Pretty funny. I go away for three days of work in the Dry Tortugas, come back and see all this wonderful sludge about me. But, it was fun spending 3 days with 3 or 4 dives per day, doing fieldwork on the last really healthy, unspoiled reef our country has. Temp was mid 80's and water was 75.
I have no doubt Sluggish, that there are people like you speak of, the horrible scientists that are just begging for grant money by doing crap work. I've worked with some of them in the past. Most of them started in the Reagan days, although some of them came around when GW was initially in office. Many of them also left, or were pushed out of science, because we elitists don't like BS, or see our work cited and drug through the cesspool that is another guy's horrible attempt at research. We're pretty much snobs like that. Imagine whatever job you do for a living. Now imagine someone coming along doing a crappier job at your job, and getting payed more for it. How would you react?
Here's the thing.... sooner or later, the cat's outta the bag. You only get a couple of screw ups in the review process before your whole methodology comes into question. As soon as that happens, other scientists won't collaborate with you anymore. Once that happens, you might as well be workin in 7-Eleven, you won't get funded.
Again, I explain, funding does not get distributed for personal use. Every expenditure must be itemized down to the last pencil used. It doesn't go into my bank account. My salary is paid by the institute that hired me, not by my grant funding. You people are pretty damn dense, who don't understand this.
