A modest proposal

From a letter by Rui Sousa in this week's issue of Science:

No prestige should be attached to the level of funding that an investigator has managed to secure. The most basic of truths must be emphasized: Money is a means, not an end. We do not do science to get money. We get money to do science. Funding cannot be a measure of productivity, because scientists do not produce research dollars. Research dollars are produced by taxpayers (and to a lesser extent by philanthropists and charitable individuals). The amount of money spent by a researcher is not a measure of his productivity, but of his consumption, and might even be counted on the negative side of the ledger when he is evaluated. (emphasis mine)

Sousa overstates the case. Some prestige should be attached to funding, because more funding (generally) allows you to get more research done. But some fields are more expensive than others, too. So getting half a million dollars to support inexpensive field work with simple equipment is far more impressive than getting half a million to support work in molecular evolution involving a lot of expensive chemicals, reagents, and equipment.

What matters -- or what ought to matter -- is the quality of work that gets done, not how much money it takes to do it.¹