A review published Monday in the journal Nature details how billionaire philanthropists are destroying modern scientific research, particularly Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
“The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire” is the best title I’ve read for a nonfiction book possibly ever. It’s authored by investigative journalist Tim Schwab, who might be my new favorite writer. Schwab detailed how charitable foundations led by billionaires might “aggravate global health and other societal issues as much as they might alleviate them,” according to Nature.
Schwab focused much of his work on Gates, who spent $7 billion on global projects in 2022 alone. But there’s a catch: In the U.S., 100,000 private foundations control roughly $1 trillion in assets, but around three-quarters of these are offset against tax, and the way charities spend this money isn’t really scrutinized meaningfully. Schwab argued that if the tax had been retained, the government could have distributed it across many scientific pursuits.
Instead, a handful of super-rich people like Gates simply dedicate these dollars to their little pet projects — even if they don’t actually help anyone but themselves, their egos, and their self-satisfaction in thinking they’re doing good.
Amazing to see @Nature publish such a great review of my book: “Schwab’s excellent exposé of hyper-billionaire ‘myths’ could yet help to catalyse political murmurations towards more collective ends.”
https://t.co/U6pObWKVoP— Tim Schwab (@TimothyWSchwab) February 12, 2024
And by limiting the number of people funding and being involved in scientific research and other philanthropic projects, corruption and misinformation can become a norm. “Many Gates Foundation programmes are shaped and evaluated using data from the US Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which was founded — and is lavishly funded — by the foundation,” Nature noted. (RELATED: Bill Gates Photographed With Alleged Epstein Victim Years After The Trafficker’s Arrest)
Schwab noted how these arrangements “could be considered a conflict of interest.” Schwab might be scared of being sued, because I personally think this is a definite conflict of interest. You can’t have the same people running the research and running the evaluation — ever. Even without direct data proving corruption, having the same people fund both sides completely undermines the ethics of the data, and should render it useless.
But more people are scared of being sued than actually doing good for the world, so I’m not surprised Gates has been able to get away with this. (RELATED: Major Health Organization Issues Second Warning Over Vaccine-Derived Polio Outbreak)
Schwab noted other examples of the wonky ethics pushed by Gates’ research. He cited how Gates’ foundation pushes women to get contraceptive implants instead of empowering women to take control of their own bodies. The foundation also offers “support for treatments that offer the best chances of accumulating returns on intellectual property risks eclipsing the development of preventive public-health solutions.”
The solution to de-billionairing the scientific world isn’t an easy one: We need a cultural revolution. We need to stop billionaires from investing in “data” that only seeks to support their narratives. We need institutions that have zero funding, other than tax-payers, so their data is at least slightly believable. We need to break down the monopolies that control our scientific communities and inspire the next generation to become research anarchists — breaking norms and resetting them to a fairer playing field.
The entire analysis in Nature is really worth a full read. And I can’t wait to get my hands on the book. Tim Schwab did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment, but it looks like his work says it all. And I am so here for it.