I've been in academics as a tenured faculty member and in other capacities and this story rings very true to me. Obviously extreme but by the same token clearly

I've been in academics as a tenured faculty member and in other capacities and this story rings very true to me. Obviously extreme but by the same token clearly illustrative of prototypical problems. Note that this isn't the first Nobel prize winner in recent years to point out similar issues. There's a kind of passing the buck phenomenon I think, for lack of a better way of putting it, combined with denial about the nature of research which is at its best by definition novel and risky. Basically no one wants to actually pay for anything, except for the federal government. The state or university doesn't say "we happily fund scientific advances", they expect it to be funded by the federal government. I always liken it to hiring a plumber, but with the expectation that they make money for you instead of fixing your plumbing, or that you hire them ostensibly for the latter but actually for the former. At some point there has to be service or product provision that is being paid for, and in our current society this is the federal government. There are many complicating factors, like the fact that "funding" for all intents and purposes as far as a university is concerned means "federal government" (this isn't actually true but is mostly true), or that the evaluations of grants are based on current consensus about what is likely to produce significant findings, which deincentivizes novel research, or that projects rather than persons are funded, or that universities are administratively topheavy, or that the funding system also incentivizes pyramid schemes of graduate school, etc. There are functional departments and universities where people can supportively function in the current zeitgeist, and some smart people can get funding for good grants. But the incentive structures are incredibly perverse now at most institutions, and basically boil down to how much money you bring in in the form of indirect funds on grants. I have been in conversations with colleagues at other universities, who were arguing about faculty who were bringing in large grant amounts, but from non-federal sources, with no indirect funds, and how this was unacceptable because it didn't benefit the university financially sufficiently even though it paid for grad students etc. Yes universities have costs etc but in the current system Karikó's experience was bound to happen. Peter Higgs has said he would never be hired today and it's probably true. All of this will continue, or you just won't hear about certain advances because they will be shut down and never develop.