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1. Embed this notice
   Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 19:56:22 JST Jon Sterling

   WE MUST FUND INTELLECTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE LONG TERM
   (a call to action)

   http://www.jonmsterling.com/jms-013G.xml

   “I am calling for the endowment and funding of independent research institutions on a permanent or decades-long basis, whose mission is not bound to a specific tool but rather to a set of scientific principles and society-level goals to be achieved on a generational timescale. … It is time for us to build and sustain the scaffolding for the next three centuries of Science.”

   • Embed this notice
     julesh (julesh@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 20:05:51 JST julesh

     in reply to

     @jonmsterling For the last year I've put the majority of my energy into trying to fund what could reasonably be called a FRO. On the whole I did not succeed yet, and every time I failed I've given up more and more moral boundaries. It's also explicitly short-term: first try to hire a postdoc or 2, and then worry about what happens after that

     For infrastructure costs that are smaller than 1FTE salary level I'm currently fairly optimistic that crowdfunding could actually work, because that's how this very mastodon server works

   • Embed this notice
     Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 20:27:09 JST Jon Sterling

     in reply to

     • julesh

     @julesh Yeah, this is not easy... With the major funding models, I really have to ask myself whether it is worth getting the money at all.

     If I spend all the time that is needed to get enough money to hire one (or god forbid, two) postdocs for a couple years, what I get in return is a lot of management overhead and realistically speaking not a ton of "added power" in my research (because the mission of a postdoc is rightly Get A Job After This, not Make a Long Term Impact). I don't think this problem can be solved in a model where only the tiniest minority of researchers (faculty like us) have any long-term job stability.

     Perhaps it is different in more applied areas or lab sciences, but I have for this reason felt that the reason to hire postdocs is mainly to support the continued health of the field by giving good young people a job and a chance to catch their breath before going on the faculty market. If I wanted my own research to go as rapidly as possible, I would hire nobody...