Who is the owner of scientific equipment?
Tags: equipment, grant proposal, group leader, principal investigatorPosted in Ethics, Tips for senior scientists
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.












Readers' comments
Thanks for the advice. It sounds almost too simple and like something people should come up by themselves. Unfortunately, most ...
19 Jul 2010 8:46, Julio E. Peironcely
Getting grants funded is a much less platonic enterprise than the science itself. I recently ran into a science professor ...
20 Jun 2010 19:32, Gijs
Hi, One question - where would you include correspondence? Some journals e.g. Nature publish "Letters" as full articles, whereas, correspondence elsewhere ...
11 Jun 2010 23:09, MH
I agree with what have been said above. Should the normalization be done against the total number of publications he/she authored/co-authored ...
8 Jun 2010 23:08, labuddy
I spent the spare time on the unfinished ideas,because the working time is controlled strictly by the boss and ...
7 Jun 2010 14:26, danxian