Preproposal news is starting to leak out of the BIO directorate, and with it a renewed sense of anguish among those who were not invited to submit a full proposal. In particular, the invite rates were painfully low this year, coming in around 22%. Considering that only 25-30% of THOSE will ever see funding, it appears that success rates in the NSF core...

The post below was written by a friend who has been through a lot in the past few years. I'm hosting it (was previously on pastebin) here to keep a permanent archive and also to make sure it gets seen. I am always shocked at what some universities will do to keep their "reputation" from being tarnished, while destroying those who build that reputation...

Today is a bit of a day of appreciation for one of the steadiest presences in the Blogging As Scientist game. Whereas I haven't been blogging here in.... a while, there was a time when I had 4-5 posts a week rattling around in my head. Everything was new, and I had no idea what I was doing in this job, but blurting it all out on a screen somehow made...

The more and more we hear about discrimination and harassment in academia, the more it becomes clear that one of the biggest problems with the current system is the potential for roadblocks along the reporting path. Somewhere along the way, it is possible for a Chair, Dean, Administrator, Lawyer, etc., to say "this isn't enough to be considered." and...

As more and more cases of academic sexual harassment continue to come out into the light (and I believe this is barely the appetizer course), there's a lot of people navel gazing about what can be done. And rightfully so - this is a problem that has festered WAY too long, as the stories make clear. Pretty much every field has AT LEAST one dude who "people...

Based on discussions on twitter, it seems pretty clear that a lot of Non-PI scientists don't really understand the concept of indirect costs, aka overhead. Most people know that a university's overhead rate is what they take from federal grant dollars to "keep the lights on", so to speak. But how is it calculated and how is it spent? The indirect rate...