xkcd: Asking Scientists Questions
https://xkcd.com/2655/

Yup, filling out grant applications all the time must be horrible.

Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2655:_Asking_Scientists_Questions

Lynn

In article <tcmdol$1obj$1@gioia.aioe.org>,
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>xkcd: Asking Scientists Questions
> https://xkcd.com/2655/
>
>Yup, filling out grant applications all the time must be horrible.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Other than the little "$500 in travel expenses
through your institution" grants, we're not talking about filling out a few
pages of forms. A serious grant application is basically a book's worth of
content, loads of accounting crap, and generally a huge amount of work that
is NOT what you got into science for. The bigger and more successful
research groups can afford to hire someone trained in paperwork stuff to do
that (and they'll be paid from the grant), but the vast majority of
scientists need to take time away from going science to do paperwork so they
can have the money to do the science they no longer have time to do.

Dave Van Domelen, and then there's the scientists who have to give up a
week or two sorting through all the grant applications and deciding which
ones to fund, which isn't exactly a desirable job.

On 8/7/2022 12:52 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> In article <tcmdol$1obj$1@gioia.aioe.org>, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>> xkcd: Asking Scientists Questions https://xkcd.com/2655/
>>
>> Yup, filling out grant applications all the time must be horrible.
>
> Yeah, it's pretty bad. Other than the little "$500 in travel
> expenses through your institution" grants, we're not talking about
> filling out a few pages of forms. A serious grant application is
> basically a book's worth of content, loads of accounting crap, and
> generally a huge amount of work that is NOT what you got into science
> for. The bigger and more successful research groups can afford to
> hire someone trained in paperwork stuff to do that (and they'll be
> paid from the grant), but the vast majority of scientists need to
> take time away from going science to do paperwork so they can have
> the money to do the science they no longer have time to do.

My last post-doc was in a 4- or 5-member materials science group; the
senior professor spent almost all his time hustling for money (and
seemed happy to do so). Lucky guy I suppose; I wouldn't have been able
to do that.

Not the only, or even the major, reason I happily took a technology
development job in industry, but it made leaving academia easier.

--
Mark Jackson - https://mark-jackson.online/
There's no nondestructive test
for indestructibility. - Randall Munroe