But you have missed out quite a few words between research and scientific - and two commas. Your yellow highlights then make your three words read totally differently. Its always been AE911's focus on only using science as the basis for their site's output. They have always rejected any circumstantial evidence such as financial prior knowledge and the like. Research to them means a lot of boring spadework to prise drawings and documents using FOIA requests. But it is always science based research.
As many here have already said, a huge % of their income last year was specific fund raising to cover a large campaign of awareness that members supported. If the board had diverted funds raised in that way to spend on different projects the members would have had a legitimate complaint to lay before them. As I understand it much of their ordinary regular income is required for day to day expences, and I would imagine that the usual small business 'cashflow' issues means that even booking flights and hotels far enough in advance of a proposed awareness tour would make a prudent finance controller resist many approaches for funds that fall outside of normal business with them.
I have read others input in here, who are close to AE911, and who have indicated that if modest sums are requested for research then it is usually granted. I am personally aware of one such where a FOIA request was granted and funds were provided to buy large storage hard-drives for the FOIA data to be loaded into and posted back. Chump change of course but not if many different people amongst the thousands of members make similar requests for assistance.
Some time ago I exchanged emails with Mark Basile following JREF 'experts' demands for his tests to be independent and also in inert atmosphere. The impression I got was that he did intend to go that way but was wary about the use of the word 'independent'. I felt that he would try to even avoid any assistance or affiliation with a recognised 'truther' organisation in order to have an arms length answer to any subsequent bias accusations.
His own site also seems to indicate this too.(
www.markbasile.org ) Much of the input in Metabunk is based on the quite small sum quoted to allow him to proceed and criticism of AE911 for not coughing up. I think that the criticism is misplaced and that in fact funds would be released in a heartbeat if MB asked. Of course I have no basis for this opinion other than an impression gained in email exchanges, and reading his site, but the difficulty in the raising of funds for MB's test would seem to fit in with my view. In any case, he already has $4k towards his $5k estimate so the point will eventually become academic. Perhaps you would like to 'chip' in ( pun intended).