Scientific grant applications are getting heavier on hype
There has been a real shift in the culture of academia over the last 10-15 years that coincides with what I&#x27;m starting to call &quot;the rise of the Twitter Prof&quot;. The twitter thing is both literal and also a stand-in for similar junk like TED talks.<p>IMO, the US needs to clean house. We should restructure our research funding so that it goes to motivated and curious people instead of politically connected PIs. This means totally disconnecting NSF&#x2F;NIH&#x2F;DARPA funding from the university apparatus. Treat academic affiliation -- and the associated albatross of &quot;overhead&quot; -- as a hindrance to grant applications as opposed to a requirement.<p>Imagine how much better the caliber of our research will be if we pay grad students $100K instead of paying them $35K and their university $65K. We could 10x our research spend by giving money to the right people instead of giving it to people who can stomach and afford giving 2&#x2F;3rds of their funding to sad excuses for institutions that American universities have become.<p>At the very least, tax payers need to stop bailing out student loan debt while simultaneously funding <i>multiple</i> annual week-long conferences in Hawaii and Europe for professors who scoff at their teaching assignments.