piece of that but this one figure puts it in perspective: The annual NIH budget for heart research alone is $1.2 billion. Bottom line, you can still thank Uncle Sam and taxpayers for most major research.