Not to mention that scientists spend a crazy amount of time writing grant proposals instead of doing science. Imagine if programmers spent 40% of their time writing documents asking for money to write code. Madness.
Indeed. You do need some idea of what you are going to do before being funded.
The tricky bit is that in research, and this a bit like the act of programming, you often discover import stuff in the process of doing - and the more innovative the area - the more likely this is to happen.
Big labs deal with this by having enough money to self-fund prospective work, or support things for extra time - the real problem is that new researchers - who often have the new ideas, are the most constrained.
If you work at a large company, it could consider 1,000's of different new major features or new products. But it only has the budget to pay for 50 per year.
So obviously there's a whole process of presentations, approvals, refinement, prototypes, and whatnot to ensure that only the best ideas actually make it to the stage where a programmer is working on it.
Same thing with a startup, but it's the founders spending months and months trying to convince VC's to invest more, using data and presentations and whatnot.
It's not a problem -- it's the foundation of any organization that spends money and wants to try new things.
How else would it work? The onus needs to be on someone to make sure we are doing worthwhile things. Like anything else in life, you need to prove you deserve the money before you get it. Often that means you need to refine your ideas and pitches to match what the world thinks it needs. Then once you get a track record it lowers your risk profile and money comes more easily.
Sounds sensible, bu the major unasked question it avoids is, was the current funding and organization structure of science in place when the past scientific achievements were achieved.
the impression I get from anecdotes and remarks is that pre-1990s, university departments used to be the major scientific social institution, providing organization where the science was done, with feedback cycle measured in careers. Faculty members would socialize and collaborate or compete with other members. Most of the scientific norms were social, possible because the stakes were low (measured in citations, influence and prestige only).
It is quite unlike current system centered on research groups formed around PIs and their research groups, an machine optimized for gathering temporary funding for non-tenured staff so that they can produce publications and 'network', using all that to gather more funding before the previous runs out. No wonder the social norms like "don't falsify evidence; publish when you have true and correct results; write and publish your true opinions; don't participate in citation laundering circles" can't last. Possibility of failure is much frequent (every grant cycle), environment is highly competitive in a way that you get only few shots at scientific career or you are out.
Imagine if everybody in every software company was an "engineer," including the executives, salespeople, and market researchers. Imagine if they only ever hired people trained as software engineers, and only hired them into software development roles, and staffed every other position in the company from engineering hires who had skill and interest at performing other roles. That's how medical practices, law firms, and some other professions work.
For example -- my wife is an architect, so I'm aware of specific examples here -- there are many architecture firms that have partners whose role consists of bringing in big clients and managing relationships with them. They are never called "sales executives" or "client relationship management specialists." If you meet one at a party, they'll tell you they're an architect.
Apparently it's the same thing with scientific research. When a lab gets big enough, people start to specialize, but they don't get different titles. If you work at an arts nonprofit writing grant applications, they will call you a grant writer, but a scientist is always a scientist or a "researcher" even if all they do is write grant applications.
> Imagine if programmers spent 40% of their time writing documents asking for money to write code.
The daily I'm not taking part anymore at work started today at 9:30 as always, and has currently (11:50) people excusing themselves because they have other meetings...
We need a revolution on exposing bad managers and making sure they lose their jobs. For every kind of manager. But that situation isn't very far from normal.
