I’ve long thought that university administrations had difficulty with the concept of running their “business” efficiently. Now I have proof.

Someone that I know very well (snicker) has had some funding for a few years to develop software infrastructure for next-gen sequencing data. This is important work, since next-gen data poses quite a challenge. The work was done through NC State funds for cancer research.

After spending a lot of time and money building a great team, and getting the project seriously underway… the person just received an email from an administrator. The administrator said:

“We just got paperwork to transfer all your people off this account. Please let me know what account to transfer them to.”

Haha. Like this investigator has another pool of $200k/year lying around.

Unless the person(s) behind this unexpected move change their minds, it’s going to be interesting times in the affected lab.

Nobody talked to the PI about the status of the project. Nobody gave any warning. Instead, they did the most cowardly thing possible in sending paperwork to a departmental administrator, so she could let the PI know the bad news (with zero notice).

Hello?

Let’s look at this from only one angle: good use of taxpayer funds. Let’s consider how useful it was to spend nearly $400k to build a team and get the project going – and then cancel it without warning.

Bye bye $400k.

Now that I’ve finished my book on grant writing, I think the book I’m planning to write about dysfunctional bureaucracy at universities just moved up in priority.

How dare you to “speculate” about what your results might mean?

That’s the attitude I’ve received twice now, from two different reviewers, on two different papers.

In the latest case, we did some work related to antibiotic resistance, and we found interesting new pathways activated in one resistant strain.

At the end of the paper, we speculated about what these pathways might be doing. We even came up with a model for it.

We didn’t claim that this was “the correct answer” – we just said, “hey, here’s our model, it’s the best we can come up with given what we know so far.”

The important thing about a model is that then you have something to test.

Science always proceeds in two stages:

1. Start with a model (e.g. a hypothesis)
2. Test that hypothesis, attempting to falsify it

For some reason, certain people seem to think that science solely consists of step number 2 – falsifying.

But, actually, step 1 is just as important, if not more. Step 1 is what leads to the real innovative leaps (and things like Nobel prizes).

But, because it involves “creativity,” and because nobody really understands what “creativity” is (a topic for a future book of mine), it gets swept under the rug.

Hence, when we use our creativity to speculate and build a model of what our results might mean, we get reviewers who say: OMG, hey, that’s way too speculative! You shouldn’t put that in your paper!

Let’s consider two scenarios:

1. We publish a paper with just the results, giving no interpretation/speculation.

2. We publish a paper with the results plus our speculative model of what they mean.

Which one of those two papers is more likely to lead someone to follow up to actually figure out what is going on?

In case number 2, where we provide the model, it is easy. We’ve provided a model, and all someone has to do is to test it (or prove it wrong).

In case number 1, we’ve only provided some data. Someone else can go test it to make sure that their data produces the same results – but if they also refuse to speculate about what it means, their paper will be even more boring than ours (unless it is a conflicting result).

Speculation is the cornerstone of science. It is what pushes things forward. I don’t like reading papers that leave me without any speculation as to what the results mean – they are dry and boring. And I certainly don’t like writing such papers because they are dry and boring.

As long as speculation is labeled for what it is, nobody is being misled. Any reader can choose to agree with it or disagree with it. In fact, that goes for any model of anything – they are just models, and they’re all speculative.

This comes back to my core motto: don’t be afraid to be proven wrong. You may be wrong. But if the fear of being wrong prevents you from speaking out and arguing a concept to the best of your ability, you’ll go forever unnoticed, into obscurity. I’ve decided that obscurity is not for me. What about you?

———

ps – The paper was accepted with only minor revisions, despite the objections of the reviewer over our speculative model.

Over at The Scientist, there’s a fruitful discussion about women in science.

I have very mixed feelings about wading into this, because it is fraught with issues.

But I’m not the timid sort, so I’m going to – in order to help you.

I get a bit tired of the rehashing of “its harder for women,” because, frankly, that conversation is not going to help you in your career.

Yes, it is harder for us women in science. My own life experiences have indicated that there are more barriers in front of us than in front of men. And I hope we can keep making progress on tearing those barriers down. But if there is progress, it is going to be slow – very slow.

Hence, this falls in the category of “out of your control.”

Spending mental energy on things out of your control is never productive.

For example, let’s say you’re only 6′ tall but you want to be an NBA basketball player. Which of the following approaches is the best one to take?

1. Lobby the NBA to incorporate some kind of handicapping for “short” folks into the rules, so that you are on “fair ground” with the 7′ and up crowd.

2. Work your hiney off to be an invaluable player, taking advantage of flying “under the radar” of taller players? Use your unique strengths – being compact and fast – to your advantage.

I don’t think #1 is going to get you very far.

But I happen to know of real-life cases of #2, such as championship basketball player John Stockton (who used to play for the Utah Jazz).

This discussion about “women being disadvantaged” allows us to point the blame at the outside world. Yes, the outside world is unfair. Just think of all those people living in poverty around the globe. That’s not fair. But is pointing that out and discussing it going to change it? Not much.

Pointing the blame at the outside world prevents us from being the very best that we can be – by doing the one thing that we can: changing ourselves.

For the open minded woman who wants to achieve greater success levels, she could learn a thing or two from men. Such as:

1. To be bold and take risks. Most Nobel prizes come from “bold” new avenues being opened up in science. A lot of us are timid about this. I think it comes from growing up in an environment where peer approval is the #1 priority (e.g. Junior high school). People who are looking for peer approval are unlikely to really take the bold risks. And so they’re unlikely to reap the rewards (because, reward is generally proportional to risk, to within some arbitrary coefficient).

2. Learn to promote yourself. A lot of us are really bad about this. We can’t promote ourselves, without feeling like we are violating some social taboo. But you won’t get anywhere in science (or life) without effectively promoting yourself. I’m not talking about standing up and saying “look at me, I’m great, I need to be appreciated.” That doesn’t work (I’ve tried, and that was a miserable failure). I’m talking about more subtle aspects of persuasion. Take, for example, my willingness to write on this blog, and take a stand on some issues here. That gets me recognized for some thought leadership. Ask yourself: is doing that an effective promotion of Morgan? If you answered “yes,” then find ways to do things like that. It is not by accident that I’m here writing a blog. I am here to help you, but helping you also helps me get recognized. So, become a thought leader in your field. For example, organize a conference… write review articles … start a blog … or whatever.

3. Be confident. Sociological studies have shown that something is different about men and women time and again: men are over confident about their abilities, and women are under-confident about their abilities. And that has major ramifications. If you are under-confident, you are far less likely to jump into something, getting yourself “in above your head.” Yet, most truly accomplished people that I know got to be accomplished by jumping in “above their heads,” then rising to meet the occasion. Once you’re in sink-or-swim mode, you’ll find untapped resources inside of yourself. Men do that all the time, simply because of their over confidence. We women do this much less often – and our careers suffer as a result. WIthout diving in, few of us will get the chance to force ourselves to “take it to the next level”. We quit before we start. I used to think that overconfidence was a bad thing, but now I realize it has its upsides. So, work on your confidence.

4. Play to your strengths. For example, writing seems to flow more easily for some women than for some men (please, no comments complaining about the stereotype, I use this only as an example). Once you identify a strength like that: use it! If you are a fast writer – use it to write more than your peers! It is as simple as that.

If we want to make a societal change in this situation, trying to effect structural change in academia will be slow and only moderately effective. It may happen, eventually, but structural change is the slowest kind there is. Individual change is very fast – once you decide to change (but, making the decision to change can be slow).

If we want to effect real societal change, a more effective approach would be going into high schools and colleges to give young women training in the above vital skills, before their habits get set in stone. We should be teaching young women the life skills of: self confidence, boldness, reasonable risk taking, and self promotion.

This would go far beyond just making better and more women scientists.

The headlines are in: “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form” (from the Guardian)

One would look at the comments and think that humans are playing “God”.

Sorry folks, we’re not there yet.

The genome is just a blueprint.

The genome itself isn’t “life”.

If you happen to think that a genome = life, try this experiment (it is simple): extract DNA from a cell, and go put it in a test tube, and see what happens.

Does it create cells that grow?

Nope. It does nothing.

What Venter’s group did (which includes my friend Clyde Hutchison) is simple: they transplanted a new blueprint into an already living cell.

Why is this such a big deal to people? Why do people blow this up into hyperbole, claiming this is “playing God?”

It is a marvelous technical accomplishment, but let’s be a little realistic. The method would not have worked without an already functioning/intact cell to transplant the blueprint into.

Furthermore, from my discussions with Clyde, they are far from the point of being able to actually “design” the blueprint from scratch.

In fact, on his recent visit to my campus, we mused about the idea of “genome designer” software – that would allow a person to pick out the attributes desired in a genome, then have the software design the DNA that will make that into being.

The conclusion? That software is probably decades away. (I’d love to be a part of creating that software, but the chance of getting a funding agency to pay for it is close to nil – they don’t like long term, creative ventures like that).

The genome that Venter’s group synthesized is based on an existing genome, already designed by nature and evolved over billions of years. They just copied its code, and added a few extras.

That’s like finding a blueprint, making a Xerox copy of it, and then putting your signature on it, then handing it to the architect. The resulting building may look much like the original, but that doesn’t mean that you are playing “the great architect in the sky”.

I don’t want to sound like a party pooper – this accomplishment is an important first step towards “designing life”. But it is only a first step.

Much akin to the first step towards building an automobile that consisted of strapping an engine to a buggy. Someone had to show that it was feasible, long before people like Henry T Ford figured out how to produce them efficiently.

This is like that – it is quite important in that it shows that it is possible.

But in terms of “Playing God”, this one falls short.

I was recently speaking to an entrepeneurial fellow, and he made a comment that stuck in my mind: “people like you and I are unemployable.”

It didn’t take me long to realize that he was right.

He was referring, overall, to the entrepeneur personality.

The “problem” with entrepreneurs is that they can’t just accept the way things are – they have to go around always trying to make things “better”.

That’s great if you’re starting a new business, or running a certain kind of science lab.

It’s not so great if you find yourself embedded in a stiff bureaucracy that is reticent to any kind of change.

The reference to being unemployable is that people like he – and myself – would drive most traditional managers/bosses crazy. Because we can’t leave well enough alone. We can’t let tradition stand. We can’t do something just because someone told us to do it – we have to understand “why” we are doing it – and then try to improve upon it.

It’s a sad statement about the stultification of most jobs.

Maybe that’s why I know of so many people who are giving up regular jobs to venture out on their own in business or consulting. It seems that more than just a few people realize that they can no longer stifle themselves enough to be “employable”.

One of my long-term goals is to figure out how to do science without having to do the bureaucracy. You may think it is wishful thinking, but I have a plan (kind of like the Cylons).

Maybe I’ll start an interdisciplinary research institute that is strucutred to be size and bureaucracy limited. Wouldn’t that be nice?

consulting, and

What is the cost of Open Source publishing?

Recently the International Society for Computational Biology put out a request for feedback on their draft Literature Open Public Access Policy Statement.

The goal is laudable: encourage all computational biology researchers to publish their work where it can be openly accessed by all.

This goal makes sense as long as the public is paying for the research being done. When the public pays, the work should be open access.

Right now, in the US and some European nations, the public pays well for science. The NIH alone doles out somewhere north of $10 billion per year in extramural, R01 style funding. And, the NIH has a public access policy in place, that mandates Open Access to the results supported by these monies.

I agree that federal granting agencies should mandate open access publishing, precisely because the funding comes from the public.

However, the ISCB’s policy seems to imply that, regardless of funding source, all results should be “open access” (which usually means the author has to pay to publish and share his/her results).

There’s a particular myopia among many scientists I know that our recent economic woes are just a little “blip” and that soon we’ll return to the good old days of solid, reliable public science funding.

If only it were so (I’d love nothing more than that).

But the reality is, every Western government (and some eastern ones, like Japan) are groaning under unprecedented debt loads. These are debt loads that range from 50%-200% or more of the GDP (note that these numbers don’t account for the massive US stimulus and bank bailouts, which by some estimates are on track to more than double the debt numbers).

Historically, countries carrying those kind of debt loads always run into economic troubles. Not of the minor kind, but of the major kind (depressions, currency collapses, bank panics, rampant inflationary bouts, etc).

Witness the recent turmoil in Greece. That turmoil is only the tip of the iceberg. Some argue that USA’s debt position is actually worse than Greece’s, as a percent of GDP (for a sobering look, have a read here).

Why should you, the scientist, care?

Because, when this debt comes calling, governments are going to be looking for things to cut. Lots of things to cut. (Either that and/or governments will inflate our way out of this, meaning that your grants won’t get cut, but your dollars will buy only a fraction of what they do now).

How does this relate to ISCB’s call?

Because it appears to reflect a line of thinking that is based on the present situation of relatively lavish public funding. It is projecting the recent past (30 years of great science funding) into the future (the next 30 years are unlikely to be like the last 30!).

However, if or when the funding becomes less lavish, who will pay for our science? And if someone besides the government is paying (e.g. companies, investors, crowdsourcing, etc), should we really be mandating “open access?”

That seems like an unfunded mandate.

I share the idealism of open access. My lab shares its software, and most of our publications are in Open Access journals (plus, now we have to, due to the NIH rules).

Yet that idealism doesn’t reflect that it costs money to do science, and that most scientists can’t fund it as a hobby out of their own pockets.

Until food and housing become Open Access, the economics of mandating Open Access publishing without identifying how it will be paid for it seems doomed to failure.

—

One quick note: if this is too doomerish and gets you into a depressive funk (like I was in for about two years when I learned how deep our economic doo doo is), don’t let it do that to you. Instead, take action to insulate yourself!

It is part of a natural cycle. There are great excesses in the systems. They will sort themselves out.

In the meantime, you need to be quick on your feet, adaptable, and entrepreneurial. Those attributes will get you through the coming challenges much better than if you’re ill prepared.

But, don’t expect to just sit by and have this leave you unscathed. It won’t.

And that is why I’m writing a book about “marketing your science” — to add entrepreneurial skills to the average scientist’s toolbox (the book is going well, I just finished another chapter).

If you don’t buy my argument from Episode V about the idea that to be truly successful, you need to think “proactive” rather than “reactive”, let’s consider one more idea from Covey’s book.

At the beginning he talks about “production” (P) versus “production capacity” (PC).

Let’s use the analogy of an automobile. The product (P) of an automobile is high speed movement – traveling miles quickly.

The production capacity (PC) of the automobile is how much mileage it will generate over its lifespan.

Now, if you take the car out, floor the gas pedal and slam on the brakes all the time, you get a lot of short term production. If you push it hard without maintaining it, you are producing lots of P – for a while.

But during that time, the PC is dwindling steadily. Soon, the car won’t start and the engine needs a rebuild.

You’ve traded short term excessive production ℗ for a longer term drop in production capacity (PC).

As Covey points out, humans work exactly the same way. If you hit that gas pedal too hard (i.e. feeling “forced” by circumstances to work 70+ hours per week), the PC will diminish. Students burn out. Lab techs get frustrated. Professors get stressed out and give themselves health problems that are attendant with undue stress.

There must be a P/PC balance in everything. Being proactive is one component of maintaining that balance. It requires thinking about the balance ahead of time, and rather than just reacting to whatever comes along (or the emotional responses to whatever comes along), making a rational decision ahead of time.

Seth Godin is an author and a marketer who makes a bold claim in his latest blog post: higher ed is on its way to a melt down.

He lists 5 reasons why this melt-down will happen (for details on each one, see his blog post, he has some interesting arguments):

1. Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students.

2. College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.

3. The definition of ‘best’ is under siege.

4. The correlation between a typical college degree and success is suspect.

5. Accreditation isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

However, he didn’t list the two main reasons that I think higher-ed is on its way to a melt down – from an insider’s point of view. I believe that the things he lists, while important, are just window dressing on the big issues facing higher ed.

Morgan’s two reasons why higher ed is facing a “meltdown”:

1. Cash flow and leverage Colleges and universities are ever more reliant upon an ever shrinking pie. Legislators are cutting back, and universities are highly leveraged. I won’t name any names – but I happen to know of more than a few universities who have leveraged to the hilt in order to build up programs based on expectations of increases in federal grant funds. If you think being highly leveraged isn’t a problem, just look up the name “Enron” on Google. What happens if the US government decides to (or is forced to) exhibit some real fiscal discipline? With a US debt at 12 Trillion dollars (yes, Trillion!), there is going to be a reality check at some point, sooner or later. No university administrator that I know of is actually thinking about this or preparing for it.

Highly leveraged institutions are particularly susceptible to cash flow crunches. They’re like one of those toothpick bridges you build as a kid – start taking out just a few toothpicks, and the whole thing falls down.

I’m not trying to be chicken little here – but I would like at least a few university and college administrators to wake up to this challenge and to be proactive about it, rather than to keep operating in reactive mode until it is too late.

(aside: It reminds me of a faculty meeting we had about a year before the economic crash of 2009. We were talking about some major building renovation plans, and had 3 different optimistic scenarios – all of them assuming that the money would be there, and that the renovation would proceed in 2009. After the presentation I raised my hand and said “what if the money isn’t there, do you have a plan B?” People looked at me like I had just walked in the room after a dip in a sewage pond – and then kept talking about the rosy optimistic renovation plans. Guess what? It’s now 2010, more than a year after the renovation was supposed to begin, and it hasn’t started yet, nor is it slated to start at any specific date in the near future. The reason for the indefinite delay is the “unexpected economic crunch”. Worse, my university is now in a mad, desperate scramble for space in the wake of not having a “plan B”. How sad that this could have been spared with a bit of proactivity.)

2. The internet. If I can go online and learn quantum mechanics by watching archived videos of Richard Feynman, why should I learn quantum mechanics from the local college professor? What compelling value does the latter offer that the former doesn’t?

Colleges and universities have yet to come up with a good answer to this question. Most are focused so much on recruiting top-notch researchers, that the idea of recruiting a top-notch educator is foreign to them. Hence, the quality of teaching is usually not all that stellar. There are some bright points – I had a few stellar professors as an undergraduate, and I have a few colleagues who really work to be stellar teachers – but the system is not set up to reward that, so it is a relative rarity. (I must admit, I work to be a good teacher, but not a great teacher – because there is no reward for doing so, whereas there is reward for becoming a great researcher and grant writer).

What do the local university or college offer that you can’t get on the internet? About the only two things are:

a) name and prestige – this will not go away, but just wait until some enterprising university or college figures out how to give a “brand name” reputable degree online. Then the whole game changes.

b) hands on experience in labs and etc. This is a vital aspect of getting an education – but does this really influence the “buying” decisions of prospective students? I don’t think so. I believe that aspects like cost and prestige far outweigh considerations of hands-on experience.

Universities are slow to move. Every time an issue comes up, a committee is convened to study it. While I’m sure such committees are being convened to discuss topics like this around the globe – internet time is ticking. Internet time doesn’t wait for a committee to make a decision. It moves ahead at a blindingly fast pace, and no university committee will keep up.

People will increasingly realize that they can get an education online for a fraction of the price of attending a reputable university or college. What are universities going to do without a “plan B” for this one?

So, Seth, I agree with you that there are some big challenges on the horizon, and I’d argue that they are even bigger than the ones you mentioned. I happen to be fond of the higher education system (despite some recent frustrations with it), so this reality is saddening.

But sometimes a natural self “cleansing” of sorts is necessary in any system that develops untoward excesses – which is where we are with higher ed today. I suspect that in 10 or 20 years – after the “melt down,” higher education will be leaner, meaner, and will have figured out how to operate on internet time.

Those .edu’s who don’t get with that program will not exist. Those that do, will thrive.

Morgan was invited to participate in a meeting designed to give feedback to the NIH for the future of informatics for handling the flood of data from the “post genome” era of biology. It is a huge challenge. But in the meeting, the primary focus was all about the machines – hardware and software that it will take to get it done. I was a bit frustrated that there wasn’t more about the “people” in the meeting, for reasons I discuss on the video.

Academics have a love-hate relationship with money that, I think, can sometimes impede forward progress.

I bring this up because of an email conversation with a friend and colleague of mine. I had asked this person about doing an interview for my online grant writing course, and I said I would compensate him for it. He’s someone who has done very well with grants.

He responded telling me that he was uncomfortable with the idea of “charging” for his grant writing wisdom.

I understand that because I previously held an attitude much like that.

Then I started a business (that one was to turn recycled plastics into kayaks and sailboards). It failed. I dumped thousands of hours into it, put my graduate work on hold, and spent 10′s of thousands of dollars on it – all down the tubes.

So I had to ask myself, what was the payoff for that investment? The reason I had made that investment in the first place was for the hope of a dual payoff:
1) Helping the world by finding good use for recycled plastics
2) Making some money in the process so that I didn’t have to scrape by any longer on a graduate student stipend

It didn’t work out. The only payoff was the lessons that I learned (boy, I can still remember that smell of plastic as it bakes in a rotomolding oven!). But I’d never have risked it if it were for just #1 alone. It was the combination of #1 and #2 that kept me going at it.

Flash forward to today. I’ve invested 100′s of hours creating a website, developing advice, working on a book. I’ve taken time away from my lab, from my family, and from my other business. I’ve been stressed out, up late many nights, and have taxed my finances to get it going. I haven’t done the one thing that I love most (whitewater kayaking) in well over a year. Instead, that time has been spent developing this content to help people (like #1 above).

Would I have done all this simply out of charity?

I’m sorry, no.

I like helping people. But there needs to be an economic payoff for doing so – particularly when it involves such a huge commitment. Number 2 above is an integral part of the equation.

If it were just a matter of giving a bit of advice here and there, I’d do that for free (and I often do, both on this blog and on my mailing list).

But when it comes to really helping people with a difficult skill like grantwriting – it takes more than just a few moments. I’ve spent at least 50 hours of my time developing my online grant writing course. And I continue to develop and refine it to try to improve the ways in which it helps people become better at expressing themselves.

I would never have committed that time to it if there weren’t some kind of economic payoff. I think it would be a bit crazy to help other people compete better against me in the pool for grants, just out of the kindness of my heart.

I do want to help, but setting up the infrastructure to really help people in a meaningful way costs money.

Have you ever wondered why, when you ask your colleagues for help, they often don’t have time to help you?

I’ve wondered about that often – and that question relates to this one of money.

As academics, we’re expected to do all sorts of stuff, “for free”. By “free,” I mean, doing things that don’t bring the grants in that often pay our salaries – things like teaching, mentoring, committee work, service work, etc. As a result of all the “free” stuff we do – it becomes very difficult to really do any of it very well, or very deeply.

Young scientists need a lot of mentoring. But that is another “free” activity on the part of the mentor. Some mentors find the time to do a lot of it anyway. Many do not. This is particularly true once you join the ranks of faculty. I had very little in the way of active mentoring. While I’ve made a big deal here of my interactions with Marshall Edgell, who helped me learn effective grant writing, we’re talking about 10-20 hours of total interaction over a span of 8 years. That’s not much.

Because it is “free”, it gets thrown in with all the other “free” stuff that needs to get done, of which there is always too much for the available time. So, it often doesn’t happen. I talked to at least four people at this NHGRI meeting I’ve been at who felt that they had almost no mentoring, and regretted the lack.

On the other hand, if someone comes to me and pays for consulting, or pays for my grant writing course, that changes the dynamic entirely. First, they’ve shown a serious commitment to get help. Second, I’ve now received their money, so I have a strong ethical and business imperative to deliver meaningful value for them. Am I perfect about that at all times? No – but I strive to get as close to that as I can, given my insanely busy life.

In fact, I’m now in the process of hiring an additional support person to keep up with all the issues with running a business like this (I already have one person helping out). That will free me up to develop new products. I have some great ideas to help you, but I can’t make them happen until I can free up some time.

And here’s the thing: I can’t pay those people with vapor. No, I have to pull out that checkbook and send off some big checks. That requires money flow, which requires charging for stuff. And if I’m charging for stuff, then I feel obliged to pay my interviewees for their time.

So, to help people in a deep way, I’ve concluded that there must be an exchange of money. Through that exchange, I’m able to help people more than the “free” model for two reasons:
1. I have a stronger imperative to do so through having received that money; and
2. The person on the other end is usually a better student, because they’ve made an investment of hard earned dollars to improve themselves, hence they strive to maximize the experience.

In contrast, I often see students in my department’s grant writing class taking the learning for granted. They won’t have to write “real” grants for many years (if ever). It is not an immediate need for them. Plus, it is paid for as a deduction from their stipend, so they never feel the pain of investing the money in the education that they’re getting. It feels “free” (even though it is technically not free), so it is not taken as seriously. If we made them pull out the checkbooks every semester for each class, they’d probably take it more seriously.

I think that there’s plenty of room in this world for good, free information. But for deep information that requires a real investment of time and energy to develop and keep up to date, the “free” model doesn’t work well.

At least I can’t figure out how it is supposed to work.

I think that by focusing too much on “free” sharing of information in academia, we’re forgetting the massive monetary infrastructure that supports that “free” – tuition, taxpayers, grants, etc. It is not actually free at all, but we think of it as free because we don’t see the costs.

As Mark Joyner talks about in Simpleology, it requires time, money, or energy to accomplish anything in life (or some combination thereof). Without one of those three, you’ve got nothing.

The only way I can think of to make the time available to help people is by getting paid to do so.

What do you think? Is there another way? Let me know in the comments.