No, the number of grants you get determines whether you get tenure / raises. So the government tells everyone what research ideas they will fund and everyone has to do as many of those as possible.
Comment on Joy
lol3droflxp@kbin.social 11 months ago
Isn’t that the same thing? Why work as a scientist when you don’t have interesting research to do? And if you do, then getting funding should be possible. I know that it can get quite tricky and exhausting but what exactly do those people expect? The whole job of scientists is to come up with worthwhile questions and to find answers.
hamster@kbin.social 11 months ago
MxM111@kbin.social 11 months ago
Usually professors come up with grants and students are solving the questions. Professors just don’t have time to do both.
Dogyote@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
The problem the tweet is pointing out is that research scientists are mostly concerned about getting and keeping funding since their jobs and the jobs of those working for them depend on it. Thus they’ll target research questions that are deemed sexy by those in control of the funds. This can lead to a few areas being over-researched and other worthy areas of inquiry being underfunded. Plus that over-researched work can be of questionable quality and importance since a lot of less-good scientists get funded due to the overabundance of funds.