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Let 'Em Loose

Feb 13, 2009

A guest post at Olivia Judson's On the Wild Side column from Stanford's Steven Quake discusses how science is funded in the US. After start-up packages run dry, professors must earn their own as well as their students' keep through grants. Quake says running a lab is very much like running a small business, but at the cost of riskier, creative ideas being denied funding and lost. He writes that it is time to re-think how science is funded and "let scientists off their leashes."

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