4 ms·

It’s sad how your lived experience is getting downvoted just because it doesn’t line up with peoples’ almost religious faith that the government is wise and gov

by pcstl 8y ago

It’s sad how your lived experience is getting downvoted just because it doesn’t line up with peoples’ almost religious faith that the government is wise and government investment in science is always a good thing.

dnautics 8y ago
ok here's one of the depressing ones. When I was on the DoE grant, the place I was working for was applying for a biology DARPA grant (different office from the DARPA grant that I was on later, that was in CS). At the time, Arathi Prabahukar was the DARPA chief and it was being whispered that she was very much grooming one of the "meta-PMs" (I don't know what to call it, but a head of a group of program managers) to a key part of her administration and possibly even her successor someday. So there I was, at the head of the research institute's very nice mansion overlooking the La Jolla shoreline and we were throwing a party for the DARPA PM to try to, uh, nudge the person towards funding the project, basically currying favor. I guess us plebs (postdocs) were invited because it was necessary to show off that we did indeed have some smart people around. Anyways, we didn't get the grant. Around that time, though, a friend and I were enjoying a bit of postdoc-schadenfreude following several science controversies (through retraction watch and pubpeer) and a huge fight broke out over a story that is now called "stripey nanoparticles". In short, a postdoc at MIT was asked to repro some results in the lab and couldn't and was convinced (and made very convincing arguments) that the previous PhD student's work was entirely an instrument artefact. This postdoc was then abused, retaliated against, and railroaded by the Principal Investigator (MIT Professor). Suddenly I noticed that the PhD student's who produced the unreproducible work name was familiar -- it was the DARPA head PM! The head PM's PhD thesis was basically all junk. Really I don't mean to criticize the PM, for this, in particular there should have been more guidance from the MIT professor. But the point is that DARPA just looks at the person and says 'hey, PhD from MIT, must be smart'. There's no deep review. So we were taking bets on how long the head PM would last, and it was about two or three years before the PM disappeared quietly from DARPA activities. I think eventually the furor around stripey nanoparticles got to be so bad that politically the PM's career in the government was effectively iced. I was curious as to what the PM is doing now, and it turns out that - no joke - CTO at a microfluidics-based medical diagnostics company.

by pcstl 8y ago

dnautics 8y ago

ok here's one of the depressing ones. When I was on the DoE grant, the place I was working for was applying for a biology DARPA grant (different office from the DARPA grant that I was on later, that was in CS). At the time, Arathi Prabahukar was the DARPA chief and it was being whispered that she was very much grooming one of the "meta-PMs" (I don't know what to call it, but a head of a group of program managers) to a key part of her administration and possibly even her successor someday. So there I was, at the head of the research institute's very nice mansion overlooking the La Jolla shoreline and we were throwing a party for the DARPA PM to try to, uh, nudge the person towards funding the project, basically currying favor. I guess us plebs (postdocs) were invited because it was necessary to show off that we did indeed have some smart people around. Anyways, we didn't get the grant. Around that time, though, a friend and I were enjoying a bit of postdoc-schadenfreude following several science controversies (through retraction watch and pubpeer) and a huge fight broke out over a story that is now called "stripey nanoparticles". In short, a postdoc at MIT was asked to repro some results in the lab and couldn't and was convinced (and made very convincing arguments) that the previous PhD student's work was entirely an instrument artefact. This postdoc was then abused, retaliated against, and railroaded by the Principal Investigator (MIT Professor). Suddenly I noticed that the PhD student's who produced the unreproducible work name was familiar -- it was the DARPA head PM! The head PM's PhD thesis was basically all junk. Really I don't mean to criticize the PM, for this, in particular there should have been more guidance from the MIT professor. But the point is that DARPA just looks at the person and says 'hey, PhD from MIT, must be smart'. There's no deep review. So we were taking bets on how long the head PM would last, and it was about two or three years before the PM disappeared quietly from DARPA activities. I think eventually the furor around stripey nanoparticles got to be so bad that politically the PM's career in the government was effectively iced. I was curious as to what the PM is doing now, and it turns out that - no joke - CTO at a microfluidics-based medical diagnostics company.