Sparks: Daily briefing: How tech billionaires are changing science funding

The man who pays for the search decides which questions are worth asking, and the researcher who forgets this will find his funding renewed only so long as his results flatter the patron.

Trace the philanthropic impulse to its origin and you find not generosity but the will to inscribe one's name on discoveries one lacked the patience to make oneself.

The democratic instinct that once spread patronage across many hands now quietly concentrates it in a few private fortunes, and no law is broken, only the habit of shared custody over knowledge.

Count the grants, name the foundations, date the announcements, and the pattern emerges: the questions that get funded are the questions the funders find comfortable, and the rest are called uncompetitive.

As water finds the channel the hand has dug for it, so inquiry flows toward the questions the patron has prepared, and the river believes it chose its own course.

Things that are tiresome: a foundation that announces its gift before the recipient has spoken; a scientist who thanks the donor before the data; a press release that calls generosity what is merely purchase.