A science business model for answering important questions

Perhaps the biggest question in science is how to do better science. Many ecologists, including this book’s editors and authors, have succeeded under the current science “business model” and, from our perspective, the status quo works well enough. But science business models are under increased scrutiny. For instance, since 2012, at least nine papers have critiqued government-sponsored biomedical research, with the most-suggested (self-serving) solution being to spend more government funds on science (Pickett et al. 2015). To get more funding, scientists might consider first improving their return on investment. To increase return on investment, ecologists (and scientists in general) could rethink training programs, reproducibility, funding distribution, synthesis, publication models, and evaluation metrics.