I heard about a practice that people perform the work for which they ask the grant—before the application.
First, because why not to cover my expenditures?
The second reason is that if the biggest part of the work for the grant is already performed, it is much easy to be sure that the idea will work and much clear what actually write in the grant. Your grant application will look great if it will based on already performed work.
Thus the grant may describe the work they already performed.
What makes you think they could get the death penalty? In what jurisdiction, and consequent to what conviction? It doesn’t seem likely that they would be convicted of murder if they were doing what was at the time considered normal science, surely, and while I suppose they could get a manslaughter or equivalent conviction via negligence, that wouldn’t ever carry a sentence so severe.
If they continued to suppress information, this may contribute to additional deaths and they could know it. In that case they can get first degree murder.
i will admit that something a bit like this sometimes happens in computer science (grant application to cover the cost of something you’ve just done; you know it’s possible, because you’ve just done it)
some years ago, I am giving a presentation to some senior honchos from our own Ministry of Defense, and afterwards I get asked about exactly this,. “so, you’re saying it’s like how people handled the Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union?” asks military dude who knows about Russia. Me, who knows how the sausages are made in academic research: “Basically, yes.”
so, maybe. Happens sometimes.
P.S. Was actually MoD, rather than DoD. DARPA principal investigators can also encounter a tough crowd.
P.P.S. And then theres the EU ones, where as PI you get a questioning that feels like a combination of your thesis defense and being audited by the tax authorities, and you gave no idea which type of question might be next,
Unlike the EU, DARPA is very fond of contract extensions, so you get “ok, we’ll pay you to do phase 1 of this, and if it works and we like it we might think about negotiating a contract extension for phase II” … which possibly reduces the need for PIs to adopt the Soviet Union Five Year Plan strategy, (like, you might really not have done phase I at the point where you’re negotiating a contract to do it).
There is an argument to the effect that if you can write down in advance what you’re going to discover by doing an experiment, then it is not, in fact, scientific research....
I heard about a practice that people perform the work for which they ask the grant—before the application.
First, because why not to cover my expenditures?
The second reason is that if the biggest part of the work for the grant is already performed, it is much easy to be sure that the idea will work and much clear what actually write in the grant. Your grant application will look great if it will based on already performed work.
Thus the grant may describe the work they already performed.
(They deny this explicitly. But of course the whole accusation is that they are lying egregiously.)
If they confirm, they will get life in jail or even death penalty, so it may be not surprising that they will deny in any case.
What makes you think they could get the death penalty? In what jurisdiction, and consequent to what conviction? It doesn’t seem likely that they would be convicted of murder if they were doing what was at the time considered normal science, surely, and while I suppose they could get a manslaughter or equivalent conviction via negligence, that wouldn’t ever carry a sentence so severe.
If they continued to suppress information, this may contribute to additional deaths and they could know it. In that case they can get first degree murder.
i will admit that something a bit like this sometimes happens in computer science (grant application to cover the cost of something you’ve just done; you know it’s possible, because you’ve just done it)
some years ago, I am giving a presentation to some senior honchos from our own Ministry of Defense, and afterwards I get asked about exactly this,. “so, you’re saying it’s like how people handled the Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union?” asks military dude who knows about Russia. Me, who knows how the sausages are made in academic research: “Basically, yes.”
so, maybe. Happens sometimes.
P.S. Was actually MoD, rather than DoD. DARPA principal investigators can also encounter a tough crowd.
P.P.S. And then theres the EU ones, where as PI you get a questioning that feels like a combination of your thesis defense and being audited by the tax authorities, and you gave no idea which type of question might be next,
Unlike the EU, DARPA is very fond of contract extensions, so you get “ok, we’ll pay you to do phase 1 of this, and if it works and we like it we might think about negotiating a contract extension for phase II” … which possibly reduces the need for PIs to adopt the Soviet Union Five Year Plan strategy, (like, you might really not have done phase I at the point where you’re negotiating a contract to do it).
There is an argument to the effect that if you can write down in advance what you’re going to discover by doing an experiment, then it is not, in fact, scientific research....