[notbob]

> I used to work at a government lab.

Most JASON scientists haven't worked at a government lab for decades. How is this relevant?

> ...I've never heard a contractor...

These aren't contractors, they are scientists. And not just any scientists. In most cases, they aren't even the scientists employed by a national lab. They're scientists employed by all manner of institutions, including universities who will pay their paychecks regardless of whether this funding comes in. Usually senior and well-respected.

Many of those scientists have, if not "fuck you money", at least "fuck you reputations" that translate into "fuck you money". E.g., the current chairperson is fucking Russell Hemley... he's not putting up with federal background checks because he needs the extra pennies...

JASON members work on JASON projects because they think those projects are important. Nobel laureates and other top scientists don't work on grant funded projects for the money... if all they cared about was feeding their families, they would just retire. And if all they cared about was money, they would pimp their reputations to private industry labs.

[cm2187]

I don't know about these specific scientists but often professors only get paid for the school terms and must rely on externally funded research grants for the rest of the year.

[AlexCoventry]

If you don't bring in grant money, you'll end up with a lab roughly the size and utility of a shoebox.

[dgacmu]

You're missing the parent's point. Another (one-time?) JASON who you might have heard of is Bill Dally. He was a prof at Stanford, including being the department chair, and is the chief scientist / senior VP of Research at Nvidia.

Needless to say, silicon valley senior VPs don't usually need extra spending cash.

[snowwrestler]

If the money isn’t an issue, then why is the entire article about the money? For example:

> The contract, run through the Mitre Corp., is the vehicle that allows the Jasons to do work with other parts of the government as well. Without it, the group has no way of getting the several million dollars in funding it needs to operate annually.

[rootbear]

I got the impression that the money isn't all salaries. They need the funds to help with the research they do with the various agencies. Do they have staff during the summer meetings who assist? Do the agencies they work for need money to provide the information the Jasons need to do a study for them? The article doesn't have enough information to answer these questions, nor does it imply that the money all goes into their pockets.

[notbob]

Several million dollars is not a lot of money for a group this size. We're talking "travel to annual meetings and fund administrative overhead (e.g. security clearances are not cheap)" money.

There's "not in it for the money", and then there's "dipping into my personal funds".

Also, again, for many of these scientists, 1MM+ is the annual opportunity cost they pay to stay in academia/public sector vs. private industry. If they were in it for personal payout, they'd have jumped ship a long time ago.

[kilo_bravo_3]

>These aren't contractors, they are scientists.

If you are paid to perform a service based on the terms of a contract you are, by definition, a contractor.

It doesn't matter if you are cleaning toilets or hosting a conference on quantum computing.

[notbob]

> If you are paid to perform a service based on the terms of a contract you are, by definition, a contractor.

1. "Contractor" means something specific in the Defense industry. Every employee, including members of the armed forces and employees of DHS, are "paid to perform a service based on the terms of a contract" (the employment contract). But, of course, literally everyone knows that when I say "contractor" I definitely do not mean "someone who has signed an employment contract with the federal government".

2. The expectations associated with grants are different enough from most other contracts that there's a useful distinction between "grant work" and "contract work".