Through no fault of your own, I believe you are misreading this key paragraph:<p>&gt; That’s a net deficit of $147,174, which Edwards covered with his own discretionary research and personal funds. The Flint Water Study team of 25 students and research scientists also estimated their total donated labor at more than 6,000 hours, which they valued at over $165,000 based on the hourly rates of the team members.<p>So it was an estimated $165k in free labor on top of the rest of the costs. You are confused because their lab costs were $166,487, which is a similar number.