3 ms·

Typically universites dont fund any but the most seed research of the most junior faculty. What they will provide is RAs and lab/center space. Even then, it is

Typically universites dont fund any but the most seed research of the most junior faculty. What they will provide is RAs and lab/center space. Even then, it is usually encombant on the researcher to buy thier RAs, course releases, summer salary, as well as pay for institutional overhead from grants. Of course the more you get in grants, the more overhead you can offset and typically the more you can publish thus the more likely you are to get tenure (assuming your institution even offers it any more). Granting organizations want there resources to go to proven successes in general and the more you publish and speak at conferences the more recognition you get for the funder. This is not to say that some funders won't risk a grant to a junior faculty member but senior facuty are likely to be safer bets. They PI the grant projects and junior faculty are participants, co-pi, and co-authors. Put in layman's terms, I am not likely to contract a guy with an interesting non conventional idea on how to build my house but you might and that is great for the new idea guy if you are willing to accept the risk. In the house building world, the senior is a general contractor or master builder. The juniors are apprentices with energy and ideas. Again though, I'm not got to contract with an apprentice to build my house or lead a multi million dollar research project.

derbOac 3y ago
The problem though is that the purpose of research is to develop new information. Building a house is an engineering and construction problem, more akin to a medical procedure, where you might want a tried and true method by an experienced practitioner. Research is similar in that you want someone with skill and knowledge doing the work. But there's a tension because in the extreme case, you could just find someone doing the same study they've done forever well and reliabily getting the same result, but that wouldn't be accomplishing the goal of research. What we have now is in between but probably closer to the latter approach, where funding agencies fund because it's likely to work in the sense of producing small p values, rather than because it generates new information. The story of Karikó is sad to me in part because it is so common, but most don't have the privilege of a historical event to underscore the problems and turn it into a fairy tale ending.

derbOac 3y ago

The problem though is that the purpose of research is to develop new information. Building a house is an engineering and construction problem, more akin to a medical procedure, where you might want a tried and true method by an experienced practitioner. Research is similar in that you want someone with skill and knowledge doing the work. But there's a tension because in the extreme case, you could just find someone doing the same study they've done forever well and reliabily getting the same result, but that wouldn't be accomplishing the goal of research. What we have now is in between but probably closer to the latter approach, where funding agencies fund because it's likely to work in the sense of producing small p values, rather than because it generates new information. The story of Karikó is sad to me in part because it is so common, but most don't have the privilege of a historical event to underscore the problems and turn it into a fairy tale ending.