So, not only is funding strict, but funding is overwhelmingly given to the oldest scientists, as they are more capable of showing that they can produce. Yet the lack of funding makes it hard for younger scientists to produce – a self-destructive prophecy.

This structure has catastrophic consequences for not only the freedom of scientific research and equitable competition among researchers, but also for the individual lives of young investigators. More specifically, since PIs are also faculty of universities, their job security banks on their ability to bring grant money to the university. The only way that security is ensured is if: (1) they have already received tenure or (2) they can produce enough to earn grants over even the experienced scientists.

A Grim Feature

That oppressive feeling was familiar to me during my time in research, but, at that point, it wasn’t clear to me just why the pressure to produce existed. That pressure belied the kind of environment cultivated by academia.

In my undergraduate years, for example, I was pushed by my PIs and lab partners to focus on my studies instead of continuing to balance coursework and research. That was no doubt due to my studies was taking too much time from my training, making me more of a drag on their resources. After my baccalaureate studies, no matter what laboratory I interviewed with, I would hear “when are you planning on going to graduate school” and “we recommend that you continue your education after two years”. Given what we know now, the questions and statements were likely because graduate students: (1) must research to satisfy their stipend requirements and, by extension, their enrollment in university, making them stronger value propositions than postbacs are, and (2) have greater access to grant funding than postbacs.

Upon my departure from lab life, I truly felt that, unless I was willing, or able, to give that time, likely at some cost, there wasn’t any room for me within the scientific community. That, of course, was an extreme feeling. The scientific community is far more vast than academia and I have since been welcomed and acknowledged as a communicator, instructional designer and more. The point is the somewhat depressing reality that, if you’re not capable of putting in 60 hours a week at the bench, you’re likely not going to be at that lab much longer. And, with the constraints that PIs have to bear, can you blame them?

Of Loss and Ruin

So far, I’ve outlined the main problem caused by funding – an increase in pressure at all levels. But the consequences of that go far – so far that the very culture of academia has changed drastically.

First, as Hackett mentioned in the quote above, there has been a shift in the education priorities of young researchers. This is, ultimately, due to the requirements of grants, which forces mentors to teach students to become technicians instead of researchers – the former masters techniques, the latter develops the methods that require those techniques. Hackett found that some scientists even recognize that “the value of [a student’s] education is their ability to master techniques rather than necessarily to find out how to think [and] how to formulate their own problems…” (1990, p. 261).

In the 1960s, federal grants didn’t come with as many restrictions; so long as you were performing valid scientific research, your work was seen as worthy of funding. However, more recently “decisions about the allocation of government research funds have gotten increased attention…as the importance of science for military and economic ends has become more fully appreciated and as various crises [justify] supporting scientific research. In consequence, the resource environment of scientists has been deliberately changed, through spectacular policy initiatives, such as the space program, the war on cancer, the AIDS effort…and through subtler shifts of priorities within agencies (such as the promotion of molecular biological approaches in the life sciences) (Hackett, 1990, p.256).” Hackett states that, due to the shifts, there is no longer a contrast between “free and proactive scientists supported by federal funds, who used those funds to advance their disciplines and career…and reactive scientists, supported by industrial money (or federal contracts), who apply those funds to the pursuit of practice ends” (1990, p.256) – they are one in the same.

In simpler terms, on top of mostly providing grants to older scientists, the government prefers to provide funding to laboratories that: (1) serve the economy or military, (2) rectify a crisis, or (3) fits some spectacular policy initiative. And, as a result of the need for that funding, there has been a shift in priority for labs, such that the practice of free, educational science has taken a second place position to the practices required by outside forces.

At this point, we have to ask ourselves what we risk by restricting the freedom of scientists so heavily. All of us have learned in schools about the exploits of Sir Isaac Newton, who was able to push our understanding of planetary science far beyond where it was. Would he have been able to do that under the constraints of commercialism, for a particular organization’s gain?