The United States is the premier example of a country where people move, and indeed move all over the country, if by doing so they get a better job. This professional mobility also applies to scientists. The country has invented a lot of mechanisms to ease these relocations.

Scientists move because they get a chance to start their own research group. Or they change affiliation because the new place offers a better scientific environment. Or offers a higher salary. For some scientists moving is very simple. A philosopher or a theoretical physicists just has to bring a few books to his new place and he is all set. For a scientist who works for a giant organization as Fermilab bringing his laboratory to the new location is impossible. But how about those scientists that have acquired movable pieces of equipment and apparatuses as a result of their successful grant applications? The scientists need this equipment to be able to pursue their research successfully in the new place. In the United States the rule is very simple: wherever the principal investigator (PI) is going – even if it is abroad – he is allowed to take with him all of his equipment. In my opinion this is the correct attitude.

But not so in Europe. In a number of countries the institute director, or the dean or whoever is the managing director of a scientific unit often objects to the moving of the equipment of a leaving PI. They use a number of incorrect arguments:

1. Equipment is owned by the institute.
Wrong, even if legally correct. The talents and the originality of the PI were the decisive factors in obtaining the equipment. The institute had nothing to do with the proposal, apart perhaps from creaming off from the proposal a substantial overhead.

2. Other people in the institute could use this equipment.
Wrong. If other people need this equipment they should have applied for a grant themselves.

3. Remaining PhD students could be harmed when the equipment leaves the institute.
Wrong. The PI is a responsible person and he can oversee the situation much better than anybody else. He will certainly weigh the interest of PhD students, either his own students or students of a colleague, in the final decision. He will certainly find an optimal solution. No manager can make a better decision.

4. The Machine Shop has made large adjustments to the equipment. This makes the institute partly owner.
Wrong. If the institute would have no group leaders, there would be no institute and consequently no machine shop. It is amusing to point out in this respect that the argumentation is always presented only one way: Objections are raised when equipment is about to leave the institute, but the same institute never offers to pay for equipment that a new PI is bringing with him when he joins this institute.

The only reason of existence of a scientific research institute are its scientific group leaders and with them the groups they lead. If you do not want a leaving group leader to take with him his equipment you should make him an offer to stay.

My conclusion is very simple: a group leader should be allowed to take freely with him “his” equipment wherever he chooses to go.

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