# Scientific Patronage **Domain:** Institutions / Funding / Knowledge Production **Doc Type:** Canonical Infrastructure Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Scientific patronage** is the funding and institutional support that determines which researchers, questions, sites and archives can persist. ## Evolutionary Nexus The Leakey Foundation, federal space research and public genome funding in [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] show that discovery has an institutional metabolism. Field seasons, collections and long-duration observations exist because resources are repeatedly allocated. ## Governance Context Funding criteria are selection pressures. They can diversify inquiry or concentrate it around prestige, commercial promise and donor preference. Provenance should therefore include who paid, under what conditions and which alternatives went unfunded. ## Funding Provenance Rule Institution-level support must not be silently converted into event-level causation. A funder may support a researcher, a later field season, laboratory analysis or a multi-year program without having financed a particular discovery. Likewise, an acknowledgement covering several sites and seasons establishes participation in a research network but does not allocate every specimen to every named funder. The Lucy record is the canonical example. The [[wiki/The Leakey Foundation|Leakey Foundation]] demonstrably supported [[wiki/Donald Johanson|Donald Johanson]] and continuing Afar research beginning in his listed 1975 grant chronology. The currently cited record does not demonstrate that its money financed the November 1974 recovery of AL 288-1. [[wiki/Provenance|Provenance]] should preserve the difference between **researcher support**, **program support**, **season support** and **event support**. ## See Also [[wiki/The Leakey Foundation|The Leakey Foundation]], [[wiki/Donald Johanson|Donald Johanson]], [[wiki/Hadar|Hadar]], [[wiki/Knowledge Commons|Knowledge Commons]], [[wiki/Provenance|Provenance]], [[wiki/Evidence Boundary|Evidence Boundary]], [[wiki/Continuity Economics|Continuity Economics]]