In Brian Martin’s article “The Politics of Research,” he discusses two very important factors in the world today; knowledge and funding. When someone wants to research more into something, they usually need someone to fund their work, that is if they can find someone interested enough to lend them money in hopes of getting it back. Martin gives an example of a drug research team looks into drugs to help reduce tension and wind up finding something that can reduce kidney stones, it is very unlikely that they would research something that is unpatented seeing as there would be no profit to gain. Martin then brings up a good point that just because you are being funded does not mean that you are going to find results. In most cases, researchers are being funded to find certain things and if some other discovery is made then it’s the decision of whoever is supplying the funding to decide if they will continue. This relates to the old saying “knowledge is money” and if you are funding a researcher, you better hope this saying is true.
