Ive worked in government labs and at universities.
The grant money literally pays their salary.
That aside... the amount of ways to commit corruption are endless...
The amount of conferences they had in Italy and Malibu and places like that...
The hot research assistant that never showed up to the lab but got paid.
The endless tech project that took a decade and millions of dollars to write a simple LMS because their buddy ran the LMS company.
The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long lunch and working 20 hour work weeks.
The university creating a team devoted to hacking the grant process.
The elite university people in charge of the funding giving their other elite university alumni preferential treatment.
Zero diversity labs because scientists hire their buddies. You can literally walk through university research buildings and see all Indian Labs, all Chinese labs, etc.
The waste is massive and insane with our tax dollars. Its literally white collar welfare.
And it happens everywhere and theres no accountability.
Its a giant scam wrapped in the virtue signaling of altruistic science.
> The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long lunch and working 20 hour work weeks.
Mostly this.
The conferences honestly aren't that much of a perk, relative to the pay differential, at least in STEM fields.
The "hot research asst" thing was common in the past but died down significantly with #MeToo (still a lot of egotistical creeps ofc).
But the amount of general laziness dressed up as busyness in academia is astounding. Most professors retire in place some time in their early to mid 30s.
The solution is to end higher ed carve-outs in federal grant awards. Let anyone qualified apply for and receive NSF funds. Stop tying tax dollars to university affiliation.
> The solution is to end higher ed carve-outs in federal grant awards. Let anyone qualified apply for and receive NSF funds. Stop tying tax dollars to university affiliation.
I think this is infinitely better than the current system of just giving money to scientists.
And it's a step in the right direction towards eliminating government funding for science altogether.
