11 ms·
The NIH already has total funding limits for grant eligibility, and the issue of competitors blocking your publications is pretty much eliminated by asking them
by _yb2s 2y ago
The NIH already has total funding limits for grant eligibility, and the issue of competitors blocking your publications is pretty much eliminated by asking them to be excluded as reviewers, because we almost always already know who is going to do that. A competent editor will also see right through that.
I did my postdoc in a very well funded lab that was larger than even your examples- and they legitimately could do big projects nobody else could do, plus postdocs and grad students had a lot more autonomy, which helped them become better scientists. The PI worked at a distant/high level, but he was a good scientist and a skilled leader doing honest and valuable research, and had economies of scale that let him do more with the same research dollars. It was the least toxic and most creative and productive lab I’ve ever seen. Banning that type of lab would be to the massive detriment of scientific progress in my opinion.
I also disagree about banning consulting and startups for PIs- that is arguably where research ends up having the highest impact, because it gets translated to real world use. It also allows scientists to survive in HCOL areas with much less government funding. Frankly, I could make 4x the salary in industry, and if I were banned from even consulting on the side it would be much harder to justify staying an academic while raising a family in a HCOL area.
I am also very upset about academic fraud and have seen it first hand- but I think your proposed solutions would be harmful and ineffective. I’m not sure what the solution is, but usually students, postdocs, and technicians know if their PI is a fraud and would report if it were safe for them to do so, but they don’t have enough power to do so. Fixing that would likely solve this. Even for a junior PI, reporting on a more senior colleague would usually be career ending for them, but not who they are reporting on.
- caycep 2y agoat this moment, what NIH? No study sections for grants since the inauguration...
- ramraj07 2y agoI agree with you that OPs ideas don't work. But I don't agree with you either. Let me point to a far more fundamental problem which is that even your well meaning lab is still a ponzi scheme that survives only because it gets cheap labor in the name of more trainees when there's no evidence that the academic system can handle MORE people. Even if we have the funding, the peer review systems we are dependent on are clearly becoming less effective just because of pure volume and breadth. I have other issues with the system but in the end this is the most important problem I see to be solved first.
- _yb2s 2y agoWe're talking here specifically about how to solve the problem of academic fraud- not how to solve the problem of treating trainees more fairly. That's an important problem also, but not what my comments were addressing. Still, I'll share my thoughts on that also. In my lab I voluntarily pay competitive industry level salaries- I pay solid 6 figures to postdocs, usually about 2x what other labs pay. I often pay my trainees more than I make myself, and I often only hire one person on a grant that most people would fund a whole lab on. It's a gamble, but it seems I get more skilled people that stay longer, and can actually afford to live, which works better than having a few more people that are all super stressed and looking for a better job. So far, it's payed off for me, and I would recommend it to other academics. Second, very few of my postdocs and grad students actually want low paying academic jobs. Most want to join the biotech startup scene, where they'll make a lot more than what they'd make as an academic, and the demand for people with their skills far exceeds the supply. I am giving them the training they need to actually get those jobs, and succeed at them while paying very well in the process. I talk with them about what they actually want- and I make sure it happens for them to the best of my abilities. When I was a grad student/postdoc, I really wanted to become a PI, and was worried it was a ponzi scheme because so few people ended up doing so. But when I was actually a postdoc, I realized most of my fellow postdocs were highly competitive for faculty positions, but still choosing not to do them by choice. Many were even receiving academic offers and turning them down for industry offers with much higher salaries. I was even co-recruited to a tenure track position, along with a respected colleague I was really hoping to work together with for decades- his co-acceptance of the offers was a big reason I chose this institution. About a week into his academic job, he got an 'offer you cannot refuse' from a startup and left on the spot. But overall, my situation is someone unusual- mostly because my field is currently in extremely high industry demand. There are indeed a lot of grad students and postdocs making pennies, and with no real job prospects beyond a tiny shot at a faculty job.