Need to chase funding distracts scientists from research

By Tom Spears. Some spend more time writing grant proposals that working in the lab. Trained in biology, Roger Pierson often has an uncomfortable side job: Asking industry or charitable foundations for money to keep his university lab running.
He’s not alone as the business side of Canadian science evolves.
There was a time in the late 1900s when researchers would ask a big government agency for the cash to do a project, and either get the money or not. Groups like the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or Canadian Institutes for Health Research, held the purse strings. More...