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• You need to be associated with a university or institute, and they take a big cut out of your funding. A vast bulk of research is done by university professors. While on the face, you might think that such institute-affiliated researchers take a monthly salary, and then get money from the government on top to spend on their research, that isn't quite true. When you receive a grant, the university or institute takes a large amount of this, eg. 50% or even 80%. Part of this is probably just taken because the president wants a nice house. But it also pays for the electricity in your office, the electron microscope everyone gets to use, the salary of the janitor, the salary of the health and safety people whose approval is required by law for you to obtain restricted research chemicals, etc. You could save a lot of money by not being a university affiliated researcher, but you can't just up and go and do research from your garage - you must deal with a lot of bureaucracy unless you want to get fined or jailed.
• Materials are expensive. Others have explained in detail why consumables (chemicals, enzymes, single use sterile tools such as petri dishes) are expensive. A lot of these you could in theory make yourself. I know many biology labs who eschew modern kits and still use DIY methods from decades ago to save money - but it's a lot of work and introduces a lot of risk for error. Even then, some crucial reagents are simply impossible to manufacture if you don't have a large chemical plant. Think by analogy to computers: You can do a lot with DIY electronics, but nobody is going to be building an i7 out of scrap metal in their garage.
• Equipment is very expensive. Even the simplest biological research equipment tends to run from thousands of dollars to hundred of thousands or even millions. Even something as basic as a centrifuge can run you two grand, and you cannot do any molecular biology without one. If you want to do sequence based research (absolutely necessary for ALS), either you must buy a very expensive sequencer or you must pay someone to run samples on theirs.
• Scientists need to eat. Research isn't a hobby, it's a full-time job. So every person involved must be paid a salary, otherwise their landlord will kick them out and they will starve. It would be ridiculous to expect someone with a 40-hour job to do a few hours of research every weekend and get somewhere.

The condensed version of the above is: Even smart people sometimes cannot solve a problem without buying expensive things. You cannot study moon rocks without buying an expensive rocket to go to the moon. You cannot study what's inside the atom without buying an expensive atom smasher. You cannot test a cancer drug if you don't have expensive cancer cell cultures to test it.

• You need to be associated with a university or institute, and they take a big cut out of your funding. A vast bulk of research is done by university professors. While on the face, you might think that such institute-affiliated researchers take a monthly salary, and then get money from the government on top to spend on their research, that isn't quite true. When you receive a grant, the university or institute takes a large amount of this, eg. 50% or even 80%. Part of this is probably just taken because the president wants a nice house. But it also pays for the electricity in your office, the electron microscope everyone gets to use, the salary of the janitor, the salary of the health and safety people whose approval is required by law for you to obtain restricted research chemicals, etc. You could save a lot of money by not being a university affiliated researcher, but you can't just up and go and do research from your garage - you must deal with a lot of bureaucracy unless you want to get fined or jailed, and you lose the very important benefit of easily being able to eat lunch with leading scientists and talk to them about science.
• Materials are expensive. Others have explained in detail why consumables (chemicals, enzymes, single use sterile tools such as petri dishes) are expensive. A lot of these you could in theory make yourself. I know many biology labs who eschew modern kits and still use DIY methods from decades ago to save money - but it's a lot of work and introduces a lot of risk for error. Even then, some crucial reagents are simply impossible to manufacture if you don't have a large chemical plant. Think by analogy to computers: You can do a lot with DIY electronics, but nobody is going to be building an i7 out of scrap metal in their garage.
• Equipment is very expensive. Even the simplest biological research equipment tends to run from thousands of dollars to hundred of thousands or even millions. Even something as basic as a centrifuge can run you two grand, and you cannot do any molecular biology without one. If you want to do sequence based research (absolutely necessary for ALS), either you must buy a very expensive sequencer or you must pay someone to run samples on theirs.
• Scientists need to eat. Research isn't a hobby, it's a full-time job. Perhaps the professor's salary gets paid by the university - but often grad students and postdocs are paid from the grant money. All these people must be paid a salary, otherwise their landlord will kick them out and they will starve. It would be ridiculous to expect someone with a 40-hour job to do a few hours of research every weekend and get somewhere.

The condensed version of the above is: Even smart people sometimes cannot solve a problem without buying expensive things. You cannot study moon rocks without buying an expensive rocket to go to the moon. You cannot study what's inside the atom without buying an expensive atom smasher. You cannot test a cancer drug if you don't have expensive cancer cell cultures to test it on.

Research does not necessarily cost a lot of money. Even today, some areas such as literature, philosophy and theoretical mathematics (non-computational) literally cost only as much as a desk, pen and paper. In theory. In practice, as many have already pointed out, even then it can make sense to do a little cost-time trade-off.

Research does not necessarily cost a lot of money. Even today, some areas such as literature, philosophy and theoretical mathematics (non-computational) literally cost only as much as a desk, pen and paper. In theory. In practice, as many have already pointed out, even in these fields it can make sense to do a little cost-time trade-off.

• You need to be associated with a university or institute, and they take a big cut out of your funding. A vast bulk of research is done by university professors. While on the face, you might think that such institute-affiliated researchers take a monthly salary, and then get money from the government on top to spend on their research, that isn't quite true. When you receive a grant, the university or institute takes a large amount of this, eg. 50% or even 80%. Part of this is probably just taken because the president wants a nice house. But it also pays for the electricity in your office, the electron microscope everyone gets to use, the salary of the janitor, the salary of the health and safety people whose approval is required by law for you to obtain restricted research chemicals, etc. You could save a lot of money by not being a university affiliated researcher, but you can't just up and go and do research from your garage - you must deal with a lot of bureaucracy unless you want to get fined or jailed.
• Materials are expensive. Others have explained in detail why consumables (chemicals, enzymes, single use sterile tools such as petri dishes) are expensive. A lot of these you could in theory make yourself. I know many biology labs who eschew modern kits and still use DIY methods from decades ago to save money - but it's a lot of work and introduces a lot of risk for error. Even then, some crucial reagents are simply impossible to manufacture if you don't have a large chemical plant. Think by analogy to computers: You can do a lot with DIY electronics, but nobody is going to be building an i7 out of scrap metal in their garage.
• Equipment is very expensive. Even the simplest biological research equipment tends to run from thousands of dollars to hundred of thousands or even millions. Even something as basic as a centrifuge can run you two grand, and you cannot do any molecular biology without one. If you want to do sequence based research (absolutely necessary for ALS), either you must buy a very expensive sequencer or you must pay someone to run samples on theirs.
• Scientists need to eat. Research isn't a hobby, it's a full-time job. So every person involved must be paid a salary, otherwise they'll get kicked out of their house and starve. It would be ridiculous to expect someone with a 40-hour job to do a few hours of research every weekend and get somewhere.

What happens if your disease has hundreds of variants which must be characterized by spending thousands on genotyping (it costs a few hundred per person, to cover things like cost of manufacturing the genotyping chip, cost of chemically preparing the sample, salary of people who do the specialized genotyping, and the profit margin of the genotyping company)? What happens if the protein that causes the disease must be purified using an extremely expensive chemical? What happens if the aberration that causes the disease is so microscopic, that you need a million dollar microscope to see it? What happens when the thing you study turns out to be so complex, that only a supercomputer (which are very expensive to have or use) can hope to make sense of the data?

The questions implies that the asker expected it to cost a lower sum. How much should it cost? It costs what it costs because that's what it costs. If you can come up with your own budget for a given study that is much smaller, yet still makes it feasible, go ahead. But just drawing money on paper and asking why it doesn't cost this much is just wishful thinking. You don't go to the car store and tell the guy you think his Ferrari "ought" to cost $32.27 because that's how much cash you happen to have in your pocket.

The condensed version of the above is: Even smart people sometimes cannot solve a problem without buying expensive things. You cannot study moon rocks without buying an expensive rocket to go to the moon. You cannot study the atom without buying an expensive particle accelerator to experiment on it. You cannot make a cancer drug if you don't have a bunch of expensive chemicals to make it from, and expensive chemicals to maintain the cancer cells or mice that you test it on.

Science is not just sitting around in a room and philosophizing. You must also do experiments. The experiment set up can sometimes get involved and complicated. Observing the outcome of the experiment can require expensive sensors or measurement tools. Processing the data gathered can require expensive supercomputers.

• You need to be associated with a university or institute, and they take a big cut out of your funding. A vast bulk of research is done by university professors. While on the face, you might think that such institute-affiliated researchers take a monthly salary, and then get money from the government on top to spend on their research, that isn't quite true. When you receive a grant, the university or institute takes a large amount of this, eg. 50% or even 80%. Part of this is probably just taken because the president wants a nice house. But it also pays for the electricity in your office, the electron microscope everyone gets to use, the salary of the janitor, the salary of the health and safety people whose approval is required by law for you to obtain restricted research chemicals, etc. You could save a lot of money by not being a university affiliated researcher, but you can't just up and go and do research from your garage - you must deal with a lot of bureaucracy unless you want to get fined or jailed.
• Materials are expensive. Others have explained in detail why consumables (chemicals, enzymes, single use sterile tools such as petri dishes) are expensive. A lot of these you could in theory make yourself. I know many biology labs who eschew modern kits and still use DIY methods from decades ago to save money - but it's a lot of work and introduces a lot of risk for error. Even then, some crucial reagents are simply impossible to manufacture if you don't have a large chemical plant. Think by analogy to computers: You can do a lot with DIY electronics, but nobody is going to be building an i7 out of scrap metal in their garage.
• Equipment is very expensive. Even the simplest biological research equipment tends to run from thousands of dollars to hundred of thousands or even millions. Even something as basic as a centrifuge can run you two grand, and you cannot do any molecular biology without one. If you want to do sequence based research (absolutely necessary for ALS), either you must buy a very expensive sequencer or you must pay someone to run samples on theirs.
• Scientists need to eat. Research isn't a hobby, it's a full-time job. So every person involved must be paid a salary, otherwise their landlord will kick them out and they will starve. It would be ridiculous to expect someone with a 40-hour job to do a few hours of research every weekend and get somewhere.

What happens if your disease has hundreds of variants which must be characterized by spending thousands on genotyping (it costs a few hundred per person, to cover things like cost of manufacturing the genotyping chip, cost of chemically preparing the sample, salary of people who do the specialized genotyping, and the profit margin of the genotyping company)? What happens if the protein that causes the disease must be purified using an extremely expensive chemical? What happens if the aberration that causes the disease is so microscopic, that you need a million dollar microscope to see it? What happens when the thing you study turns out to be so complex, that only a supercomputer (which are very expensive to have or use) can hope to make sense of the data? What happens when you are studying a very dangerous pathogen that will kill you unless you have a $100 million BSL-4 lab that takes $2 million every year to maintain?

How much does he think it should cost? Based on the quote, I suspect it is $0. That's not gonna happen.

It costs what it costs because that's what it costs. If you can come up with your own budget for a given study that is much smaller, yet still makes it feasible, go ahead. But just writing numbers on paper and asking why it doesn't cost this much is wishful thinking. You don't go to the car store and tell the guy you think his Ferrari "ought" to cost $32.27 because that's how much cash you happen to have in your pocket.

The condensed version of the above is: Even smart people sometimes cannot solve a problem without buying expensive things. You cannot study moon rocks without buying an expensive rocket to go to the moon. You cannot study what's inside the atom without buying an expensive atom smasher. You cannot test a cancer drug if you don't have expensive cancer cell cultures to test it.

Science is not just sitting around in a room and philosophizing. You must also do experiments. The experiment's set up can sometimes get involved and complicated. Observing the outcome of the experiment can require specialized sensors or measurement tools. Processing the data gathered can require state of the art supercomputers.