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The article explores various issues impacting scientific funding as of 2018. Particular focus is given to the millions of scientific papers published every year and to how much research, including biomedical research, is wasted or underutilized. Additional topics discussed include the massive amount of time it takes to review research proposals, not funding the work of young scientists and how there is relatively limited evidence about which scientific practices work best.

The article discusses the role of the citizen scientists in climatology research. Citizen science projects utilize volunteers to help researchers conduct labor-intensive studies, including using volunteers for reporting species sightings, assisting in the categorizing of images, and analyzing data. Topics include an overview of a collaborative project involving a team of international scientists and nonexperts, called the Old Weather project, that is attempting to fill gaps in the Earth's historical climate record. Volunteers are tasked with searching through digitized logbooks of World War One (WWI)-era ships and entering weather data into the project's Web site, which is then added to the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's records.

The article discusses citizen satellites, called "CubeSats," which are tiny, standardized spacecraft that are making orbital experiments affordable and accessible to research groups of every size. According to the authors, CubeSats do not take long to develop, do not add to orbiting space debris, and can be used by various entities of varying size, including universities, companies, and hobbyists. Topics include the economic aspects of the CubeSat concept, a brief historical overview of the use of microsatellites in research, and the increasing popularity of CubeSats in science missions in fields ranging from atmospheric physics to microgravity experiments. INSET: The Guts of a CubeSat.

The article defends basic research and urges the U.S. Congress to reauthorize and fully fund the 2007 America COMPETES Act. Several examples are cited of research into basic science having a substantial and positive economic impact, among them the federal government's $3.8 billion investment in the Human Genome Project.