One expects those doing the cuts to report examples of weak projects.
One expects those opposing the cuts to report examples of strong projects.
In Harvard's publicity, those opposing the cuts are reporting an example that sounds speculative and seems like something better done in industry. Harvard is not doing a good job playing its hand, which is much stronger than one would guess from this example.
Harvard does best when it lists past verified successes and prizes. It is better to extrapolate from that than to guess which current projects will succeed.
I have a feeling that if you keep prodding that we will find the research money yields very little. I made a few inquiries myself with ChatGPT and it appears that some funding sources are far more effective than others. Apparently Howard Hughes Medical Institute money produces much more results per dollar than NIH money.
The people who have Howard Hughes money are the most elite scientists given the privilege of funding without the onerous grant writing effort needed for NIH funding. They are most productive because they were already very successful and they don't need to spend much time on writing grants.
Even so, a huge amount of good has come from NIH funding and Harvard has many of the best applicants, and inducing them to leave to other institutions will be very inefficient.
The people with NIH grants are not the people calling for killing the Jews. Many of those are at the Divinity School, the Law School, the Kennedy School, and the School of Public Health, and a few irreconcilable undergraduates whose punishments were overturned by the faculty. There will now be a different system for discipline discussions; it will be more consistent, and hopefully better: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/25/protest-panel-president/
"...I emailed Professor Kun-Hsing Yu and his administrator, Faith McDonald, this morning, to ask, “Do you think it's accurate to describe your advance as ‘life altering’? Has anyone’s life been altered by it yet, actually? Or is that only a hope for the future?” They haven’t gotten back to me yet with an answer."
As my grandmother was fond of saying...."Don't hold your breath."
I so appreciate your poking holes in Harvard's arguments-- both in this and in your prior piece about their hypocritical use of First Amendment rights.
One expects those doing the cuts to report examples of weak projects.
One expects those opposing the cuts to report examples of strong projects.
In Harvard's publicity, those opposing the cuts are reporting an example that sounds speculative and seems like something better done in industry. Harvard is not doing a good job playing its hand, which is much stronger than one would guess from this example.
Harvard does best when it lists past verified successes and prizes. It is better to extrapolate from that than to guess which current projects will succeed.
I have a feeling that if you keep prodding that we will find the research money yields very little. I made a few inquiries myself with ChatGPT and it appears that some funding sources are far more effective than others. Apparently Howard Hughes Medical Institute money produces much more results per dollar than NIH money.
The people who have Howard Hughes money are the most elite scientists given the privilege of funding without the onerous grant writing effort needed for NIH funding. They are most productive because they were already very successful and they don't need to spend much time on writing grants.
Even so, a huge amount of good has come from NIH funding and Harvard has many of the best applicants, and inducing them to leave to other institutions will be very inefficient.
The people with NIH grants are not the people calling for killing the Jews. Many of those are at the Divinity School, the Law School, the Kennedy School, and the School of Public Health, and a few irreconcilable undergraduates whose punishments were overturned by the faculty. There will now be a different system for discipline discussions; it will be more consistent, and hopefully better: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/25/protest-panel-president/
"...I emailed Professor Kun-Hsing Yu and his administrator, Faith McDonald, this morning, to ask, “Do you think it's accurate to describe your advance as ‘life altering’? Has anyone’s life been altered by it yet, actually? Or is that only a hope for the future?” They haven’t gotten back to me yet with an answer."
As my grandmother was fond of saying...."Don't hold your breath."
I so appreciate your poking holes in Harvard's arguments-- both in this and in your prior piece about their hypocritical use of First Amendment rights.