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So what happens if a scientist (let's say a faculty member at a university) suddenly has a brilliant idea, for example a possible solution to a Big Problem in his field and an experiment to test it, but doing so is not among the objectives of any of his current grants?
Does he write a grant proposal at that point? That sounds like a huge delay which would make it very likely someone else will publish the same thing first.
Do academics have faster means of securing smaller amounts of funding for such things?
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>>8334131
No, your idea dies with you because nobody will believe and/or fund you, unless you're very lucky.
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>>8334143
Simple and true.
Unless you manage to acquire a freak grant that allows you to do whatever the fuck you want (e.g. Bill Gates believing in your 'vision'), you ALWAYS word your grant in such a way that you maximise the chances of success. This means that the funding call is already limiting what you can or can not do. Sure, there's always a bit of wiggle-room and most scientists like to invest a tiny portion of their money into their pet projects, but other than that - progress in tiny steps.
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>>8334131
Your ideas are actually shitty, you just haven't thought about them enough.
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>>8334131
Unless we're talking about very expensive stuff, most academics don't actually spend the grant money on the specific grant-based project as it comes in. Past grants often pay for current projects as the grant proposals for those current projects are being written - and the projects may well be nearly complete by the time the grant formally funding them is awarded. It's a treadmill of sorts.
So long as the budget more or less checks out no one will bat an eyelid. Except for things like expensive equipment most budget items are going to be personnel costs and general "consumables" most of the time anyway.
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>>8334183
is this true?
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>>8334131
Ok here is what happens in terms of grand writing: first you do the research, or most of it, then you write a grant, and when you get the money you use it for the next research.
It's an open "secret" in academia, the time ordering of grant writing and research is reversed.
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>>8335452
Is it actually legal though?
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>>8335456
Who the fuck are they gonna send? The science police.
The thing is you and your buddies are pretty much the only experts in the world on the topic you're researching.
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>>8335459
>Who the fuck are they gonna send?
Whoever is in charge of checking if they're spending their grant money as they said they would
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>>8336175
It is the most efficient way to do research. If you have to wait for 6 months to get the grant and start research, you're gonna be late 6 months and another uni/country will publish before you. Scientific administrators have no interest in shooting themselves in the foot. Non scientific administratos might or might not be aware, but it's not like they're gonna be able to tell that you are studying scattering on high energy traps in two dimensional electron gases while you were supposed to study persistent paramagnons.
The process of research is that there are a lot of worthwhile idea being thrown around in conferences or in email chains between researchers, and you can be sure if you pick up one, somebody else did it too. You have to be fast.
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