Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Looking a gift horse in the mouth

I'm all for the questioning of authority, but this seems strange...check-out the "Acknowledgments" of this paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.6052v1.pdf. I'm not sure what "caps" they're talking about...the limit of three-months of summer salary in total (from all agencies) per summer? The NSF's cap at two months? And they question the "lack of support of basic research in general"? Are they suggesting that this paper is applied, not basic? Very strange, even for Willy.

Update: Peter Woit explains at least part of the issue...NSF's salary caps on summer salary. I was thinking things were so tight for Willy that he needed a second job as an EMT, but apparently his EMT gig is as a volunteer. Also note, that there's a new version with a much more politically correct ack.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of explicitly not thanking people for not supporting you (at your desired level). This is something I can apply to my life.

Douglas Natelson said...

That was odd. There is a difference between acknowledging and thanking, and slamming the agencies doesn't seem productive for anyone.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what the program managers will say on their next grand decision: "since you don't like our policies and badmouth us in your work, we opted to encourage you to seek funding elsewhere"

Anonymous said...

and that obviously was supposed to be "grant decision"

Anonymous said...

ha ha ha....as if they will even see that. It's not like anybody in these positions will even read their paper. Who do they think they are, anyway?