One of the favorite complaints of biologists is that we spend too much money on large-scale research projects. Grousing about big science, however, is nothing new. I remember in the early 1990s when the NIH announced its intention to sequence the human genome. NIH funding was tight at the time, and the idea of throwing scarce resources at a project of dubious feasibility, and without a clear scientific objective, seemed ludicrous. Many of my university colleagues wrote protest letters to stop the perceived boondoggle, to no avail. I personally thought it was a waste of money. We were all wrong.
The success of the Human Genome Project, in part, helped convinced the public that biologists' work was worthy of more public funds, and it helped justify the doubling of the NIH budget. It also started a push towards big science at the NIH, exemplified by the "Roadmap" initiative, started in ...
