151–160 of 361 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any recourse? Like can the research group claw back the IP and give it to another company?
It would be a shame if the formula were to "leak" accidentally, resulting in commercialization taking place in another country with looser IP laws, and saving thousands of people's lives in the process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not familiar with science, but I don’t believe things are terribly bad for engineers. Brilliant innovative engineers have a degree of control over their lives. If a person is unhappy about the bureaucracy of the large org they can find another job in a startup. Or they can find a better job in a smaller, better managed organization. Or if they’re feeling lucky, they can even start their own business. If they curr…
> I’m not familiar with science, but I don’t believe things are terribly bad for engineers. Brilliant innovative engineers have a degree of control over their lives. The only fundamental difference is not between science and engineering, but between research&academia and industry, specifically in the number of positions available and the competition there is to fill them. You mentioned startups. Basically that means…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd go out on a limb to say "likely many", especially since this is a rather new phenomenon. This is yet another example of bean-counters being at the helm: in their pursuit for productivity (narrowly defined as "impact factor"), they have undermined the very conditions that favor meaningful discovery. These essentially boil down to: the ability for research faculty to make long-term, risky bets. What the bean-counte…
> What the bean-counter class can't seem to understand is that researchers are motivated to make big discoveries, so you can actually trust them to be judicious in their use of resources. What you don't seem to understand is there are some who are not motivated by that. Note that I make no claims as to how many are honest/dishonest. This is a valid thing that "bean counters" often miss.
Essentially we have created huge administrative bodies to check that nobody is taking advantage of the system, without any cost benefit analysis. We often now spend similar amounts on checking as we are on running the system itself. Maybe we should just acknowledge that some people will always take advantage of the system, and that's just the cost of "doing business".
This article makes me wonder how many groundbreaking discoveries are buried under academia's bureaucracy and ego battles.
Having always a suitable opportunity for someone's skillset is impossible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also not actually true. The NIH themselves is fine with you buying computers that directly support the "aims" of the grant (e.g., data analysis). They don't want you buying "general" office equipment off a grant. However, most universities are touchy about this and default-deny all computer purchases unless you yell the chapter and verse of the regs at them (which I have now done several times).
Yep, I'm referring to a historical anecdote, not current practice. It'll be tough to dig up a solid citation for the HP "calculator" story but I've heard it from more than one reasonably-credible source, e.g.: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/9499/when... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_9100A#cite_not... .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also not actually true. The NIH themselves is fine with you buying computers that directly support the "aims" of the grant (e.g., data analysis). They don't want you buying "general" office equipment off a grant. However, most universities are touchy about this and default-deny all computer purchases unless you yell the chapter and verse of the regs at them (which I have now done several times).
Yep, I'm referring to a historical anecdote, not current practice. It'll be tough to dig up a solid citation for the HP "calculator" story but I've heard it from more than one reasonably-credible source, e.g.: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/9499/when... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_9100A#cite_not... .
I just wanted to explain that although "No computers on NIH grants" is still current practice at most universities, it shouldn't be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What the bean-counter class can't seem to understand is that researchers are motivated to make big discoveries, so you can actually trust them to be judicious in their use of resources. What you don't seem to understand is there are some who are not motivated by that. Note that I make no claims as to how many are honest/dishonest. This is a valid thing that "bean counters" often miss.
This is argument is at the center of much of the administrative bloat. It is the same if we consider the arguments around UBI, free public transport etc. Essentially we have created huge administrative bodies to check that nobody is taking advantage of the system, without any cost benefit analysis. We often now spend similar amounts on checking as we are on running the system itself. Maybe we should just acknowledge…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wit…
But if you really want to persue a basically competent merit-based path, there's usually one available. You can make 2x in a crypto conjob, or 1x on a gamble that someone needs a plausible value-adding service.
I just don't see this logic at work in academia. The only reason I care here is how often academics have a kind of superstition of 'business' which is nothing other than a description of their own situation. When, in reality, freedoom from these chronic stupidities lies in everything they claim to hate.