The difference is giving more power to researchers directly and side-stepping university administration and overhead. See: https://www.nsf.gov/policies/document/indirect-cost-rate

▲

jltsiren 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

More power, with a greater personal risk.

I've received some individual grants from private foundations in another country. Those grants were essentially unconditional gifts, as there were some tax benefits with such grants. I could have spent the funding period surfing in Bali instead of doing research, and nobody would have had the standing to complain.

Things change if the funder wants to maintain control over how the money is spent. Once there are regulations and compliance requirements, things become risky for the individual. If you end up in a situation, where a reasonable person would employ a lawyer or another professional, it's safer to have a legal entity between you and the funder.

▲

matthewdgreen 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Some of this overhead is nonsense. A lot of it is training and fellowships. Some of it exists because the government has strong regulations to prevent self-dealing and fraud. I certainly think some of those regulations could be relaxed, but I’m not sure this administration would produce better ones.

▲

pseudocoup 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If your research requires access to heavy duty machinery then it makes sense to partner with an institution already in possession of the goods. Be that university, national lab, or as a sole practitioner. Of course there’s some premium overhead built in to the rate. Hardware and institutional backing ain’t cheap.

▲

rayiner 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue we have over-corrected on that stuff. Go back and look how processes worked in the 1950s and 1960s. People used to write relatively short proposals to do quite massive works. It's the meme: "You can just do stuff!"

I'd argue that this is one of the advantages of Anglo and Anglo-American culture that has become eroded over time. I've been reading about the British East India Company and how much discretion employees were afforded in carrying out their work: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-com.... They had like 35 employees in London and managed to take over Mughal India, which was a gunpowder empire with guns, cannons, 4-5x the state revenues and 25x the population of Britain. Pound for pound it's probably one of the most effective organizations in history.

▲

matthewdgreen 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Federal laws on grants are Byzantine and I’m not going to defend them. I think they make research much too expensive, and the compliance costs exclude smaller businesses and institutions. With that said: the general public voted for them. They did this because politicians raised the specter of fraud (which is real) and the public does not like their tax dollars being stolen. The current administration is doing things right now that sure look a lot like the type of stuff that motivates even stricter laws in the future, and will cause blowback for years. So no, I don’t think they’re in a good position to leave us with “reforms”. If anything I think they’re going to be gone in two years and all their works will sum up to even more new laws designed to keep the next version of them in check.

▲

tuveson 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Effective at what though? The article is not exactly painting a rosy picture of EIC, nor should it. More of an advertisement for laws and regulations that curtail such abuses and an educated populace that can see such a threat to their liberty.

	▲	rayiner 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Effective at what though? The article is not exactly painting a rosy picture of EIC, nor should it. The EIC overthrew a gunpowder empire with vast resources and one of the largest militaries in the world with 1,000 European soldiers and a few dozen administrators in London. There's incredible lessons in there, orthogonal to whatever you're talking about.

▲

Natfan 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

effectiveness does not equate moral or ethical goodness

	▲	fastball 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Moral posturing also doesn't equate to moral or ethical goodness. That said, effectiveness actually is a frequent shortcut to goodness, in that effectiveness often leads to efficiency and efficiency is one of the best methods of indiscriminate uplifting of people in an otherwise unfair and imbalanced world.
	▲	rayiner 13 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Organizational effectiveness and efficiency is a moral virtue. It's a force multiplier that you can apply to whatever end you think is moral or ethical.