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Tillery to Represent Hayes Against UC Berkeley in Dispute over Lab Fees
- hdevalence 13y agoAgain with the title-changing. "Tillery to Represent Hays Against UC Berkeley in Dispute over Lab Fees" does not tell me: - who Tillery is - who Hays is - why I should care about a dispute over lab fees. The original title made it clear what the issue is: the scientist in question alleges that his lab is being shut down due to his criticism of a herbicide made by Syngenta, who coincidentally give money to the university. Please, stop secretly editing the titles.
- zzzeek 13y agoFTR the original title is from this Michael Pollan tweet: https://twitter.com/michaelpollan/status/368771855064133634 https://twitter.com/michaelpollan/status/368771855064133634 "Tyrone Hayes, embattled scientist critical of Atrazine and Syngenta, loses his lab funding at Berkeley" I had shortened it to "Scientist critical of Atrazine and Syngenta loses his lab funding at Berkeley". Though I pretty much expected the HN title change.
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- keithpeter 13y ago"While money doesn’t talk, it swears" as Mr Dylan sang. I hope this gentleman gets his day in court. In the UK, we have tight controls on fertilisers because of run-off into water supplies. You'll be drinking (a dilute form) of what they spray quite quickly over here.
- epistasis 13y agoIt sounds like there are a couple thing going on. First, the researcher has run out of funding, and second, UC Berkeley is accused of ramping up his lab fees far far faster than his colleagues in order to prevent him from continuing research. The first is a travesty, and there are many fine and outstanding labs out there that are going through similar situations, due to stagnant funding for years followed by the current sequestration. This is irreparably damaging US scientific research, as once a lab closes and all the specialized reagents are gone, it's going to take years to get back to the same starting point. The second is puzzling, if true. The only thing that I can think of that would cause UCB to act that way is I they feel that this professor will prevent them from getting commercial finding for other professors. That seems tenuous at best, but I can't imagine any other reason for administrators to blackball a prominent professor. And this would be impossible for the administrators to do at all if the professor was getting grant support for his research.
- dnautics 13y agothe second is a travesty (if the accusations are true as characterized and there isn't something going on, like, the researcher didn't read the fine print). the first is not. If you are not doing research efficiently, then you should not be doing research. You may see "outstanding labs" but if the grant reviewers disagree, then what. You are not entitled to research money. Someone has to want to give it to you. It can be debated if grant reviewers are actually doing a good job (versus being a whitewashed version of cronyism), but the bottom line is, that money is NOT the researcher's money. It's the taxpayer's money. And there is not an infinite supply of it.