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'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

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Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#101

Post by CamperBob2 »

exmadscientist wrote: post #56
thelittlenag wrote: post #32

My wife was hired last year as a full time professor and leads her own lab. By far the largest pressure on new faculty is the ability to get money into her lab, and by extension the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets). Getting approved for the money via the grant process means having published "interesting" re…

> the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets) Don't forget that this is actually money laundering. Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants). So the University helpfully launders the…

Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants)

Sadly, that bit of goofiness goes back a long way. It's why the early HP desktops were sold as "calculators." Many important customers told them that buying a computer required approval from the board of directors, but anybody could buy a "calculator" out of petty cash.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#102

Post by justin66 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #86
exmadscientist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets) Don't forget that this is actually money laundering. Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants). So the University helpfully launders the…

So, if you're complaining about this in an HN comment, that means you reported it to the NIH, right? Because "kickbacks" are not a common thing, friend.

> Because "kickbacks" are not a common thing, friend.

cue the audience laughter

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#103

Post by strangattractor »

m_a_g wrote: post #3

This article makes me wonder how many groundbreaking discoveries are buried under academia's bureaucracy and ego battles.

I've been in rooms with Academics with egos so big it displaces enough oxygen to make it stifling. No one will challenge their behavior because it may affect their career. IMHO it is the due to the culture of Academia which is often win lose and credit based. This eventually leads to unethical behavior in some cases - falsification of data, theft of ideas and believe it or not sabotage. Any type or advancement is almost strictly based on what you can take credit for doing.

There is no Nobel for people that run labs that produce the next 10 Nobel winners other than themselves.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#104

Post by quacked »

mjburgess wrote: post #64
exmadscientist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets) Don't forget that this is actually money laundering. Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants). So the University helpfully launders the…

What amuses, and irritates, me is that academics frequently project this insanity onto Business or The Profit Motive. Having close connections in academia, that world is the worst of what can be imagined. A highly competitive start-up, or scale-up, environment has a level of Reason and Merit imposed by the market which rationalises most everything (even the insane VC fantasyland headline-driven stuff is intelligible)…

I don't know if I'd agree that Reason and Merit are always applied by the market, unless the market is referring to "whatever VCs can be convinced to give money to". However, the crux of what you're saying, which is that in academia Reason and Merit are thrown directly out of the window is completely true.

My favorite discrepancy is in hiring. In startups, you can win a $150k/year job in a ten minute conversation with the right person and be at work the following Monday, even that afternoon in some cases. This is especially true if your previous work is already known to the person doing the hiring.

In academia (and to a lesser extent government work) they're conducting 6-month searches and stringing along candidates for months at a time for $65k jobs with a fraction of the responsibility of the equivalent in the private industry.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#105

Post by exmadscientist »

stavros wrote: post #94
exmadscientist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets) Don't forget that this is actually money laundering. Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants). So the University helpfully launders the…

I don't understand this comment. So basically, I have a bunch of dirty money, I give it to a university, who then use all of it to buy a bunch of stuff that my own company sells, thus cleaning the money? So basically what I've done is I've given away $X million of stuff, and my company gets its 5% margin out of it? This makes zero sense to me.

They are removing conditions ("strings") from federal grant money and simultaneously taking a large cut to fund the university's general operations.

They are not laundering general money, they are doing a very specific thing here.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#106

Post by waterheater »

tverbeure wrote: post #50
m_a_g wrote: post #3

This article makes me wonder how many groundbreaking discoveries are buried under academia's bureaucracy and ego battles.

It's not just academia. A friend of mine was involved in the development of a ground breaking medicine for a pretty common incurable disease. The results of the first and second round trials were fantastic, giving a significant number of patients a normal quality of life that they hadn't experienced in years. The formula was sold to a big pharma company that completely botched the third round trial. It's not that har…

On this subject, I recommend the book "Vitamin C and Cancer: Medicine or Politics?" by Evelleen Richards. Pharmaceutical companies have no intrinsic motivation to provide (1) cures at (2) a price one could purchase without health insurance.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#107

Post by stavros »

exmadscientist wrote: post #105
stavros wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. So basically, I have a bunch of dirty money, I give it to a university, who then use all of it to buy a bunch of stuff that my own company sells, thus cleaning the money? So basically what I've done is I've given away $X million of stuff, and my company gets its 5% margin out of it? This makes zero sense to me.

They are removing conditions ("strings") from federal grant money and simultaneously taking a large cut to fund the university's general operations. They are not laundering general money, they are doing a very specific thing here.

Hm, I guess I just don't know enough about how grants work to understand what's going on.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#108

Post by bjornsing »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #53
RecycledEle wrote: post #17

I wish every disagreement was logged in a system so that, decades later, we could know who was right and who was wrong. It would tell us who to listen to and who yo shun. I had hopes that Internet forums would be that record, but the nukers destroyed that.

That sounds incredibly dystopian.

If you’re very sure of yourself and typically wrong, then yes. But to me the current situation is quite dystopian.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#109

Post by Beijinger »

bitzun wrote: post #81
Almondsetat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we in the 1700s? being a PhD does not mean I have to use your honorific every time you are mentioned

When someone is a PhD, and you know this, and you choose to use ms/mr/mrs instead of dr (or omitting an honorific altogether, the most common, unobjectionable choice), it can easily be interpreted as condescension.

Dude, PhDs give a fuck about PhDs. At least in the States. I would find it odd to be addresses this way. When I addressed my phd supervisor the first time with professor doctor XYZ, he just said, I am Bill. My name is Bill!

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#110

Post by bachmeier »

thelittlenag wrote: post #32

My wife was hired last year as a full time professor and leads her own lab. By far the largest pressure on new faculty is the ability to get money into her lab, and by extension the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets). Getting approved for the money via the grant process means having published "interesting" re…

> they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets

This leads to some very interesting conversations at universities.

"Your department doesn't bring in many grants, so we can't grant your budget request."

"But grants aren't revenue. They're money used to cover the expense of doing research."

"Yes, but they bring in overhead."

Then when the granting agencies try to cut overhead:

"We can't afford a cut in overhead. That money is used to cover the cost of doing research. We'd be losing money."

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