The following arguments do not necessarily represent my positions, but here they are, just for the sake of argument.
1. Of course there will be a certain number of labs that will shut down, but how serious will the impact actually be? Are we talking about a couple of hundred people? Or hundreds of thousands?
2. Okay, some (perhaps even many) PI labs will close, but is that bad? Perhaps these labs are sub-par anyway, and it wouldn't it be good for the progress of science to direct the money to labs that produce top research? Companies get rid of "dead weight" all the time, and that's exactly what helps them navigate a changing environment, isn't it?
3. Regarding overhead. If one PI has the same amount of funding as the four PIs previously, shouldn't this one surviving lab hire the same number of people and spend the same amount of money for reagents? Sure, there will be some lag, but once the system equilibrates, shouldn't university get the same amount in overhead?
It's all about the transition period. Yes, in steady state either model is fine.
I really don't like the argument that the labs who will have to close are sub-par. There are people out there who had a grant scored 5th or 6th percentile and they need that grant to continue operating and it looks like now they won't get it. Those are not sub-par labs. They're just labs who were unlucky with timing. And culling labs primarily based on luck doesn't seem like a smart strategy to me.
Agreed, and this may contribute to a talent gap where a generation of scientists leave/couldn't come into the US
The following arguments do not necessarily represent my positions, but here they are, just for the sake of argument.
1. Of course there will be a certain number of labs that will shut down, but how serious will the impact actually be? Are we talking about a couple of hundred people? Or hundreds of thousands?
2. Okay, some (perhaps even many) PI labs will close, but is that bad? Perhaps these labs are sub-par anyway, and it wouldn't it be good for the progress of science to direct the money to labs that produce top research? Companies get rid of "dead weight" all the time, and that's exactly what helps them navigate a changing environment, isn't it?
3. Regarding overhead. If one PI has the same amount of funding as the four PIs previously, shouldn't this one surviving lab hire the same number of people and spend the same amount of money for reagents? Sure, there will be some lag, but once the system equilibrates, shouldn't university get the same amount in overhead?
It's all about the transition period. Yes, in steady state either model is fine.
I really don't like the argument that the labs who will have to close are sub-par. There are people out there who had a grant scored 5th or 6th percentile and they need that grant to continue operating and it looks like now they won't get it. Those are not sub-par labs. They're just labs who were unlucky with timing. And culling labs primarily based on luck doesn't seem like a smart strategy to me.