This system is one of the primary reasons I decided not to go into academia
“what happened to you, academia? You used to be about the science. Now you’re just about the money.”
I’m gonna go with “immediately after the fall of the soviet union” when the feds pulled the plug on all funding for higher education in lieu of doing donuts in the parking lot and invading Iraq over and over again
Scientists have been looking for funding since before the scientific method existed. Leonardo Da Vinci had patrons
Researchers need to afford to live, and that money comes from research grants. If this was even a problem, which it isn’t, the root cause is capitalism.
It’s inherent to grants. If you want scientists to choose their topics you have to fund them unconditionally.
