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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

#191

Post by s1artibartfast »

mjburgess wrote: post #77
s1artibartfast wrote: post #57

Unpopular opinion, but this was a reasonable outcome from the university. If a researcher makes a great discovery, but can’t get funding to do anything with it, You don’t keep them around not making progress. They got pushed out, found funding, and finally furthered the technology. It is unclear if more scientific progress would have been made if they were kept at penn without funding.

You have summarised the incentives. You've yet to defend them. Presumably the point of research is that it's not commercially viable at this stage; were it, the market would already address this need. Why bother with a university research system which 'lives or dies' just as start ups do? We already have those. It is widely recognised that there needs to be a long (perhaps millenia-long) pipeline of 'unprofitable' re…

The defense would be that this set of incentives worked. We have an amazing rna vaccine that saved millions of lives. This came about from public ally funded primary research and privately funded subsequent research.

It is easy to opine on the amazing value of the amazing technology or the vaccines should have been carried forward with perfect hindsight. This was not obvious to other academics or private markets at the time.

The only way to avoid this with certainty would be to tenure every academic, and publicly fund every project.

> It is widely recognized that there needs to be a long (perhaps millenia-long) pipeline of 'unprofitable' research into commerical outlets. Who thought playing around with wires and magents would lead anywhere?

We do amazing things with wires and magnets. You know because the system worked, just like it did with mRNA vaccines.

Masses of very smart people do their best to assign government grants, and invest private money for returns. If someone can perfectly predict scientific winners and losers, there would be no problem.

Simply funding all "unprofitable" research is not a workable solution. If we did this, every university would have an alchemy department. Making something work is not just a matter of time an money.

I have defended the current incentives. Do you have a workable alternative that doesnt involve future knowledge?

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

#193

Post by ubermonkey »

waterheater wrote: post #146
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 tea…

U of Austin is having difficulty because it's defined from the jump as a right-wing institution.

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

#194

Post by mistrial9 »

adolph wrote: post #143
cvwright wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

wikipedia EN does not make that so clear, but they do also mention that the book itself by Winston Groom sold a million+ more copies after the movie came out..

there are remarkable stories of swindling of all kinds out of Hollywood, of course! great movie too

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

#195

Post by s1artibartfast »

ModernMech wrote: post #91
mjburgess wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have summarised the incentives. You've yet to defend them. Presumably the point of research is that it's not commercially viable at this stage; were it, the market would already address this need. Why bother with a university research system which 'lives or dies' just as start ups do? We already have those. It is widely recognised that there needs to be a long (perhaps millenia-long) pipeline of 'unprofitable' re…

Unfortunately universities are not immune to the realities of living in a capitalistic society. Money needs to be made, growth needs to be demonstrated, debts need to be paid, and for that grants need to come in. People recognize that unprofitable research is necessary, but no one wants to fund it. And event when by some miracle it does get funded, people complain loudly and mock it ruthlessly. Sometimes the institut…

The government funds a large amounts of unprofitable research because some of it may prove valuable. much of it does not prove valuable.

Unlimited funding for all researchers is not a viable option, so discretion is used. Very smart people put effort in to competing and selecting the most promising options.

One could argue that this technology was overlooked initially (although it eventually DID get funded).

What nobody suggests is how this technology should have been discerned from the rest without future knowledge.

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

#196

Post by bachmeier »

FireBeyond wrote: post #166
cycomanic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you accuse others of misrepresentation but are yourself misrepresenting. Regarding overheads yes they pay for some of these things, but they also are clearly being used to prop up ever increasing administrative bodies (whose salaries have often grown disproportionately compared to academic staff). Just some examples (and they are in physics/engineering and not the US so specifics are not directly compa…

A corollary to your story, from my partner who started as Payroll at a university and now is the Accounting Manager, reporting to the Financial Controller. > prop up ever increasing administrative bodies (whose salaries have often grown disproportionately compared to academic staff). Over the four years she has been there, faculty have received 3 3-5% annual raises. Staff have received ... 1 1% raise. Faculty and sta…

> Faculty got a $7,000 stipend to "set up a home office". Staff got ... nothing.

That's a very unusual university. I have never heard of such a thing. During covid, it was common for faculty to take large pay cuts, but not staff. The $7000 you mention is less than my pay was cut. Staff were unaffected.

> They just try to tell Finance "just pay the bill, thanks".

I don't believe this if you are talking about a US university. That's just not how it works.

> And then audits find faculty paying for flights for their partners on the university card... or first class upgrades... or very liquid lunches.

That's why there's no such thing as "just pay the bill, thanks". They don't pay without knowing what it's for. First and foremost, they have to confirm it's legal. After that, they have to confirm they're in compliance with tax laws. I'm not even getting into state laws if it's a public university and all the other potential problems. Paying a bill without knowing what it's for would simply never, ever happen at a US university.

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

#198

Post by antognini »

queuebert wrote: post #12

Academia does not value quality, but quantity. It selects for scientists who are the best at marketing and networking, not necessarily doing quality science, though they can also be. I have no idea how to fix this, but competition needs to be reduced, probably by more guaranteed funding for positions, not just projects, as grants are. This latest military aid package is 2x the entire NIH budget, so surely there is mo…

My dad was a professor and would joke that the way a tenure committee made their decision was that they'd print out all your papers, put them in a folder, and then throw it down a stairwell. If your packet made it to the bottom, it would be an easy yes. If it made it halfway down it would be marginal. If it only made it down a few steps it would be a definite no.

There's also the old aphorism that tenure committees can't read, but they can count.

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

#199

Post by cycomanic »

FireBeyond wrote: post #166
cycomanic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you accuse others of misrepresentation but are yourself misrepresenting. Regarding overheads yes they pay for some of these things, but they also are clearly being used to prop up ever increasing administrative bodies (whose salaries have often grown disproportionately compared to academic staff). Just some examples (and they are in physics/engineering and not the US so specifics are not directly compa…

A corollary to your story, from my partner who started as Payroll at a university and now is the Accounting Manager, reporting to the Financial Controller. > prop up ever increasing administrative bodies (whose salaries have often grown disproportionately compared to academic staff). Over the four years she has been there, faculty have received 3 3-5% annual raises. Staff have received ... 1 1% raise. Faculty and sta…

The university your partner works at sounds like non of the universities I have worked at or heard of.

Regarding home office, when covid hit we went to all online teaching with a lead time of a few weeks (changing an in person course to online teaching is not straight forward). There was no funding for setting up the home office and rules around covid meant that you couldn't even deduce your office at home from taxes.

Even when we went to hybrid teaching there was no central support for kitting out lecture halls with cameras/microphones etc. Academics often used some research (or personal) funds for purchasing cameras etc.

About flights and misuse of funds. I find it hard to believe that people could purchase flights with their cards at all universities I have been at you had to use the approved travel agent for flights. Also the only people allowed to fly business were high level management/admin, no matter where funding was from. Also I don't have an issue with submitting receipts, however I don't see why I have to spend the time on scanning receipts which I also have to send in as original. Moreover why do I need to know freaking tax codes for a train ticket or some lab consumables? Isn't that exactly what finance's job is?

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

#200

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

And this is also why I think the single biggest innovation starter billionaires could do would be to apply grant funds to new Professors for interesting research.
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