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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

#141

Post by WalterBright »

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…

This is hilarious. I've been lectured by several PhD's that insist the NSF is an unbiased organization, doling out grants based purely on scientific merit.

Of course, it is nothing of the sort.

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

#142

Post by senkora »

> Unless something changes, this isn’t going to go well," Grady told Karikó, according to her memoir.

While unpleasant, this is a conversation that is sometimes necessary to have as someone in a position of power communicating to a subordinate.

> In 2013, Karikó said she returned to her lab after spending time away to find all of her belongings having been packed, moved, and misplaced at Grady's direction.

But this is just petty and cruel.

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

#143

Post by adolph »

cvwright wrote: post #132
bachmeier wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Even more baffling, there are studies showing that most US universities actually manage to lose money on federally funded research. Yes, the overhead rates are obscene, but somehow the compliance costs are even greater.

See also How Hollywood Studios Manage To Officially Lose Money On Movies That Make A Billion Dollars

For example, consider the case of Winston Groom who was promised 3% of the net profits of a film based on a little book he wrote called Forrest Gump. As noted, Paramount would later argue that the film, which cleared almost 13 times its production budget, a total of $700 million at the box office or about $1.2 billion today, had actually lost $62 million, all in an attempt to weasel out of paying Groom, among others.

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/how-hollywo...

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

#144

Post by seanr88 »

rawgabbit wrote: post #48
seanr88 wrote: post #36

In many professions including the business of startups and academia you need to be at least as good at selling something as you are at developing/discovering it.

While that may be true today, in the research sciences — there should be some kind of middle ground. Thomas Edison may have been a giant of self promotion. But I would argue Nikola Tesla invented as much or more foundationally important technology we use today. I would argue Tesla like Kariko will never be a wiz at self promotion. But a domain expert should have spotted them early on. I mean isn’t that the job of peo…

but the people you have to convince are the people who are doling out tax payer money for research. By definition they don't know your fabulous discovery only you know that. So you need to convince someone else that the idea you have is worth investigating and they should give you money to do it. So the people who are best at convincing other people are the people who get the grants and who get to do the research.

Even once you have discovered something convincing other people that what you have discovered is worthwhile is not easy, as this article shows.

Being a good fundraiser is more important than technical skill in both research/academia and also in startups.

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

#145

Post by lupire »

mlsu wrote: post #135

Reading the comments here, it seems that even very prestigious universities are full of academic pettiness and dysfunction which deny all of us the output of brilliant people like Katalin Karikó. It leaves me wondering: why do we not create any new universities? Why doesn't a Carnegie of our age create a new university? Brin University? Zuck University? This seems like a no brainer. I think it might seem difficult to…

Today they make companies. Karikó went private to great success.

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

#146

Post by waterheater »

mlsu wrote: post #135

Reading the comments here, it seems that even very prestigious universities are full of academic pettiness and dysfunction which deny all of us the output of brilliant people like Katalin Karikó. It leaves me wondering: why do we not create any new universities? Why doesn't a Carnegie of our age create a new university? Brin University? Zuck University? This seems like a no brainer. I think it might seem difficult to…

Look into the difficulties faced by the University of Austin [1] (not the University of Texas at Austin).

This is a project which explicitly seems to be pushing back against the current toxic academic environment, yet a major issue they are encountering seems to be degree accreditation. To get "recognized" these days, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) [2] will need to agree that your school teaches things correctly. Of course, the AAUP is responsible for the current toxic academic environment, so it's a catch-22.

Zuck University almost certainly will be fully aligned with the AAUP.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Austin

[2] https://www.aaup.org/

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

#147

Post by seanr88 »

seanr88 wrote: post #144
rawgabbit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that may be true today, in the research sciences — there should be some kind of middle ground. Thomas Edison may have been a giant of self promotion. But I would argue Nikola Tesla invented as much or more foundationally important technology we use today. I would argue Tesla like Kariko will never be a wiz at self promotion. But a domain expert should have spotted them early on. I mean isn’t that the job of peo…

but the people you have to convince are the people who are doling out tax payer money for research. By definition they don't know your fabulous discovery only you know that. So you need to convince someone else that the idea you have is worth investigating and they should give you money to do it. So the people who are best at convincing other people are the people who get the grants and who get to do the research. Ev…

there is more to the analogy too. Once you have convinced a large player that your offering is important and have raised money successfully, everything gets a lot easier. Have a big grant and work at a top University attracting more money is a hell of a lot easier. Get into YC, guess what raising your Series A just increased in probability by about 20X.

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

#148

Post by WalterBright »

godelski wrote: post #92
Kye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it always like this or headed here? I'm curious if flat government funding for research against rising costs creates or amplifies counterproductive incentives.

A little of both. The problem is that evaluation of research work is insanely difficult. A lot of people think it's easy because "the world is objective, it either works or doesn't" but research is cutting edge and you're only chipping away at a much larger picture. It can take decades for a work to reveal itself as truly profound or utter shit. The problem, which I rant about in a longer comment, is that instead of…

Any source of funding will spawn an industry designed around extracting every dollar from it.

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

#149

Post by araes »

cvwright wrote: post #132
bachmeier wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Even more baffling, there are studies showing that most US universities actually manage to lose money on federally funded research. Yes, the overhead rates are obscene, but somehow the compliance costs are even greater.

Having tried to write a large grant recently, can slightly comment. I attempted to work with a university, because like most grants, never available without an academic tie-in. In a pithy way, the only individual grants are mostly NEA/NEH grants about writing books about writing books (also applied for those).

The university I worked with had a 40+% overhead rate auto-included. This could not be negotiated. If you want to work with us, we add this amount to our Govt. request.

The university added a lot of extra work because of this. I basically brought them a proposal, I literally walked over to their partnership office and said "I've written a proposal I'd like to work with you on." It was mostly written, and said I think "some number" would be reasonable. They said, we don't apply without 40+% overhead, rewrite the whole grant so it works with our overhead and faculty tie-in requirements. I said that seems very large, and then none of the other numbers work. They said, write with 40+%.

The eventual result was that the university wanted me to work as a sub-contractor being paid less than a different contractor they were going to hire as a specialist, so I could have the pleasure of partnering with them.

Also, it needs to be completed a month before the deadline, because then all our internals need to churn over the money numbers (and predictably came back a check mark). I was glad it lost.

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

#150

Post by tombert »

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…

My dad used to be a full time professor of aerospace engineering. He liked the research, and he didn't mind teaching, but he quit after a few years because he absolutely hated having to play "salesman" all the time. He found himself seeing everyone as "potential funding", and he personally found it kind of hard to turn that mentality off.

He went back to industry after that, which has its share of legitimate problems, but at least they don't typically expect their engineers to also be sales people.

Also universities pay shit.

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