In Cambridge, Mass. — home to M.I.T. and Harvard — they include the $100 million Ragon Institute for immunology research, the $150 million Koch Institute for cancer studies, the $165 million Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, the $250 million Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the $350 million McGovern Institute for brain research, the $450 million Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the $700 million Broad Institute for genome research.

“If I’m a rich person, I’m going to give to a leading institution — to Harvard or Princeton,” Dr. Murray said in an interview. That pattern, she added, “poses big issues” for the nation.

This to me is really the core problem with this arrangement. By empowering the wealthy to drive science, we risk consolidating power in a space that benefits tremendously from diversity and openness. Can these be supported even if science funding is progressively privatized and centralized? It might be hard. I say this from my own experiences and interactions with the Broad in particular, which frankly is doing a tremendous amount of damage to science through its heavy-handed pursuit of a truth its founders have believed for decades. What we need in science is not pursuit of glory, although it helps. We need some real openness, and this is supported as much by the mess of public funding as anything.