Comment by some_guy_nobel

Yes, I agree there is a funding requirement for academic science. Hell, even attending a conference you've been accepted to is prohibitively expensive if out of your own pocket.

But your original statement was far too broad:

> there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding.

There are absolutely members from every one of those subsets driven by curiousity.

(In my own life, I have reached out to labs in completely different fields than my own to help publish out of nothing more than pure curiosity.)