i'm glad there was an article written about this sociological phenomenon in the sciences. begging, sharing, bidding, _stealing_, fixing, and making do were the

i'm glad there was an article written about this sociological phenomenon in the sciences. begging, sharing, bidding, _stealing_, fixing, and making do were the standard in every "poorly funded" (read: extremely well funded in comparison to many others) academic lab and every "poorly funded" (read: fairly well funded) private biotech company that i have worked with. i can only imagine what it is like to work in a place that isn't very well funded, given the level of stuff that was happening where i have been. you can tell when grants are approved and when new rounds of funding are raised because there's a new round of fresh equipment that shows up in the lab -- then, later, the hand-me-downs and salvaged gear shows up between funding rounds. it isn't uncommon to see equipment in action that is 20 years old. one place even had an analysis instrument from 1968, but i would say that is an outlier. there are also a few places who pride themselves on over-spending on all-new top of the line equipment, but in my experience these are the massive pharma companies where money is not as much of a concern as equipment uniformity and supply chain. the result of all the old/salvaged equipment, of course, is that all of these old things need maintenance and break down, typically at the worst possible moment. tensions over resources are also the norm within organizations, in my experience. there isn't always enough to go around, yet people are obligated to share with their neighbors when they're in a pinch... and, on aggregate, scientists have a habit of always being in a pinch. interestingly, there was also a group that i worked with local to boston (https://www.boslab.org/ https://www.boslab.org/) which made a small educational lab exclusively with auctioned/salvaged/fixed gear, and did so extremely cheaply. they had sufficient means to do basic molecular bio experiments, which was really cool. the trouble is that consumables are going to be extremely expensive no matter what, so savings on capital are not as significant as they may seem. honestly, at this point the culture of austerity and recycling in the sciences seems ingrained in a lot of people, particularly PIs from the US. giving them more money isn't going to make the problem go away because they are accustomed to hoarding their cash as much as possible. they don't know if or when the next grant will be approved, or if it is going to be for as much money as they really need. this habit works very well in certain biotech companies, too -- often, VCs don't understand that the cost savings might have consequences. as someone who has been involved with founding several, starting a lab is time consuming, but not particularly difficult. there's probably a business opportunity somewhere in there. maybe something like assembling sets of second-hand / repaired equipment and selling them as a package to new labs.