This is a brilliant article. My father used to work at IBM ARC back in the 1990s, and you’re describing how things worked there, during a period in which numerous Nobels were earned working within a corporation.
The jack-of-all-trades approach to being a PI was also part of what drove me personally out of a Ph.D. program and into industry. I didn’t want to be a solo entrepreneur constantly writing grants for peanuts. The most attractive jobs to me back then (early 2000s) seemed to be the government lab jobs that had no teaching responsibilities, and relatively less pressure to raise grant funding constantly.
We need to encourage more divisions of labor in the practice of scientific research. This is a great diagnosis of some of the fundamental problems of our current system. Kudos, Jason!
I don’t fault you for not mentioning it because it’s definitely more speculative. But as a voiceover I would add to this pitch for block funding the observation that in many cases, getting a large enough group together seems to lead to a critical mass, whereby new ideas start to fission off of each other. I think we’re seeing something like that now at the Flatiron institute, and probably because they’re doing many of things you’ve prescribed.
This is a brilliant article. My father used to work at IBM ARC back in the 1990s, and you’re describing how things worked there, during a period in which numerous Nobels were earned working within a corporation.
The jack-of-all-trades approach to being a PI was also part of what drove me personally out of a Ph.D. program and into industry. I didn’t want to be a solo entrepreneur constantly writing grants for peanuts. The most attractive jobs to me back then (early 2000s) seemed to be the government lab jobs that had no teaching responsibilities, and relatively less pressure to raise grant funding constantly.
We need to encourage more divisions of labor in the practice of scientific research. This is a great diagnosis of some of the fundamental problems of our current system. Kudos, Jason!
I don’t fault you for not mentioning it because it’s definitely more speculative. But as a voiceover I would add to this pitch for block funding the observation that in many cases, getting a large enough group together seems to lead to a critical mass, whereby new ideas start to fission off of each other. I think we’re seeing something like that now at the Flatiron institute, and probably because they’re doing many of things you’ve prescribed.