Comment by searine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by searine | Hacker News Reader

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>Difficulty is not value. Extremely talented people are doing arbitrary waste work.

Grants are hard, not because of admin/paperwork, but because coming up with a novel idea is hard and convincing others to fund it is harder.

The people leading the grants are the ones creating and guiding the ideas. They set the agenda.

A tech CEO doesn't spend their days coding minor bug fixes, in the same way a PI doesn't spend their days doing lab work. They are leaders, who are occupied getting funding and setting the direction.

>Did you miss the comment we are replying to? The existing oversight is ineffective. It’s just a hoop for the professor to jump through.

It's not ineffective though, and an excess of PhDs is not a collapse, it is a boon.

>Personal communication is not systematic public reporting.

You have absolutely no clue how much public reporting is involved in grants. Just a complete ignorant comment right here.

>There is public info - but it’s a facade. It’s constructed with the goal of appeasing the public requirements.

Conspiracy bullshit. Take your meds.

>Also professors tend to use a two job approach: stuff they like, and stuff that’s important for their career.

Wrong. Every PI I know does the stuff they like, and they get it well funded, because they are the best in the world at what they do.

>I actually lived it, so thanks for your understanding and consideration.

You post about tech and programming and call yourself a "software engineer".

>yes you are buying into (or actively promoting) anti-intellectualism. >Name calling.

Good. You should feel ashamed for the way you are acting.

> convincing others to fund it is harder.

Yes, we are in agreement. That's why promoters are so valuable.

> in the same way a PI doesn't spend their days doing lab work.

This large workforce of Phd's protecting the time of the PI also represents a massive allocation of young intelligent talent, and that's part of my concern.

> an excess of PhDs is not a collapse, it is a boon.

It's difficult to talk about demand for required credentials. A large percentage is foreigners securing visas to work in the US.

> You have absolutely no clue how much public reporting is involved in grants. Just a complete ignorant comment right here.

> Conspiracy bullshit. Take your meds.

I think researchers put a great deal of care into public reporting. And I think they use their intellect to construct a story conducive to their careers. Who doesn't?

I am aware of researchers who use a technique where they get funding for a project that is basically finished, and use the funds for more speculative research. TTheir sources of funding expect more predictability than they can realistically provide. Wouldn't you say that represents a gap in the public's visibility?

> Every PI I know does the stuff they like

I don't doubt they are passionate and driven. I'm saying something different. When you are in the thick of establishing yourself you have to care more about what system cares about (this is maybe your situation?), and modern competition makes this all encompassing. But the book they write in sabbatical tends to look different than their official title.

> they get it well funded, because they are the best in the world at what they do.

How would we falsify this statement?

> You post about tech and programming and call yourself a "software engineer".

PhD to software engineer is a common career path.

> Good. You should feel ashamed for the way you are acting.

Name calling doesn't sound intellectual to me. I choose not to reciprocate.

EDIT: to focus on my personal beliefs and not yours.

I think our impasse is for some reason you have this idea that PI's hate their work / are gaming the system. I just don't understand where you are coming from. Maybe that's true sometimes, but most all PIs I have worked with are not gaming the system. They are just working on a decades-long line of inquiry.

>I am aware of researchers who use a technique where they get funding for a project that is basically finished, and use the funds for more speculative research. Their sources of funding expect more predictability than they can realistically provide. Wouldn't you say that represents a gap in the public's visibility?

Their grant is public record. Their oversight during that grant is public record. Their regulatory approvals are public record. Their publications are public record.

"Basically finished" is not finished. It is not finished unless it has been published. Your statement is like saying "its wrong for a baker to buy an oven if he already has the flour and sugar. The cake is basically finished. He is just putting future costs into this current cake".

Most grant applications include prior work, current work, and future work. A program officer will make site visits and assess current work and upcoming work. Funding of a grant is not "do X thing and publish, end of project and money:. It is the pursuit of an idea. If task 1 is "basically finished" the PO will push for publication of that and moving on to the next aim.

In many cases having an aim "basically finished" is a good thing. It shows that prior work is successful and future work can produce similar success. Most grants have multiple aims and several sub-aims. If one aim is finished, they move on to the next. If all the aims are complete, the grant usually indicates next steps. The PI and PO will have discussed the next steps long before they are carried out.

If the PI chooses use some funds from a grant to carry out speculative research. Good. GOOD. That is what scientific inquiry is meant for. Not all research can be speculative. Not at research can be mainstream. It is a mix, based on opportunity and expertise.

This is grants 101. Please, again, I'm not lecturing you on software development, because it is not my expertise. Please understand scientific funding before lecturing me about it.

>Name calling doesn't sound intellectual to me. I choose not to reciprocate.

Its not name calling to call out your anti-intellectualism. You are contributing to the decline of American science, and I will not stand for it.

> you have this idea that PI's hate their work / are gaming the system.

That’s actually not what I said.

> If the PI chooses use some funds from a grant to carry out speculative research. Good. GOOD. That is what scientific inquiry is meant for.

My claim is not about good or bad. My claim is that there is a gap between how science is done and how it is presented to the public.

> This is grants 101

You seem to agree such a gap exists, you just think it’s a good thing or a matter of business.

> because it is not my expertise

So notice when I bring up correct information, I’m told I don’t have the experience/expertise to do so despite my academic union card.

Please do share opinions about software. We have no professional organization. People argue with ideas.

> You are contributing to the decline of American science, and I will not stand for it.

you seem to identify intellectualism as a group of people or an organization.

I think that’s a mockery of truth and ideas.

Yes American science as a family of organizations deserves scrutiny and critiques. Funding these organizations is not an absolute public good.

> My claim is that there is a gap between how science is done and how it is presented to the public.

There is a gap between how software is written and how it is used by the public.

Clearly computers are flawed and need a complete rework.

>Please do share opinions about software. We have no professional organization. People argue with ideas.

Software is a illuminati scam perpetrated by bitter typesetters forced to get funding in a system they don't believe in. Anyone who says otherwise is in on it.

>Funding these organizations is not an absolute public good.

Are they flawless, no. Have they done more public good than any organization in history (or at least top 3)? yes.

And your response is to poo-poo the whole system because you had a bad time in your PhD. Sad.

>Yes American science as a family of organizations deserves scrutiny and critiques. Funding these organizations is not an absolute public good.

They deserve scrutiny and critique from an informed point of view on what science can accomplish for the public, that is, what science can do for the absolute public good. "This doesn't work like I thought it did!" is not necessarily, in and of itself, an absolute public bad. It is, unfortunately, a cost of doing business in employing specialized labor to do specialized work.

Driving a truck doesn't work how the broad public thinks it does, either.

>I am aware of researchers who use a technique where they get funding for a project that is basically finished, and use the funds for more speculative research. TTheir sources of funding expect more predictability than they can realistically provide. Wouldn't you say that represents a gap in the public's visibility?

Yes, I would say that represents a gap between a public who want to see a science factory in which not one single blueberry muffin is ever wasted on an unworthy grad-student's wasteful seminar, and the actual reality of how science works. The problem is that going, "aha, gotcha, you were HIDING these ILLICIT SEMINARS on SPECULATIVE WORK!" doesn't educate the public on how science really works and also doesn't make the seminars unnecessary. If you eliminate all the scientific processes that don't conform to an uninformed popular image of white-collar "efficiency" (eg: Office Space), you won't have any good scientists left, because they'll fuck off to private-sector jobs where you don't have to justify a blueberry muffin to a hostile Senate subcommittee.

(For anyone wondering if I'm hungry or something, in January 2025 my lab's parent university forbade us from providing lunch during lab meetings because they were informed that the incoming Administration was going to start looking for efficiencies in scientific grant funding.)

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