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Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

About 4: The thing is that the current system gives the government complete flexibility in what they want to do. If they don't want to fund research in X any more, just stop giving the grants. If they actually ran their own lab, they'd have to shut it down, get rid of employees, etc. Seems very convenient for them, especially given that grant funding tends to fluctuate with congressional tides.

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Good point. I'm thinking of "dead labs", where a tenured professor runs out of grant money and can't secure any more, so students and lab staff gradually disappear on their own, since the only official long-term job is the PI's. One unproductive professor's salary isn't much compared to an entire office or building in the D.C. suburbs.

(Empirically, a professor doing X will continue doing X until retirement, regardless of the grant situation. But students can still opt out.)

Also, grants can come from sources other than the government, no?

Yes, charities and NGOs like the American Cancer Society fund grants, too. But basic research is usually way outside their core competency, so teaming up with universities is their best option.

Companies team up with academic labs occasionally, and I think this is great.

But the government does already run its own labs and fund semi-independent research-only institutions. I'd like to see an expansion of these (mainly the latter), as well as Master's programs in science/tech, to help this current glut of graduate students transition to non-academic careers.

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