Are Scientists Addicted to Grant Money?

The question is raised by Andrew Resnick in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Andrew Resnick has written a letter published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that suggests researchers are “addicted” to funding, much like drug addicts.

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To say a scientist in the current environment is addicted to grant money is like saying a anorectic struggling to control her appetite intake is addicted to food.  You must have it even if you sometimes don't like how it makes you feel. Even for tenured track faculty, grant funding is often an essential part of performance evaluations, and universities these days provide negligible research support, so to get work done to write papers and advance requires outside funding.

And don't get me going on soft money, the money that supports many non-tenure and tenure track scientists.  At many institutions they depend on grant funding for all of the their own salary, the salary of their staff, and the research materials, and they often don't care much where the smack comes from.

And just to show that there's a song for everything:



Found at WUWT. Wombat-socho has a generic "Rule 5 Monday" compendium up at The Other McCain.