Cut ALL government funding to universities. They have endowments, spend that stagnant money on research. Watch how parsimonious the boards get when it’s their own cash.
I think the funds for the "administrative overhead" should come out of the original grant allowance, not tacked on top. That should set the cat amongst the pigeons.
What you've described is actually how it's done. The administrative cut is already factored into the size of the grant. So, it's a distinction without a difference.
I was discussing this the other day with an old med school classmate of mine who retired after a long academic medical career. He pointed out that many foundations that fund research grants, like the American Heart Association, cap indirect costs at 15% over direct costs, and that there's no reason for NIH grants to be charged any more than that. He pointed out that at one time when he was at Harvard med school in the 1980s, the IDC rate was 104% to fund the building of a new power plant. Anything over and above what private foundation like AHA pay will just be used by university administrators to fund their pet projects. And while many are wailing and gnashing their teeth and saying that capping IDCs at 15-20% will cripple research, in fact, provided the total NIH/NSF research budget is not cut, capping IDCs at 15-20% over direct costs will mean more money left to fund actual research.
“A 2015 British Academy of Medical Sciences report suggested that the false discovery rate in some areas of biomedicine could be as high as 69 percent.”
Well, thanks be to God that well-trained AI will soon do all the heavy lifting to discover new medicines, cutting out humans entirely and therefore all opportunities for fraud. 🙄
I'm surprised and cheered by how zealously the new administration is attacking fake science and federal bloat. Even if this pace continued for years, I worry that the efforts will amount to buckets from the ocean, but by changing the funding signals and reforming incentives there could be some truly wonderful downstream effects. You never hear anyone explicitly defend this kind of nonsense... yet we spend billions every year generating it. We must stop.
Hat is off to you Dr. Briggs, another great post. I do hope you and The RedNeck Intellectual are working with DOGE and Christopher Rufo in helping the movement to restructure our higher learning institutions and begin producing innovative solutions for our society. Thanks for all you do.
Refrigeration, canned goods, interchangeable parts, semiconductors, VACCINATIONS, nanotechnology, genomics, etc.
How “basic” are any of the above to our daily lives, our “civilization” or culture? (What is “basic”?)
What do they have in common? (Maybe not so much??)
“Refrigeration” stands out (for me) because (to my knowledge) very little (if any) taxpayer funding was involved in developing this and related technologies.
“Interchangeable parts” stands out just as saliently because without taxpayer funding (the pre Civil War US government though its facility in Springfield Massachusetts) the machinery (grinding, milling etc.), methods, and measuring tools would have been developed by another government somewhere else (perhaps the English, probably the Prussians?) because the amount of time and capital required for bootstrapping was beyond the capacity and motivation of any private profit oriented concern.
“Vaccinations” are interesting because Louis Pasteur’s work was funded by the French government augmented by industry support and a lot of private donations. The MRNA research for the latest breakthroughs in vaccines followed a similar pattern though the role of government in being able to direct massive amounts of funding extremely rapidly was probably much more dramatic than in Pasteur’s circumstances.
Canned goods like interchangeable parts and semiconductors (computerization) were originally sponsored and developed for military purposes. Under Napoleon’s direction the method of sealing heated food in sealed glass jars was demonstrated and the British later developed the method of sealing food in metal containers, keeping in mind prospects for mass production and a ready market in the British navy.
A nation’s military, even when it is not the driver of basic research, is often a captive market for new technologies that are still being perfected in terms of design, use, and manufacturing. Another regimented “captive market” for mass produced clothes and shoes were the slaves of the American South upon whom many of the quantitive (later known as Taylorism) were first inflicted/practiced.
Mass production of goods, “massification” in general, and the “regimentation” of the human mind are surely related and generate all kinds of justified unease.
What is basic?
Is fear more basic than curiosity? Violence more than nurturance? Hatred more than sexuality? Revenge more than altruism? Pride more than empathy? Resentment more than forgiveness? …Whatever their relationship to each other all of these do seem to be on a different plane of the human make up than those modern aspects of culture requiring massive accumulations of capital and force.
Gleeful gloating over the pain of others is not confined to fascism. It happens all the time in secure environments (including nurseries, but also in the agonistic arenas “maintained” under liberal (rule-of-law, constitutional) democracies. I did my share of canvassing before the last election here in New Hampshire where (contrary to the national trend) we increased voter turnout over 2020 and delivered our electoral votes to the genocidal Biden Harris administration. Something that struck me about MANY many Trump supporters was their FAITH in liberal democracy (or is it “human nature”) that a victory for Trump COULD NOT POSSIBLY involve all the chaos and pain he was promising.
ALL of us (at times) have thrilled at the discomfort of others. It’s part of human nature. VERY few of us commit to the conscious and intentional infliction of terror, genocide, or prolonged subjugation of any other class of humans and that PROBABLY includes the vast majority of those who (for whatever wounded reasons) proudly style themselves fascists.
And the most “best” and most “basic” forms of science are less concerned with “answers” than they are with coming up with BETTER questions.
I’d like to propose that one reason why attacks on universities (where so much basic research happens, mostly with taxpayer funding) is that “we” have not been able to marshal “ourselves” against a common enemy since the fall of the Soviet Union (although THAT could change in a trice, couldn’t it?!
What interests me (as a rule-of-law communist/anarchist) is the pattern(?) by which the American taxpayer has allowed himself to fund so much basic research, and then to subsidize so much of the marketing and production of nascent technologies via the military captive market, and then to support (by cutting taxes) the accumulation of obscene profits by private corporations whose owners then use their accumulated wealth to subvert and traduce rule-of-law liberal democracy which made their fortunes possible in the first place. Of course, to subvert constitutional democracy, they have to poison our minds with excessive doses of destabilizing fear, selfishness, outrage, guilt, and shame.
Cut ALL government funding to universities. They have endowments, spend that stagnant money on research. Watch how parsimonious the boards get when it’s their own cash.
I think the funds for the "administrative overhead" should come out of the original grant allowance, not tacked on top. That should set the cat amongst the pigeons.
What you've described is actually how it's done. The administrative cut is already factored into the size of the grant. So, it's a distinction without a difference.
Supposedly, NIH just tacks on the overhead. NSF doesn't.
Artist here, I run small business. Overhead is <1%-
Mantra: exercise deferred consumption 😘🥳.
Has created abundance ❤️.
I was discussing this the other day with an old med school classmate of mine who retired after a long academic medical career. He pointed out that many foundations that fund research grants, like the American Heart Association, cap indirect costs at 15% over direct costs, and that there's no reason for NIH grants to be charged any more than that. He pointed out that at one time when he was at Harvard med school in the 1980s, the IDC rate was 104% to fund the building of a new power plant. Anything over and above what private foundation like AHA pay will just be used by university administrators to fund their pet projects. And while many are wailing and gnashing their teeth and saying that capping IDCs at 15-20% will cripple research, in fact, provided the total NIH/NSF research budget is not cut, capping IDCs at 15-20% over direct costs will mean more money left to fund actual research.
“A 2015 British Academy of Medical Sciences report suggested that the false discovery rate in some areas of biomedicine could be as high as 69 percent.”
Well, thanks be to God that well-trained AI will soon do all the heavy lifting to discover new medicines, cutting out humans entirely and therefore all opportunities for fraud. 🙄
Universities don't need extra money to administrate researchers...that's their job, for which they are already paid too much...0% is right
What the heck is an "emotional all-hands meeting"? It sure don`t sound like a guy thing.
Then again ...
Like the expression "took a licking", or "we were licked". I thought it sounded oddly ambiguous, even way back as a 3rd grader.
I'm surprised and cheered by how zealously the new administration is attacking fake science and federal bloat. Even if this pace continued for years, I worry that the efforts will amount to buckets from the ocean, but by changing the funding signals and reforming incentives there could be some truly wonderful downstream effects. You never hear anyone explicitly defend this kind of nonsense... yet we spend billions every year generating it. We must stop.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/project-2026?r=1neg52
Hat is off to you Dr. Briggs, another great post. I do hope you and The RedNeck Intellectual are working with DOGE and Christopher Rufo in helping the movement to restructure our higher learning institutions and begin producing innovative solutions for our society. Thanks for all you do.
Refrigeration, canned goods, interchangeable parts, semiconductors, VACCINATIONS, nanotechnology, genomics, etc.
How “basic” are any of the above to our daily lives, our “civilization” or culture? (What is “basic”?)
What do they have in common? (Maybe not so much??)
“Refrigeration” stands out (for me) because (to my knowledge) very little (if any) taxpayer funding was involved in developing this and related technologies.
“Interchangeable parts” stands out just as saliently because without taxpayer funding (the pre Civil War US government though its facility in Springfield Massachusetts) the machinery (grinding, milling etc.), methods, and measuring tools would have been developed by another government somewhere else (perhaps the English, probably the Prussians?) because the amount of time and capital required for bootstrapping was beyond the capacity and motivation of any private profit oriented concern.
“Vaccinations” are interesting because Louis Pasteur’s work was funded by the French government augmented by industry support and a lot of private donations. The MRNA research for the latest breakthroughs in vaccines followed a similar pattern though the role of government in being able to direct massive amounts of funding extremely rapidly was probably much more dramatic than in Pasteur’s circumstances.
Canned goods like interchangeable parts and semiconductors (computerization) were originally sponsored and developed for military purposes. Under Napoleon’s direction the method of sealing heated food in sealed glass jars was demonstrated and the British later developed the method of sealing food in metal containers, keeping in mind prospects for mass production and a ready market in the British navy.
A nation’s military, even when it is not the driver of basic research, is often a captive market for new technologies that are still being perfected in terms of design, use, and manufacturing. Another regimented “captive market” for mass produced clothes and shoes were the slaves of the American South upon whom many of the quantitive (later known as Taylorism) were first inflicted/practiced.
Mass production of goods, “massification” in general, and the “regimentation” of the human mind are surely related and generate all kinds of justified unease.
What is basic?
Is fear more basic than curiosity? Violence more than nurturance? Hatred more than sexuality? Revenge more than altruism? Pride more than empathy? Resentment more than forgiveness? …Whatever their relationship to each other all of these do seem to be on a different plane of the human make up than those modern aspects of culture requiring massive accumulations of capital and force.
Gleeful gloating over the pain of others is not confined to fascism. It happens all the time in secure environments (including nurseries, but also in the agonistic arenas “maintained” under liberal (rule-of-law, constitutional) democracies. I did my share of canvassing before the last election here in New Hampshire where (contrary to the national trend) we increased voter turnout over 2020 and delivered our electoral votes to the genocidal Biden Harris administration. Something that struck me about MANY many Trump supporters was their FAITH in liberal democracy (or is it “human nature”) that a victory for Trump COULD NOT POSSIBLY involve all the chaos and pain he was promising.
ALL of us (at times) have thrilled at the discomfort of others. It’s part of human nature. VERY few of us commit to the conscious and intentional infliction of terror, genocide, or prolonged subjugation of any other class of humans and that PROBABLY includes the vast majority of those who (for whatever wounded reasons) proudly style themselves fascists.
And the most “best” and most “basic” forms of science are less concerned with “answers” than they are with coming up with BETTER questions.
I’d like to propose that one reason why attacks on universities (where so much basic research happens, mostly with taxpayer funding) is that “we” have not been able to marshal “ourselves” against a common enemy since the fall of the Soviet Union (although THAT could change in a trice, couldn’t it?!
What interests me (as a rule-of-law communist/anarchist) is the pattern(?) by which the American taxpayer has allowed himself to fund so much basic research, and then to subsidize so much of the marketing and production of nascent technologies via the military captive market, and then to support (by cutting taxes) the accumulation of obscene profits by private corporations whose owners then use their accumulated wealth to subvert and traduce rule-of-law liberal democracy which made their fortunes possible in the first place. Of course, to subvert constitutional democracy, they have to poison our minds with excessive doses of destabilizing fear, selfishness, outrage, guilt, and shame.
You had me until the last paragraph, so ... thanks ...
Briggs, AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! Hallelujah!