The funding of science research is inherently worthwhile, and the funding of research in the social sciences and humanities is a waste of money. This is the general perception in the media, and so many readers of the National Post choked on their corn flakes when they read on Monday morning of an NSERC grant holder who, apparently, used his small slice of the funding agency’s billion-dollar budget to pimp his ride and equip his home with a state-of-the-art entertainment system.
This fellow spent more money in his living room than I used to write my book.
There is no war between scientists and humanists: we in the latter group understand where our national priorities lie, and we also acknowledge the great costs associated with doing science. But the story of the unidentified scientist at the unidentified university with the plasma television should remind us that all research funding, both extensive and modest, must be monitored closely. If the researcher in question was able to undertake his work while still preserving the necessary flexibility to misappropriate at least twenty thousand dollars from the government, his proposal would have had to have been as barmy as the wackiest SSHRC project to ever capture Robert Fulford’s attention.
The flaws in our funding system are obvious. As I have written previously, because we need to allow researchers the discretion to spend their money effectively over a number of years, it is impossible to get exhaustively itemized budgets before the work begins. The bureaucracy that oversees expenditure is split between accountants in Ottawa with one set of rules and accountants in our universities with their own, derived from council guidelines. As a result, you might find yourself dealing, as I did, with a dilemma. In the first year of my SSHRC grant, I paid $600 to repair my laptop monitor. It was a perfectly good machine, and I saw no reason to blow one-seventh of my money on a new one. But by the last year of my grant, my laptop was a paperweight. Still, when I requested funds to replace it, I was told that I had already made my one allowable computer expenditure! People helping me manage my money pointed out, however, that if I claimed full food and incidentals per diems for the eight weeks I spent researching at an archive, even if I was lunching on peanut butter and jam and carrying my own bags, I could indent for enough money to offset the costs of my technology. Is there any wonder that a system this pennywise and pound foolish is vulnerable to nefarious characters?
We do not know if this scientist is still employed at his university. If, as his university concluded, he altered receipts in making these claims, I cannot imagine that he kept his job. But if he lost his job because of fraud, is it likely that the public would not know? I have a feeling that if this had been, say, a humanist wasting money that had already been earmarked for an unconventional project, we would have, somehow, heard a little more a little sooner.
