Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research

K.’s plight (an authentic one) illustrates how the present funding system in science eats its own seed corn [2]. To expect a young scientist to recruit and train students and postdocs as well as producing and publishing new and original work within two years (in order to fuel the next grant application) is preposterous. It is neither right nor sensible to ask scientists to become astrologists and predict precisely the path their research will follow—and then to judge them on how persuasively they can put over this fiction. It takes far too long to write a grant because the requirements are so complex and demanding. Applications have become so detailed and so technical that trying to select the best proposals has become a dark art. For postdoctoral fellowships, there are so many arcane and restrictive rules that applicants frequently find themselves to be of the wrong nationality, in the wrong lab, too young, or too old. Young scientists who make the career mistake of concentrating on their research may easily miss the deadline for the only grant they might have won. Research institutes with their own funds can solve these problems, but grant holders like K. do not have any flexibility. The real world of science has no tidy banks of pigeonholes, each one occupied for a standard period by an exemplary student or a perfect postdoc.