
How to incentivize research scientists - pchristensen
http://www.slate.com/id/2240838/pagenum/all/
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elblanco
Having worked at a major research facility as a research scientist I can say
that providing incentives to researchers is usually not the problem.

At least where I worked, we worked on limited government contracts that were
intended to scratch a particular itch (or explore where that itch might be).
"Innovation" only really ever happened when the client asked the right
question, and we managed to find a novel answer. Sometimes the contracts were
for just a few months, sometimes for decades depending.

There was almost no room for self-guided exploration or innovation in the
sense that I think this article is talking about. Nobody ever got a contract
for a few million $$$ and a couple of years to just "go forth and do what you
do and innovate".

On the front side of actually doing the work, we spent inordinate time and
effort hunting for grant money and contracts and trying to secure those as
well. But again, once we got the work, the strings attached were usually so
restrictive that most of the work ended up being more or less mechanical
except for a couple particularly sticky problem areas (which of course is why
our services were employed).

~~~
mbergins
DARPA funding mostly?

